Original subtitles

# Will the circle be unbroken

# By and by, Lord, by and by

# There's a better home a-waiting

# In the sky, Lord, in the sky... #

By 1968, with the war in Vietnam intensifying,

America was more divided than it had ever been since the Civil War.

The wounds that the nation seemed to be suffering

and inflicting on itself sometimes appeared too deep to heal.

The gulf between generations

sometimes seemed too wide to be bridged.

More and more people from all walks of life

felt their voices were not being heard.

Country music was not immune to the divisions.

A young poet and troubadour would reject the path

his parents had chosen for him,

and, in Nashville, find salvation in his art,

bringing to country music an honesty and lyricism rarely heard before.

A restless rebel who had been expelled from the Grand Ole Opry

would triumphantly return to its stage,

then welcome others from every style of music to join him.

Two remarkable singers, pursued and beset by their own inner demons,

would turn their troubles into songs

and find, for a time, some peace with each other.

And just when one of the most traditional forms of country music

seemed to have been left behind, it would resurface

and then find a way to bring the generations together.

# Will the circle be unbroken

# By and by, Lord, by and by

# There's a better home a-waiting

# In the sky, Lord, in the sky. #

# When you left, I thought that I would soon get over you

# Even told myself that I'd find somebody too... #

The minute we heard him, we had never heard a voice like that.

# ..come and gone but not your memory... #

George Jones.

I'm not sure whether he didn't know he was important

or fought being important.

# Yes, I'll be over you when you're standing over me... #

I think the trials and tribulations that George went through

had everything to do with his music.

I think when he was hurting, you could hear it in a song.

# Don't expect to hear me say that I still love you then... #

I always say, George didn't sing country songs,

George was a country song.

# For I'll be over you when the grass grows over me. #

APPLAUSE

"If I could have made a living doing some other things,

"I know I would have been a lot happier," George Jones once said,

"but you don't get that in this business."

# Beneath still waters there's a strong undertow... #

Singing had helped raise him from the poverty of his childhood,

but never let him escape its most painful memories.

# ..what the deep water knows... #

Born in 1931 in a log shack in Southeast Texas,

the youngest of eight children,

Jones inherited the gift of music from his mother's family...

..but his father had a weakness for hard liquor

which turned him mean and uncontrollably violent.

Returning home drunk many nights,

he would rouse young George from bed and demand some songs,

belt-whipping the boy if he hesitated.

George would perform with tears streaming down his face.

When the family moved to a government housing project

in Beaumont, the father took his 11-year-old son to a bus stop

and forced him to sing for strangers passing by,

and then confiscated the coins they tossed into George's tin cup

to go on a bender.

# Just because I ask a friend about her

# Just because I spoke her name somewhere... #

He had this quality of a musical instrument.

He had complete control of his voice,

much like an operatic singer, except it was country.

# She thinks I still care... #

He approached each recording, he said,

"Until you are just like the people in the song

"and you are living it and their problems become your problems.

"Until you're lost in the song

"and it just takes everything out of you."

When Jones recorded in Nashville, other musicians started

coming to his sessions just to listen to him sing.

In the '60s he got to a point where he was making 1,000 a night,

which was a lot of money for a country artist.

He had the flattop haircut, he was singing hungry.

And you think about monumental records like A Girl I Used To Know,

She Thinks I Still Care, You Comb Her Hair, The Race Is On -

these are very, very important records at that point in time.

George was wide open in those days, he was living hard.

In 1968, his second wife -

who didn't drink and didn't really like country music -

divorced him, and he moved from Texas to Nashville.

He opened a nightclub on Lower Broadway called Possum Holler

and marketed a line of souvenirs,

including women's lingerie called Possum Panties.

Jones was 37 years old and a major star.

He told his friends, "You can just say,

" 'Old Possum ain't getting married again until he's 69.' "

# Well, I'm a gonna get on that ol' turnpike and I'm gonna ride

# I'm gonna leave this town till you decide... #

George Jones's vow to stay single for the next 32 years

lasted less than one.

Jones and his new wife shared a number of things in common -

both had already been married twice before.

Both had extraordinary voices.

# We were watchin' TV Ernest Tubb was singin' loud

# I said he's the man for me

# I love him there's no doubt

# I'm leavin' you and going out to find out where he's at

# And if I can't find him

# I'll settle for that bluegrass Lester Flatt... #

And Tammy Wynette's personal life

seemed just as fragile and tormented as her new husband's.

