The partnership between Tauck and Ken Burns has produced a new tour called “Music of America” that focuses on the history of American music, with visits to Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans and Mississippi.
As with all the programs in this series since the beginning of the partnership 15 years ago, the itineraries are put together by a team that includes Tauck product development experts working with filmmaker Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan, the historian and writer who has been a close partner to Burns on the creation of many of his most successful films.
Dayton Duncan has been instrumental in Ken Burns’ filmmaking career from the beginning, having provided writing and historical research for many of his most successful films since Burns’ breakout hit in 1990, The Civil War.
Duncan also collaborated with Burns on Baseball (1994), The West (1996), Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery (1997), Jazz (2001), Mark Twain (2001), Horatio’s Drive: America’s First Road Trip (2003), The War (2007), The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (2009), The Dust Bowl (2012), Country Music (2019), and The American Buffalo (2023).
Though Ken Burns is the brand name, Duncan is a full partner on the creation of the films as well as on the construction of these itineraries.
Burns and Duncan, though they are primarily in the business of documentary filmmaking, now have 15 years of experience working on the creation of tour itineraries. They bring the destinations to life through the same kind of historical storytelling that animates their films.
Tauck-Ken Burns tours also include short films that focus on highlights of the tours and feature interviews with Burns and Duncan. More than 100 films have so far been created for the tours.
The new Music of America: Nashville to New Orleans draws chiefly on two Ken Burns films: Jazz and Country Music. Tauck says the new tour “traces the roots of country music, blues, jazz, rock and roll, and more in Nashville, Memphis, the Mississippi Delta and New Orleans.”
It’s a nine-day program that begins with a two-night stay at the Four Seasons Hotel Nashville, then two nights at the Peabody Memphis. It includes a night at the Westin Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi, and ends with a three-night stay at the Ritz-Carlton New Orleans.
The itinerary includes the following:
In Nashville, a private pre-opening guided tour of Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum, with a presentation by a professional songwriter and a live performance of the Grand Ole Opry.
In Memphis, it includes a visit to the Sun Studio, where Elvis Presley made his first recordings, as well as Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and Carl Perkins. It includes a Tauck-exclusive, after-hours tour of Graceland, Elvis’s legendary Memphis home, and a dinner at the Presley Motors Automobile Museum, which houses a collection of Elvis’s cars, including his famous pink Cadillac.
In Mississippi, it includes a tour of the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, a Southern-style lunch and a performance at the historic Club Ebony in Indianola.
In New Orleans, it includes a visit to the B.B. King Museum, a private jazz performance at Preservation Hall and a visit to the National World War II Museum.
The tour explores the region’s culinary traditions, with a bourbon tasting and lunch at the historic Belle Meade plantation, a culinary demonstration and lunch at the New Orleans School of Cooking, dinner in New Orleans at Tujague’s (specializing in traditional Creole cuisine), and a farewell reception and dinner at Galatoire’s.
It also includes city tours of Nashville, Memphis and New Orleans, and a tour of Houmas House and Gardens in Darrow, Louisiana, between Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and New Orleans.
A Hybrid Medium
Although Burns had no previous experience in tour operation before the start of the Tauck partnership, he and Duncan decided to enter into the tour partnership with Tauck based on an affinity that crossed disciplinary lines.
As Burns explains: “We recognize in the folks at Tauck the same level of excellence that we’ve tried to achieve. We work in public television, and we do so quite consciously for a number of reasons – the least of which being no commercial interruptions. It permits us to spend the time it takes to do it right. We found in Tauck the same commitment to do it right – to not just be good, but to be excellent.”
The Ken Burns American Journeys are still tours and events, but the incorporation of the film medium and the collaboration with filmmakers could almost make them qualify as something beyond traditional tours, almost a hybrid medium.
In the case of Tauck, a century-old company, the business started out as a tour operator straightforwardly. Arthur Tauck Senior was traveling as a salesman of a coin tray that he had invented that provided banks with a more efficient way to count and store coin inventory than had been previously used.
Tauck’s flash of insight was wanting to share what he was experiencing on the road with others, most of whom had probably not traveled the roads he was discovering. That was its starting point. The Tauck coin tray became a standard for banks.
The young inventor/entrepreneur, who had designed a better way for banks to handle coins, did not fail to see the potential of the tours he had started offering by putting an ad in the paper. When he saw the response, he wasted no time turning his idea into a business and building it from there.
Now Tauck has had 100 years to evolve from that point, and though it still provides tours, some of the programs it operates go beyond what could be defined as “tours” in historical terms. They are more like programs of events and activities in one location city.
Some of the Ken Burns programs, such as the Civil War program in Washington D.C. and the Jazz program in New Orleans, take place almost exclusively within the base city and have little in the way of inter-city travel. But the time saved by not having to travel cross country is well utilized in providing meaningful activities in the destination cities.
It’s true synergy in the basic sense of a combination of two things that produces something greater than the sum of its parts.
Some elements, notably that of storytelling, are common to both media. These tours incorporate film itself, as well as borrowing the cinematic vision of the filmmakers in creating a program made up of activities that is more like an event or an entertainment medium than a travel program.
Film and tour operation have a number of things in common. Both draw on things that tell a story in a particular place. A film transports you virtually to a place, by means of sounds and images from a screen. A tour provides the opportunity to go to that place and see it in three dimensions. And even if you have been to the place before, the tour gives you a chance to see it presented in the context of the subject of the film.
Get It While You Can
The American Journeys series is a revolving, evolving set of itineraries. The Civil War, Jazz and Chicago events each ran for a limited time and are now history. So, if there is interest in one of the programs, it’s a good idea to grab the opportunity while it’s available. These are not all perennially offered programs. They are not necessarily going to be available in the future.
Now Playing
The Ken Burns American Journeys programs currently running include the following:
- Spirit of the Desert: The National Parks of the Southwest
- Yosemite and Sequoia: John Muir’s California
- America’s Canyonlands
- Grand New England
- Southern Charms: St. Augustine, Savannah & Charleston
- Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks
- Legends of the American West
- Yellowstone & the Tetons: American Safari
- Wonderland: Yellowstone in Winter
- In Freedom’s Footsteps: New York City to Washington, DC
- Canadian Rockies & Glacier National Park
For more information, see https://www.tauck.com
David Cogswell is a freelance writer working remotely, from wherever he is at the moment. Born at the dead center of the United States during the last century, he has been incessantly moving and exploring for decades. His articles have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Fox News, Luxury Travel Magazine, Travel Weekly, Travel Market Report, Travel Agent Magazine, TravelPulse.com, Quirkycruise.com, and other publications. He is the author of four books and a contributor to several others. He was last seen somewhere in the Northeast US.
