KNOXVILLE, Tennessee — At its heart, country music tells the story of America, in particular the strong women of America, said acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns.
A shining example is East Tennessee's Dolly Parton. Today, the Sevier County native is hailed as country music royalty. But she didn't start that way.
When she was born at home in 1946, her parents had little cash so they paid the doctor with a sack of cornmeal, Burns said Monday morning during a press stop at Parton's statue in downtown Sevierville.
Parton, the girl with the coat of many colors, was determined to follow her dream of becoming a musician.
"She dreamed big," Burns said. "She is the whole package. She is an extraordinary human being. She is one of the most talented songwriters in the history of country music, and she has a voice given to her by God that is beyond compare."
Parton features prominently in Burns and company's upcoming PBS series on country music. The 16-hour documentary airs on East Tennessee PBS and other public stations in September.
Burns and colleagues Dayton Duncan and Julie Dunfey are in Tennessee this week to promote the series. They stopped Sunday night in Bristol and will appear Monday night at the Clayton Center for the Performing Arts on the Maryville College campus.
The event is at 7:30 p.m. and includes special guest Ketch Secor, whose work includes performing in Old Crow Medicine Show. Philanthropist, businessman and music fan Jim Clayton will moderate.
Duncan, Dunfey and Burns also collaborated on the series "The National Parks: America's Best Idea", for which Duncan came to Knoxville in 2009 for a screening.
The country music series has been eight years in the making.
Burns and company interviewed scores of people with ties to country music including Willie Nelson, Rhiannon Giddens, Roseanne Cash, Roy Clark, Marty Stuart and Loretta Lynn. Parton is highlighted in one of the production's promotional spots.
The series will look at Appalachia's influence as well as that of Nashville, Virginia, Texas, California and Canada on country music.
Last April, during a lecture at the Tennessee Theatre presented by the East Tennessee Historical Society and Lincoln Memorial University's Duncan School of Law, Burns talked about the upcoming country music documentary, teasing the audience with what they learned about the creation of such songs as "Rocky Top", the Felice and Boudleaux Bryant hit that's become the anthem of the University of Tennessee.
He said Monday the filmmakers talked with singer Brenda Lee about how the Bryants wrote "Rocky Top" in Gatlinburg. It's great material.
"We had the best scene of 'Rocky Top' and that involved Brenda Lee talking about how Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, who wrote the tune, how they helped each other and how Boudleaux wouldn't sing it right and Felice would yell at him," Burns said. "And if you can imagine Brenda Lee telling us about this, you would say you would be idiots to drop it. But in a big, huge episode, we ended up dropping it."
It will be available as a DVD extra, Duncan said.
The film goes up to the emergence of Garth Brooks in the mid 1990s on the country music scene. Newer artists can be seen as the program concludes and the credits role.
East Tennessee's influence on country music includes everyone from Parton to Chet Atkins to Roy Acuff. Knoxville is infamous as one of the last places Hank Williams stopped before dying while on the road.
"It's an extraordinary legacy," Burns said of East Tennessee's contributions to country music.
Williams' last ride is covered in the series, Burns said. In late December 1952 Williams, riding in a blue Cadillac driven by a young man named Charles Carr, headed from Alabama northward to a gig in Ohio.
On New Year's Eve night, they checked into the Andrew Johnson Hotel on Gay Street in Knoxville. A few hours later, however, they were back on the road.
Early on the first day of 1953 in Oak Hill, W. Va., Williams, 29, died, he said.
Burns knows there's great speculation about when Williams actually fell silent.
"As far as our scholarship has done, he was on his way, had already left Knoxville, had passed Bristol, had turned sort of left up into West Virginia and somewhere along the way in the back of his young driver's car in the snowstorm in the early hours of January 1953, the Hillbilly Shakespeare had passed away," he said.
It was arguably the end of an era in country music, Burns said.
The documentarian often alludes to a well-known quote about country music consisting of "three chords and the truth."
The special also goes into the impact of "Hee Haw", the long-running syndicated TV show that featured performers such as Buck Owens, Clark, Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones.
While some have scoffed at it, the program became a "huge showcase" of what country music had to offer, Burns said.
Musician and writer Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show offers commentary on the film and also acted as an adviser to it. Secor said, like millions of people, he grew up learning about history and appreciating it because of Burns' work.
It was a thrill to be part of the project, he said.
"I thought before I was standing on the shoulders of giants but now my love and awe for those giants is giant," Secor said. "What these women and men have done in these past 100 years -- their sacrifice of their lives and livelihoods, their bodies that they literally laid to down to go do this. I mean, this is a really hard gig, but it used to be really, really hard, kill-ya hard."
Among those "giants" shown in the series is Loretta Lynn, who grew up in a Kentucky holler and went on to become on the preeminent figures of the form. She's always been frank about living and loving, cheaters and soulmates.
That's what country music is all about.
"You don't write about fantasies. You write about life and true life, what was going on that day. That's the way I did it," Lynn says in the upcoming film.
On Wednesday, many musicians featured in the film will gather in Nashville at the Ryman for a special performance.
Burns thanked PBS, East Tennessee PBS and Bank of America for their longtime support of his work.
