On American Pastimes we commemorate the 10th Anniversary of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

This week American Pastimes features a one hour radio special commemorating the 10th anniversary of the release of O Brother, Where Art Thou? The program features interviews with the actors and musicians who contributed to the film and soundtrack. Soundtrack producer T-Bone Burnett discusses the original recordings that inspired the soundtrack, and the making of the film soundtrack. A number of songs that were left off of the original soundtrack CD are also featured throughout the program.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a comedy produced and directed by Joel & Ethan Coen. It was filmed near locations in Canton, Mississippi and Florence, South Carolina. Actors included George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and Charles Durning. The soundtrack recording won a Grammy for Album of the Year in 2001.

The music used in the film is period-specific folk, traditional Appalachian and popular music that includes the bluegrass of singer Ralph Stanley. The musical selection also includes acoustic blues, and religious music, including Primitive Baptist and traditional African-American gospel, most notably the Fairfield Four, an a cappella quartet with a career that extends back to 1921 and who appear towards the end of the film as singing gravediggers.

Set in 1937 rural Mississippi during the Great Depression, the film's story is a modern satire loosely based on Homer’s Odyssey. The homage and allusions don’t end here though.

The title of the film references the 1941 Preston Sturges film Sullivan's Travels, in which the protagonist, a film director, wants to direct a film about the Great Depression called O Brother, Where Art Thou? The scene in which prisoners view a picture show in a theater is nearly identical to a scene in the Sturges film.

The Soggy Bottom Boys, the musical group that the main characters form, serve as accompaniment for the film. Their name is a homage to the Foggy Mountain Boys, the bluegrass band led by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. Tommy Johnson, the lead guitarist of the Soggy Bottom Boys, is an intentional reference to the legend of Delta Blues artists Tommy Johnson or Robert Johnson, both of whom were said to have sold their souls at a crossroads to the devil in return for fame and fortune.

The character of Governor Pappy O'Daniel is based on real-life W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel, the populist Democratic governor of Texas from 1939 to 1941 who, like his Louisiana counterpart Gov. Jimmie Davis was also a well-known songwriter.

Vernon T. Waldrip is the character who is Penny's "bona fide" suitor, as well as the manager of the Homer Stokes political campaign. The character’s name is evidently a nod to novelist Howard Waldrop, whose 1989 novella A Dozen Tough Jobs retells the Twelve Labors of Hercules, also set in the Depression-era American South. The novella was also an inspiration behind the film.

O Brother is a richly textured film which celebrates humanity (morons included!), the human condition and the music of the American people. I was at the Father's Day Bluegrass Festival in Grass Valley the year after the film and soundtrack were released. From the stage someone asked "How many of you are at the bluegrass festival for the first time?" and about a hundred hands went up. Then he asked "How many of you are here because you saw O Brother, Where Art Thou?" And about a hundred hands went up again. In retrospect, that the film was the catalyst for a commercial renaissance of bluegrass and traditional music should not have been a surprise to anyone. The music can speak to all. But at the time, it seemed surpising, like some kind of miracle.