O Brother Soundtrack

There is another Nashville, with a kind of music so distant from what the city's commercial center cranks out as to be from a different planet. It thrives in the community's nooks and crannies like a cluster of quietly smiling mountain wildflowers in the shadow of those cultivated hothouse blooms that flaunt their colors on radio stations from coast to coast.

The soundtrack for O Brother, Where Art Thou? - indeed the film, itself - celebrates this gentle music. Writer/directors Joel and Ethan Coen call it "folk music." Eric Fellner, the film's producer, calls it "bluegrass music." Terms such as "roots" and "Southern vernacular" are bandied about to describe it. But what this seemingly ethnic sound is, is "country music." Or at least it was before the infidels of Music Row expropriated that term to describe watered-down pop/rock with greeting-card lyrics.

This original country sound first flowered during the Depression, the era that frames O Brother, Where Art Thou? It was fertilized by blues, gospel, string-band hoedowns, Appalachian balladry, work songs and vaudeville hokum. Its practitioners were small-time entertainers who led itinerant lives as they traveled from one schoolhouse show to the next, from one radio "barn dance" to the next, from one makeshift recording studio to another.

Despite the hard economic times, record companies and radio stations discovered an enormous hunger for the homey sounds of The Carter Family, the rowdy blues of Jimmie Rodgers, the saucy humor of Uncle Dave Macon, the dazzling fiddling of Arthur Smith and the scintillating blues moans of countless slide guitarists, harmonica men and jug-band songsters. That hunger for emotional truth gave us our multi-million dollar music industry.

The razzmatazz of western swing, the whipped-dog whine of honky-tonk music, the creamy crooning of singing cowboys, the itchy-pants yelp of rockabilly and the suburban gleam of The Nashville Sound seemed to drown out the innocence of this rustic, acoustic kind of country. But it has survived. Now called "old-time music" this style thrives at the more than 500 bluegrass festivals, fiddle contests and folk gatherings that are staged every year in America. It is recorded or performed by young people virtually every night in Music City, U.S.A.

You won't hear it on "country" radio. And it flies beneath the commercial radar of most record shops. So for those whose musical tastes are shaped by the great, gray behemoth that is the modern entertainment business, this music does sound obscure. Even exotic.

It was this sound that the Coen brothers and record producer T Bone Burnett came in search of on a scouting trip to Tennessee's capital city in the spring of 1999. With the help of Denise Stiff and Gillian Welch they found a troupe of people eager to recreate the ethos of the 1930s - The Whites, Alison Krauss & Union Station, John Hartford, Ralph Stanley, the Fairfield Four, Emmylou Harris, The Cox Family, Norman Blake and The Nashville Bluegrass Band were among the talents who marched forward for this extraordinary project. Several of them even wound up on screen.

Before a single frame of film was shot, these musicians and others created the "canvas" upon which the colorful saga of O Brother, Where Art Thou? would be painted.

"The reason for our using so much of the era's music in the movie was simple," explains Ethan Coen. "We have always liked it. The mountain music, the delta blues, gospel, the chain-gang chants, would later evolve into bluegrass, commercial country music and rock 'n' roll. But it is compelling music in its own right, harking back to a time when music was a part of everyday life and not something performed by celebrities. That folk aspect of the music both accounts for its vitality and makes it fold naturally into our story without feeling forced or theatrical."

"Music became a very prominent feature very early on in the [script]writing," adds Joel Coen, "and it became even more so as we went along. There are very few scenes in the movie that don't have an in-screen musical element to them.

"Both Ethan and I are long-time listeners to and fans of this music. It began to take over the script as we went on, until the film became almost a musical. It establishes the tone and the flavor."

Indeed, the music is practically a cinematic character in itself. Hillbilly and blues sounds underscore what is easily the Coen brothers' warmest film. O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a comedic retelling of Homer's The Odyssey set in Mississippi in 1937, starring George Clooney as an escapee from a chain gang with an obsession for Dapper Dan hair pomade. You read that correctly. This is, after all, the team that created the decidedly sideways Raising Arizona, Fargo and The Big Lebowski.

Clooney is Ulysses Everett McGill, a fast-talking petty criminal who is trying to get home to Ithaca (Mississippi, not the Greek isle) to see his wife Penny (instead of Penelope), portrayed by Holly Hunter. Ulysses' chained-together companions are the sweet dimwit Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson) and the phlegmatic crank Pete (John Turturro). The trio journey through a landscape of wonder and adventure populated by a series of outlandish characters who jumble together classical mythology, Southern archetypes and pop-culture imagery. And there is music every step of the way.

Yes, there are the Lotus Eaters who lull Ulysses' cohorts. They're reimagined here as a blissful Baptist congregation engaged in riverside immersion to the lovely strains of "Down To The River To Pray." Alison Krauss is accompanied here by the First Baptist Church of White House, TN as well as such heavenly vocalists as Tim O'Brien, Maura O'Connell, Pat Enright, Sam Phillips and Gillian Welch.

