David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young were one of the most potent musical forces to ever assemble get tagged with the “supergroup” label. In 1970, the band rush-released a new single titled “Ohio” in the wake of a deadly shooting at Kent State, when the Army National Guard opened fire on a crowd of anti-war protestors, killing four people. For his new documentary series about the Vietnam War, Ken Burns turned to a new supergroup to bring their own spin on the classic anthem.
Blues guitar maven Gary Clark Jr., soul sensation Leon Bridges, and jazz phenom Jon Batiste hooked up in the studio recently and came out with sparsely arranged, elegiac version of the song. Propelled by a tender piano melody, along with some slide guitar accents, the song soars thanks to the gorgeous vocal harmonies of the three men combined. The trio’s take was just recently added to Spotify’s “Echoes Of Vietnam” playlist alongside some of the best music produced from that era.
Burns has pulled in some incredible musical muscle for his latest documentary series. Handling the score is no less than Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross who put together over 90-minutes of new music for the 18-hour series. “The sheer scale of the project combined with the magnitude of the subject matter was initially daunting for us, but the commitment, care and reverence they displayed made the experience deeply satisfying on many levels,” Reznor said in a statement.
You can listen to Clark, Bridges, and Batiste’s take on “Ohio” above.
