Country Music, Episode 2

Episode Two is where country music goes off the rails. Not the show - the music. By 1933 Jimmie Rodgers was dead, the Carter Family was falling apart, and the Great Depression had devastated the record industry. Into this void rode a cowboy. A singing cowboy. Gene Autry's talents were modest indeed (as Autry himself knew). Somehow he became the biggest entertainer in America, star of stage, screen, and records - and literally hundreds of singing cowboys followed in his wake, a blight on the landscape for more than a generation. There are brief glimpses of life here and there - Bob Wills in Texas, the Monroe Brothers in Kentucky. But it's a world dominated by a god damn singing cowboy. Hank Williams can't get here soon enough.