A Brief History of: Country Music

Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

A Brief History of

COUNTRY MUSIC www.halearteddude.com

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Published privately by the Any Major Dude With Half A Heart website (www.halfhearteddude.com) © halfhearteddude.com 2013

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This book may not be sold. It may not be edited or altered without the author’s express permission. Excerpts must be duly credited. This book may be freely distributed in its current form.

This volume is available exclusively as an e-book















CONTENTS

Introduction

1

Chapter 1: Pioneer Days

2

Chapter 2: The rise of Country Music

12

Chapter 3: Country and Rock & roll

20

Chapter 4: The Glory Years

24

Chapter 5: Establishment vs Outlaws

30

Chapter 6: The Rise of the Stetson

34

Chapter 7: Corporate shine and alt.country

37















Visit Any Major Dude With Half A Heart www.halfhearteddude.com















INTRODUCTION

T

his booklet is the collated and edited version of a series of articles that appeared on the Any Maj Major or Dud Dudee With Hal Halff A Hea Heart rt blo blog g (halfhearteddude.com) from July 2010 to October 2012. It sought to provide a brief history of country music. The series was accom panied panie d by sever several al compi compilatio lations ns of song songss from the eras cover covered. ed. The idea was to illustrate the text, not to shift some music to freeloaders. I know that some readers were inspired to seek out the CDs or official downloads of many of the featured songs; and even if they did not, I hope that the com pilations, pilati ons, and the articl articles, es, might have helped to dimin diminish ish some deeply ingrained prejudices against country music. So the objective was not only to inform those who already had an interest in the genre, but also to persuade those had resisted becoming acquainted with country music to give it a chance. I hope the series weakened resistance and preconceived notions of the stereotypes of Confederation flags and the jargons of Hicksville. Hicksville. Since the series concluded, the TV series Nashville series Nashville has become a big hit; although it is in essence a soap opera, it surely will help dispel further notions of country music being the exclusive domain of people who say “howdy pardner”, “giddy-up” and “yee haw” while chewing on straw,, never mind the image of Deliverance straw of Deliverance woodsmen and KKK parades. Of course it is legitimate to dislike the sound of the steel guitar, the banjo, the fiddle, the mandolin or the yodel. But is country all that? I would propose that country is so broad a genre that it is practically impossible to claim to hate all of it. At its best, as Hank Ballard once said, country is soul music. I have consulted many sources, but I should single out two: the exquisitely compiled and illustrated book Country book Country Music: The Complete Visual Visual History, History , edited by Paul Kingsbury & Alannah Nash, and Roughstock’s Histor Historyy of Country Music (www (www.roughstock.com/histo .roughstock.com/history/introduction) ry/introduction).. The Roughstock history takes a different approach to the one I take here, so the histories are, I hope, complementary. Where I commit errors, I apologise. Where I emphasise one fact and omit another another,, feel free to disagree. You are invite you to circulate this eBook as widely as you like. I assert the copyright to the text, but the book is absolutely free.















Chapter 1: Pioneer Days

F

or the first few decades of its recorded history, country music was not even called that. Alternately Alternately,, it was called things like Old-Time Music, Old Familiar Music, Hillbilly or Folk, but the term “Country” did not find any currency until the late 1940s.

Whatever it was called and however one may define it, country music has its roots in the rural Southern Appalachian folk songs – the so-called broadside ballads, which geographical isolation had preserved for decades and even centuries – and in the minstrel shows which brought black music to white folks through the visual medium of blackface. It has its roots in the Christian revivalism of Billy Sunday (read up his story; it’s quite amazing) and Dwight Moody, in Calvinist church music, and in the gospel of the cotton fields. It has its roots in the French square dance, the quadrilles quadrilles,, in the Alpine yodel and the music of Hawaii. It has its roots in the songs sung by cowboys, whose mobile lifestyle encouraged the use of small musical instruments, such as the mouth harmonica and the fiddle. And it has its roots in the popular music produced in urban New York’s Tin Pan Alley, whose songs travelled south via vaudeville shows.

















