"American Epic" on PBS

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FloridaClay
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"American Epic" on PBS

Post by FloridaClay »

If you have your new June edition of The Antique Phonograph you may have noticed the lead story in “Anything Phonographic,” entitled “The American Epic project finally seeing the light of day.” Indeed it is. The 3 episodes started showing on PBS on successive Tuesdays on the 16th. If you have an interest in how the recording industry “discovered” and popularized country and blues music, it is fascinating.

The first segment of episode one was especially interesting to me. Although I grew up in East Tennessee, I was ignorant of the importance of the region in popularizing recorded country music and what Johnny Cash christened “the big bang of country music,” the 1927-28 Victor “Bristol Sessions.” I knew nothing about it until Bear Family Records marvelous Bristol Sessions set came out in 2011. (It took a German firm to teach me the history of what was my own back yard for years.) There is now a Smithsonian affiliated museum about the event in Bristol, which I have visited, that people come from everywhere to see.

The last episode will be broadcast on the 30th. The first two can be seen free online at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/american-epic/. I bought access to all three episodes from Amazon Prime TV for $9.95 I think it was because I wanted to see it on the big screen, although I won’t have access to the last episode until after the 30th.

This is really well done and I recommend it to you.
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Wolfe
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Re: "American Epic" on PBS

Post by Wolfe »

RCA Victor started another Bristol Sessions project some years before Bear Family, but they don't appear to have completed it. I have the disc, it sounds pretty good. I think they had access to some metal parts for the transfers, but there is also some noticeable noise reduction.

https://www.amazon.com/RCA-Country-Lege ... B00006JYB6

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Re: "American Epic" on PBS

Post by epigramophone »

This series is also being shown in the UK on BBC4. The first episode has already aired, but the second is tonight at 10.00PM.

Although blues/country/folk music is not my thing, I found the program fascinating and look forward to the rest of the series.

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Wolfe
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Re: "American Epic" on PBS

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One of the participants of the Bristol Sessions was still living until quite recently. She's since passed away. There she is holding her copy of the Bear Family box.

http://www.heraldcourier.com/news/georg ... 0646a.html

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FloridaClay
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Re: "American Epic" on PBS

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Wolfe wrote:One of the participants of the Bristol Sessions was still living until quite recently. She's since passed away. There she is holding her copy of the Bear Family box.

http://www.heraldcourier.com/news/georg ... 0646a.html
Thanks. I have printed off a copy and will put it in my Bristol Sessions box. I am familiar with the small town where she lived. Not much more than "a wide place in the road" as they would say there.

Clay
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2. Shortage of finance, however dire, will never prevent the acquisition of a desired object, however improbable its cost.

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Re: "American Epic" on PBS

Post by FloridaClay »

epigramophone wrote:This series is also being shown in the UK on BBC4. The first episode has already aired, but the second is tonight at 10.00PM.

Although blues/country/folk music is not my thing, I found the program fascinating and look forward to the rest of the series.
I am coming to an appreciation of it late in life myself. As a young person growing up in East Tennessee my attention, like that of my peers, was to the popular folk and early rock of the era, and an abiding affection for the big band era music I heard on relatives old 78s. I had no understanding at all of rock's roots in country and blues or the echos of long gone English and Irish tunes of earlier centuries that underlie the sounds of groups like the Carter Family whose ancestors brought that music with them from "the old country" to be somewhat protected in the isolation of the Appalachians. Now it all has some fascination.

Clay
Arthur W. J. G. Ord-Hume's Laws of Collecting
1. Space will expand to accommodate an infinite number of possessions, regardless of their size.
2. Shortage of finance, however dire, will never prevent the acquisition of a desired object, however improbable its cost.

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Re: "American Epic" on PBS

Post by Wolfe »

Anyone watching the series that wants a primer on the music covered would do well to consider buying the companion CD set : https://www.amazon.com/American-Epic-Co ... 11TTJN4Z51

It uses some whiz-bang transfer process to "extract new life from the grooves" and blah blah blah...I'm not sure what all they did, but, it does sound very good. The music is well chosen, a fairly broad cross section of many of the musicians that have come to be recognized as interesting or important from this period, many of them familiar names from other collections like this. A number of the tracks were first reissued on the the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music, that seminal document of the 50's and 60's folk revival. There's plenty to read about the Harry Smith Anthology of you're not familiar with it already.

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Re: "American Epic" on PBS

Post by edisonplayer »

I'm sure "American Epic" will be (or is)on DVD.I'd love to get it.edisonplayer

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Re: "American Epic" on PBS

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edisonplayer wrote:I'm sure "American Epic" will be (or is)on DVD.I'd love to get it.edisonplayer
Follow the link in the original post. From there you can buy the DVD, CD, or a combination of both.

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Re: "American Epic" on PBS

Post by New Yorker »

^ Blu-ray, too!

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