Search - Tony Ellis, Earl Scrugs, Fiddlin' Johnny :: Horatio's Drive: America's First Road Trip

In May 1903, spurred by a friendly argument and a $50 wager, retired New England doctor Horatio Nelson Jackson headed east from San Francisco on America's first transcontinental automobile journey/race. That mother of all road trips is the subject of this Ken Burns PBS documentary, and its soundtrack evokes both the era and scope of Jackson's journey with the sympathetic grace we've come to expect from the filmmaker. The music here ranges from pre-1920 recordings by The Original Dixieland Jazz Band (the jaunty "Tiger Rag" and "Livery Stable Blues") to interpretations of popular music of the period ("Bill Baily Won't You Please Come Home," "Cecile") and modern originals performed and/or written by John McKuen, Tony Ellis, Earl Scruggs, Jacqueline Schwab, Bobby Horton and others. The emphasis is on folksy, guitar ?n' banjo bluegrass stylings that conjure the dusty plains and rural mudholes of an America heartland whose highways were still mostly the unpaved wagon and horse trails of the previous century, yet tempered with the budding urban popular music of the growing towns and cities where Jackson and his grime-caked jalopy drew curious spectators by the droves. Skillfully woven into the musical feast are newspaper accounts and the reminisces of Jackson himself, read by Tom Hanks, George Plimpton, Tom Bodett and Murphy Guyer. -- Jerry McCulley