• AllMyVinyl #50
• Band: Various / Ken Burns
• Album Title: Country Music
• Release Date: 13 Sep 2019
• Date purchased: 6 Apr 2021
• Location purchased: Amazon
• Color of vinyl: black
• Number of discs: 2
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube ]

OK, this one will get me some strange looks.  I’d like to say for the 50th in this vinyl series of mine, I chose something different, but it was random. ha.  I’ll start this by saying I love Ken Burns films.  I’ve watched nearly all of them over the years.  So when the 2019 film came out and was about Country Music, I was curious.  Country isn’t my favorite musical genre, but there’s a handful of songs I do like.  So I was gonna watch it, and I did.  Also, a guy I know for the Texas Rangers used to work at the Grand Ole Opry, so I was curious to see if he’d pop up in this (he didn’t).

So I watched the movie, and honestly some of the earliest stuff was kind of lost to me – I can’t say the earliest country is stuff I really care for – has an odd sound that doesn’t mostly work, but as time passed, I started to know more of the music myself, and I did like some of the songs that I hadn’t heard before.  Of course the movie was enjoyable – was Ken Burns after all.  The movie itself is still available to view on the PBS website (but I think you havre to sub to PBS to see it now).  There is an extended 25 minute trailer for the movie on that link that is free, and I’ve embedded it from Youtube on my page below.

This will be one of the shorter ones in the series, because the bulk of the album while enjoyable enough isn’t the kind of stuff that I want to write about individual songs for (as a metalhead).  I will include the track list and a few short remarks about some of the songs.  I did listen to it on Wednesday morning before starting work.  I did enjoy quite a lot of it, but honestly the bulk of it kind of blended together.  Here’s a few notes from listening to the album.

• Jolene (Dolly Parton).  This is probably the one song on this album that would transcend into metal.  I mean Rob f’in Halford sang this with her.  It’s the song I know MOST from this album, and I’d wager the one you probably know if you know just one from this album.  She put out an official lyric video for this a couple of years ago (the song came out in 1971), I’ve included that below.
• Can the Circle Be Broken (The Carter Family). The first song on the album is the exception to the rule of not liking the early country stuff.  This one works very well for me.  “Can the circle be broken bye and bye”.  This just works for me all around.
• Fox Chase (DeFord Bailey) – It sounds like something you’d hear in early Bugs Bunny cartoons.
• It’s Mighty Dark to Travel (Bill Monroe) – It’s fast paced banjo song – those always work for me. It speaks a bit to my 3-4 min fast metal song thing, but with a banjo?  It shouldn’t work, but it does.
• Ring of Fire (Johnny Cash) – The original Man In Black’s killer track.  I adore this stuff.  When I’d go to Texas Rangers games, they would play Ring of Fire and play video of fire on all the scoreboards when the opposing pitcher was in trouble.  Fun memory.  I also saw it done a few times live by others.  Once by Pat Benatar in 2022 in my first concert back from covid lockdowns.  I also saw the Brian Setzer Orchestra do it in Dec 2018.  I’ve included a video I recorded myself of that below.  It’s a smoking hot track.
• Crazy (Patsy Cline) – I can’t tell you why, just like the slow country tune. Nice feel.

A few amusing notes about songs on here:

• Stand by Your Man (Tammy Wynette) – Now there’s nothing wrong with this song, but I saw it used back in the 90’s in the James Bond film Goldeneye.  They had actress Minnie Driver intentionally singing it as a Russian woman – so the accent is really BAD (intentionally) for this song.  Even Bond himself said “Who’s strangling the cat?”
• Pancho & Lefty (Willie Nelson / Merle Haggard) – The song starts off with a sound that really reminds me of the theme song from Cheers.

As I said earlier, the bulk of the album just blurs into a stream of music, as a lot of it sounds similar to me.  There was only one song that I could say I thought was ACTIVELY bad.  Thing is the song alerted me to that from the title.  And it WAS as bad as I thought it would be.  This is specifically Mule Skinner Blues.  That’s because it had a LOT of yodeling in it. I mean the full title is “Mule Skinner Blues (Blue Yodel No 8)”, so it kind of warns you up front.   The only song that made me go “Ahhhh – stop!”

So to sum up, I did enjoy this, but I think I enjoyed the movie more.  Not something I listen to a ton, and I do recall that some of my all time favorite country songs weren’t on here.  Some of that stuff is God Blessed Texas (Little Texas), Man I Feel Like a Woman (Shania Twain), Standing Outside the Fire & Friends in Low Places (Garth Brooks), Chattahoochie (Alan Jackson), East Bound & Down (Jerry Reed), and a song that really smokes…  “The Man Comes Around” by Johnny Cash (this was used in an episode the revival of the TV series Dallas).

Back to rock tomorrow with Diamond Dave…