'CMA Fest: 50 Years of Fan Fair' doc comes to Hulu

"CMA Fest: 50 Years of Fan Fair" -- a new, 75-minute documentary highlighting a half-century of Country Music Association (CMA) summer festivities -- has finally arrived on the Hulu streaming platform.

Mainstream country's premier summer festival event has grown from humbly servicing an overflow of fans coming to country radio's DJ convention at the Municipal Auditorium as the genre's popularity blossomed in the early 1970s to move to the Tennessee State Fairgrounds in 1982 and then to downtown Nashville in 2001. Spurred by the festival's re-branding as a full-scale Lower Broadway destination event with a four-night television special recording at Nissan Stadium, attendance for the event has grown over 250% in the past quarter-century.

The new Hulu doc is a comprehensive feature highlighting classic icons like "Whisperin'" Bill Anderson, Dolly Parton, Jeannie Seely and Charley Pride's widow Rozene Cohran, 80s and 90s era country stars including Brooks & Dunn, Vince Gill, Wynonna Judd, Patty Loveless, Reba McEntire, Lorrie Morgan, Trisha Yearwood and Black Country Music Association members Valierie Ellis Hawkins and Frankie Staton, plus modern era stars including Kelsea Ballerini, Dierks Bentley, BRELAND, Brothers Osborne, Luke Bryan, Luke Combs, Carly Pearce, Thomas Rhett, Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban, Lainey Wilson and more.

The stories offered by the stars are as much an excellent historical narrative as they are terrific frames for the eras of the genre's evolution for longtime country fanatics and pop-intrigued genre newcomers alike.

Quaint "only in Nashville" stories, including the likes of Lorrie Morgan's star vocalist father, George, bringing fans to their home for dinner and Cohran's stories of accompanying her husband, Pride, for hours of revelry extending late into the night highlight the 70s era.

Extended autograph signings, including Garth Brooks' epic 23-hour signing spree at 1996's Fan Fair, are recalled by the likes of Wynonna. She also recalls moments alongside her mother, Naomi, in the barns at the Nashville Fairgrounds as thousands of country fans were serviced by stars who, aware of the uniqueness of being able to have one-on-one contact with their growing fanbases, braved Music City's intense summer heat for double-digit hours to satisfy fans then exponentially growing by the number of countries and states to visit the CMA's event.

Also, have you ever wanted to see footage of how Trisha Yearwood invited her fans to sing songs with her in a Fair Fair signing booth designed to be a recording studio? It's included in the documentary.

Importantly, Robert Deaton -- the executive producer of ABC's CMA Fest special and the CMA Awards -- recalls how, when Fan Fair became a much larger deal by 2001 but was too big for the Fairgrounds, Tim McGraw's manager Scott Siman used an impassioned eleventh-hour pro-festival speech to the CMA's Board of Directors to begin the process to evolve the festival into the Lower Broadway "CMA Fest" spectacle it has now become.

Key to that evolution is Brooks & Dunn's Kix Brooks imploring the CMA Fest's board to create the organization's charitable arm that has evolved into the CMA Foundation. Artists' fees for performing at the event are not paid to them. Instead, they are donated to the foundation, which aims to give underprivileged youth access to musical instruments and music education.

Heartening to the notion of country music's future retaining its roots are Ballerini, Rhett, Wilson and Chris Young being highlighted as current-era country music performers who like have attended CMA Fan Fair and CMA Fest events totaling a sum equal to the number of years that the events have been transpiring. Couple that with Deaton's parents attending the inaugural 1972 Fan Fair and the idea that country music -- regardless of how broad the scope of the genre's sonic inspirations spread -- will still retain its classic historical essence is essential.

"Country music, as a genre — once introduced to it, creates you as a lifelong fan," said Deaton to the Tennessean. "I've grown up and old with country music. From Buck Owens and Grand Opry stars to Lil Nas X and everything we put on that stage [in 2023], country music has never been more of a place both comfortable with itself but also unafraid of its future."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: 'CMA Fest: 50 Years of Fan Fair' doc comes to Hulu