From the start, country was located in the South, with its socially inflexible but culturally promiscuous racial barriers. The fiddle and banjo, for example, were initially instruments of black music, though the banjo, banjo , an African instrument brought to America by slaves, was innovated on by whites to give it its present five-string form. The blues had a profound effect on country (in the 1920s and ’30s many country songs incorporated the term blues in their titles). That, of course, did not inhibit the occasional incidence of coarse racism in country music. So it was not peculiar that the hugely popular and very influential string band Gid Tannen Tannen and the Skillet Lickers should release songs with titles like “Run Nigger Run” (even though the track was an old black folk song about escaping slavery, slavery, the title is singularly startling). startling). Still, forgotten black blues musicians such as Arnold Shultz and Rufus Payne had a huge influence inf luence on the development of country country.. Shultz, a fiddler and guitarist, taught the future bluegrass legend Bill Monroe and influenced the famous finger-picking guitar style of Merle Travis, while Hank Williams Williams – perhaps country’s country’s most pivotal figure – learned to play guitar from Payne. Bob Wills, Wills, another country pioneer with his Western Western Swing, incorporated the blues and jazz sounds he loved into his music. Uncle Dave Macon, meanwhile, claimed to have learned his seminal song “Rock About My Saro Jane” from black stevedores along the Cumberland river in the 1880s. The advent of accessible radio in the early 1920s was crucial in the rise of popular music, country included, as record companies started to seek new sounds. Indeed, radio was crucial in the long-term. With Nashville’s WSM Radio’ss broadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry from the city’s Ryman Radio’ Ryman Auditorium reaching almost all of the US by 1927, many country artists became household names even before the Opry’ Opry’ss syndication.

































proved popular, and the star perfor performer mer was Fiddlin Fiddlin’’ John Carson. He was heard by a visiting A&R man, Ralph Peer, who three years earlier had released one of the first blues records, re cords, Mamie Smith’s Smit h’s Crazy Blues. Peer, a key person in the development of country music, signed up Carson for the Okeh label. On 14 June 1923, in a make-shift studio on Atlanta’s Nassau Street, Carson recorded “Little Old Cabin In The Lane”, a minstrel song from the 1870s written by Will S Hays. Peer thought Carson’s vocals were nothing like anything he had heard before, and not in a good way. way. Yet, Yet, what Peer thought was “pluperfect awful” singing would provide a template for generations of country singers. The recording became a hit. A year later, classically-trained tenor Vernon Dalhart’s “The Wreck Of The Old ’97”, backed with “The Prisoner’s Song”, became country’s first million seller. Country music was now a commercial proposition, and Dalhart was its first superstar. New stars now popped up. Uncle Jimmy Thompson, already 78 in 1925; Uncle Dave Macon, a trucker in his 50s (whose 1924 “Hill Billie Blues” gave the genre one of its early names); Carl T Sprague, a genuine cowboy singing genuine western music; North Carolina’s Charlie Poole (country’s (country’s first celebrity death, in 1931 at 39); Riley Puckett, who was country’ss first yodeller; Gid Tannen country’ Tannen and his Skillet Lickers (of which the blind Puckett and his fiddling collaborator Clayton McMichen were also members). And then, in 1929, the Carter Family – A.P., A.P., his wife Sara and her cousin Maybelle (a later incarnation, after Sara and A.P. divorced, included wider family members, including Maybelle’s daughters June and Anita) – broke through with the lovely “Wildwood Flower”. Along with Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills, the Carter Family would define the sound of country music. If Dalhart was country’s first superstar, then Jimmie Rodgers was the

















Ralph Peer, the A&R man who saw country music ’scommercial potenal.

Jimmie Rodgers, country’s first superstar.

Carl T. Sprague

Fiddlin’ John Carson

The Carter Family: Sara, A.P. and Maybelle. Maybelle, a hugely influenal guitarist, later revived the Carter Family with her daughters, including June.

















