The Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers Represented Two Opposite Trends in White Southern Music.
(These are excerpts from my volume "A History of Popular Music")
Country Music
Southern States: Hillbilly Music
In 1910 ethnomusicologist John Lomax published "Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads" (that followed by 2 years the first known collection of cowboy songs), and in 1916 Cecil Sharp began publishing hundreds of folk songs from the Appalachian mountains (or, ameliorate, the Cumberland Mountains, at the border between Kentucky and Tennessee), two events that sparked interest for the white musical heritage, although the world had to await until 1922 before someone, Texan fiddler Eck Robertson, cut the first record of "old-fourth dimension music". These collections created the myth of the Appalachians as remote sanctuaries of simple, noble life, whose inhabitants, the "mountaneers", isolated from the evils of the world embodied the true American spirit. Many of those regions were not settled until 1835, and then they were settled by very poor immigrants, thus creating a landscape of rather backwards communities, all the same fastened to their traditions but likewise preoccupied with the daily struggle for survival.
In 1922, a radio station based in Georgia (WSM) was the first to broadcast folk songs to its audience. A petty later on, a radio station from Fort Worth, in Texas (WBAP), launched the first "befouled dance" show. In june 1923, 55-twelvemonth old Georgia's fiddler John Carson recorded (in Atlanta) 2 "hillbilly" (i.eastward., southern rural) songs, an result that is ofttimes considered the official founding of "state" music (although Texas fiddler Eck Roberton had already recorded the yr before). The recording manufacture started dividing popular music into 2 categories: race music (that was only black) and hillbilly music (that was only white). The term "hillbilly" was actually introduced by "Uncle" Dave Macon's Colina Billie Blues (1924). In 1924, Chicago's radio station WLS (originally "Earth's Largest Store") began broadcasting a befouled trip the light fantastic toe that could be heard throughout the Midwest.
With When The Work's All Washed This Fall (1925), Texas-bred Carl Sprague became the commencement major musician to record cowboy songs (the first "singing cowboy" of country music). And, finally, in 1925, Nashville'south first radio station (WSM) began broadcasting a barn dance that would eventually alter proper noun to "K Ole Opry". Country music was steaming ahead. Labels flocked to the South to record singing cowboys, and singing cowboys were exhibited in the big cities of the North.
Among the most literate songwriters were Texas-born Goebel Reeves, who penned The Drifter (1929), Bluish Undertaker's Blues (1930), Hobo's Lullaby (1934) and The Cowboy's Prayer (1934), i.east. a mixture of hobo and cowboy songs, and Tennessee-built-in Harry McClintock, the writer of the hobo ballads Large Stone Candy Mountain (1928) and Hallelujah Bum Again (1926).
Country music was a federation of styles, rather than a monolithic style. Its origins were lost in the early decades of colonization, when the folk dances (Scottish reels, Irish gaelic jigs, and square dances, the poor human's version of the French "cotillion" and "quadrille") and the British ballad got transplanted into the new earth and got contaminated by the religious hymns of church and campsite meetings. The musical styles were reminiscent of their British ancestors. The lyrics, on the other manus, were completely different. The Americans disliked the bailiwick of dearest, to which they preferred pratical issues such as real-world experiences (ranching, logging, mining, railroads) and existent-world tragedies (depository financial institution robberies, natural disasters, murders, railroad train accidents).
The instrumentation included the banjo, introduced past the African slaves via the minstrel shows, the Scottish "dabble" (the poor human's violin, simplified so that the fiddler could as well sing) and the Castilian guitar (an instrument that became popular in the South only effectually 1910). Ironically, as more and more blacks abandoned the banjo and adopted the guitar, the banjo ended upward being identified with white music, while the guitar ended up existence identified as black music. For example, Hobart Smith learned to play from black bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson, merely went on to play the banjo while Jefferson played the guitar.
The role of these instruments was more rhythmic than melodic, because nearly performances were solo, without percussion. Some regions added their ain specialties (such as the squeeze box in Louisiana), but mostly white music was based on stringed instruments. When not performed solo, it was performed by string bands, particularly after the 1920s, when the first recordings immune musicians to really make a living out of their "old-fourth dimension music". The string bands of the 1920s included Charlie Poole's North Carolina Ramblers, that augmented the repertory of quondam-fourth dimension music with songs from minstrel and vaudeville shows, Ernest Stoneman'south Dixie Mountaineers, and finally (only the real tendency-setters for string bands) the hillbilly supergroup Skillet Lickers, formed in 1926 and featuring Riley Puckett on guitar, Gideon Tanner and Clayton McMichen on fiddles (and all of them on vocals), the first ones to tape Ruby River Valley (1927).
