Horatio's Drive - Original Soundtrack Recording
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