Bill Carruthers was in his late 20s in 1959 when he got the nod to become the director of The Soupy Sales Show as it became nationally syndicated. He moved his family to Los Angeles from Detroit, and eventually worked mostly as a director, creator, and producer of game shows including The Newlywed Game, The Dating Game, Give-N-Take, The Neighbors, Second Chance, and my personal favorite, Lee Trevino’s Golf For Swingers. He formed his own self-titled production company and along with Screen Gems’ Joel Stein produced The Johnny Cash Show for ABC.
Between its debut on June 7, 1969, and until its end on March 31,1971, there were 58 episodes taped at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Along for the ride with Cash was his wife, June, The Carter Family, The Statler Brothers, Carl Perkins, and The Tennessee Three. It was originally a summer replacement for the Saturday night variety show Hollywood Palace, but it often landed in the top 20 of the Nielsen ratings, eventually making its way to a regular primetime rotation.
Featuring a blend of guests that were attuned to Cash’s own unique musical sensibilities and interests, along with the need of the producers to pander to the mainstream, it was occasionally used as a vehicle for promoting other shows. But the first show set the tone: Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, comedienne Fannie Flagg, and fiddle player Doug Kershaw.
That first summer of 1969 offered a genre-busting array of guests: Gordon Lightfoot, Linda Ronstadt, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Joe Tex, Glen Campbell, The Monkees, Marty Robbins, Merle Haggard, O.C. Smith, Odetta, Ian and Sylvia, Charley Pride, The Staple Singers, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.
In January 1970 the show was back on the air and the first show’s guests were Arlo Guthrie, Jose Feliciano, and Bobbie Gentry. Over the next few months Pete Seeger appeared twice, and on Feb. 11 Cash performed this classic duet with Ray Charles.
The 1971 roster of shows continued showcasing all forms of roots music, including gospel, folk, country, jazz, and rock. The Edwin Hawkins Singers, Derek and the Dominos, David Houston, The Dillards, James Taylor, Kitty Wells, Conway Twitty, Randy Scruggs, and Neil Young were just a few of the guests.
A particular highlight of the show was the appearance of Louis Armstrong. Two years earlier he was suffering from heart and kidney ailments that took him away from performing. In the summer of 1970 he was given the green light by his doctors to resume touring, and he appeared with Cash in October. Soon after, Armstrong had a heart attack that caused him to take another break for two months, and the following summer, on July 6, 1971, he passed away.
After two seasons, The Johnny Cash Show was cancelled, the victim of a cross-network “rural purge” designed to seek out a more contemporary primetime audience that was younger, urban, and suburban. It was an absolutely absurd decision, as Cash’s wide range of guests across different genres, his commitment to both social causes and religion, and his outlaw image made him a cross-generational icon.
The show inspired a chart-topping live album of the same name from Columbia Records, and with millions of mainstream fans from national television exposure, Cash and his troupe would tour frequently and successfully in the ensuing years. He would also be called to return to primetime television, hosting other variety shows and specials with June by his side. And the best thing? Almost all of the shows, either in their entirety or through highlight clips, are viewable free on YouTube. The complete list of guests can be found on the show’s IMDb page.
Let’s close this out with the final sign-off from the last show on March 3, 1971.
This was originally posted as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column at the website of No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.
In 1912 a group of raisin growers in California’s San Joaquin Valley got together and decided to form a collective but had no name or business plan. They soon became the California Associated Raisin Company, but a gentleman named E.A. Berg coined one of the most iconic brand names in American history: Sun-Maid. In 1915, Sun-Maid’s director saw a young woman named Lorraine Collett in a bright red bonnet drying her hair, and she agreed to pose for a painting that would become the company’s logo. That logo was featured on a little red box that my mom would put into my Roy Rogers tin lunchbox as my snack every day I went to school. That’s my first memory about the sun: It helped grow something sweet and satisfying.