Yes, there are Sirens who seduce our heroes. Their voices are provided by Krauss, Welch and Emmylou Harris on an elaboration of the old black folk lullabye "Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby."

And, yes, there is a Cyclops, portrayed here by John Goodman as a deliriously evil, one-eyed Bible salesman. There's a blind soothsayer, too.

But there is also a non-Homerian character named Tommy Johnson, portrayed by the young New Orleans bluesman Chris Thomas King. He's sold his soul to the devil at The Crossroads in exchange for musical brilliance, just like his Depression-era namesake Robert Johnson supposedly did. So Southern mythology collides with its classical cousin in this collage of characters, imagined and real.

There was a real Pappy O'Daniel (Charles Durning); and he did campaign to the strains of country music. But he was in Texas, not Mississippi. "You Are My Sunshine" was, indeed, a campaign theme song. But it was for the governor of Louisiana. Pappy's opponent Homer (get it?) Stokes (Wayne Duvall) has The Whites on his bandwagon singing The Carter Family's "Keep On The Sunny Side" as his competing "sunshine" campaign song.

There was a real gangster named Babyface Nelson (Michael Badaluccio), too. But he died in a hail of FBI gunfire in Illinois three years before he makes his wildly manic appearance in O Brother, Where Art Thou?

What is real and what is mythic is beside the point in the topsy-turvy world of the Coen brothers. What counts is the sheer joie de vivre of this film.

Similarly, the music of O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a joyous mish-mash of periods and styles. The soundtrack includes vintage recordings, such as Harry "Mac" McClintock's hobo classic of 1928, "Big Rock Candy Mountain" and The Stanley Brothers haunting 1955 version of "Angel Band." And it has contemporary renditions of songs of the period, such as Krauss and Welch's "I'll Fly Away" and John Hartford's fiddle piece "Indian War Whoop." Sometimes the actors sing for themselves, as in Nelson's romp through the Jimmie Rodgers chestnut "In The Jailhouse Now" and King's ethereal performance of "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues." And sometimes they don't, as in Clooney lip synching Dan Tyminski's "I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow."

Sometimes the musicians appear on screen, as in the lovely Cox Family performance "I Am Weary (Let Me Rest)." Sometimes they don't, as in Ralph Stanley's chilling rendition of "O Death" in the midst of a white supremacist rally. Sometimes they are characters in the film, such as when members of the Fairfield Four sing "Lonesome Valley" as grave diggers. Sometimes they are only heard, as is the case when The Peasall Sisters sing "In The Highways" as the voices of Clooney's long-lost daughters.

What counts is that it all works brilliantly, both within the context of the film and outside it as a listening experience. And what also counts is that this soundtrack delivers the message that old-time music is very much alive. It speaks to us as vividly today as it did to listeners generations ago. You might not hear it on the radio, but you'll feel it in your heart. O Brother, Where Art Thou? will see to that.

As Joel Coen puts it so well, "The film is a valentine to the music."

THE MUSIC OF O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? COMES TO LIFE

On May 24, 2000 the historic Ryman Auditorium was booked to offer Nashvillians an evening of sublime beauty. Label executives and soundtrack producers so loved the music of O Brother, Where Art Thou? that they brought it to life as a benefit concert for the Country Music Hall of Fame. Filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen loved it so much that they hired famed documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker to record the show for posterity.

The concert that unfolded that night was one of the greatest musical moments in the annals of Music City. Holly Hunter was there, and T Bone Burnett and Tim Blake Nelson. But the stars who shone brightest were the unassuming acoustic performers who made audio magic the old-fashioned way on that hallowed stage.

The Fairfield Four earned an ovation for their stark, a cappella gospel treatments of "Po Lazarus" and "Lonesome Valley." John Hartford fiddled, sang and served as the evening's emcee. Dan Tyminski offered "Blue and Lonesome Too," as well as his soundtrack contributions. The Cox Family brought down the house with "Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown." Gillian Welch and David Rawlings had the crowd grinning from ear to ear with their old-timey "I Want to Sing That Rock and Roll." The Whites augmented their set with the toe-tapping "Sandy Land." The Peasall Sisters were adorable beyond measure.

One by one, Chris Thomas King, Alison Krauss & Union Station, The Nashville Bluegrass Band, Emmylou Harris and the other soundtrack participants took the stage. And one by one, they took us back to a time when music sprang from the heart and not the corporate boardroom. In their simplicity and eloquence, these performances were far more emotionally moving than anything that can be manufactured in our modern studio electronic wonderlands. By the time the entire cast assembled around Ralph Stanley for "Angel Band," eyes were moist throughout the hall.

It was a night of healing, a night to restore the spirit, a night of blessings and wonder. Rain cascaded on the city streets as we made our way home, which was a fitting metaphor for the cleansing that the music had given us.

The ghosts in country's most revered venue rested easy that night. We all did.

Robert K. Oermann
Nashville, August 2000