Tammy's snatches at happiness were few and far between.

That is what I observed.

And you always wanted her to be happier...

..because you felt like she wasn't.

And you didn't know how to fix it,

and you didn't know how to ask her if you could fix it.

Born Virginia Wynette Pugh in Itawamba County, Mississippi,

close to the Alabama border,

she had been raised on a cotton farm by her grandparents.

Her father had died before she was one,

and her mother had moved to Memphis

to work in a defence factory during World War II.

She married at age 17, a month before her high school graduation.

By the time she turned 23, she was the mother of three girls,

divorcing her husband and living in Birmingham,

making 45 a week by singing on a local television show

early each morning before going to work all day at a beauty salon.

In 1966, she packed her children and a few belongings into her car

and moved to Nashville,

where she started making the rounds along Music Row,

hoping someone would sign her to a contract.

Eventually she began showing up at the office of Billy Sherrill,

a young producer at Epic Records.

Another record producer, who will be forever nameless, she had seen him

and he made some derogatory remarks about their relationship.

It made me really mad at him, so the next time she came in

I said, "I've got this song, we'll record this."

She said, "You wouldn't be kidding me, would you?"

I said, "You learn the song,

"and tomorrow we'll make a little history."

# Just follow the stairway

# To this lonely world of mine

# You'll find me waiting here

# In apartment number nine... #

At that point, her name was Virginia Wynette Pugh.

I said, "Pugh is the ugliest name I ever heard."

She said, "Well, I don't know what else...

"What do you want me to be?"

I said, "I always loved the name Tammy.

"There's a movie out, Tammy And The Bachelor,

"let's call you Tammy and forget Pugh,

"and use your middle name, Wynette.

"From now on you'll be Tammy Wynette."

# Wrap your arms around me

# And the sun will never shine

# In apartment number nine. #

Apartment #9 did not make history,

but musicians in Nashville took notice of the new singer.

Yeah, what a voice.

That was her first record, and I heard it on the radio and I said,

"I got competition."

Billy Sherrill had been inspired by the rich arrangements

that rock producer Phil Spector was creating in Los Angeles,

known as the Wall of Sound.

When Sherrill wrapped his own version of it

around Tammy Wynette's dynamic voice,

the result was a steady string of number one country hits.

# ..becomes final today

# Me and little J-O-E will be goin' away... #

One of them was written by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman,

in which a mother tries to shield her son

from the agony of the break-up of her marriage

by spelling out words like divorce and custody.

# ..D-I-V-O-R-C-E. #

"The song," Wynette would say, "fit my life completely."

When it hit the top of the country charts,

her second marriage, to songwriter Don Chapel,

was beginning to disintegrate.

By this time, George Jones's second divorce had just been finalised.

The two had gotten to know each other,

performing at concerts on the road.

Jones, 11 years older, was Wynette's idol as a country singer.

She had all of his song lyrics handwritten

in a loose-leaf notebook.

One night, Jones stopped at Wynette's and Chapel's house.

She had been playing Jones's latest hit, written by her husband,

over and over. Chapel began ranting and cussing.

Jones, who had been drinking, exploded,

turning over a dining table and tossing a chair through a window.

He shouted at Chapel, "You don't talk to her like that."

"She's my wife," Chapel answered.

"What the hell business is it of yours?"

"Because I'm in love with her," Jones blurted out,

"and she's in love with me. Aren't you, Tammy?"

"Yes," she admitted, "I am."

A few days later, he flew her to Mexico City

so she could get a quick divorce.

# Sometimes it's hard to be a woman... #

In the midst of all the turmoil,

Billy Sherrill brought Tammy back into the studio

to record a song they had co-written.

# You'll have bad times

# And he'll have good times

# Doing things that you don't understand... #

I always wanted to write a song

about a woman talking to another woman.

It's always a guy talking about women, women talking about guys,

and I figured if a woman talked to another woman,

what would she tell her?

Sometimes it's hard to be a woman,

giving all your love to just one man.

You'll have bad times, he'll have good times, and all that.

So if you love him, you'll forgive him.

So stand by your man.