Beyond raisins, I don’t recall ever spending much time thinking about the sun. You learn about it in science class and study the mythology, and it’s in the news whenever there’s an eclipse. It can burn you and make you sweat, it’s so gigantic that if it were hollow you could fit 960,000 planets the size of Earth inside, and it rises in the east, sets in the west. Stories, myths, legends, facts and fiction: A gazillion books, films, paintings, and songs have either made the sun their subject, or at minimum placed the three-letter word into the title. We love it, we fear it, and many worship it. We’ve been taught to travel far to take vacations in sunny places, and when we have outdoor plans we pray for a sunny day. And for those who can’t get enough of it, there’s a small town in Norway where the sun doesn’t set from April to August.
I have a strong recollection of getting sunburned when I was about five or six, when my family had rented a house for a week down the Jersey shore in a town called Ocean Gate. Back then most folks weren’t so conscious of the danger that the sun could cause, apart from warnings from the endless Coppertone suntan lotion billboards on the side of the highways that featured a dog pulling down a little girl’s shorts. At the end of my first day in the sand and surf, we came back at the house, washed off with a hose and saw that my skin was the color of a tomato. My mom told me I was going to be in a lot of pain and she sent dad to the local drugstore for a bottle of something called Solarcaine, which they slathered on me from top to bottom. It helped a little, but it hurt so bad that they rented a beach umbrella for me to sit under for a few days and I had to keep a shirt on and wear my Phillies baseball hat.
Speaking to both my ignorance and stubbornness, one might have thought I learned a life lesson. I didn’t. For the next 60 years I rarely would put on sun protection and pretty much hated wearing hats. I got sunburned many, many times until I figured out my own little method of soaking up just a little bit of sun during the first few days of summer or while on a vacation, “laying down a base,” as I called it, and eventually developing that healthy-looking dark tan. Worked like a charm most of the time and, besides, it was the sun: the source of life on Earth, providing humanity with food, shelter, warmth, and don’t forget those damn sweet raisins.
Last month I caught a bad cold that developed into bronchitis and went to see my doc. After she checked me out and wrote a prescription, I casually pointed to this spot on my arm that I had recently noticed and asked her what it was. “It’s a trip to the dermatologist,” she replied, and the next day I stood naked in front of a stranger who found a couple of suspicious looking spots. Let’s skip the gory details, but five days later I was diagnosed with not just one type of malignant skin cancer, but two. If I had any doubt to the seriousness of it, when I got the call it began with “I don’t want to alarm you, but tomorrow morning you’ll be seeing an oncologist.”
Cutting – I probably shouldn’t use that word – to the chase, in the past three weeks I’ve had two surgeries leaving me with a new fear of the sun, two long scars, and we’re still not finished. If you want the good news, it was caught before it spread and it looks like I’ll be sticking around for a while longer. The bad news is that I have to buy a hat and start wearing it. And put on sunscreen. And wear long-sleeved shirts with fabric that offers ultraviolet protection. And keep out of the sun from 10 to 4. Great.
I do not share this for empathy, but I’m up against a deadline and at the moment this is about the only thing on my mind. Songs about the sun seem to take a new meaning today, so there you have it. And listen, I ain’t one to be preachy, but it wouldn’t hurt you to get an annual skin check-up. Let me close this out not with a song about the sun, but one by Eva Cassidy who passed away at the age of 33 after her skin cancer spread. She had discovered the same sort of thing I have when she was in her late 20s, took care of it, and then blew off the follow-ups. In her death she has gained in popularity, especially for her version of “Over The Rainbow,” but this is the song that keeps playing over and over in my head.
After my picture fades and darkness has Turned to gray Watching through windows You’re wondering if I’m okay Secrets stolen from deep inside The drum beats out of time
If you’re lost you can look and you will find me
Time after time
If you fall I will catch you, I will be waiting
Time after time
This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.
