Dayton Duncan is the lead producer and writer of Country Music. He is the author of 13 books and has been involved with the work of Ken Burns for nearly 30 years. For The West, broadcast in 1996, Duncan was the co-writer and consulting producer. It won the Erik Barnouw Award from the Organization of American Historians. He was the writer and producer of Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, broadcast in November 1997. The film attained the second-highest ratings (following The Civil War) in the history of PBS and won a Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America and a CINE Golden Eagle, as well as many other honors. He was the co-writer and producer of Mark Twain, and writer and producer of Horatio's Drive, about the first transcontinental automobile trip.
The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009), which Duncan wrote and produced, won two Emmy Awards – for Outstanding Nonfiction Series and Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming – and earned him and Burns the designation of Honorary Park Ranger from the National Park Service. His most recent film with Burns was The Dust Bowl, a two-part series about the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history, broadcast in November 2012. It won a CINE Golden Eagle and a Western Heritage Award; his script won a Spur Award and was nominated for an Emmy. Duncan has also served as a consultant or consulting producing on all of Burns's other documentaries, beginning with The Civil War and including Baseball, Jazz and The War.