# Stand by your man

# Give him two arms to cling to

# And something warm to come to... #

Stand By Your Man would be Tammy Wynette's biggest record ever,

selling five million copies, earning her a Grammy and making her

the Country Music Association's Female Vocalist of the Year,

beating out the previous recipient, Loretta Lynn.

I'd just like to say thanks

for making this the greatest year of my life, thank you.

APPLAUSE

One amusing thing to me about Tammy and Loretta,

if you ever noticed this,

Tammy's songs were always about standing by your man

and treating your man right and being there for him,

and yet she divorced several times.

Loretta Lynn was always threatening, "Don't come home drinking,

"don't do this or I'll do that,"

and she always stayed with her man.

I always kind of thought they wrote each other's songs.

In early 1969, George Jones and Tammy Wynette were married

and began touring together in a bus emblazoned Mr And Mrs Country Music.

Jones had his own hit rising in the charts at the time,

I'll Share My World With You.

It reached number two.

Stand By Your Man was still number one.

# Casey joins the hollow sound of silent people walking down

# The stairway to the subway in the shadows down below

# Following their footsteps... #

I remember I used to do demo sessions at Columbia Studio

and there was this guy there who was the janitor.

He would always blast out his push broom

and he'd start asking me questions about songwriting.

And as I got to know him, I realised this guy was not just a janitor.

I think he was about three or four years older than I was.

I found out he had been to Oxford

and had been an officer in the military and a helicopter pilot,

and I got to know him pretty well.

I thought he was an amazing songwriter,

and his name was Kris Kristofferson.

MEXICAN-STYLE MUSIC PLAYS

Growing up in Brownsville, Texas, Kris Kristofferson had shown

an early interest in poetry and music.

He especially enjoyed listening to Hank Williams on the radio,

and to the Mexican music

that seemed to permeate the streets of his border town.

The rancheros and the music I heard across the river in Matamoros...

..I think that probably put the heart in it for me.

His mother and his father, a general in the Air Force,

had their own ideas for his future...

..and after moving to California,

were proud that their son entered prestigious Pomona College

where he played rugby and football,

joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps,

and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in English literature,

before going on to Oxford, England, as a Rhodes Scholar

to continue studying the Romantic poets.

I loved William Blake - and Shakespeare, of course.

William Blake said,

"If he who is organised by the divine for spiritual communion

"refuse and bury his talent in the Earth,

"even though he should want natural bread,

"shame and confusion of face

"will pursue him throughout life to eternity."

He's telling you that you'll be miserable

if you don't do what you're supposed to do.

When Kristofferson turned 29, his life was at a crossroads.

He had a wife and small child and was well on his way toward

a distinguished military career like his father's.

He was a captain and helicopter pilot in the army's Airborne Rangers

and had volunteered for duty in Vietnam,

but instead was assigned to be an instructor at West Point.

Before he started that job,

he visited Nashville for a few days in 1965.

Marijohn Wilkin, the co-writer of the classic song Long Black Veil,

agreed to show him around.

She introduced him to producer "Cowboy" Jack Clement,

who in turn took him behind the scenes at the Grand Ole Opry.

Jack and Marijohn took me backstage there, I was still in uniform.

Johnny Cash was there and he was skinny as a snake.

It looked like he was trying to be like Hank...

..like he was going to end up like Hank Williams.

He was still exciting to watch perform.

And that's probably why I left the army - it just electrified me.

He resigned his West Point position,

moved his small family to Nashville,

and set about trying to interest people

in the songs he had begun to write.

To earn money, and hoping to meet some artists

who might record something he wrote,

Kristofferson got a job at Columbia Records'

studio, sweeping floors, cleaning ashtrays

and sometimes slipping demo tapes and lyric sheets

to the stars who passed through.

For four years, he struggled to make it.

He and his wife divorced.

His parents lost patience with the direction his life had taken.

Well, my mother just disowned me.

She sent me a letter saying, uh,

"We thought it was cute when you were little

"and you liked country music, but I think that as a grown man...

"You know, nobody over the age of 15 listens to that trash," she said,

"and if they did, it wouldn't be anybody we'd want to know."

And, uh, "Please don't write or come home,

"because you're an embarrassment to us."

When I read the letter, I was in Jack Clement's office,

and Jack said, "You've got to give me that letter,"

cos he said, "I'll show it to Johnny Cash!"