Barring any storm, fire,earthquake, malaria outbreak, tooth impaction, gall bladder attack, transit strike, fall, cut, bruise, forgetfulness, or worse, by the time you read this I’ll likely have had the pleasure of attending the Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman reunion concert, backed by Marty Stuart and The Fabulous Superlatives. It is the 50th anniversary of The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo, one of several albums of the 1960s that assisted with the infusion of country music into the minds of baby boomer rockers and several generations thereafter. The month happens to coincide with another anniversary of sorts: Gram Parsons, who with the help of Chris Hillman brought the concept for the album to the band in 1968, passed away on Sept. 19, 1973.
I could easily cut, paste, and re-juggle the incredibly large volume of words already written about this album (the Wikipedia page is incredibly detailed), but I thought perhaps there might be another way to acknowledge the impact and importance that it has had over time. When Sweetheart was first released, it really didn’t resonate with most music fans of the day, who looked upon the group as the “American Beatles” with their string of jingle-jangle top 40 hit singles. But for those of us city folk who were enchanted with both the cowboy iconography and Nashville honky-tonk instrumentation, it was the game changer.
In a recent interview with Rock Cellar magazine, McGuinn talked to Jeff Slate about the album and tour:
“My wife and I were in an airport in Buenos Aires, waiting to get on a plane,” McGuinn says. “We remembered that it was the 50th anniversary of the album, and we were thinking about Chris Hillman, he’d had a tough year because his house was damaged in the fires in California last year, and Tom (Petty) had died, just after finishing Chris’ album with him, and so I said, ‘Man, let’s do something to cheer up Chris!’
“I think we were doing country music even before Gram was,” McGuinn points out, referring to Gram Parsons, who had just joined the Byrds at the time the band headed for Nashville, and who is often credited as the godfather of the country-rock genre. “He’d been through a Kingston Trio phase, and all the same things I’d been into. He was turned on by Elvis, just like the rest of us. And Elvis was combining country and rhythm and blues anyway, long before any of us. But we’d done ‘Time Between’ and ‘Old John Robertson’ and lots of other songs in that style long before Sweetheart.”
Hillman picks up the story, and gives Gram a little more credit:
“I met Gram, standing in line at the bank. He came over to rehearsal, and he had two great songs — ‘Hickory Wind’ and ‘One Hundred Years From Now’ — and his youthful exuberance, I think, too, gave us a shot in the arm that we really needed. It was good timing. The Sweetheart sessions were fun, because we were down in Nashville and I had a comrade. I had Gram, who loved country music like I loved country music. He understood it, just as I did. So we hit it off immediately, and we had great times during the sessions down there.”
Recently I had an idea to create a tribute to the album by finding some covers and originals and putting them together in a playlist that I could listen to and share with friends. Never got around to that, but it stuck with me. So you might be wondering why only Side One? To be honest, as I started to work on this column I got hungry and went out for pizza. As I walked passed by a theater I impulsively stopped to see a film and then went to a bookstore. When I got home I fed the cat, watched the news, and forgot about my deadline. And going through YouTube looking for the right clips took longer than I anticipated, but abracadabra — a new concept has emerged. The one-sided tribute is now a thing, and trending.
The small town of Ferriday, Louisiana, has produced two celebrities who happen to be cousins. You likely know that one is Jerry Lee Lewis, whose nickname is “The Killer” and is considered one of the pioneers of rock and roll music, while the other is televangelist Jimmy Lee Swaggart. In the ’50s, when Sam Phillips’ Sun Records was recording Jerry Lee, he also offered a contract to Jimmy Lee to kick off a new gospel label. He declined, citing a calling to preach, and by the late-’80s his weekly televised revival was featured on more than 3,000 stations around the world. An excellent singer and pianist, in the mid-’70s he began releasing gospel recordings that earned him quite a few Dove Awards and Grammy nominations.
We’ll get back to him later.
