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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. I'm Tom Keane Jay Ley.

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Speaker 1: We bring you insight from the best in economics, finance, investment,

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Speaker 1: and international relations. Find Bloomberg Surveillance on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud,

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot Com, and of course on the Bloomberg. In

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Speaker 1: a moment here we're gonna go to uh truly one

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Speaker 1: of the recent cultural successes of the nation, that is

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Speaker 1: the PBS series Country Music with Ken Burns. And of

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Speaker 1: course this comes off his magisterial effort on Vietnam a

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Speaker 1: number of years ago. Of course, we know of baseball

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Speaker 1: in the Civil War, uh long before. I mean, really

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Speaker 1: he has invented and sustained a genre, Paul has. It

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Speaker 1: really is that he's really taken documentary filmmaking to another level.

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Speaker 1: And it you know, it really all started for me

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Speaker 1: for that Civil War series that came out in ninth

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Speaker 1: team ninety's that long ago, but it really helped I

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Speaker 1: think a whole generation, uh kind of just rekindled the

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Speaker 1: interest with the Civil War, and then of course he

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Speaker 1: continued it with baseball, which is was you know equally

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Speaker 1: as epic uh looking at you know, a big part

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Speaker 1: of americanum the courage of country music is Mr Burns

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Speaker 1: has had the courage to go back to the foundation,

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Speaker 1: before the Ryman Auditorium, before uh what what they did

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Speaker 1: on radio, back when radio really mattered to this nation.

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Speaker 1: And then he moves on forward and ends in. The

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Speaker 1: critics would say ends way too early because he doesn't

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Speaker 1: move on to what country music is being out come.

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Speaker 1: He leaves it with Garth Brooks, the Bluebird Cafe and

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Speaker 1: the revolution that was at the time. Ken Burns, Welcome

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Speaker 1: to Bloomberg Surveillance. Wonderful to speak to you again. Thank

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Speaker 1: you Tom for having me. Paul, great to be with you.

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Speaker 1: Congratulations again on this. When you developed this series, you

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Speaker 1: had to begin somewhere. Our colleague in crime, David Girl's

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Speaker 1: father Philip Gura, is the expert on the Martin guitar.

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Speaker 1: How far back in the Martin guitar did you go

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Speaker 1: to begin country music? Well, you know that was the

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Speaker 1: hard point ending it. We knew, because we're in the

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Speaker 1: history business, we're not going to go up to the present.

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Speaker 1: But as Mark Twain said, history doesn't repeat itself, but

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Speaker 1: it rhymes. We knew that whatever is going on now

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Speaker 1: there would be a rhyme in every one of our

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Speaker 1: eight episodes, and indeed there is and happy to discuss

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Speaker 1: that much harder was where to start? And we begin

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Speaker 1: in the twenties when both the relatively you know, mature

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Speaker 1: medium of phonograph records UH several decades old UH is

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Speaker 1: beginning to record this old time hill country music and

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Speaker 1: this new new technology of radio is beginning to disseminate it.

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Speaker 1: At that point, once we've got a few people recorded,

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Speaker 1: we go back and collect many centuries of folk tunes

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Speaker 1: from the British Isles and the banjo from Africa and

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Speaker 1: all the intertwined influences in America, including the Martin guitar,

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Speaker 1: and talk about George Frederick Martin and what he did

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Speaker 1: and when his grandsons did to sort of improve it

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Speaker 1: and make it a kind of popular household item that rivaled,

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Speaker 1: not only rivaled, but exceeded the piano in the parlor.

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Speaker 1: Someone said to me that Bing Crosby changed things because

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Speaker 1: he was the first person that's saying to you, what

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Speaker 1: did Hank Williams Sr. Do? He spoke to your heart.

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Speaker 1: I think it's absolutely true about Bing Crosby. I'm not

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Speaker 1: sure he's the first person i'd suggest Louis Armstrong in

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Speaker 1: the way he bent notes and and was able to speak.

