By now, it’s no secret that many filmgoers who saw the Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? also bought the movie’s soundtrack—1.5 million of those filmgoers, in fact. Some six months after its release, the album’s remarkable staying power is still amazingly evident. It steadfastly holds the No. 4 position on the June 16 Billboard country albums chart, after an astonishing run of nine weeks at No. 1. (It also topped out at No. 13 on the Billboard 200.) Many of the soundtrack’s distinguished artists assembled at New York’s Carnegie Hall on June 13 to re-create last year’s celebrated Ryman Auditorium concert experience. And on July 24, the Mercury Records imprint Lost Highway will release Down From the Mountain, a collection of songs from the D.A. Pennebaker/Chris Hegedus documentary about the Ryman event. (The concert film just screened this past week at the Nashville Independent Film Festival.)

The O Brother soundtrack has been one of the year’s most noteworthy releases, but with the mounds of accolades and positive media coverage the album has generated, perhaps the most surprising event of all is a sort of nonevent: Mainstream country radio has largely turned a deaf ear to the project. Although some station programmers have put “Man of Constant Sorrow,” the album’s single, into regular rotation, many of them are treating the song as a novelty record—spinning it just enough to appease listeners’ requests. The traditional bluegrass anthem, sung by Dan Tyminski and lip-synched by George Clooney in the movie, has about as much chance of becoming a country radio success story as Clooney does of becoming an actual musician.

At a time when much is being made of country music’s aesthetic and commercial decline, the story of this soundtrack’s success is instructive because it perfectly embodies country radio’s bullheaded and downright maddening refusal to rethink the format. WSM-650 AM deejay Eddie Stubbs, a noted country music historian and passionate devotee of traditional music, bristles at the way other stations have treated the soundtrack. “I’m sorry,” he says, “but these radio stations that are claiming to be country radio stations, if there was an album by George Strait or Alan Jackson that was No. 1, they would be playing it. By and large, country radio has chosen to ignore this album because it’s such a departure from what they’re used to playing. It’s really a disgrace, because those so-called country radio stations are not being responsible broadcasting entities, ignoring a No. 1 album.”

“Man of Constant Sorrow” is in heavy rotation on WSM-AM, a programming decision made by music director Trish Matthews. In addition to the single, other album cuts are getting occasional airplay as well, including Ralph Stanley’s “O Death,” The Whites’ “Keep on the Sunny Side,” and Alison Krauss’ “Down to the River to Pray.” “Realizing it’s something that would play quite well to our audience,” Matthews says, “we went ahead and started it just about from the get-go.”

Of course, WSM-AM is an anomaly—it’s one of the few large-market country stations that plays bluegrass and classic country on a regular basis. But what some country radio program directors may not realize is that cable network Country Music Television (CMT) has been instrumental in driving sales of the soundtrack. “Man of Constant Sorrow” was in heavy rotation on CMT for a couple of months and reached No. 1 on the network’s weekly program, Top 20 Countdown.

“It was pretty much the only major exposure for the soundtrack, and even for the movie, early on,” explains Chris Parr, CMT’s vice president of music and talent. “They only had it in a handful of theaters when we [added] the video. I would say it had a huge impact. One of the record executives mentioned to me early on that it...was helping to perpetuate the movie. It’s not like [the film] is just going to drop into 5,000 theaters overnight.” (Parr says another of his “pet projects” is new acoustic band Nickel Creek. CMT has been aggressively playing two videos by the young bluegrass protégés, helping to land their self-titled debut album in the Top 20 on the country albums chart, even though they’re getting virtually no radio support.)

Despite WSM-AM’s support of O Brother, other Nashville country program directors have not been so quick to get on board. Mike Moore of WSIX-97.9 FM readily admits to placing “Man of Constant Sorrow” in occasional rotation, although he refers to the soundtrack as a “phenomenon.” So does Wes McShay, who until just a couple weeks ago served as program director of WKDF-103.3 FM. “I think it’s one of those songs that’s probably a very high burn record as far as playing it a whole lot,” he explains. “It sounds so much different than a lot of the other things that we’re playing. We are playing it enough to keep people interested in it, and to take care of people’s requests for it.”

Gregg Swedberg, program director for KEEY-102.2 FM in Minneapolis, only recently added the track after seeing the sales it has generated. He compares it to other novelty songs, drawing an offhanded parallel to Taco’s 1982 cover of the Irving Berlin chestnut “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” “At the time, people wanted to hear it, and they thought it was pretty cool. In six months, I don’t know if anybody’s going to be thinking [this song] is still cool, but right now it is.

“I consult a whole bunch of radio stations, and I bring this record up to the guys I talk to, and they’re like, ‘I don’t want to play that, that’s too weird.’ It’s too weird, to a certain extent, because we’ve become so white-bread and homogenous.”

Swedberg, it should be noted, came to country radio from the pop format. Although his Taco comparison sounds absurd, there is a small grain of twisted truth to his assessment: The song is, indeed, a sort of remake, having been passed down through many generations of old-time, bluegrass, and folk musicians. Dan Tyminski’s adaptation draws heavily from the version recorded by the Stanley Brothers for King Records in 1959.