When I was just a little boy the devil did not call my name, but my parents sent me off to Hebrew school so I could learn the Torah and prepare for my bar mitzvah, a rite of passage when one turns 13. After the big event I didn’t continue with my religious education and spent most of my adult life declaring myself an atheist. But as strange as it sounds for an unsaved nonbeliever, heathen, and sinner such as I, the sound and glory of gospel music reached my ears when I was in my early 20s and I’ve always kept it close at hand.
Although I have no interest in getting too academic here, gospel and spiritual songs are largely an American-made type of music, albeit down racial lines. According to the New World Encyclopedia, “The relationship between the origins of white and African American gospel music is a matter of some controversy. Some argue that gospel music is rooted in Africa and was brought to the Americas by slaves. However, gospel harmonies and many of the hymns themselves also show a clear Scottish influence. Although white and black gospel singing may have grown up side by side and cross-fertilized to a great extent in the South, the sharp racial division in the United States, particularly between black and white churches, has kept the two apart. While those divisions have lessened slightly in the past 50 years, the two traditions are still distinct.”
Thomas A. Dorsey, the son of a Georgia Baptist preacher was originally a blues and ragtime jazz composer and singer. Often referred to as the “father of black Gospel music,” he is credited with teaming up with Mahalia Jackson — herself influenced by blues singer Bessie Smith — to bring the rhythm and energy of secular music into the church, and they formed the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses, which is still thriving today.
In the late ’20s, gospel music began getting recorded and released by folks such as the Carter Family and Blind Willie Johnson. Within a few years, the Grand Ole Opry began to feature bluegrass and traditional gospel singing, while pioneering urban gospel performers gained popularity among black audiences. As the recordings became a solid revenue stream for record labels, distinct subgenres began to appear. Here are a few clips that reflect the various styles.
The Stanley Brothers
The Five Blind Boys of Alabama
Blackwood Brothers with JD Sumner
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
It’s hard to escape the influence that gospel music has had on almost every form of American roots and popular music. It’s always fascinated me that some of the greatest spirituals have been performed by pill-poppin’ and bottle drinkin’ fornicators and sinners, and there is a long list of those who have easily crossed that highway. Little Richard and Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Sam Cooke quickly come to mind.
Which brings me back to the aforementioned Jimmy Lee Swaggart.
In February 1988 Swaggart admitted to his audience that he had sinned, and was suspended by the Assemblies of God for sexual immorality. Because they felt he wasn’t repentant enough, he was defrocked. Two years later, now an independent Pentacostal preacher, he was found in the company of a prostitute for the second time. Instead of offering yet another public apology, he stood on the pulpit and declared “The Lord told me it’s flat none of your business.”
On my own spiritual path, somewhere along the way I’ve moved from atheism to becoming a reluctant agnostic. Ceremonial trappings, century-old traditions, preachers on television with toll-free numbers on the screen, and the hypocrisy of those who espouse family values yet embrace politicians who ritually lie, cheat, and steal will not cause me to repent nor accept a savior. But to each their own. Nature, emotion, art, and music in all its glorious forms are my higher power. And I say amen to that.
This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.
‘Tis the season of ghosts and goblins, trips to the pumpkin patch and apple orchard, lots of candy and a reminder to visit your dentist. While some live in a climate without benefit of experiencing the change of seasons, this year in New York the leaves of the trees have been offering us a kaleidoscope of colors. With thoughts of skeletons, ghosts, and goblins in my head, it wouldn’t seem right to miss an opportunity to share some of my favorite songs about monsters and murder. Such a happy time of the year.
Back in the day before there were television networks that pumped in homogenized programming 24/7, local stations had to fill up morning and late-night slots with their own productions. My town had characters like Bertie the Bunyip, Chief Halftown, Sally Starr, and John Zacherle. The latter had a long career in hosting horror films in both Philadelphia and New York. He went by two names, either Roland or Zacherle. Maybe some might recall his 1958 recording of “Dinner With Drac.”
