Ken Burns’ Country Music Neglects Chicago’s Contributions
No one does historical or cultural documentaries like Ken Burns. The Civil War, Prohibition, the Vietnam War and now Country Music. It is detailed, extensive and enrapturing. And yet, there is much that Burns and his crew neglected especially in regards to Chicago and the influence of Chicago’s country music industry.
For example, in the very beginning completely unmentioned was Wendell Hall who preceded Jimmy Rodgers by four full years. Hall, who worked as a song-plugger for a Chicago publishing company, was introduced to a crystal radio set one day and saw immediately its commercial possibilities. He went to the one existing local Chicago radio station and offered to sing some of his own music for free, of course. The next day he went around to some music stores and pleasantly discovered the songs he had performed were selling in sheet music. Hall borrowed his father’s car and barnstormed the country. He went to every little burgh that had a radio station, coming unannounced and offering to perform for free but first he made sure the local music shops had his sheet music. After several months of barnstorming, one of his songs, It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’, had become the number one selling sheet music in the country and the major record companies soon recorded it for photograph sales. It was a major hit in 1923.
Hall had a long career in Chicago in music. He was certainly not as popular or influential as Jimmy Rodgers or the Carter family but he was still historically important. Not only was his song It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’ arguably the first national country music hit song but Hall certified the power of radio to make music popular incredibly fast. It was a new era and Hall was the first to set the path.
Chicago was neglected but Cincinnati was totally ignored. In the first couple of decades Chicago and Cincinnati were as much country music production centers as Nashville. The Cincinnati-based Crosby Radio company made that city a power in original entertainment production. They even experimented with a 500,000 watt radio transmitter that could be heard anywhere on the North American continent.
In part, the problem is Ken Burns made his documentary about country music artists instead of about the country music industry. It is the usual method in which cultural history is presented. After all, people are more interested in the artist than the business people who may have made the artist popular. Thus there is much about the Carter family and little about Ralph Peer and the other businesses that made the industry what it was. Events in the industry that greatly influenced the industry are also neglected such as the payola scandal of the late 1950’s that had a huge impact on radio and the music industry and which also was a Chicago originated event.
Ken Burns’ Country Music seems to have taken a Nashville focus which somewhat distorts the reality of the country music industry at least until the 1970’s when traditional country music centers like Cincinnati, Chicago and Dallas even Memphis and New Orleans had become nearly non-existent as country music production centers. Therefore, there is no explanation as to why they declined.
Chicago had not only been a country music center but some of the music businesses of Chicago helped make Nashville the eventual dominant center of the industry. Burns notes the importance of Acuff-Rose in Nashville but says nothing of Fred Rose who was from Chicago. Or they mention how the producer of Roger Miller helped launch Miller’s career. The production company was Smash Records which was owned by Chicago-based Mercury Records. Eddie Arnold was noted as a contemporary and equal to Hank Williams but totally ignored was Arnold’s early television programs which were produced in Chicago.
Country Music is another great PBS documentary but if you want to know more about Chicago’s contribution to this American musical genre, you are better served reading Chicago’s Music Industry.
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