The "hillbilly" format (led past the guitar and a fleck more "cosmopolitan") was more than popular in the plains, while the "mountain" format of the Appalachians (dominated by fiddle and banjo) remained relatively sheltered from urban and African-American influences.
Solo artists, or "ramblers", became pop after Globe War I, but often had to move to New York to make recordings. Some of them specialized in "event" songs, songs that chronicled gimmicky events, such equally Henry Whitter's The Wreck Of The Old 97 (1923), that may accept been the first "railroad song" (but actually used the melody of the traditional The Transport That Never Returned), subsequently recorded by New York's vocaliser Vernon Dalhart (1924) for the national audience (perhaps the beginning hit of land music), Andrew Jenkins' Decease Of Floyd Collins, also offset recorded by Dalhart (1926), well-nigh a mining blow, and Bob Miller'due south Xi Cent Cotton and Forty Cent Meat (1928), Dry out Votin' (1929), and specially Twentyone Years (1930), possibly the commencement "prison song". Miller was, past far, the most prolific, writing thousands of hillbilly songs.
Hillbilly musicians also dealt with the contrary genre, the novelty song: Wendell Hall's ukulele novelty It Ain't Gonna Pelting No Mo (1923), Carson Robison'due south whistling novelty Nola (1926), Frank Luther's comic sketch Barnacle Bill The Sailor (1928).
Very few of these singers were of country origins: Vernon Dalhart, Carson Robison and Bob Miller were New York singers who became famous singing hillbilly songs (and sometimes composing them, every bit in the example of Robison and Miller).
The real land musicians had been known mainly for their instrumental bravura. A national fiddle competition had been organized in Georgia already in 1917 (by the Old Time Fiddlers Organization). Two musicians of import in the transition from the quiet and linear "mountain" way and the fast and syncopated "bluegrass" style were banjoists Charlie Poole of the North Carolina Ramblers (Don't Let Your Deal Go Down, 1925; White House Blues, 1926, better known as Cannonball Blues), and "Uncle" Dave Macon, the main "collector" of former-time music and one of the best-sold artists during the Roaring Twenties (Continue My Skillet Good And Greasy, 1924; Chewing Gum, 1924; Sail Away Ladies, 1927). If these 2 already used the banjo as much more than a mere rhythmic device, Dock Boggs was perhaps the first white banjoist to play the instrument like a blues guitar (in 1927 he recorded six plantation dejection numbers and Sugar Babe, that was rockabilly ante-litteram). Sam McGee was one of the first to play the guitar similar a bluesman, starting with Railroad Blues (1928). Georgia'southward blind guitarist Riley Puckett, the writer of My Carolina Home (1927), played a key role in transforming the guitar from percussion instrument to accompanying musical instrument.
Un until the late 1920s, hillbilly artists were considered comedians every bit much as musicians. Many of them had a repertory of both songs and skits. The Skillet Lickers were probably instrumental in creating the charisma of the country musician, as opposed to the image of the hillbilly clown.
The Hawaian steel guitar, invented by Joseph Kekuku around 1885 in Honolulu, was a late addition to the line-upwards of string bands. The incidental music to Richard Walton Tully's play Bird of Paradise (1912) popularized the ukulele and the steel guitar in the USA, every bit did the Hawaiian pavillion at the "Panama Pacific Exhibition" of San Francisco in 1915. On The Beach At Waikiki (1915), composed by Henry Kailimai and Sonny Cunha, started a nation-broad craze. In 1916 all the record labels started selling records of Hawaiian music, including Sonny Cunha'south Everybody Hula (1916), Richard Whiting'due south Along the Style to Waikiki (1917), Hawaiian Butterfly (1917), composed by Billy Baskette and Joseph Santly, and Walter Blaufuss' My Isle of Golden Dreams (1919). Hawaiian steel-guitar virtuoso Frank Ferera toured internationally. He had debuted on tape with Stephen Foster's My Sometime Kentucky Home (1915). The craze subsided in the 1920s, but the steel guitar (start recorded by a hillbilly musician in 1927) would become more and more popular in the repertory of country music.
