The TV Column

PBS airs special on Highwaymen supergroup

The Highwaymen featured (from left) Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. American Masters presents a new documentary on the group at 8 p.m. Friday on AETN.
The Highwaymen featured (from left) Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. American Masters presents a new documentary on the group at 8 p.m. Friday on AETN.

Why do we watch PBS? Let me count the ways.

Some watch for Downton Abbey and other outstanding British dramas. Some enjoy it for antiques and appraisals, or even those seemingly interminable Beg-a-Thons featuring Peter, Paul and Mary and aimed at "viewers like you."

And some just can't get enough of the unintentional hilarity of The Lawrence Welk Show, or the infomercials disguised as self-help programs (try yoga at 5:30 a.m. each Saturday).

For me, it's the music and music specials and we've got a great one on deck.

The Highwaymen: Friends Till the End premieres at 8 p.m. Friday on AETN as part of the 30th anniversary season of American Masters.

Country music fans need to set their DVRs. This one is worth saving, especially since half the group is now dead.

The Highwaymen -- Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson -- have been labeled country's first supergroup and "an epic quartet comprised of the outlaw country genre's pioneering stars."

The special points out that the Grammy-winning group was "an essential musical and cultural influence" that was active from 1985-1995. The Highwaymen only recorded three albums, but they contained some classics, including "Highwayman," "Sunday Morning Coming Down," "Folsom Prison Blues," "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow up to Be Cowboys," "Always on My Mind," "Me and Bobby McGee," "Desperados Waiting for a Train," "Luckenbach, Texas" and "Silver Stallion."

The Highwaymen also toured the world and even starred in a 1986 CBS TV movie remake of the 1939 John Wayne film Stagecoach. The movie starred Kristofferson as the Ringo Kid (Wayne's role), Nelson as Doc Holliday, Cash as Marshal Curly Wilcox and Jennings as the gambler, Hatfield.

Somehow the film escaped Emmy notice.

In the American Masters special, producer/director Jim Brown (a four-time Emmy winner) explores how these icons (labeled "the Mount Rushmore of country music") came together and the results of their historic collaboration.

The documentary uses rare concert and behind-the-scenes footage as well as new interviews with survivors Nelson and Kristofferson, and family members Jessi Colter (Waylon's wife), Annie Nelson (Willie's wife), Lisa Kristofferson (Kris' wife), and John Carter Cash, the only child of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash.

Others interviewed include singers Toby Keith and John Mellencamp and band members Reggie Young (guitar), Mickey Raphael (harmonica) and Robby Turner (pedal steel guitar); as well as Mark Rothbaum, The Highwaymen's manager who was also Willie Nelson's manager for 40 years and helped conceive the group.

"I had three of my favorite people out there," Nelson, 83, recalls of his bandmates. "It was some of the best times of my life."

"I was up there on the stage with my heroes, the people that I worshipped," Kristofferson, 79, adds. "Willie's the outlaw coyote. Waylon's the riverboat gambler. I'm the revolutionary communist radical and John is the father of our country. For me it was heaven."

Singer Marty Stuart says, "It was four of the last American heroes. They rode into town and made us love country music -- made us love American music. And you know what, it was a victory lap for everybody."

Stuart, who was there, also recalls the moment in a Montreux, Switzerland, hotel room when The Highwaymen was formed in 1984. The four and their families were in Montreux to record a Christmas special.

"The magic in that guitar pull in that hotel room was tangible," Stuart says. "You could feel it in the air. You could almost put it in your pocket. And that was the standard. For me, that was the bar that was set."

About that informal guitar session, John Carter Cash, who was only 14 at the time, adds, "I do remember the essential spirit of excitement and the idea said, 'Let's just do a record together.' The idea just sort of came up out of the joyous camaraderie everyone was sharing. It was a very natural endeavor. It seemed like the right thing."

Jennings, who died in 2002, and Arkansas native Cash, who died in 2003, add their perspectives via archival interviews.

Sure to delight fans, the special contains footage from a previously unreleased concert recorded live at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y., in 1990.

The Highwaymen: Friends Till the End explains how the four friends "liberated American pop and country music from record label and producer control to create a new musical landscape where the artists controlled their songwriting, recording and performing."

In an era when too many country stars seem to be slick, cookie-cutter, arena-polished performers, it's refreshing to look back at true individuals and appreciate them for what they were.

The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Email:

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Weekend on 05/26/2016

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