I suppose most people associate Halloween with “The Monster Mash” and Bobby “Boris” Pickett, but personally I prefer another song by Round Robin. An American songwriter and musician whose real name was Thomas Baker Knight Jr., he had quite a career writing hit singles in the ’50s such as “Lonesome Town” for Ricky Nelson, which was followed by decades of creating an impressive catalog that has been recorded by a long list of singers: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Paul McCartney, Elvis Presley, and Jerry Lee Lewis, to name just a few. He spanned multiple genres, from early rock to psychedelic to country, but my favorite is this 1965 novelty number he performed himself. It’s darn scary.
Transitioning back to roots music, if you have any interest in learning about the history of American traditional ballads, the Library of Congress offers an excellent article. But murder ballads are a different beast, a subgenre, and Wikipedia offers this simple definition:
A broadsheet murder ballad typically recounts the details of a mythic or true crime — who the victim is, why the murderer decides to kill him or her, how the victim is lured to the murder site and the act itself — followed by the escape and/or capture of the murderer. Often the ballad ends with the murderer in jail or on their way to their execution, occasionally with a plea for the listeners not to copy the evils committed by them as recounted by the singer.
One of the things that make murder ballads so interesting to me are that they show up in so many styles, including folk, bluegrass, country, pop, rock, blues, and hip-hop. Some are old, some are new, and I enjoy them all, especially on a cold, dark night. Running the gamut from the traditional to some fresh blood, I put together some songs and performances that are guaranteed to take you down the road less traveled. Seriously: Lindsay Lohan and Nirvana on the same list? Boo.
Johnson Mountain Boys – “Duncan and Brady”
The Wilburn Brothers – “Knoxville Girl”
Kate and Anna McGarrigle – “Ommie Wise”
Wilson Pickett – “Stagger Lee”
Joni Mitchell and Johnny Cash – “Long Black Veil”
Vandaveer – “Pretty Polly”
Lindsay Lohan – “Frankie and Johnny”
Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds with PJ Harvey – “Henry Lee”
Sufjan Stevens – “John Wayne Gacy Jr.”
Nirvana – “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?”
This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.
I would imagine most people know Compton as the epicenter of late ‘80s hip-hop and a city dominated by crime and gang violence. Smack in the middle between Long Beach and Los Angeles, just south of Watts, back in the ‘50s and ‘60s it became a suburban destination for middle class blacks attracted to both its location and the affordable single-family homes that were available after a Supreme Court case knocked out segregation laws. But with a small commercial area, a shrinking tax base, and a corrupt government, by 1969 Compton held the distinction of having the highest crime rate in California.
There’s another side of musical history from Compton that pre-dates local gansta rap and g-funk. Town Hall Party began in 1951 as a radio broadcast and eventually became a television show that lasted for almost ten years before going off the air. The old Town Hall building at 400 South Long Beach Boulevard was being booked occasionally for country-and-western “barn dances” when it was taken over by promoter William B. Wagnon Jr. It was his idea to get the dances broadcast live on local radio, and the success soon led to a television show concept that started and stopped, but didn’t really become cohesive until August 29, 1953.
The website Hillbilly-Music Dawt Com has done a great job in researching the history of Town Hall Party, which I would encourage you to check out, but here’s an excerpt:
“The lineup on that first show was to be Tex Ritter, Les (Carrot Top) Anderson, Wesley and Marilyn Tuttle, Jack Lloyd, Joe Maphis, Rose Lee Maphis and Texas Tiny (a disc jockey at KFOX who had a three hour a day show). Tex Williams and his band were to provide the musical backing for performers. Jay Stewart was to be the announcer.”
