Anyone been watching this TV series this week?  I have been learning a great deal, e.g. Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan were very close friends as evidenced by several short clips that demonstrated their friendship and mutual affection for one another's music and talents - even being paramutual fans of each other.  Just in general, the program has made me much more appreciative of Cash's brilliance in music, knowing the vastly different array of music and having the ability to learn not only the notes but the lyrics of countless songs of all genres.  He truly had a love of all types of music and was brilliant but the antithesis of pretentious.  Which, once again, begs the question: why is he considered by many to be "country?"  I have NEVER thought of him as country - he almost deserves his own genre/category:  call it "Johnny Cash."  And his iconic contradictory paradigms, e.g. never expressing negative about Presidents but many times defying their policies, e.g. LBJ and Vietnam.  He has quite a history and personal complexity  I have always been impressed by his abilities but much more so now.  Ken Burns, co-producer for the series, is to be commended for his authenticity, accuracy and pragmatic approach to this series.  Very educational!

Also interesting that the program mentioned the close knit affiliation between what many of us would consider hard-core rock and the country music genre.  I am very much aware of the foundation of rock as being a composite including country - no doubt about that.  But the program solidifies that.  So, a question that comes to me in light of the program:  why is there a "Country & Western" genre when, in fact, they are distinctively separated by many artists and musicologists?  Why lumped?