The first stars of the hillbilly genre were the members of the Virginia-based Carter Family unit, basically a song trio (Sara on pb vocals and autohapr, Alvin on bass vocals, and Maybelle on alto vocals and on guitar) that started out in 1926 and starting time recorded in 1927. Unlike their peers, who emphasized the instrumental sound, the Carter Family unit focused on songs. Collectively, they wrote over 300 songs, including classics such as Will You Miss Me When I'yard Gone (1928), Keep On The Sunny Side (1928), a cover of Theodore Morse's 1906 song, Foggy Mount Top (1929), My Clinch Mountain Domicile (1929), Worried Human being Blues (1930), Can The Circle Exist Unbroken (1935), No Low (1936), and especially Wildwood Flower (1928), a traditional first published in 1860 that Maybelle turned into a guitar masterwork. Their song style was the quintessence of the "close-harmony" style of country music. Later, Maybelle (who plucked the melody on the bass strings) formed her own quartet with her three daughters (among whom June wrote Ring Of Fire and Helen wrote Poor Old Heartsick Me).
In 1924 with his first recording, Rock All Our Babies To Slumber, bullheaded Georgia's guitarist Riley Puckett (already a radio star) introduced the "yodeling" manner of singing (originally from the Swiss and Austrian Alps) into land music, the style adopted in 1927 by the first star of land music, Mississippi's Jimmie Rodgers, who midweek information technology to the Hawaian slide guitar and, de facto, invented the white equivalent of the blues with T For Texas (1927), Waiting For A Train (1928), In The Jailhouse Now (1928), Mule Skinner Blues (1930). Ironically (just too tellingly), Jimmie Rodgers became the first star of this very white phenomenon past beingness the most influenced by the very black music of the blues. The twelvemonth he died (1933) was a watershed year for land music.
Rodgers was influential in creating the myth of the Far West, which had already been fueled past the cowboy songs of Carl Sprague and Goebel Reeves. Thus "country" music became "country & western" music. Originally, country music was mainly from the Southeastern states (Virginia, Tennesse, Kentucky and neighboring states). Simply at present the audience was condign fascinated with the Southwestern states (Texas and neihboring states). The romantic allure of the mount dweller was slowly being replaced by the romantic allure of the roaming cowboy.
Some other country musician who, like Rodgers, harked back to the blues, was Louisiana's vocalist-songwriter Jimmie Davis whose songbook was no less impressive: Pistol Packin' Papa (1929), Organ Grinder's Blues (1929), Pussy Blues (1929), Nobody's Darling Simply Mine (1935), It Makes No Difference Now (1938), You Are My Sunshine (1939).
In the meantime, two new styles were emerging: honky-tonk and western-swing. And two instruments debuted in those years that would become the staple of rock bands: Adolph Rickenbacker invented (1931) the electrical guitar and Laurens Hammond invented (1933) the Hammond organ. The steel guitar was electrified shortly later, and enthusiastically embraced by country musicians (another sign that the trend was away from the mountain purists).
Information technology was Texas singer-songwriter Gene Autry'due south Silver Hairde Daddy Of Mine (1931) a large hit that launched the "honky-tonk" style of country music. Debuting in the film Tumbling Tumbleweeds (1935), Autry (who in existent life was non a cowboy at all) was also the first of the "singing cowboys" of Hollywood (before Roy Rogers, Tex Ritter, Johnny Bond, Jimmy Wakely) that contributed to motility land music (originally an eastern phenomenon) to the "far west", at least in the pop imagination. He also recorded Mother Jones (1931), a labor song, as well a long list of western-flavored songs, such as Mexicali Rose (1936). Roy Rogers and songwriters Bob Nolan and Tim Spencer formed the genre's supergroup, the Sons Of Pioneers, who composed some of the genre'southward classics, starting with Bob Nolan'southward Tumblin' Tumbleweeds (1927).
Clyde "Ruby-red" Foley was the star of Chicago, popularizing state music in the big city with Sometime Shep (1935) and Chattanooga Shoeshine Boy (1950).
By now "hillbilly" was no longer a positive attribute, merely rather a derogatory one, and thus "country & western" came to connote all white southern music. The performers wore country attires and mimicked the slang of cowboys. The fascination with the West spread to the big cities of the N thanks to fake hillbilly songs written by professional Tin Pan Alley songwriters, such as Bill Hill'southward The Concluding Roundup (1933), actually a tricky tune in the Broadway way, but nevertheless influential in creating the faddy of the Far Due west. This enabled Tex Ritter, who had never been cowboy but just a rodeo allure, to become a star in New York, thanks to his Texan accent, and then (1936) in Hollywood (Stone'n'Rye Rag, 1948).