There were a number of country stars that either joined the cast for short periods or were simply guests, including Lefty Frizzell, Johnny Cash, Jim Reeves, Sons of the Pioneers, Smiley Burnette, Patsy Cline, Eddie Cochran, George Jones, Wanda Jackson, Carl Perkins and Gene Autry. The Collins Kids, Larry and Lorrie, became show regulars with their rockabilly beat and harmonies. Just two years apart, by age ten Larry was a guitar whiz, playing a double-neck Mosrite guitar like his mentor, Joe Maphis.
According to Country Song Round-Up in August 1954, “the 10-piece Town Hall Party band featured Joe Maphis, Merle Travis, superb steel guitarist Marian Hall, Billy Hill and Fiddlin’ Kate on violins, PeeWee Adams on drums, Jimmy Pruitt on piano, and other excellent musicians who created a Town Hall Party sound also heard on many country sessions produced by Columbia Records in Hollywood in the 1950s.”
In 1957 Screen Gems filmed a series of 39 half-hour shows that they syndicated and re-named the Ranch Party. The Collins Kids were given co-star billing with host Tex Ritter. In his book Reflections, country performer Johnny Bond, who was also involved in the program, wrote that “traditional country entertainers, singing cowboys and rock singers never shared the spotlight in a more harmonious manner than on the Town Hall Party and syndicated Ranch Party shows.”
Columbia Records released a Town Hall Party album in 1958 that included many of the regular cast members who soon departed the show because NBC decided to discontinue the Saturday night radio broadcasts. In late December 1958, the newly opened Showboat Hotel in Las Vegas began to put on Town Hall Party shows featuring Tex Ritter, The Collins Kids, and Town Hall regulars, thus drawing them away from the Saturday night telecasts on Los Angeles station KTTV. In December 1960 they were dropped from the lineup, and the final performance at the old Compton Town Hall was on Jan. 14, 1961.
Beginning in 2002, the Germany-based Bear Family Records began to release a series of Town Hall Party DVDs that now includes 25 titles. Most feature various artists, but they’ve also brought out an artist spotlight series that includes Joe Maphis, The Collins Kids, Johnny Cash, Eddie Cochran, Merle Travis, and others. There are a few dozen clips and also complete shows available to view on YouTube, with some posted from Bear Family and others from private collectors. It was a great time period for country music in California, and it came straight outta Compton.
This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.
While it’s a little hard to admit that every now and then I can lose my focus and get sidetracked, there are those occasions when I take on a particular subject only to end up somewhere else. For example, about a month ago I sat down to write a short essay about the Carter Family, and by the time I got to the second paragraph I had shifted the focus to the African-American influence in roots music, featuring videos from Uncle John Scruggs to Grandmaster Flash. But after spending several months of researching and reading books about Sara, Maybelle and A.P. Carter, listening to hours of audio recordings and radio transcriptions, and watching an excellent documentary titled The Winding Stream you’d think I would be prepared this time around not to stray from the path. Wrong.
As much as I’d love to retell the story of the Carter Family for those who may not know how they’ve left an everlasting imprint on American music, it is the journey of award-winning independent producer, director and writer Beth Harrington and the way she brought the Carter’s story to the screen that has currently captured my interest. It’s too good of a tale to not be told. And better still, most of it will be in her own words. God bless digital footprints.
On November 15, 2010 a Kickstarter campaign was created to help fund a feature-length documentary. At the top of the page it’s described as an “epic story of the dynasty at the heart of American roots music – The Carter and Cash families.” Here is an excerpt of the introduction:
My name is Beth Harrington, and I’ve been a documentary filmmaker for more than 30 years. I’m also a former musician – a singer in the band Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers. So there you have it, my two loves – music and documentary film.
A few years ago, I successfully combined these loves on a film called Welcome to the Club – The Woman of Rockabilly. It was really well-received, so much so that it got nominated for a Grammy Award. Needless to say, this encouraged me to move ahead on my next music documentary, The Winding Stream which has the subtitle “The Carters, the Cashes and the Course of Country Music.”