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Speaker 1: But but I think within the community of country music,

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Speaker 1: which is of course connected to jazz and blues and

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Speaker 1: all the other Hank Williams is speaking to universal human

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Speaker 1: emotions of love and loss. Let's take love for a second. Um,

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Speaker 1: I got a hot rod Ford and a two dollar bill,

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Speaker 1: and I know a place right over the hill. The

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Speaker 1: joy almost in high coup like phrases, um of of

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Speaker 1: the of love, the possibility of new love. And then

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Speaker 1: he also says, um, the silence of a falling star

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Speaker 1: lights up a purple sky. And as I wonder where

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Speaker 1: you are, I'm so lonesome I could cry. There's no

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Speaker 1: one on the planet that does not know what Hank

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Speaker 1: Williams is saying. And that you know is Rodney Kraal,

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Speaker 1: the singer and songwriter who in our film says, when

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Speaker 1: a songwriter gets it right for themselves, it's right for

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Speaker 1: everybody else. And Hank so directly channeled these universal human

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Speaker 1: emotions that the rest of us are still in its thrall.

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Speaker 1: And I think you guys in business should know that

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Speaker 1: the rising tide of this broadcast the kind of old

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Speaker 1: fashioned thing where we all gather around our TV sets

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Speaker 1: together rather than at our own pace. People are still

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Speaker 1: doing that. It's available for free for streaming, and the

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Speaker 1: DVDs are out and blah blah blah. But there's a

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Speaker 1: huge community of feeling it has eased up. If you

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Speaker 1: look at the Amazon or the Billboard charts of country

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Speaker 1: of music, the number one is the new release of

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Speaker 1: Abbey Road. The remaining nine are all connected to us,

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Speaker 1: that is to say, our soundtrack or some of the

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Speaker 1: people we featured in the films, their backlist coming up,

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Speaker 1: and it goes. You know, it's dozens of stuff. Even

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Speaker 1: Bob Dylan is having a resurgence because he makes an

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Speaker 1: appearance in about five or six of our episodes. Let

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Speaker 1: me bring in my colleague Paul Sweeney. Paul so Ken,

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Speaker 1: I just wondering. You mentioned Hank Williams. Who are some

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Speaker 1: of the other artists that you think in your work

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Speaker 1: in your documentary that really kind of helped the evolution

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Speaker 1: of country music as you know it well, So so

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Speaker 1: I would I would make amount rushmore if you will,

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Speaker 1: and I make room for a few more heads than

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Speaker 1: the four that are on our political amount Rushmore, which

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Speaker 1: of course, we're only addressing the first hundred twenty five

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Speaker 1: years of our existence. Um. Certainly Jimmy Rodgers, who's the

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Speaker 1: first great superstar from Mississippi, steeped in the blues learned

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Speaker 1: from the black all black train crews that were laying

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Speaker 1: track in in Mississippi. The Carter family, which seems the

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Speaker 1: opposite Jimmy Rodgers, is most definitely the Saturday night tradition

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Speaker 1: in America, and the Carter family is the Sunday morning tradition.

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Speaker 1: But within them are many influences, including African American songs

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Speaker 1: and Mother Maybell Carter, the original American guitarist, the lead guitarist.

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Speaker 1: She invented the Carter scratch. Being able to do the

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Speaker 1: melody with your thumb and keep rhythm with the remaining

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Speaker 1: fingers is still today the dominant way of playing guitar.

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Speaker 1: And so I put them on, and I'd add Johnny

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Speaker 1: Cash and Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton and Merle Haggard

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Speaker 1: to to the mount rushmore of people who who spoke directly, Ken,

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Speaker 1: let me get this in because I want to drive

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Speaker 1: forward the more modern country music and country music. Of course, folks,

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Speaker 1: you can see it on PBS to me, the swinging

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Speaker 1: point is an incredibly gifted person named Ricky Skaggs. That's

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Speaker 1: not a household name, but you brilliantly have don't get

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Speaker 1: above your raising in there. Explain the cultural tip point

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Speaker 1: of the people like Ricky Skaggs that's through country music

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Speaker 1: into a more modern era. Well, it's very interesting. They

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Speaker 1: really represent these, you know, contradictory impulses in in country

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Speaker 1: music because country music has always been seeking to cross

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Speaker 1: over and have more lucrative pop success, and that has

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Speaker 1: always annoyed the purest And what Ricky Skaggs and what

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Speaker 1: Marty Stewart and what George Strait and Randy Travis and

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Speaker 1: Reba McIntyre and others did is they took the traditional

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Speaker 1: form of country music and unashamedly held onto it but

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Speaker 1: brought it up to the modern era. Um. You know,

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Speaker 1: Ricky Skaggs have been a disciple since six years old

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Speaker 1: of Bill Monroe. I mean, we got footage of him

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Speaker 1: performing at seven years old. It's unbelievable. A mandolin prodigy.