Both honky-tonk and western-swing were, de facto, by-products of the shift of country music towards the western states (i.e. Texas).
In 1932 vocalist Milton Dark-brown and fiddler Bob Wills cut the outset records of a kind of country music influenced by jazz that was after dubbed "western swing" (by Foreman Phillips in 1944). Basically, the country & western music of rural towns merged with the swing of the big bands of urban jazz. The two pioneers then split. Chocolate-brown'southward philharmonic, the Musical Brownies, featuring fiddler Cecil Brower (who introduced Joe Venuti's fashion to country music), jazz pianist Fred Calhoun, Bob Dunn on one of the first amplified steel guitars and a rhythm section influenced by ragtime, ruled in Texas, while Wills' Texas Playboys, based in Oklahoma and featuring a country string section and a jazz horn section, and now fronted by Tommy Duncan, debuted on record in 1935 (with Osage Stomp, reminiscent of Volition Shade's Memphis Jug Band) and went on to produce Steel Guitar Rag (1936), New San Antonio Rose (1940), their greatest hit, recorded with an 18-piece band, perhaps the first nation-wide hits of state music. Fourth dimension Changes Everything (1940), Smoke on the Water (1944), New Spanish Two Stride (1946).
From 1936 Chicago's fiddler and accordionist Frank "Pee Wee" King, who wrote Bonaparte's Retreat, Tennessee Flit and Slow Poke (1950), led the most popular of the western swing bands, the Gold West Cowboys.
After the war, Spade Cooley (in Los Angeles) introduced a variant of western swing that de-emphasized the contumely and reeds while returning to the more traditional sound of pop orchestras.
Western Swing marked the transition from the primitive string-bands to the dancehall orchestras. These bands were responsible for the introduction into land music of instruments such as drums, horns and electric guitar.
Texas singer Al Dexter had hits in both the honky-tonk style, such equally Honky Tonk Blues (1934), and the western-swing style, such as Pistol Packin' Mama (1942), boasting a revolutionary arrangement of squeeze box, trumpet and steel guitar. San Diego's pianist Merrill Moore did the same after World War Two, achieving a synthesis in songs such every bit Business firm Of Bluish Lights (1953) that heralded rock'n'roll.
The other major genre to surface during the 1930s was bluegrass music, merely this one originated in the traditional southeastern areas ("bluegrass state" being the nickname of Kentucky). Several singer-instrumentalist couples had appeared (particularly brothers) that played a more spirited music devoted to domestic themes.
Alabama's guitar-based Delmore Brothers (Alton was the main composer and atomic number 82 vocalist) were instrumental in popularizing the "brothers mode" thanks to their tenure with the "Chiliad Ole Opry" between 1932 and 1938. They were also important for bridging the world of white music and the world of black music. Their songs were bluesy, and they often interpreted gospel songs. Their greatest hits were in fact dejection numbers, from Brownish's Ferry Blues (1933) to Blues Stay Away from Me (1949). In 1944 they added the bluesy harmonica of Wayne Raney, and in 1946 they added electric guitar and drums. That is when they recorded their series of incoherent boogies, one step away from rock'n'coil: Hillbilly Boogie (1945), Freight Train Boogie (1946), Mobile Boogie (1948), Pan American Boogie (1950). Other famous numbers were Gonna Lay Downwards My Old Guitar, Midnight Special, Beautiful Brown Eyes (1951).
Some other "brother act" was that of the Blue Heaven Boys, formed by Bill and Earl Bolick (respectively, mandolin and guitar), perhaps the near faithful to the "mountain" tradition in their versions of Sunny Side Of Life (1935), Down On The Banks of the Ohio (1936), Story of the Knoxville Girl (1937), Are You From Dixie (1939), Turn Your Radio On (1940).
The bluegrass way, that originated in the 1920s from both Kentucky and Bristol, on the Virginia-Tennessee border, was a by-production of the "brother mode", except that information technology was fast, virtuoso and sometimes instrumental-simply "mount music" (the country equivalent of the dixieland in jazz). Information technology derived from the string bands of the 1920s, with a banjo, fiddle, and mandolin leading the melody, backed by guitar and string bass. The notable addition to the arsenal of the string bands was the Italian mandolin, that became popular in the South with bluegrass music. The vocals were not every bit important as in the "brothers style", although often featured a high-pitched tenor vocalization. Bluegrass music relied a mixture of techniques: mountain music'due south iii-finger banjo picking, land & western'southward dabble, the rhythmic guitar of the ramblers, the tenor-driven choir of religious hymns with bass-register counterpoint.