Record sales collapsed dramatically with the Depression, with sales drop ping from fr om 104 million in 1927 to just 6 million in 1932. 193 2. Some records still sold prodigiously, of course. Gene Autry’s “That Silver-Haired Daddy Of Mine” (released in 1931 but becoming a mega-hit a couple of years later, it is sometimes considered the first honky ho nky tonk record, a decade before that subgenre really took hold) sold a million copies, as did Patsy Montana’s 1935 hit “I “ I Want Want To Be A Cowboy Cowboy’’s Sweetheart” Swe etheart”.. The 1930s saw the rise of the Singing Cowboys, combining the motion pictures with records. There had been singing cowboys before, like the real cowherder Carl Sprague, and the frontier ballads (lovingly collected in the 1910s by John Lomax) contributed to the country repertoire. The breakthrough, however, came with the movie cowboys. The first was Ken Maynard, but bu t others were more successful, such as Autry, Tex Ritter (father of the late actor John Ritter) and Roy Rogers, perhaps the most commercially savvy of the lot. Various other country stars made cameos in Hollywood over the years, including Patsy Montana, Pee Wee King, Red Foley, Bob Wills, Ernest Tubb and Jimmie Davis. The movie cowboy imagery had an enduring influence, especially in the Stetson hats that periodically become obligatory country uniform and the garish rhinestoned outfits taken to extravagant extremes in the 1960s by Porter Porter Wagoner Wagoner.. The cowboy song has made intermittent comebacks, led by the likes of Marty Robbins in the 1950s and Willie Nelson in the ’70s. Apart from Patsy Montana (from Bill Clinton’s hometown of Hope, Arkansas), there were singing cowgirls too, such as Louise Massey and Kitty Lee. The era was a good time for harmonising sibling acts such as the Monroe Brothers (future bluegrass legend Bill and brother Charlie), the Allen Brothers, The Blue Sky



















1940’s “New San Antonio Rose”, with Tommy Duncan on vocals. By then several western swing acts had come and some already gone. Coming in the wake of Brown and Wills were acts such as Cliff Bruner, Hartman’s Heart breakers,, the Light Crust Doughbo breakers Doughboys, ys, Swift Jewel Cowboys, Hoosier Hot Shots, Tune Wranglers Wranglers and Hank Han k Penny, who in his long career would wou ld staddle various forms of country. Some country artists, such as Montana and Louise Massey,, would dabble in western swing occasionally. Massey 1940s country legend Merle Travis defined western swing this way: “West“Western Swing is nothing more than a group of talented country boys, unschooled in music, but playing the music they feel, beating a solid two-four rhythm to the harmonies that buzz around their brains. brains . When it escapes in all its musical glory, my friend, you have h ave western swing.” When rock & roll broke br oke big in the 1950s, Wills caustically remarked that he and his likes had been playing that already in the 1930s. Perhaps Uncle Dave Macon (born in 1870!) was the first rock & roller; he was the first country singer to feature the word “rock” in a songtitle, back in 1927 with the song he had learnt from those stevedores. The Depression gave rise to a series of songs with socialist undertones (though nobody would call it that), and not only by Woody Guthrie. Socially critical songs preceded the Depression, of course. Bob Miller, a collaborator with Irving Berlin, wrote “Eleven Cent Cotton And Forty Cent Meat” in 1928,



















The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s list of “500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll” features shockingly few early country songs. One that is included is Jimmie Rodgers “Blue Yodel Yodel No. 9”, his 1930 recording with Louis Armstrong which helped to introduce jazz to the crazy sterw of country influences, which would find fuller expression with the rise of western swing. Red Foley’s “Old Shep” of 1941, a maudlin ballad about a child’ child’ss dying dog, is not really very good, but it also merits consideration in the development of rock & roll for helping to inspire a pre-pubescent Elvis Presley of Tupelo, Mississippi, to take up music. In fact, “Old Shep” was the first song Elvis ever sang in public, at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show in Tupelo in October 1945 (he placed fifth f ifth in the talent show). After becoming a rock & roll sensation, Elvis paid tribute to the song he once was obsessed with by recording it. The terribly arbitrary and incomplete Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s list also includes Roy Acuff’s “Wabash Cannonball” – one of the many train songs in country country.. A folk song from the late 19th century originally recorded by the Carter Family in 1929, it was Acuff’s breakthrough hit, launching a career that spanned four decades. In 1948 he reluctantly ran for governor of Tennessee on a Republican Republic an ticket (the idea initially initiall y was a publicity stunt), but bu t lost to two-time governor Gordon Browning, who won 67% of the vote.



















Patsy Montana, the first female superstar of country music.