KRISTOFFERSON LAUGHS And I gave him the letter.

And the first time I ever met John

was when I was a janitor there at Columbia, and he said to me,

"It's always great to get a letter from home, isn't it, Kris?"

You've got to wait until I'm into the song, you know?

From then on, Cash told the studio

to let Kristofferson watch his usually closed sessions.

In 1969, Bob Beckham of Combine Music decided to take

a chance on Kristofferson, and brought him to his boss,

the record producer and publisher, Fred Foster, to audition.

Kristofferson was hoping to be hired as a songwriter

with a weekly salary called "a draw".

# This may be our last good night together... #

Now, my formula is, if you're gonna play me a song

that you've written, I want to hear four.

Anybody might luck up and write one.

A miracle could happen and you might do two.

You're not gonna write four great songs unless you're a writer.

So he sang me four songs,

and I thought, honestly, before he finished those four songs,

that I was hallucinating.

I said, "There's no way anybody can be this great.

"My God, what is this?"

# ..our shadows come together

# Softer than your... #

So, I said, "OK, I'll sign you.

"I'll agree to the draw you want, but on one condition."

# ..this may be... #

Foster insisted Kristofferson also record an album,

singing his own songs.

"Man," he said, "you're crazy. I can't sing.

"I sound like an effing frog."

I said, "Possibly, but one that can communicate, cos you've sold me."

He said, "OK, if you're crazy enough, I guess I am, too."

As he predicted, Kristofferson's debut album

did not sell well, but one day, Foster came to him

with an idea for a new song.

It wasn't much, just a phrase that came to Foster when he met

the songwriter Boudleaux Bryant's new secretary, named Barbara McKee.

Everyone called her Bobbie.

Fred said he had a song title for me.

I thought he said, "McGee", but he said, "Bobbie McKee."

"How does that grab ya - Me And Bobbie McKee?"

And I says, "How does what grab me?"

LAUGHING: You know?!

I didn't know how I was gonna write that.

And then it started coming together for me.

# Busted flat in Baton Rouge and headin' for the trains

# Feelin' nearly faded as my jeans

# Bobby thumbed a diesel down just before it rained

# Took us all the way to New Orleans... #

And he got caught in a bad rainstorm in Baton Rouge.

# ..my harpoon out of my... #

And he wrote the first verse in his car -

"Busted flat in Baton Rouge, heading for the train.

"Feeling nearly as faded as my jeans."

# With them windshield wipers slappin' time

# And Bobby... #

I was trying to capture a feeling that I had from a film

that had really moved me.

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

# Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose... #

The film was La Strada by the Italian master Federico Fellini,

in which the hero abandons the woman he loves

after a long and tempestuous journey.

# ..Bobby sang the blues... #

HE SPEAKS ITALIAN

And at the end of the film, Anthony Quinn is getting drunk in a bar...

And he goes out by the beach.

# ..and Bobby McGee... #

And he's looking up, on his knees,

looking up at the stars and just weeping, you know?

And that's what I was trying to get.

# ..enough for me

# Good enough for me and Bobby McGee... #

So, I owe it to Fellini. HE LAUGHS

Roger Miller would be the first to record the song.

Others came out with their own versions.

Then, in 1970, the blues and rock singer Janis Joplin recorded it.

Fred Foster had a chance to hear it before it was released.

# Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose

# Nothin', that's all that Bobby left me, yeah

# But feelin' good was easy, Lord

# When he sang the blues

# Hey, feelin' good was good enough for me, yeah

# Mm-hm

# Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee

# La-da-da, la-da-da-da... #

Then she got to the middle part of Bobby McGee, and I just lost it.

I just started crying.

# ..Bobby McGee, yeah... #

I couldn't help it.

# La-da-da, la-da-da la-da-da, la-da-da

# La-da-da, la-da-da, la-da-da

# Hey, now, Bobby My Bobby McGee, yeah... #

That's... That's not a record, that's an experience.

# ..La-da-da, now La-da-da, la-da-da... #

And I called Kris and told him.

I said, "Don't be alone when you hear this."

# ..Bobby McGee, yeah!

# Well, I call him my lover Call him my man... #

Joplin's single, released posthumously -

she had died from a drug overdose -

became the number-one record in the country.

# ..La-la-la-la... #

Out of gratitude for providing him with the title of his first big hit,

Kristofferson insisted that Fred Foster share

half of the writing credit.