Kentucky-based mandolinist Beak Monroe, who had started a duo in 1934 with his guitarist brother Charlie, popularized the "bluegrass" fashion with Kentucky Flit (1945), Blue Moon Of Kentucky (1945) and Footprints in the Snowfall (1945), performed by his new ring, the Blueish Grass Boys, that eventually came to include virtuoso musicians such equally Earl Scruggs on banjo, Chubby Wise on fiddle, Howard Watts on bass, and Lester Flatt on guitar, which were in turn replaced in the Sixties past a new generation of virtuosi (fiddler Richard Greene, guitarist Peter Rowan, banjoist Nib Keith). Monroe's spectacular mandolin mode was documented on instrumental pieces such as Rawhide (1951) and Roanoke (1954). At the peak, Monroe's band was then focused on improvisation and technical skills that it sounded similar a jazz group performing country music.
Flatt and Scruggs formed their ain act in 1948, that, thanks to pieces such as Foggy Mountain Breakdown (1949), Roll In My Sweet Baby'due south Arms (1950), Pike County Breakdown (1952), Flint Colina Special (1952), and somewhen the striking The Ballad of Jed Clampett (1962), competed with both Pecker Monroe. Flatt and Scruggs were also instrumental in introducing the dobro guitar (since 1955, played by Buck Graves), a variant of the Hawaian steel guitar, into land music.
Bluegrass acts of the 1950s included the Osborne Brothers (Sonny on banjo and Bobbie on mandolin), maybe the most innovative of the new generation, equally displayed in Ruby (1956); and the Stanley Brothers (Carter being the pb singer), much more than focused on the song harmonies than on the instrumental counterpoint and solos, from the "high lonesome" style of A Vision of Mother to beloved songs such as How Mount Girls Can Dearest (1959) to religious themes such equally Gathering Flowers for the Chief's Bouquet and Albert Brumley'due south Rank Strangers (1960).
Bluegrass would remain the branch of state music most obsessed with dazzling technical proficiency, whether vocal or instrumental.
Tennesse native Roy Acuff became the first star of Nashville thank you to two tunes already recorded by the Carter Family unit: The Neat Speckled Bird (1936), based on the melody of I'chiliad Thinking Tonight Of My Blue Eyes, and Wabash Cannonball (1936), i of the well-nigh historic "railroad songs". The Precious Jewel (1940), based on The Hills of Roane County, Wreck On The Highway (1942), one of the earliest car songs, Frank "Pee Wee" King's Tennessee Waltz (1947), were sung in an old-fashioned, mournful mountain manner, and accompanied mainly with the dobro (James Clell Summey until 1938 and Beecher "Pete" Kirby subsequently 1938). State broadcasting had been dominated by string bands: Acuff'south emotional solo performances changed the very perception of what land music ought to be. He was instrumental in turning land music into a business, and a huge nationwide business. The music publishing company he founded in 1942 with songwriter Fred Rose (credited with many songs that he actually only revised and published, including Hank Williams' Kaw-liga and Take These Bondage From My Centre) became a gilded mine.
Johnny Bond wrote Cimarron (1938), I Wonder Where You Are This evening, Hot Rod Lincoln, Your Old Love Letters and Tomorrow Never Comes.
In 1939 the "Grand Ole Pry" moved to Nashville's "Ryman Auditorium" and was broadcasted by the national networks.
All the same, the nation was withal largely unaware of country music. Information technology wasn't until 1942 that "Billboard" introduced a cavalcade on land music, and only in 1944 it introduced the charts for hillbilly songs.
New York: Dissent
If country music represented the quintessential American values, and a positive attitude towards the American fashion of life, others (harking back to the epics of the itinerant "hobos") were seeing through the American Dream and confronting the issues of poverty, fascism and racism.
