Local • Perspective
Washington, the capital city that’s always been a country outpost
By John Kelly, Columnist
September 17
Sherry Starr has a T-shirt her kids gave her that reads, “I was country when country wasn’t cool.” ... It’s a line from a Barbara Mandrell song. We were talking about country music, me and Sherry, who’s 83 and lives in Silver Spring.
You can’t have missed the fact that PBS is showing Ken Burns’s eight-episode, 16-hour documentary on the history of country music. The series has made Sherry ponder her own introduction to the music, back in the 1950s when she was an undergrad at the University of Maryland.
She was walking down a hallway in her dorm when she heard music coming from the room of a girl she didn’t know. She didn’t know the music either — it was probably Hank Williams, Sherry thinks now — so she stuck her head in.
“She had a little old radio,” Sherry said. “I said, ‘What’s that music?’ And she said, ‘I’m from the hills of West Virginia, and we call it hillbilly.’
“I was hooked for life.”
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... This area has always been an incongruous country hotbed, its artists, promoters and fans vital to the music’s success. Ken Burns touches on some of those figures in his documentary — Winchester, Va.’s Patsy Cline, for example — but he didn’t have room for others.
That’s one reason WETA produced six mini-documentaries that are being broadcast as part of the country music epic. The shorts — from two to six minutes each — were produced by Seth Tillman and Mark Jones and explore D.C.-area aspects of country music.
“We felt it was a really good opportunity for a lot of people who are newcomers to the area,” Seth said. “Probably the last thing they think of is D.C. as a country town. Of course, it was.”
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Twitter: @johnkelly
For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/john-kelly.
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