# ..Hey, hey, hey Bobby McGee, yeah. #

# Take the ribbon from your hair

# Shake it loose and let it fall

# Layin' soft against my skin... #

Kris Kristofferson is probably the best songwriter.

# ..shadows on the wall... #

You can just go right down the road and compare Kris with anybody -

Gershwin or anybody else.

GATLIN: I think he's the greatest lyricist in the English language.

Now, people say, "Johnny Mercer"...

..and Johnny Mercer was great.

# My huckleberry friend... #

Johnny Mercer - great, is great, but, let me tell you...

"See him wasted on the sidewalk in his jacket and his jeans,

"wearing yesterday's misfortune like a smile."

"Once he had a future full of money, love, and dreams,

"which he spent like they were going out of style.

"But he keeps right on believing

"for the better or the worse, searching...

"Keeps right on believing, for the better or the worse,

"searching for the shrine he's never found.

"Never knowing if believing was a blessing or a curse,

"if the going up was worth the coming down."

# Help me make it through the night... #

Nashville was now a songwriting capital,

and Kris Kristofferson was one of the city's hottest songwriters,

having elevated what was possible to say in a country song.

He had more hits with songs like For The Good Times,

about a man and a woman making love one last time as they break up,

and Loving Her Was Easier Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again,

about the sweet memory of a lost love.

# I have seen the morning burning golden

# On the mountain in the skies

# Aching with the feeling of the freedom

# Of an eagle when she flies... #

PRIDE: I'm in the business of selling lyrics, feelings,

and emotions.

Lyrics, see, I sing lyrics.

See, that's what's wrong with a lot of other music.

They got the lyrics, but you don't never hear 'em.

Now watch this.

# I have seen the morning burning golden

# On the mountain in the sky

# Aching with the feeling of the freedom

# Of an eagle when she flies

# Turning on the world the way she smiled

# Upon my soul as I lay dying

# Healing as the colours in the sunshine

# And the shadows of her eye

# Waking in the morning to the feeling

# Of her fingers on my skin

# Talking of tomorrow... #

Now watch this line.

# Talking of tomorrow and the money, love and time we had to... #

He could have just said...

# Talking of tomorrow and the money we had to spend... #

# Talking of tomorrow and the money, love and time we had to spend

# Cos loving her was easier than anything I'll ever do again. #

Aren't those fine lyrics?

I didn't write 'em.

The Kris Kristofferson song that caught Johnny Cash's attention

had nothing to do with love.

Instead, it painted a despairing picture

of a lonely man waking up on a Sunday morning,

hungover from Saturday night, and his feelings of isolation

as he walks the streets of a peaceful town on the Sabbath.

# Well, I woke up Sunday morning

# With no way to hold my head that didn't hurt

# And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad

# So I had one more for dessert... #

KRISTOFFERSON: I was describing what I was going through at the time.

# Then I fumbled through my closet for my clothes

# And found my cleanest dirty shirt... #

# Well, I woke up Sunday morning

# With no way to hold my head that didn't hurt

# And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad

# So I had one more for dessert. #

And that was true, too!

# Then I fumbled through my closet for my clothes

# And found my cleanest dirty shirt... #

And I'm wearing it right now!

"And I washed my face and combed my hair

"and stumbled down the stairs to meet the day."

# ..Cos there's something in a Sunday... #

It was a...

# Makes a body feel alone... #

It was a blessing.

# And there's nothing short of dyin'

# Half as lonesome as the sound

# On the sleepin' city sidewalks

# Sunday morning comin' down... #

CROWELL: You step into this emotionally-charged scene

of sorrow and woe...

..and a strange kind of hopefulness at the same time.

GATLIN: You can see that old boy stumbling through there,

and he's hungover, and he's smoked a bunch of dope,

and he stayed up too late, and he's depressed,

or he's lost his job, or his woman's left, or something...

..and he stumbles through that...

.."And far away, I heard a lonely bell a-ringing..."

# ..Far away, a lonely bell was ringin'... #

"..and it echoed through the canyon

"like the disappearing dreams of yesterday?!"

Hey, all those words in the dictionary,

but nobody else before Kris knew what damn order they came in!