Woody Guthrie Guthrie with Leadbelly in 1940.



















which gives country the Hawaiian sound (the steel refers to the slide held in the hand that holds the frets). Roy Rogers was among Hollywood’s Hollywoo d’s singing cowboys of the th e movies, but before that he was a founder founder,, in 1933, of the Sons of the Pionee Pioneers. rs. The original pioneers are long gone, but new generati generations ons of of pioneers pioneers are keeping the name alive even now, currently led by Luther Nallie, who joined the group in 1968. But back in the ’30s, Rogers soon left for the big screen while the Sons of the Pioneers became both country staples and performers on the big screen, including the 1942 movie with Rogers which was named after the band. They recorded the first version of “Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds” – written by bandmem ber Bob Nolan, Nolan, who first named it “Tum “Tumbling bling Tumb Tumble le Leaves” Leaves” – before before Gene Gene Autry made it famous. The Sons later recorded another great original, 1946’s “Cool Water” (also written by Nolan). Woody Guthrie, of course, influenced generations of folk singers; indeed, he spearheaded the folk movement with acolytes such as Pete Seeger. It arguably reached its zenith with the output of Bob Dylan in the 1960s. Dylan also owed a lot to the repository of blues and country. Other than Guthrie, it is evident that Dylan listened much to the original Carter Family Family.. Their rendition of a traditional song, “Can The Circle Be Unbroken”, was covered by Dylan and many others (Carl Perkins also borrowed bor rowed the chorus for his “Daddy



















Chapter 2: The rise of Country Music

B

y the early 1940s the crooners had begun to make their mark, with Jimmie Davies having led the way. Many of them had toiled and crooned in the 1930s. But with a world war slowly engulfing the globe, the market wanted, and got, the distraction of romance. More than that, men took their country songs with them to the army and disseminated the music among their fellow soldiers. Country music thus found new fans, and its leading singers – Roy Acuff, Gene Autry, Red Foley, Tex Ritter,, Eddy Arnold – gained a national audience. In 1945, Arnold even beat Ritter the mighty Frank Sinatra in a favourite-singer poll among GIs stationed in Germany. Some singers hit temporary highs before befor e disappearing, such as Ted Daffan, whose 1944 hit “Born To To Lose” (actually recorded in 1942) would later be covered covered by Ray Charles on his seminal 1962 LP LP Modern Modern Sounds In Country And Western Western Music Mu sic.. Other momentarily bright stars included Wesley Wesley Tuttle and Jack Guthrie. The latter, Woody Guthrie’s cousin, was very influential but died in 1948 at the age of 32 of tuberculosis. tuberculosis. Western swing continued to grow in popularity popularity.. Not only was Bob Wills one of the biggest names in country, but artists such as Pee Wee King, like





















teristics. Honky tonk arguably is an attitude more than a genre. In fact, most of what would be defined as mainstream country – from Tubb to Hank Williams to Hank Thompson to Lefty Frizzell to George Jones to the stetsoned gang of latter years – is honky honk y tonk. But so are the Outlaws of the ’70s, such as Waylon Waylon Jennings, Jennin gs, Tompall Tompall Glaser and Willie Nelson. But here h ere we are moving ahead of ourselves. Helped along by the proliferation of hayride and barndance shows on radio, country went mainstream. The most influential of these of course was Nashville’ss Grand Ole Opry, Nashville’ Opry, which attracted the best and most popular stars from other shows, a policy it would follow well into the 1950s (when it nevertheless failed to spot the talents of Louisiana Hayride regular Elvis Presley Presley,, even after he appeared on the Opry as Hank Snow’ Snow’ss opening act). Augmenting the Opry line-up, headed and presented by Acuff, were comics such as the wildly popular Minnie Pearl. Not surprisingly, the novelty record was very





































Spade Cooley, whose brand of California-based Califo rnia-based western west ern swing was more pop oriented than the rest of the genre. Indeed, it is said that the term western swing was invented by Cooley’s manager, and after Cooley beat Wills in a Battle of the Bands contest (on Cooley’s hometurf), he modestly styled himself “King of Western Swing”. His appearance in 38 western films helped further to make Cooley a national star, and by the late 1940s he hosted his own Emmy-winning variety television show s how.. That show was dropped in 1956. 195 6. Five years later, his wife asked for a divorce. In a drunken rage, Cooley beat her to death. He served eight years of a life sentence. The night before he supposedly was to be paroled, he died backstage after playing a benefit concert in Oakland for the Deputy Sheriffs’ Association of Alameda County. Two stars of the era would be monumentally monumentall y influential: Lefty Left y Frizell and Hank Williams.



