In a somber guitar-based folk manner, Oklahoma'south Woody Guthrie wrote the Dust Bowl Ballads (1935, first recorded in 1940), the soundtrack of the Great Depression, to become the first major singer-songwriter of the USA. After moving to New York in 1940, he likewise graduated to be the voice of the political "opposition" with Pretty Male child Floyd (1939), the anthemic This Land Is Your Country (1940, first recorded in 1944), Ludlow Massacre (1944), 1913 Massacre (1944), Deportee (1948), and the Ballads Of Sacco & Vanzetti (1947); but also composed popular songs such as Oklahoma Hills (1937), Pastures Of Enough (1941), Reuben James (1941), So Long It's Been Proficient To Know You lot (1942), Philadelphia Lawyer (1946). His songs were mostly based on ancient hillbilly melodies.
The Left gained strength throughout the 1930s, finding shelter in the artists' lofts of New York'south Greenwich Village. The "Hamlet Vanguard", opened by Max Gordon in 1939 in that area (seventh Avenue and 11th Street), was a jazz society but soon began to serve a white audience of political dissidents.
The viability of popular music as sociopolitical protest had been proven by Blood brother Can You Spare A Dime (1932), a song written by Yip Harburg (music by Jay Gorner), a veteran of the Broadway musical and the Hollywood soundtrack, and sung past Bing Crosby. In fact, the whole soundtrack of Victor Fleming's Wizard of Oz (1939), likewise written by Harburg (music by Harold Arlen), was meant as a commentary to the Corking Low.
Besides Guthrie, other folk musicians equanimous protest songs. For instance, Earl Robinson wrote Joe Hill (1936) to commemorate a murdered wedlock leader.
Some other important strain of popular music had to do with folk music, which Guthrie and Robinson had already associated with social sensation. In 1940 Pete Seeger went farther: he formed the Annual Singers to sing protestation songs (Nosotros Shall Overcome, Guantanamera), sometimes with communist overtones. In 1948 Seeger formed the vocal quartet Weavers loosely modeled after the Country Family unit. Their arranger Gordon Jenkins added a string orchestra to their embrace of Leadbelly'south Good Night Irene (1949), thus creating the first folk-pop crossover. The collaboration with Gordon Jenkins continued with The Roving Kind (1950) and Wimoweh (1952). Their If I Had A Hammer (1949), Where Have All The Flowers Gone (1956), Bells Of Rhymney (1959) and Turn Turn Plow (1962) established the vogue of folk music, while Wimoweh (1961) even resurrected African folk music. His Goofing Off Suite (1955) was, de facto, the start tape of "American primitivism".
Another pioneer of the folk revival, Burl Ives, popularized Foggy Foggy Dew (1945), a traditional English tune, Bluish-tailed Fly (1948), a Civil War melody, Harry McClintock'southward Big Rock Candy Mount (1948) and Stan Jones' Ghost Riders In The Sky (1949), based on the traditional When Johnny Comes Marching Home.
"Ramblin' Jack" Elliott Adnopoz became Guthrie's ambassador in Europe. Several blackness musicians (notably, Leadbelly and Josh White) benefited from the folk revival.
In fact, the folk revival was instrumental in rediscovering forgotten genres and musicians that could not perhaps aim for the charts. For example, the tradition of "ane-man bands" was kept live in San Francisco past a blackness musician, Jesse Fuller, an old man (he debuted at 58) who played at the same time guitar, pedal bass, harmonica, hello-hats and castanets, immortalized by his San Francisco Bay Dejection (1954). In 1948 Moe Asch founded Folkways, a record label devoted to folk music, but too to Latin-American music, to Native American music and to dejection music.
New York became the stage for a motility of "folk revival" that spawned hits such as the Tarriers' Banana Gunkhole Vocal (1956), that besides launched the calypso craze, the Kingston Trio'due south traditional Tom Dooley (1958), Jimmy Driftwood'southward Battle Of New Orleans (1958), and Jimmy Driftwood'south Battle of New Orleans (1958) and Soldier's Joy (1958), all of them reconstructed from traditional melodies. Ethno-musicologists such as the New Lost Urban center Ramblers assembled "lost" songs on albums such as The New Lost City Ramblers (1958), Vol II (1959) and Songs from the Depression (1960). The Limeliters assembled a multinational repertory on soothing collections such every bit The Slightly Fabulous (1961). The "Newport Folk Festival" (1959) created a vast audience for this music, an audience that increasingly came to exist identified with the political Left and the young beatniks of the Greenwich Hamlet.
These folksingers had little in common (stylistically or ideologically) with the hillbillies of land music, but they ended upward creating the urban audience for country music. Country music, even in states that were apace urbanizing such every bit Texas, had been catering mainly to the countryside. The post-war generation of folksingers catered about exclusively to the audition of the big cities. It wasn't long before state music learned that lesson.
