In 2000, The Coen Brothers film O Brother, Where Art Thou? utilized a collection of songs that represented a broad canvas of blues, bluegrass, Gospel and country to help drive a tale set in 1930s Mississippi during the Great Depression, chronicling the story of trio of chain gang escapees, portrayed by George Clooney, Tim Blake Nelson and John Turturro.
Those songs were foundational to the movie, as prior to its filming, producer, songwriter and musician T Bone Burnett assembled a group of artists to create the movie’s 19-song soundtrack. The result was an unexpected runaway hit, which cast a national spotlight on a rich catalog of timeless songs and artists including Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, The Fairfield Four, Dan Tyminski and Ralph Stanley, while also featuring select original recordings from the 1920s and 1950s.
“The songs didn’t sound like they were done in different decades,” Burnett tells Billboard. “I’ve always tried to make music where you can’t tell what decade it’s from.”
Tyminski served as the lead singing voice for Clooney’s character, Ulysses Everett McGill, on the song “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow” — a performance so commanding that it would define Clooney’s character in the film. The soundtrack included songs such as “Keep on the Sunny Side” (performed on the soundtrack by The Whites), “You Are My Sunshine” (Norman Blake), “Down to the River to Pray” (Krauss) and “O Death” (Ralph Stanley) and “Big Rock Candy Mountain.”
The soundtrack rose to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and spent more than 20 weeks at the pinnacle of the Top Country Albums char. It also earned multiple Grammys, including album of the year, and received accolades from the Academy of Country Music, Country Music Association and the International Bluegrass Music Association. Burnett was the recipient of four Grammys for his work on the soundtrack, including producer of the year (non-classical) and album of the year.
The album is credited with sparking a resurgence of interest in bluegrass and old-time folk sounds, and also introduced a new generation of listeners to the music. More than 25 years later, the soundtrack’s enduring legacy is honored through a vinyl edition that released Feb. 20 via Lost Highway Records.
On Saturday (Feb. 28), the Grand Ole Opry will celebrate the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack and its long-term influence with a special evening of performances from Billy Strings, Krauss, Tyminski, Del McCoury Band, Molly Tuttle, Old Crow Medicine Show, Jerry Douglas, The Fairfield Four, Harris, The Fisk Jubilee Singers and more.
Burnett spoke with Billboard about his work on the storied album.
What do you recall about becoming involved with the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack?
When I first got the call from Joel and Ethan [Coen], they said, “Would you like to make a movie about the history of American folk music?” That was their elevator pitch, I suppose you would say. And it was an all-consuming, immersive experience for like two or three years.
You had previously worked with The Coen Brothers on the film The Big Lebowski, and the song “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow” was potentially going to be used for that film. How did it make its way into O Brother?
The songs always come from the characters. On The Big Lebowski, I had sent them “A Man of Constant Sorrow” for the hero. It’s an epic song and I thought The Dude was an epic hero. They didn’t use it for Lebowski, but in O Brother, I think it’s in there four times or something like that. That was the beginning of it and the Coens have a deep knowledge of American vernacular music. I was more of a facilitator, even though I’ve gotten way more than my share of credit for it. Folk music’s always been there and all of our music is built on folk music, but at that time at the turn of the century, it had fallen into one of the periods where it wasn’t getting as much notice as it’s gotten since then.
What was the approach to determining the right mix of artists to bring in for this project?
Denise Stiff was Alison [Krauss]’s manager. I went to her because she knew that whole scene and had worked with Keith Case at a booking agency, booking all those talents on that circuit. She really cast the musicians, I would say.
With older music and sounds making up the bedrock of the soundtrack, how did that impact your approach to recording the album?
My engineer, Mike Piersante, he went and did a lot of research on the Decca Recording Company. All the recording companies had their own equipment, their own microphones and technology and all that. Decca had a method called the Decca Tree, where three microphones are placed in a triangle, with one microphone closest to the singer or the band. We had a 47 Neumann microphone and used three ribbon mics and basically recorded it in mono with the Decca Tree. Now, everything’s been done “in the box” for so long that if you just learn the song and get in front of a microphone, you can do it in three minutes. You don’t have to spend six weeks constructing something in the box. You can do something much braver and more alive and more free, if you just do it.
One of the older recordings included on the soundtrack is James Carter and the Prisoners’ “Po’ Lazarus,” which folk music collector Alan Lomax had recorded Carter singing at a Mississippi penitentiary. How did that recording come to be part of the soundtrack?
The film starts with a chain gang and we started looking through all the chain gang music we could find. After the movie and soundtrack came out, James came out to the Grammys and that was wonderful. The Lomax Foundation found him in Chicago. He didn’t even remember recording that song, it was like 70 years later or something. And I particularly love that song. I think the Fairfield Four will do that at the Opry. I’m glad we are finally getting to turn this into a radio show, which is what we were trying to do in the first place, trying to do a ‘30s radio show.
Looking back, did you think the soundtrack would end up ushering in such a pivotal moment in music?
I didn’t think about that at all. My thinking at the time was that we’ve got George Clooney in a movie, putting a spotlight on all these incredibly talented people who have been underappreciated for some time — nobody more so than Ralph Stanley, and Emmylou [Harris] and Alison. When I listen to Mike Compton’s [mandolin] intro to “Man of Constant Sorrow,” it sounds like a Chuck Berry intro. It harkens back to the excitement of the early days of rock and roll. I thought, “We’ve got a beautiful rock n’ roll record with a George Clooney movie attached, and it won’t get played on radio.”
Ralph Stanley, who’s a bluegrass legend, sang an a cappella version of “O Death” on the soundtrack. Tell me about that decision for it to be recorded that way.
I was working from the Dock Boggs version of “O Death” that I really loved, and I invited Ralph to play banjo and sing it in the film. He came in and started playing and singing it, and he didn’t play the same style as he was singing, so I thought, “Let’s try a cappella.” I walked into the studio to say that, and Ralph got up and walked to me and said, ‘Let’s just try this a cappella,’ and I said, “Great idea.”
Elvis Costello said when Ralph got up and sang “O Death” at the Grammys [in 2002], right in the middle of the audience, it was the music community’s truest response to the 9/11 attacks, and I think that’s right. I think that song matched the feeling that we all had in the country at the time. And there was Y2K at the time, which was supposed to shut down everyone’s computers and everything — which, by the way, would’ve been a good thing, if I’m looking at how 2025, 2026 came off, I would be okay with that. The digital plague that has come over us is a serious problem and people are just starting to recognize that. At any rate, this was an early response to that. This was an early analog response to the so-called inevitability of the digital world.
How did you feel when you saw the finished film?
I was 50 when we did that. My Dad had told me when I was a kid — I used to write all the time, and he said, “Are you going to be a writer? Then don’t publish anything till you’re 50.” That came back to me, that I’ve worked my whole life to learn how to do this. I also felt incredible gratitude to the Coens and to George [Clooney] for being so generous and for being so good. I mean, nobody makes better movies than the Coens.