I’d been aware of the Original Carter Family – the biggest “old-timey” music act of their day – and their musical legacy for a long time. But working on Welcome to the Club and meeting Rosanne Cash (who narrated that film) made me think it was time to do a film about this music dynasty that stretched from the 1920s to the present. I wanted to explore how the Carters practically “invented” country music and how legions of musicians – from Woody Guthrie to Elvis to Johnny Cash to Joan Baez to Jeff Tweedy, to name a few – all feel a debt of gratitude to them. And, as a result, how the tradition instituted by the Original Carters has carried on in their family and in the culture at large.
And I realized that, even though small parts of this family’s epic story had been told before, no one had presented this big picture. No one had shown the connection to the Carter Sisters, to Johnny Cash, to the folk movement and to the Americana movement. And no one had told the story using both original recordings AND contemporary roots music artists performing (and discussing) the music.
I started shooting The Winding Stream in 2003 and, with Rosanne Cash’s help, one of the first interviews I did was with her dad, Johnny Cash. Sadly, it was to be one of his last interviews; he passed away only three weeks after we’d spoken with him. This forced the realization that I needed to step up production because we were losing some of the key players in this story. I felt a real urgency to get these interviews on tape. I spent a lot of my own money doing so. And I’m very glad I did. But I knew I would need more.
What stuck out for me when I first read those words was the year that Beth noted she first started to shoot this film: 2003. Seven years later she was seeking money to complete editing, sound design, music and footage rights, animation, graphics and titles. That right there is the definition of vision, focus and tenacity.
For those of you who’ve either started or contributed to a Kickstarter or any other crowdsourcing project, it’s a leap of faith that you’ll get to your goal. Sometimes there’s just not enough money donated to keep it going, and there are other times that the original idea turns out to be either flawed, abandoned or simply unable to be completed for any infinite number of reasons.
But there was something I noticed about The Winding Stream campaignthat was different than most, aside from the fact that the picture was actually completed and released: in five years Beth has published forty-two updates to her supporters. What follows is a look into what it took to get this film to the finish line. I’ll share a few of her updates with a little selective editing, and dispense with quotation marks since y’all know it’s Beth’s writing.
Update #4, December 8 2010: Hi everyone. Well, as you may know by now, we’ve reached our Kickstarter goal! I’m moved and grateful to all of you who contributed to this campaign. And you did it in three weeks. Thank you so very much!
Update #15, March 21, 2011: Just a quick note to let you all know that we’ve been putting the funds we raised with your help to very good use. Just back from Bristol, Tennessee/Virginia (yup, it’s a city in two states) and we got five critical interviews done, plus a musical performance with the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Wildly successful trip. Probably a Nashville shoot still in our future and one in California and we’ll be close to done shooting.
Update #17, February 28, 2012: I realize it’s been a while since I’ve updated you on things connected to The Winding Stream so here’s a little update. We’re well into post-production now which means there is a glimmer at the end of the tunnel (not exactly a light yet, but soon). Since last I wrote we’ve received two grants – one from the National Endowment for the Arts and one from the Roy W. Dean Foundation which have helped us considerably and are big honors, needless to say. We’re in the running again for funding from the Independent Television Service and should know in a while if we get that. We’ve started to show excerpts from the film now – once at a fundraiser here in Washington State and more recently at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, MT. Both times the reactions have been very positive which has buoyed our spirits a lot as we move along.
Update #18, April 29, 2012: We’re writing to let you know about some new developments with The Winding Stream. We’re moving into full post-production soon with our pal, editor Greg Snider at the helm. And we’ve found a wonderful animator to do cool photo-animations for us, Mike Olson. I’m at work on the companion book to the film, and we’ve had interest from cable channels, film festivals and theatrical and DVD distributors for when the film is done. Our hope is to wrap it all up by the end of the year.
May 3, 2012: A second round of Kickstarter funding begins.