# ..echoed through the canyons

# Like the disappearing dreams of yesterday... #

When Johnny Cash heard Sunday Morning Coming Down,

he said later, he felt as if he'd written it himself.

# Wishin', Lord that I was stoned... #

"The lines of the song started running through my head,"

he remembered,

"and I realised I could identify with every one of them."

Cash decided to perform Sunday Morning Coming Down

on his television show.

There was a line, "Wishin', Lord, that I was stoned,"

in Sunday Morning.

The network did not want Dad to sing, "Wishin' I was stoned,"

on network television, and he argued with them about it,

and they put the foot down - "You just can't do that."

Well, Kris was in the audience that night,

and Dad just couldn't, in good conscience, change that word

with the songwriter sitting in the audience.

# I'm wishin', Lord that I was stoned... #

When he was performing it, he sang, "Wishing, Lord, that I was STONED!"

Little emphasis on "stoned!"

And Kris was very happy. The network was not.

# And there's nothin' short of dyin'... #

Later, Cash would ask the man

who had written those words, the shy ex-janitor

who thought he didn't have a good voice, to come on his show.

# ..sleepin' city sidewalks... #

John was always encouraging me.

He was always on my side, and he put me on his show, too.

It was the first time I was ever in front of people doing that.

# Doo-doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo... #

I never had to work for a living after that.

# Mm-mm-mm... #

MUSIC: Man In Black by Johnny Cash

# Well, you wonder why I always dress in black

# Why you never see bright colours on my back

# And why does my appearance seem to have a sombre tone?

# Well, there's a reason for the things that I have on

# I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down

# Livin' in the hopeless... #

It's very easy to stand on the margins

and, you know, sort of throw cabbages...

..but not so easy to stand in the middle

and unite the way he did.

# I wear the black for those who've never read... #

As the 1970s began, Johnny Cash's records

played constantly on country radio,

but he was also a hero to many members of the counterculture.

He would sometimes flash a peace sign during a concert,

but refused to publicly criticise President Richard Nixon.

He and June also tried to help Jan Howard after she lost her sons

by bringing Howard with them on tour.

He went to play for the troops in Vietnam,

while being vocal about his opposition to the war in Vietnam.

That was him in a nutshell.

# Each week we lose a hundred fine young men... #

He could hold two opposing thoughts

at the same time and believe in both of them

with the same degree of passion and power.

President Nixon invited him to perform at the White House,

and though many of his younger fans objected,

Cash said he was honoured to go.

Then he learned that the President wanted him to sing

Guy Drake's song, Welfare Cadillac,

which was popular on country radio at the time,

but disparaged poor people

who relied on public assistance to survive.

He went to the Nixon White House to perform,

yet refused to perform Welfare Cadillac,

even though the President had requested it.

# The old man turned off the radio

# Said, "It looks to me like they've all gone wild"... #

Instead, he sang one of his own songs.

# Well, man, could it be that the girls and boys

# Are tryin' to be heard above your noise?

# And the lonely voice of youth cries, "What is truth?"... #

The song was, "What Is Truth?", a full-throated defence

of those who challenged the status quo,

from the music they danced to and the length of their hair

to questions about war and the need to speak out against injustice.

# ..You better help that voice of youth

# Find what is truth

# And the lonely voice of youth cries

# "What is truth?" #

THRUM OF HELICOPTER

In the summer of 1971,

American combat troops were being withdrawn from Vietnam,

but the divides at home were as great as ever.

MUSIC: Nashville Blues by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

That same summer, a group of long-haired musicians

from southern California began setting up

in the Woodland Studios in east Nashville,

across the Cumberland River from Music Row.

It was the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

Their version of Jerry Jeff Walker's song, Mr Bojangles,

had been a top-ten pop hit,

but they were still searching for their own sound.

We were not a country band.

I was the banjo player.

We played a bluegrass-sounding kind of music,

but it wasn't bluegrass.

We played jug band music. We played some folk-rock music.

They decided to cut a record with John McEuen's banjo-playing hero,

Earl Scruggs.

With his help, they started recruiting other legends

in country and bluegrass music to join them...

Merle Travis, Doc Watson,

Jimmy Martin and Vassar Clements.

# There's a bright and a sunny side, too... #

Maybelle Carter agreed to take part, as well.

She had recently been touring with some of her grandchildren

and had no prejudices against young people's musical tastes.

