Country Music

Country Music 

In A Nutshell

Like the blues, country music is a homegrown American art form. Like jazz, country music was big before World War II and then had to contend with the rock and roll revolution from mid-century onwards. Like rock and roll, country music is often a culture unto itself: a look, a feel, and an attitude.

But the similarities only go so far. The story of country is unique within the history of popular music. From folksy, traditional origins, country music grew to a sophisticated multi-billion dollar a year business. From the honky-tonk bars of rural Texas and the mountains of Appalachia, country sounds have come to permeate popular music and to constantly assimilate new pop influences.

In other words, the story of country music is big, bigger probably than anyone would have expected a music so strongly tied to a vanishing rural past to ever get. The story of country music is so big, in fact, that it's not hard to see quite a bit of the history of twentieth century America in the history of its biggest music.

WHY SHOULD I CARE?

So country music is huge. It's been huge since the forties, right? So what? Well, jazz was commercially huge in the forties, but it's not now. Rock pretty much pushed it off the charts, off the dance floor, and off the popular airwaves. Not so with country. Country is the music that stared rock and roll down and didn't flinch. Country is made of different stuff.

Like what? Whiskey, for one. And history for another. Those jokes about country music being an endless lament for lost women, lost farms, and lost horses have some grain of truth to them. Country became a commercial music in 1923, a time when America seemed to be rushing headlong into the future (ever hear of the roaring twenties?). An older, agrarian world seemed to be vanishing into an uncertain future of urban industrialization, and from those early days of country on record and radio, it has been a music of considerable comfort and familiarity for millions of people who identify deeply with something that is unique to country music.

To find out just what that is, that thing uniquely "country", and where it came from, and what it means, read on. You'll also learn why Hank Williams was Kurt Cobain before Kurt Cobain, where bluegrass came from, and why Eminem will never be tough enough to be country. But that's all just part of the bigger story…

Country music came from humble origins. It came to America in pieces of folk tradition from England and on slave ships from Africa. It grew up poor and isolated in the mountains of Appalachia, and it grew up sun baked and worn down in the rural South. It blew across the plains and deserts of Texas, and it rode the rails from coast to coast. The music sounded a little different from place to place, but it was decidedly rural and tied to the past wherever you went. It was tradition.

Then in 1923, tradition went into business. A record company man with an ear for talent and a head for new markets recorded a champion fiddler down in Georgia on the suggestion of a local enthusiast. "Little Log Cabin in the Lane" by Fiddlin' John Carson became a regional hit for Okeh records, and Okeh's A&R (artist and repertory) man Ralph Peer became convinced that a market for "hillbilly" music existed. Peer made it his work over the next decade to find and record this music, and he deserves considerable credit for introducing several of the greatest talents of country's early commercial period.

Peer's field recording work was complemented by the rise of the radio and the hugely successful radio "barn dance" programs, of which Nashville's Grand Ole Opry is the most famous. As America pitched into the Great Depression in the early '30s, radio sustained the still-young country music industry and strengthening signals carried the barn dance programs to listeners and fans across the country. The '40s, then, proved to be a pivotal period in shaping the future of the music and the business for decades to follow. Power and profits shifted to Nashville, already home of the Opry, with the founding of country music's great publishing company, Acuff-Rose, in 1942. A country music establishment of sorts (think insiders, a stable of local talent, and even a fledgling style that would become the heralded "Nashville Sound") began to coalesce in the town. Bluegrass came into its own, and country's greatest icon, the doomed legend Hank Williams, arrived in Nashville in those years.

The post-war story of country music, in many ways, is the story of post-war America recast. There were years of tremendous growth and prosperity, spiked, and arguably seasoned, with the turbulence of an ongoing cultural revolution. Rock and roll, in the form of Elvis Presely of course, swept in, and women asserted themselves as powerful commercial draws and creative personalities in the industry, if not as equal partners, then at least forces to be reckoned with. Like other young Americans, some country performers came to question the dominant power structures in their world. In the parallel world of country music, this meant Nashville, and the 1960s and '70s witnessed the flourishing of an outsider vein of country. A decidedly rock and roll-influenced, guitar-driven sound throbbed out of Bakersfield, California to rival the slick Nashville productions of the time, and independent (and sometimes rougher edged) performers like Waylon Jennings spawned a movement that became known as "outlaw" country.

source:www.shmoop.com