Credit: Mary Ellen MatthewsJack White will be an executive producer on American Epic, a three-part TV documentary exploring the birth of modern music. Producer extraordinaire T Bone Burnett and actor Robert Redford are also executive producers on the project.
Set in the 1920s, American Epic tells the story of "when record company talent scouts toured America with a recording machine and for the first time captured the raw expression of an emerging culture," according to a press release.
White will also be an executive producer on The American Epic Sessions, a feature-length film in which contemporary artists, including Alabama Shakes and Beck, will record music using re-created equipment from the 1920s. White's Third Man Records will also issue an album of the recordings on vinyl.
"In American Epic we can examine how important the fact is that when phonograph records were invented, for the first time ever, women, minorities, poor rural men and even children were given the opportunity to say whatever they wanted in song, for the whole world to hear, shockingly without much censorship," says White in a statement. "What they were allowed to say on phonograph recordings, they were not allowed to speak in public or in person. That is an astounding thought."
American Epic and The American Epic Sessions will air on PBS this fall.
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