• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, Today

Perhaps it comes down to personal tastes and interests, but two documentaries that crossed my desk long ago about pioneering record labels were two of the best documentaries on any subject that I have ever had the pleasure to watch as part of my job.

And now, here comes another one. “King of Them All: The Story of King Records” -- premiering Friday night on PBS -- comes from Cincinnati, where a company named King Records rose from essentially nothing to become one of the most influential record labels in the post-war era.

It may or may not be true that King is unsung, unremembered or unknown today, but I had never heard of it until I watched this documentary on Wednesday.

The documentary sets out on a mission to prove its thesis that King had as much impact on the evolution of music in the 1950s and 1960s as other mythical, and arguably better-known, labels such as Chess, Sun and Stax. 

On the subject of that thesis, mission accomplished. Not only is the documentary persuasive, but it is hugely entertaining, fascinating and surprisingly moving.

The story begins in the 1940s when a man named Syd Nathan discovered the moneymaking power of selling records when he began selling some in his Cincinnati appliance store.

In the documentary, Nathan comes across as brash, ambitious and opportunistic. Interview subjects in the film who knew him lovingly note that he was nearly blind (but drove anyway).

But his greatest strength may have been that he was colorblind, and did not care who was black or who was white. 

In the film, the point is made more than once that as a Jew, Nathan understood and had experienced discrimination.

The film is as much a documentary about King Records as it is about a place and a time unfamiliar to many -- namely, the region in and around Cincinnati, Ohio, in the years after World War II.

The film shows how Cincinnati -- located just across the Ohio River from Kentucky -- played a role in the histories of black migrants from the South seeking factory jobs in the North, and poor whites from Appalachia who migrated there seeking essentially the same thing.

As a result, King Records first made its bones by discovering and recording talent from both groups. 

Although they would later be known as R&B, and country and bluegrass, the black music recorded at King was called Race music and Sepia music, and the music from the hills and hollows of Kentucky was called Hillbilly music.

The documentary asserts that King in the 1940s became one of the most successful and influential record labels in America with this formula, although it also makes the point that Chess and Sun were not yet established, and Atlantic was in its infancy.

Nevertheless, the stars of King Records in those days included names such as Little Willy John, the Stanley Brothers and Hank Ballard, who famously originated “The Twist” at King in 1958, two years before Chubby Checker.

King hit its peak in the 1960s with its most famous discovery, James Brown, who recorded at King’s Cincinnati studios for 15 years (1956-71). 

“King of Them All” (a titled take from the slogan for King Records) was made in Cincinnati and directed by a local guy named Yemi Oyediran. 

The PBS press material says this documentary represents Oyediran’s debut as a feature-length film director.

He produced it, too, with business partner JP Leong, a lifelong friend, through the production company they co-own called Afrochine.

If “King of Them All” is Oyediran’s first film, then it is a very impressive debut. The film consists in large measure of archival photos and film clips of life in the midwestern United States in the 1940s through the ’60s that are jaw-dropping in their scope and variety.

A great deal of work was put into this one-hour documentary, and every minute shows it. Congratulations to all.

As for the other two record-label documentaries mentioned above, the first was the two-hour “Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ’n’ Roll,” which first aired as part of A&E’s “Biography” series in 2000. '

The other was “Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story,” seen on PBS in 2007. 

“King of Them All: The Story of King Records” airs Friday night (October 10) at 10 Eastern on PBS.