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Speaker 1: But he's plugging it in and he's played sing it

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Speaker 1: in a way that he takes old tunes that had

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Speaker 1: never charted, like don't get above your raisins southern phrase,

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Speaker 1: don't get too big for your bridges, and he turns

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Speaker 1: it into and it brings us into the model. Let's

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Speaker 1: do this. We want to come back and really jump forward.

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Speaker 1: Here from Ricky Skaggs. This is in celebration of country music.

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Speaker 1: It's out on PBS and once again with the emotion

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Speaker 1: of his previous Vietnam, Baseball and Civil War, ken Burns

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Speaker 1: is with us. Paul Sweeney and I with ken Burns,

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Speaker 1: you know him of course some Civil War many other

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Speaker 1: efforts for PBS. Vietnam was deeply emotional and now again

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Speaker 1: country music. Ken Please compare and contrast the response of

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Speaker 1: country music to all of your other projects. How does

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Speaker 1: it fit into the ken Burns work. Well, you know

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Speaker 1: the big series that you mentioned, Civil War, Baseball, Jazz

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Speaker 1: and the War about World War Two, National Parks, the Roosevelts,

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Speaker 1: and Vietnam have all been hugely responded to and have

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Speaker 1: have have been very gratifying in the response and the

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Speaker 1: ratings and stuff like that. And the numbers aren't in

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Speaker 1: completely for country music and won't be because there's so

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Speaker 1: many streams um that we're getting and that's going to

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Speaker 1: be a different kind of metric and measurement. But I

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Speaker 1: haven't had a film since the Civil War that's had

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Speaker 1: this kind of emotional impact. You know, people finding me,

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Speaker 1: tracking me down, writing me, stopping me on the street. UM,

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Speaker 1: you know, beginning to tear up because that song meant

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Speaker 1: something for them. They were that song got them through

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Speaker 1: that divorce. This was something that that meant something when

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Speaker 1: they're grandparents passed away, whatever it might be. There's a

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Speaker 1: you know, our underwriter, our corporate underwriter for the last

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Speaker 1: thirteen years. They've just signed up for the next ten.

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Speaker 1: Bank of America UM had a wonderful tagline in their

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Speaker 1: underwriting thing where they said, nothing connects the country like country.

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Speaker 1: And so I think, as we began our conversation earlier,

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Speaker 1: this idea of doing something collectively has really been lost.

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Speaker 1: We're all individual free agents, and we healed that lonesomeness

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Speaker 1: that Hank Williams is talking about the reason I've spent

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Speaker 1: my entire professional life in public broadcasting is I like,

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Speaker 1: you know, the PBS thing, the public podcasting is obvious,

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Speaker 1: and the s isn't system, it's service, and so I

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Speaker 1: I'd almost say it's PBUs. Do you know what I'm

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Speaker 1: meaning that we rarely have that. In our friend Bended Lives, Kenbrigs,

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Speaker 1: John Caramanica in the New York Times, I thought it

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Speaker 1: was a great treatment. And there's the photo by Amy

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Speaker 1: Curland of the Bluebird Cafe, which was about the song,

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Speaker 1: and the song permeates country music throughout all of the decades.

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Speaker 1: It was one day at the Bluebird Cafe, Garth Brooks

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Speaker 1: gets up and changes country music. Everybody that's involved degrees

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Speaker 1: that he's simple, single handily did an Amy Curlin audition,

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Speaker 1: got up there, this kid from Oklahoma, and away country

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Speaker 1: music went to a new a new tact, a new generation.

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Speaker 1: So the great irony of it, and I always think

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Speaker 1: that when the songs themselves are stories, that's the great

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Speaker 1: popularity of country music. It's easy to understand these are stories.

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Speaker 1: But when you tell the story behind that song, you're

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Speaker 1: sort of exponentially engaged. So in fact, Garth is playing

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Speaker 1: after a week of being turned down by every record

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Speaker 1: label on music Row, and he goes in there and

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Speaker 1: he's singing and playing, and people are giving him standing

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Speaker 1: ovations for the chorus, not not at the end of

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Speaker 1: the song, but for the chorus. And Amy Curland as

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Speaker 1: she tells us on camera, had never seen that before.

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Speaker 1: And so there's a record executive who had been one

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Speaker 1: of the ones that had passed on him, and he said,

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Speaker 1: you know what, let me give him a chance. And

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Speaker 1: of course the rest is history. All of a sudden,

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Speaker 1: you're not talking about a great a hundred thousand or

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Speaker 1: five hundred or that rare platinum in country music, but

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Speaker 1: you're talking about twenty or twenty millions in sales, and

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Speaker 1: Garth's you know, obliterates every past record that's ever happened.