Also part of the Leftist motility of ideas were the iconoclast satirists who attacked the American way of life, gimmicky politics and assorted taboos in the nighttime clubs of New York: Richard "Lord" Buckley, Lenny Bruce and Tom Lehrer (chronologically). Their caustic humour really anticipated the existential spleen and the political skepticism of the Greenwich Movement.
Texas and Tennessee: Country Music
The 1940s were mainly the years of "honky-tonk" music, a much more driving mode than traditional Appalachian music, and the first urban form of country music. Originally named later on the saloons where alcohol was being served illegally (which, in turn, took their name from the factories that made gin), honky tonk became even more popular at the cease of Prohibition era. Its stars were from Texas: Ernest Tubb (Walking The Floor Over You, 1942), who was besides the first land artist to employ an electrical guitar, and William "Lefty" Frizzell, Rodgers' natural heir, i of the most innovative vocalists and a poignant songwriter (If You've Got The Coin I've Got The Time, 1950; Always Late, 1951; I Want to Be With You Ever, 1951; Danny Dill'due south folk ballad The Long Black Veil, 1959; Saginaw Michigan, 1964; That'southward the Mode Beloved Goes, 1973). Floyd Tillman wrote It Makes No Deviation Now (1938) and the "adulterous song" Slipping Around (1949). Houston-based pianist Aubrey "Moon" Mullican predated Jerry Lee Lewis in fusing honky-tonk and boogie-woogie, two styles that had much in common, with Harry Choates' New Jole Blon' (1947) and I'll Sheet My Send Alone (1950). South Carolina's guitarist Arthur Smith did something similar with the instrumental Guitar Boogie (1945). Ted Daffan composed the classics Worried Mind (1940), Built-in To Lose (1943), Headin' Downwardly The Highway (1945). Honky-tonk songs dealt with more prosaic themes such as booze (of course) and cheating.
Purists looked downwardly on honky-tonk, that preserved little of the original spirit of state music, but Hank Williams shut them downward with Lovesick Blues (1949) and You're Gonna Change (1949), followed by a repertory of both ballads and pseudo-blues. Among the former: Cold Cold Center (1950), Why Don't You Love Me (1950), Your Cheating Centre (1952), I Saw The Calorie-free (1953). Among the latter: Moaning The Dejection (1950), Long Gone Lonesome Blues (1950), So Lonesome I Could Cry (1949), I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive (1952). Plus rhythmic songs that predated rock'north'scroll, such as Motion It On Over (1947), Honkytonking (1948), Howlin' At The Moon (1951). He died young (at 29), and his last songs, such equally Jambalaya (1952) and Fred Rose'southward Kaw-liga (1952), already predated the age of exotic music.
The star of honky-tonk who succeeded Williams, Webb Pierce, from Louisiana, adopted the electrical guitar and steel guitar and moved towards pop and rock'north'roll in Merle Kilgore'south More And More (1954) and Teenage Boogie (1956). Ray Price, from Texas, bordered both honky-tonk and western swing in songs such as Don't Permit The Stars Go Into Your Eyes (1952), Crazy Arms (1956), Urban center Lights (1958). Hank Thompson'southward band, also from Texas, did the contrary (from western swing to honky-tonk), starting with Wild Side of Life (1952), basically a cover of Roy Acuff's The Great Speckled Bird (1936). Another Texas, Johnny Horton, adjusted the style to the dancehalls and to rock'n'roll with songs such as Honky Tonk Homo (1956).
Jimmie Rodgers' style was instead revived by Canadian-born Hank Snow, particularly in his own I'chiliad Moving On (1950), i of the greatest hits of the mail-war era, The Golden Rocket (1950) and The Rhumba Boogie (1951).
Amidst instrumental virtuosi, Merle Travis' finger-picking style (that was basically an adapation of a banjo technique to the guitar) turned the guitar into both a melodic and rhythmic instrument. To his contemporaries, he sounded similar two guitarists, not ane. He also recorded Folk Songs of the Hills (1947), including his own celebrated protest song 16 Tons, in a vein similar to Woody Guthrie'southward. Fume Smoke Smoke (1947) was his biggest hitting.
