An Evening with Bill Malone, historian of Ken Burns’s Country Music

Premiere country music historian and former Tulane professor Bill C. Malone, the voice of the history of country music in Ken Burns’s new docu-series Country Music, will return to New Orleans  January 23rd to share his story and journey, while providing a little accompanying music for the audience.

Of Burns’s PBS 12-part documentary, Rolling Stone Magazine suggested that it  “might well be the most ambitious, culturally resonant music documentary ever made.”  Widely recognized as the ranking senior authority  on the genre, Bill C. Malone is an author, musician, and noted historian of traditional American music. His seminal work, Country Music, U.S.A., was the first definitive --  and still stands as the most authoritative --  academic history on the subject, launching the study of the art form and opening the field to hundreds of historians in its wake. As writer Larry McMurtry wrote, "If anyone knows more about the subject than [Malone] does, God help them." 

Joining Malone will be NPR veteran Gwen Thompkins, host of public radio’s Music Inside Out, which airs on WWNO, and a longtime student of music from around the world; Dr Patrick Maney, professor emeritus of modern American history at Boston College;  musician Pat Flory; and Dr. Bruce Raeburn, former director of Tulane’s Hogan Jazz Archives.

This program is free and open to the public, presented by the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies at UNO.