Lynn, Wanda Jackson, Skeeter Davis and Tammy Wynette would walk. Molly O’Day had briefly attained star status in the 1940s, Goldie Hill was hugely popular for a while, Rose Maddox had a series series of hits hits with with her brothers. brothers. Kitty Wells was bigger than any of them. Kitty Wells Wells was already in her 30s and a mother of three when she became a star. She was the first female ever to top the country charts – though she was not the first female million-seller; million-seller; that honour belongs to Patsy Montana. And in that first hit, “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels”, she made a statement that a woman need not be submissive – even if it was written by a man, J.D. Miller – and knocked off off Hank Thompson’s Thompson’s slightly misogynist anthem which her song answered, “The Wild Side Of Life” off the #1 spot (both were, it might be pointed out, cover versions version s of previously released records). Many women in country would peddle the submissiveness of their gender in song, but Wells introduced feminist themes long before it was re-



















dolin maestro resented other bluegrass acts for encroaching on what he regarded as his territory. So when the Stanley Brothers signed with Columbia Records, Monroe left the label in a huff for Decca. Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys performed for 57 years until a few months before his death in 1996. It was a Monroe song, “Blue Moon Of Kentucky”, that served as the b-side of Elvis Presley’s debut single. Rockabilly borrowed from western swing, boogie woogie and the new genre of black music, rhythm & blues. It had in fact been around for a while: the record commonly identified as the first ever rockabilly record, Buddy Jones’ “Rockin’ Rollin’ Mama” of 1939, featured featur ed a boogie woogie woog ie piano solo and guitar work that anticipated the sound of the 1950s. The evolution of rockabilly is key to the birth of rock & roll as much as R&B. The slap bass style of playing which was so integral to early rock & roll was a common western swing and rockabilly technique. Western swing artist Bill Haley







































death at 57 in 1982, Robbins was never off the country charts. He did a cover of Arthur Crudup’s “That’s “That’s Alright Mama” before Elvis’ Elvis ’ recorded his version. Who knows what might been had Robbins’ single been a huge hit? He also scored a batch of pop hits, most famously “A White Sports Coat (And A Pink Carnation)”, a US #2. He might have had another massive pop hit; he was the first to record “Singing The Blues”, written by Melvin Endsley, but his label, Columbia, pushed the version by Guy Mitchell, recorded almost two months later. Robbins’ version sold 750,000 copies; Mitchell’s Mitchell’s 3 million. Rob-



















Chapter 3: Country and Rock & roll

S

ome years ago, the brains at Rolling at Rolling Stone grappled to identify the first ever rock & roll record. In the final face-off, they picked Elvis Presley’s debut single “That’s All Right”, a cover of R&B singer Arthur Crudup’s song, over Bill Haley’s “Rock Around The Clock” (itself a cover, though the song was actually written for the former western swing singer).



















fields (proverbial and otherwise) is documented fact. Some blues of the 1920s or ’30s sounds much like some of what would come to be called country, and vice versa. Early country produced a huge number of songs with the word “blues” in the title, and these were indeed blues songs; not because these singers were consciously imitating black musicians (though they were profoundly influenced by them), but because the blues cut across the races. r aces. The father of popular country music, Jimmy Rodgers, had a catalogue full of num bered blues songs. In short, as as we saw in the first chapter, chapter, early country owed owed



















blues, with different lyrics. Johnson reworked the arrangements, and Berry came up with the lyrics about the car and a girl, those rock & roll staples. It is striking that many of the songs which Rolling which Rolling Stone named as being aming the “first” rock & roll records were by performers whose roots were in country (if I had been asked, I’d have nominated any number of songs by the jump blues and jazzman Louis Jordan, who sounded and acted rock & roll long before it became a thing). Bill Haley, as noted earlier, was a western swing musician, and Elvis





















could southern soul men Joe Tex and Solomon Burke. Ray Charles recorded a whole collection of country songs. Arthur Alexander, a massive influence



















Chapter 4: The Glory Years



















music. Cash was the first country singer to really provoke (and then stare down) the Ku Klax Klan, which once burnt a cross on his lawn.





































Haggard came from the country scene in Bakersfield in California, where the sounds of the South were implanted by Dust Bowl migrants, just like his















































































































































































A Brief History of: Country Music

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