Update #25, June 21, 2012: In the last 9 years I have amassed a treasure trove of what I consider to be important interviews with people who were witness to some of our most important shared cultural history. The early days of radio, the infancy of the record industry, the growth of interest in what would later be called “country” and “folk” music. People like Johnny Cash, Janette and Joe Carter, Mike Seeger, Charles Wolfe and others knew the Original Carter Family and were among the last living witnesses to the Carters’ role in all this. The people I just named have all passed away in the time we’ve been working on this film. I started to view completion of this film as a sacred trust. These folks had taken the time to share this with me.
This material couldn’t just languish on a shelf. It had to be made into the film I’d promised. So we stuck with it. Through years when everyone turned us down. Through times when we scraped by with tiny amounts of money that would get us one more interview. Through lots and lots of days of colleagues and friends — er, actually, that’s redundant; my colleagues on The Winding Stream are my steadfast friends –donating their time and talent and energy to this. Through many sleepless nights when I did think that I was – indeed – plum crazy to persist.
June 27, 2012: Funding for the second Kickstarter campaign is met.
Update #28: January 7, 2013: Hi everybody! Wanted to let you all know how much progress we’ve made on The Winding Stream! We have a final cut of the film and are now clearing rights for the music and archival images. If all goes well, we should have a completed film very soon. Thanks again for helping us get this far!
Update #29, February 1, 2014: Stopping by to let you know that great things are happening for The Winding Stream. We just recently learned that this labor of love- that’s taken more than a decade and the efforts of numerous talented people to complete – has been chosen for this year’s South by Southwest Festival in Austin.
Update #33, August 7, 2014: Monday’s NYC premiere of The Winding Stream at Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center was a big hit. We had a full-house and the New York audience embraced the film. We’d also like to announce that The Winding Stream won the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Woods Hole Film Festival. This is our fourth festival award and we’re very grateful to be recognized this way. Thanks to all of our Kickstarter backers! You helped make this possible.
Updare #37, December 12, 2014: We have a big, exciting challenge! As you may know, we need to finish paying for music and archival footage and rights before we can open the film theatrically, air it on public television, or make it available on platforms like iTunes and cable on demand. We want to make all this happen as soon as possible to build off our festival momentum. We once needed $85,000. But incredibly we have recently received a grant from the Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation for half that!
Update #39, September 2, 2015: Hi Friends – I wanted to let you all know that we’ve entered the next phase of the life of The Winding Stream! Theatrical! Thanks to the efforts of our partners at Argot Pictures, we are now taking the film to art houses across the country. We are also thrilled to say that the good folks at Omnivore Recordings are releasing a soundtrack album from the film! That drops on October 16.
Alright…so as you can tell, I’ve been completely swept away by Beth, her team and this unbelievably enchanting film. On a musical highway that’s ninety years long and still stretches out before us, there are unlimited on and off ramps that this filmmaker could have chosen. With a subtitle that reads ‘The Carters, The Cashes and The Course of Country Music’, she brings to life a family tree with endless branches. By using the voices of those still living and the ones who’ve passed on, and enhancing that experience with film, video, photographs and animation, the music and stories are presented with the delicacy and historical context one could have only hoped for.
There is a tendency to receive and process information in bite-sized pieces in this technologically supercharged world we live in. And I’m sure Beth would agree that it would be a mistake to believe that the tales of this great musical family can be told in a mere ninety-two minutes, despite over a decade in the making. (I’d love to see what didn’t make the final cut.) I think of The Winding Stream as a doorway to discovery, and hope that people will be inspired to seek out not only the music which has endured over the years and is readily available, but also take the time to learn more about the folks who absolutely define any such notion of what you might think the term Americana means. This is a story for the ages.
For those of you in the New York area, I plan to attend a screening at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville (the most appropriately named town ever) on February 11, and there’ll be some fine live music from the Shovel Ready String Band. Buy your tickets before they sell out and if you happen to see me, please say hi.
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