# Keep on the sunny side... #

She says one day when we were practising,

Grandma says, "I really like that song -

" 'One toke over the line, sweet Jesus.'

"I think we should learn it."

So, me and my cousin David, and Laurie, are cracking up, laughing.

She said, "Well, I think it's a good little gospel song."

And we said, "Grandma, do you know what that song's about?"

She's going, "It's a gospel song."

But the king of country music, Roy Acuff, proved harder to get.

He told a reporter doing an article about the newcomers,

"I don't know if they're young boys or old men.

"If I ever saw them again without their hair,

"I'd never know them."

That didn't sound too positive.

MUSIC: Soldier's Joy by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

Once the sessions began, it became clear

that the West Coast hippies weren't interested

in having the country and bluegrass artists accompany THEM.

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band wanted to back up the legends.

We set up in a big studio

in a circle, really, facing each other.

It was so warm and so immediate.

I think the idea was...

..to try to recreate a living room or a back porch.

For us, it was like going back to 1928 and making early records.

We wanted to make an old record.

They kept at it for six days, performing one song after another...

Half a dozen Carter Family standards,

like Keep On The Sunny Side and Wildwood Flower...

..a few of Merle Travis's hits...

..banjo tunes written by Earl Scruggs...

..and other instrumentals

that allowed the collection of talented musicians to shine.

Everyone involved felt a special magic in the studio.

When the Vietnam War was raging

and marches were going on and churches were being burned,

in the midst of all this turmoil...

..it came together in the studio.

STUDIO CHATTER

On the last day, Roy Acuff himself showed up

and asked to hear a little of what they had recorded.

He said something like,

"How would you boys describe this music?"

And we're going, "Well, uh, it's mountain music,

"or it's, you know, it's kind of bluegrass,

"or it's got kind of an Appalachian vibe."

And he said, "It ain't nothin' but country."

Then Acuff led them through some of the songs HE had made famous

from the stage of the Ryman Auditorium back in the 1940s.

ACUFF: Now, whenever you decide that you're gonna record a number,

put everything you've got into it.

Don't say, "Oh, we'll take it over and do it again,"

because every time you go through it,

you lose just a little something, especially a man with voice.

So let's do it the first time, and to hell with the rest of it.

MUSIC: Wreck On The Highway by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

# Who did you say it was, brother?

# Who was it fell by the way?

# When whisky and blood run together

# Did you hear anyone pray?

# I didn't hear nobody pray Dear brother

# I didn't hear nobody pray

# I heard the crash on the highway

# But I didn't hear nobody pray. #

For the album's climax,

they chose another Carter Family song,

which would become the name of the album.

Circle. OK.

Everyone joined in.

SONG: Will The Circle Be Unbroken?

# I was standin' by my window

# On one cold and cloudy day

# When I saw the hearse come rollin'

# For to carry my mother away

# Will the circle be unbroken?

# By and by, Lord, by and by

# There's a better home a-waitin'

# In the sky, Lord, in the sky... #

To get in this recording studio and make a record with folks

that kind of bridged that cultural gap

and that generation gap, that was significant.

We heard stories later, where, you know, a good friend of mine

said that he and his dad were kind of estranged,

and they sat down and bonded on that Circle album.

# ..be unbroken?

# By and by, Lord, by and by... #

Released as a triple-disc album,

"Will The Circle Be Unbroken?" got little play on country radio...

# ..in the sky Lord, in the sky... #

..but Rolling Stone magazine praised it.

Some progressive FM stations started featuring it,

and especially on college campuses around the nation,

it caught on, spread by word of mouth.

Ultimately, it would be recognised

as one of the most iconic albums in country music history.

# I will follow close behind her

# Try to hold on and be brave... #

I think the song "Will The Circle Be Unbroken?" shows hope.

It shows a better future may be ahead.

Things may be bad, but they'll get better.

"Undertaker, please drive slow.

"That's my mama going, but she'll be OK."

# ..by and by, Lord, by and by

# There's a better home a-waitin'

# In the sky, Lord, in the sky. #

MUSIC: Me & Paul by Willie Nelson

# It's been rough and rocky travelling

# But I'm finally standing upright on the ground

# After taking several readings

# I'm surprised to find my mind's still fairly sound

# I guess Nashville was the roughest

# But I know I've said the same about them all... #