Country Music, Episode 7

A tremendous episode, the best in the series. The title suggests we're going to be covering the "outlaws" movement of the 1970s, which was something that always smacked just a little of music industry hype. The "Outlaws" album may have been the biggest selling record in country music history, the genre's first ever million-seller - but it was never a real album. It was a compilation of loose ends slapped together by RCA in response to what Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings had already set in motion.

What we get is far richer and deeper. It begins with Dolly Parton and George Jones, two great country voices both somewhat trapped by their circumstances. Parton had long outgrown her dependence on Porter Wagoner, her mentor and discoverer. Jones was trapped, as always, by his own demons and madness. By the end of the episode, Parton has broken any chains that held her back and become a pop star while remaining a country icon. Jones never in his life made a move that didn't have something to do with country music. His story in this episode ends with his comeback hit "He Stopped Loving Her Today," which is just another excuse for us all to ponder the utter miracle of his voice, one of the true Seven Wonders of the known universe. Another generation of performers begins to emerge, including Hank Williams Jr (always a little overrated) and the magnificent Rosanne Cash, for whom no praise is sufficient.

But the heart of the episode develops out of Burns' dive into the nascent Texas songwriter circle of the early 1970s. The late great Guy Clark himself appears, explaining how it all happened, and Burns has dug up footage of the gang of singers and players that gathered around Guy and Susanna Clark, including a very young Rodney Crowell as well as the great doomed eccentric Townes Van Zandt. Meanwhile, in California, Gram Parsons is giving a folksinger named Emmylou Harris a crash course covering everything he knows about country music, which is considerable. And in Nashville, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings have both reached the point of despair when it comes to Music City ever being able to make anything of their work. All these threads and more (including some Burns doesn't even have time or room to bring up) end up coming together in a simply stunning climax built around "Pancho and Lefty", Van Zandt's most famous song, and as great a song as anyone could ever write.

Burns didn't dive quite as deeply as he could, but I don't mind. This story already runs 130 plus minutes. I myself think it's fairly significant that Emmylou Harris signed with the Warner/Reprise group when she started her solo career. Warner/Reprise really had no country catalog  at the time - the genre was dominated by Columbia (Johnny Cash, George Jones) and RCA (Chet Atkins, Dolly Parton, Charley Pride) and both companies had by this time developed something of an assembly line approach to turning out country product. Warner/Reprise was the rock label, and while they assigned a producer (Brian Ahern, who had recorded Anne Murray) they gave Harris the same kind of autonomy - and budget - they were giving their other artists. They did tell her she needed a hot band, and presumably because they didn't know how things were done in the country music field, they actually gave her the money to assemble one.

So Harris put together her legendary Hot Band. It was built around the session pros Gram Parsons had borrowed from Elvis Presley's touring band,  including the great James Burton, and augmented by young hotshots like Rodney Crowell (who would marry Rosanne Cash - man, these circles will never be unbroken) and Ricky Skaggs. Warner/Reprise hadn't given Parsons the type of support that would pay for those guys. But they knew, like everyone else, that Parsons was a drug-addled fuckup. Harris was the grown-up who'd kept the Parsons show and tour from crashing into the ditch. Waylon Jennings was with RCA and Willie Nelson was with Columbia, and both had been struggling to find their way, having been locked inside the Nashville factory for more than a decade. Now working from deep in the heart of Texas, they had by now secured for themselves the same kind of artistic license Warner/Reprise had given Harris. Harris' debut album, Nelson's "Red Headed Stranger" and Jennings' "Dreaming My Dreams" were all released during the first six months of 1975. RCA's "Outlaws" hodge-podge would follow in January 1976.