Wade Jessen, country airplay monitor for Billboard, is somewhat cautious when talking about mainstream country radio’s reception to the record. “Sometimes I think it’s unfair to generalize country radio as a whole single entity, because there are stations out there that play it,” he says. Indeed, tradition-friendly WBCT-93.7 FM in Grand Rapids, Mich., and alternative country station KIKK-95.7 FM in Houston have “Man of Constant Sorrow” in regular and heavy rotations, respectively. Both added the song based on enthusiastic listener response. KIKK program director Darren Davis also added it to his other station, KILT-100.3 FM, the market-leading country station, because of the soundtrack’s phenomenal sales.

“If it’s a good song, we play it. If people wanna hear it, we play it. No other format in the world draws all its material from one city on the face of the earth,” Davis grumbles. “Yet country programmers insist that all country music they play comes from Nashville, and it all sounds exactly the same, with no room for variation. If you turn on an A/C station or a Top 40, all their music is not coming from Los Angeles. It’s from L.A., New York, Berlin, London, Paris—everywhere, you know. We’ve gotten way too inbred.”

Jessen does acknowledge that the soundtrack should be getting more airplay based on record sales. But he cites several factors that have contributed to many radio programmers’ reluctance to trumpet anything left of center: Most significantly, the majority of commercial radio stations are owned by large corporate entities, meaning that one person in the broadcasting chain or an independent consultant often makes the key programming decisions for a large number of stations. And those decisions are often informed by a fear of alienating the radio audience, with the ideal demographic being 35-year-old housewives. “They’re horrified of offending somebody or making somebody tune out,” Jessen says. “So instead of taking a chance on pleasing a segment of the audience, they feel like they’re going to run a whole hell of a lot of people off by playing something they don’t like.”

The artists featured on the soundtrack are much closer to the street, so to speak, and their reactions to the lack of airplay stem from firsthand experience—from the frustrating realization that they’re getting only limited exposure on the format nominally devoted to the kind of music they make. Stanley, the album’s patriarch, says public radio has done a lot to promote the soundtrack, but his gentle demeanor noticeably shifts when discussing country radio. “One thing I’m proud of, that CD has made No. 1 without these big, highfalutin country disc jockeys playing it,” he says defiantly. “I’m proud to see that happen. So they don’t get no credit for that.

“I think it looks bad on ’em myself, right now. And I think it’s gonna hurt ’em in the long run.”

Tyminski, who now gets recognized on the street, is a bit more philosophical. “This song is so pure and old-timey, I think the majority of programmers feel it doesn’t sit well in their playlists, although [people who’ve heard] it on country radio comment that they wish there was more like it. I know I’ve talked to several producers here in town, who kinda scratch their heads and ask me what it is about that record that’s made it what it is.” Indeed, at The Dan Tyminski Band’s April gig at The Station Inn, the singer generated palpable excitement when he broke into “Man of Constant Sorrow.” The mostly college-aged crowd leapt to its feet, whooping approval.

This is, in fact, the demographic buying the album, says Mercury Records president Luke Lewis. “I think that the general perception might be that this is a rural film, and that rural people are buying the soundtrack, and it’s quite the contrary. The biggest markets are the urban markets for both the film and the soundtrack.” New York, Lewis explains, is the second-biggest market for sales of the record. “I think this record is incredibly hip, and I think it’s perceived that way. I don’t think mainstream country consumers are the ones buying this record necessarily at all.”

That may be, but then how to explain the fact that mainstream country stations are clearly getting requests for the song—that, as some deejays have suggested, the song wouldn’t even be on country radio at all if it weren’t for public demand? Meanwhile, country radio’s audience is shrinking, and the format seems to be holding at bay the very listeners it should be trying to attract: fans of honest-to-goodness country music. In other words, those record buyers who’ve made the O Brother soundtrack such a success.

The reasons for country radio’s current identity crisis can be traced back not just to the corporate consolidation of commercial radio, Jessen explains, but also to the country music boom of the early ’90s. As the format drew more and more listeners, the number of stations playing country music nearly doubled, but the programming personnel hired by those stations lacked knowledge of the music. “Simply, there weren’t enough programmers with a country pedigree who had played country records for 15 to 20 years. It went from being primarily an adult format to being a youth-oriented mass-appeal format, which included a lot of adults. They had to hire ex-rock programmers or Top 40 programmers with no country background.

“Traditional sounds were to them—and I almost hate to say this because I feel it’s sacrilege—that old, twangy, cry-in-your-beer, sing-through-your-nose country music. They didn’t want to deal with it. That’s one of the main reasons why we’re here with country radio sounding so pop and so A/C, because the programmers feel the golden era is over, if they feel anything about it or care at all.”

Ironically, rather than attracting listeners, this lack of historical perspective is now apparently causing them to tune out in droves. If there’s a lesson to be learned in the success of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, it’s that country radio won’t renew itself so long as programmers continue to ignore the music’s traditional underpinnings. By disregarding the roots, they may just fell the tree.