His disciple Chet Atkins simplified Travis' style by using three fingers instead of only 2. More importantly, Atkins pioneered the classic "Nashville sound" through compositions such as Bluesy Guitar (1946), a duet between electrical guitar and clarinet, Canned Heat (1947), Galloping on the Guitar (1949), Chinatown My Chinatown (1952), Land Gentleman (1953), Downhill Drag (1953), that progressively downplayed the rustic role of the fiddle and the steel guitar while emphasizing a sweeter, poppier sound based on guitar and piano.
Jean Ritchie pioneered the revival of the dulcimer with records such as Singing Traditional Songs of Her Mount Family (1952).
Les Paul, a white guitarist who played more than often with jazz musicians than country ones, invented the solid-body guitar (1941), pioneered new recording techniques ("close miking", "echo delay", "multi-tracking") and engaged in archetypical experiments of record manipulation and overdubbing in his 1948 songs Brazil and Lover (on which he played all instruments by himself), besides sprinkling his recordings with all sorts of sound effects. His artistic solos on the hits sung past his wife Mary Ford, starting with a embrace of Morgan Lewis' jazzy show-tune How High the Moon (1951) and with the traditional Swedish waltz Mockin' Bird Hill, influenced both jazz and rock.
Los Angeles-based pyrotechnic guitarist Joe Maphis was ane of the first to use the instrument not just for the rhythmic accompaniment but also for the lead lines. He as well equanimous Dim Lights Thick Smoke (1952) and Fire On The Strings (1954).
Other virtuosi included fiddler Vassar Clements and blind flat-picking guitarist Arthel "Doc" Watson, who recorded his commencement album, Doc Watson Family unit (1963), at the age of xl.
"Tennessee" Ernie Ford was the sexual practice symbol of state music in the 1950s, and launched standards such every bit Smokey Mountain Boogie (1948), Johnny Lange's and Fred Glickman's Mule Train (1949) and Shotgun Boogie (1950), a progenitor of rock'n'curlicue.
Leon Payne, a member of Bob Wills' Texas Playboys, wrote Lost Highway (1949) and I Love You Because (1950)
Felice and Boudleaux Bryant were amidst the most successful Nashville songwriters, from Hey Joe (1953) to Dear Hurts (1961) to Rocky Top (1967), and peculiarly for the Everly Brothers.
At the end of Globe State of war Two, several studios had opened in Nashville, reflecting the growing popularity of the "Thousand Ole Opry". Then musicians started relocating to Nashville. By 1954, when the "Country Music Disc Jockeys' Association" (CMA) was created, Nashville had every bit many songwriters every bit New York. Chet Atkins was one of the producers who, in the 1950s, crafted the "Nashville sound", basically country music played with a popular sensibility (the guitar and sometimes the pianoforte replacing the dabble, background vocals, cord orchestra). Atkins was the man who buried the "high lonesome" Appalachian audio. In 1961 there were 81 radio stations devoted to country music, in 1966 in that location were 328. Past 1963 one out of every 2 American records was produced in a Nashville studio.
The Importance of Country Music
Country music had a profound impact on the American subconscious: information technology provided the American nation with an identity. Pop music (as performed in theaters, every bit published by Tin Pan Alley) was largely a European invention, and then much so that European stars touring the Usa were invariably given a regal welcome and billed every bit the "existent thing". But country music was American, and only American: its performers were American, its audition was American, its stories were American, its "sound" was American. Americans could enjoy pop music on Broadway, but they could not place with information technology the same fashion that they could place with the hillbillies and the cowboys. The audio of country music embodied the history of the Us, it represented its genome. As it developed from the 1920s to the 1960s, it merely continued to emphasize that "American" element, progressively removing the European elements: it sounded less and less like the English ballads and the Irish dances that originated it, and more and more like something completely new.From a musical viewpoint, land music emphasized get-go of all the story, so the vocalization, and concluding the organization. It was a secular music, devoted to personal, domestic or commonage issues, but largely set in a secular universe. It was rational to the extent that its characters were trying to brand sense of their life and their environment.
This contrasted with rhythm'northward'blues, that emphasized kickoff of all the voice, and then (ever more) the arrangement, and finally the story; that had a stronger mystical chemical element (the legaly of the spirituals and of gospel music); that was fundamentally irrational, in that it accepted the human condition as inevitable.
The Nashville Sound
See:
- Outlaws
- Country music of the 1970s
- Country music of the 1980s
Bibliography:
Malone, Pecker: "Country Music U.s.a." (1968)
Source: https://www.scaruffi.com/history/country.html
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