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Speaker 1: And he still retains that humility to go to a fanfare,

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Speaker 1: not even invited, and signed, not for an hour, not

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Speaker 1: for two hours, but for twenty hours until everybody was satisfied.

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Speaker 1: And that's not getting up. And Paul's great about this

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Speaker 1: and what Kenberg's captures as he actually talks to Allan Reynolds,

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Speaker 1: who was Jim Rooney made this happen, and they've got

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Speaker 1: a direct leg back through Don Williams to the earlier

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Speaker 1: country music. So can you know when when I when

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Speaker 1: I think about country music, it's you know, you think

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Speaker 1: about you know, the Southeast United States, but it's really

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Speaker 1: now a nationalist, not global phenomenal. What really happened there, Well,

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Speaker 1: it has been like that from the beginning, And I

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Speaker 1: think it's just that that commerce and convenience categorizes country

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Speaker 1: music and it's into its own silo, and therefore imprisons

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Speaker 1: it as if it's an island nation. It's connected to

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Speaker 1: all other music. And when you've got a fifty thousand

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Speaker 1: watch signal in the nineties twenties beaming out country music,

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Speaker 1: Hank Snow is hearing it. In the thirties in Nova

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Speaker 1: Scotia and the maritime provinces, people on the other side

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Speaker 1: of the Sierra Nevada are are hearing it and and

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Speaker 1: being um drawn to it. So New York City, one

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Speaker 1: of its most popular radio stations, is a country station.

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Speaker 1: I think what we do is, in our desire to categorize,

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Speaker 1: we limit its scope and its reach. And I think

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Speaker 1: from the very beginning, I mean, when you say World

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Speaker 1: War two, you think of Glenn Miller, and you think

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Speaker 1: of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw. Well, in fact, probably

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Speaker 1: a majority of the folks listening to music, we're country

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Speaker 1: music fans. And the same was true in Vietnam, where

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Speaker 1: we think it's got a purely rock and roll soundtrack.

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Speaker 1: It doesn't and we prove it here as we did

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Speaker 1: in in a Vietnam series. So I think it's all

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Speaker 1: he's been there. And because it's about three chords in

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Speaker 1: the truth, Harlan Howard said that a songwriter, he's acknowledging

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Speaker 1: this isn't complicated like classical music. But you know what,

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Speaker 1: you can hear the lyrics and that truth part cannot

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Speaker 1: be denied. It is speaking about, as I said, universal

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Speaker 1: human experiences can that a Nashville become the center of

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Speaker 1: country music. By accident, the National Life and Accident Insurance

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Speaker 1: Company decided that it might be helpful to sell policies

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Speaker 1: if they started a radio station WSM, we shield millions.

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Speaker 1: They ended up with one of those fifty things, and

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Speaker 1: they put on as Charlotte had in Dallas had in

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Speaker 1: Chicago had a Barn Dance. That Barn Dance quickly got

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Speaker 1: renamed just by accident one day of the Grand ol Opry.

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Speaker 1: It's the longest running radio show in the history of

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Speaker 1: the United States, and because of Nashville's central location, the

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Speaker 1: rarely poorly the the comparatively poorly paid musicians who played

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Speaker 1: there on Saturday nights could go to better paying gigs

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Speaker 1: in a week, as long as they were back the

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Speaker 1: next Saturday night for the next grand old opery. And

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Speaker 1: so Nashville just grows. Songwriters move there, and then of

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Speaker 1: course the stars live there because they're performing on the

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Speaker 1: opera stage and heading out on the road for the week.

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Speaker 1: It's a it's it's an amazing thing. And this place

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Speaker 1: called the Athens of the South, by its old inhabitants,

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Speaker 1: has to sort of make way for Music City USA.

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Speaker 1: Ken Burns, congratulations on another tour to force Mr Burns's

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Speaker 1: country music. It is a PBS and by all accounts,

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Speaker 1: it is spectacular as well. Thanks for listening to the

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Surveillance podcast. Subscribe and listen to interviews on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud,

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Speaker 1: or whichever podcast platform you prefer. I'm on Twitter at

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Speaker 1: Tom Keane before the podcast. You can always catch us worldwide.

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Speaker 1: I'm Bloomberg Radio a