"The Appalachians"
William Schulz
July 6, 2005
To capture in three hours of television the history, essence and character of a region nearly 400 million years old -- one which stretches more than 1500 miles from Canada to Alabama -- is a daunting challenge. But writer/producer Phyllis Geller and executive producer Mari-Lynn C. Evans more than meet that challenge in their three-part series, "The Appalachians." The series, produced by Evening Star Productions, has been distributed nationally to PBS stations by American Public Television.
Geller and Evans have assembled a formidable cast -- musicians Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, Marty Stuart, Jimmy Dickens and Chris Jones, historians and other academics from West Virginia College, the Universities of Kentucky and North Carolina, Appalachian State University and California University of Pennsylvania. They have garnered fascinating archival footage, contemporaneous paintings, drawings and portraiture,plus gorgeous cinematography. Bringing all this together is a beautifully-written script narrated by J.W. Mahony and the original music of Charlie Barnett.
The creators of "The Appalachians" have wisely limited their story to what we think of as "Central Appalachia" -- all of West Virginia and the large parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas dominated by the Allegheny, Cumberland, Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. What Geller and Evans seek to do is tell "the story of a land shaped by the people and a people shaped by the land."
"The Appalachians" covers much ground -- historical, cultural, religious, economic, political. Much of the region remains poor and there are villains in this TV history -- timber lords who stripped the hardwood forests, mining barons who exploited workers and ravaged the environment, the Army Corps of Engineers whose dam-building destroyed lush farmlands and the homes of countless families who had lived there for generations.
But the most compelling feature of this series is the people of Appalachia. Their forefathers began arriving in these hills early in the 17th century. However their story really began a century earlier when King James I of England grew weary of trying to contain rebels in the Scottish lowlands. He offered them homesteads in Ulster where the Irish were themselves causing him problems.
As one of the historians filmed for "The Appalachians" notes of this equation: "What better thing to get some of the borderland Scots who were always getting in trouble to go whomp up on the Irish?"
It didn't quite work out that way, as the British would discover to their great discomfort in the American Revolution. Over the century of James' migration, a new people emerged in Ulster -- the Scotch-Irish. After "suffering religious persecution, rising rents and bad harvests," tens of thousands moved on to the New World.
They came at the same time as others from England, Wales and Germany. But the Scotch-Irish were a breed apart. As another expert relates: "The Scotch-Irish were more hot-tempered than the Germans. So when the Indians attacked, you wanted Scotch-Irish there because they were terrific fighters. But when the Indians weren't there the Germans were just as happy not to have the Scotch-Irish around."
What all the newcomers brought to America -- and none more than the Scotch-Irish -- was a fierce independence, a love of God and family and a musical tradition of "fiddle-music" and ballads passed down over generations dating back to the English troubadours of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. This music came to include not only the Irish fiddle but the German dulcimer, the Italian mandolin, the Spanish guitar and the African banjo. It would go by many names -- hill-billy, old-timey mountain, bluegrass, country. "It is a gift to all the world from the people of Appalachia."
As important as their music to the settlers and fighters of Appalachia was religion. The first arrivals were largely Calvinists, believers in what is described here as a "tough, demanding, grim" theology. But by the 1740s a more hopeful, optimistic vision was spreading through the mountains.
Ministers of every Christian faith descended upon Appalachia in what became known as the Great Awakenings, a series of evangelical revivals that would last more than 80 years. Baptists and Methodists commissioned farmer preachers called Circuit Riders, and sent them across the region to inspire others to worship together.
Folks traveled long ways to attend great Camp Meetings. The King Ridge revival in Lexington, Ky., attracted 25,000 people in 1801 when the town's population was 5000. "The same revivals that energized the spirit would also transform religious music," we learn. "By the end of the Great Awakening a very different sound was echoing throughout the mountain hollows.
"As white and black people mingled at revival meetings, the white musicians picked up on African rhythms. They created blood-stirring songs to fit the new emotional religions -- songs that would become classics of gospel and bluegrass. Today we are still hearing the sounds of the revivals through country music after 200 years."
Perhaps the most moving moment in this wonderful series comes at the very end. The quintessential Scotch-Irish Johnny Cash, two months before his death in September 2003, tells of his first trip to Ireland. An Irishman thanks him for singing an old Irish folksong, "Forty Shades of Green." When Cash tells him that he wrote it, the Irishman will have none of it.
Sitting in a parlor somewhere in Appalachia, the clearly-dying Cash and his daughter, Rosanne, tell the story, laugh and sing the verses. And we learn, from what is his last-filmed interview, more not only of the incomparable Cash but of the rugged region and the indefatigable people he represented.
TV at its very best.
