A couple of days ago, Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker, stopped by San Quentin Prison to screen a snippet of his new documentary, Country Music. He joked that he was going to have the correctional officers lock the door so the incarcerated men would have to sit through the sixteen and a half-hour documentary and judging from the preview – nobody would have minded.
After the screening the floor was open for incarcerated men to ask questions. Each question was prefaced with praise for all the documentaries that he’s done over the years, and most recently, a series that hit home on The Central Park Five. One of the men that works in video production thanked him for the Ken Burns effect, used in video editing software. Burns recited the story that Steve Jobs contacted him to obtain permission to use the term "Ken Burns Effect" for Apple's video production software.
During the twenty minutes of the eight part series, the most anticipated segments were interviews with Merle Haggard who was inspired by Johnny Cash when he performed at San Quentin in 1958. Cash performed again in 1969 for a live concert that was released as an album, Johnny Cash at San Quentin. There was a sense of pride as the imprisoned men cheered along with A Boy named Sue and nodded in agreement with the more somber songs.
I wanted to ask Burns what he thought Haggard or Cash would’ve thought of rap, but another inmate prompted an answer about the influence of country music which seeds are sprinkled in rock n’ roll, the blues, bluegrass, etc. My roots are hardly country, but I lived in Tennessee and central Florida and wrote and played just “a little bit country”. Playing music crosses borders and breaks down barriers, but any musician will tell you that to succeed you have to pick a genre. Some popular and established musicians were able to crossover, but in general you stayed in your lane.
Burns notes that country music has a strong connection that stems from the working class and that the musicians who have been popularized don’t forget that. While the pomp of a flashy country star can sell out a sponsored arena, the more likely scenario that comes to mind is a dusty filled down home beer bucking roadhouse. I never considered that a city about 250 miles north of where I live was the home of the Bakersfield sound. I didn't realize that Haggard played at the local bars in the central valley as did Buck Owens and Jimmy Rodgers.
One of the inmates at San Quentin, known as “Curly”, shared a cell with Haggard who taught him to play bass. I'd like to do a documentary on him, but then there are no shortage of stories or great musicians inside these walls.
Burns and his writer and director seem appreciative of the men inside. He can relate to what he refers to as the authenticity of country music. The men nod in agreement and seem genuinely captivated by how he captured the soul of the south and the evolution of the Nashville sound and rockabilly spread west. The men were inspired and agreed that "the poet of the common man" was a song that spoke to them in a way that gave them hope. That they could maybe be somebody someday.
As I sat there with some of the inmates that I work with at the prison's the video department, I could sense how impressed they were by the documentary, not just because of the relationship to prisoners and San Quentin, but because they had an inside look at a man who saw them - and their common bond was music that migrates across barriers and breaks down bars. Burns said, “The best argument won’t change a person’s mind, but a good story will.”
And for men in prison, they can realize perhaps, a story with a different ending.
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