Remember O Brother, Where Art Thou? This 2000 Cohen Brothers classic was quite a big deal back at the turn of the millennium. It’s still a very well-loved satirical musical today. George Clooney and a number of other big actors from the film really made it what it was.
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However, at the heart of the film’s success was its absolutely stellar soundtrack. And that very soundtrack brought bluegrass to the top of the US charts just a couple of years later. It did so mainly through the several variations of the film’s main song “Man Of Constant Sorrow”.
O Brother Where Art Thou is set in Mississippi during the Great Depression. So, it’s not exactly shocking that bluegrass and proto-country music are the stars of the show. The story behind the comedy-drama musical follows three escaped convicts (played by Clooney, Tim Blake Nelson, and John Turturro, respectively) on a journey to find their hidden fortune.
However, the journey is more important than the goal in this Odyssey reimagining. The trio become a hit band with the song “Man Of Constant Sorrow” and form The Soggy Bottom Boys. There are other amazing songs on this film’s soundtrack, including “The Big Rock Candy Mountain” and “In The Jailhouse Now”.
Bluegrass Made a Resurgence Following the Release of ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’
The Cohen Brothers wanted to keep things as authentic as possible, so they brought in famed Americana producer T Bone Burnett to bring the soundtrack to light. In fact, the soundtrack was more or less curated before filming even started. A few artists that Burnett brought in include Ralph Stanley (of The Stanley Brothers), Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, and other legends.
“Bluegrass will never be the same because of that record and the way that music was presented in that movie,” said Krauss of the experience. “T Bone, with the way he produced that record, kept his hands off it and left his fingerprints all over it. He had such respect for the people playing it, for the history of it, the history of roots music itself.”
The soundtrack behind O Brother Where Art Thou? didn’t get a ton of love from country music radio, but that didn’t stop it from earning a number of Grammy Awards and catapulting to no. 1 on the Billboard 200. The soundtrack also made it to no. 1 on the Top Country Albums and Soundtrack Albums charts.
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