Country Music

I

Introduction

Country Music or Country-and-Western Music, major genre of American popular music, primarily produced by white Southerners beginning in the early 1920s. Born out of the folk music of Southern Appalachia, country music encompasses the styles known as Western swing, honky-tonk, bluegrass, rockabilly, and new country. Over the years country music has been influenced by folk, gospel, rhythm-and-blues (R&B), and rock music and in turn has had an impact on these popular genres. Although originally known by the derisive label “hillbilly music,” country has since moved into the popular music mainstream and gained wide international acceptance.

II

Characteristic Musical Elements

Musically speaking, country music is one of the simplest styles to create and one of the least intimidating to listen to, features that contribute to its popularity. This basic aspect of country music stems from the fact that it is based predominantly on lyric content rather than musical content. In country, the primary purpose of the musical elements of harmony, melody, and rhythm is to showcase the lyrics without distracting from them. Exceptions to this general rule include the purely instrumental music from country music’s early history and the technical virtuosity often found in bluegrass music.

Country harmony relies for the most part on a simple selection of repeated chords—usually three, although additional chords or as few as two may be used. Vocals appear mainly as single, unharmonized lines, although at times they are harmonized with high, closely spaced voices, especially in the chorus of a song. Rhythmically, there is little syncopation. Most country music is written in ¹ time (four beats to a measure), with the first and third beats receiving emphasis. Melodies are typically just as basic as the rhythm. Many country tunes sound very similar and are distinguishable by their lyrics.

The lyrics of country songs commonly parallel the lives of ordinary, working-class Americans and cover such subjects as love and relationships, loneliness, religion, poverty, and work. A song’s lyric theme is frequently repeated as a hook (a catchy musical phrase) in the chorus section. Most country lyrics are extraordinarily economical, using 150 or fewer words, and the compact result is often poetic and evocative.

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The subcategories of country music often use different sets of musical instruments. The country genre began in the 1920s with string bands, which usually consisted of various combinations of guitar, fiddle, banjo, mandolin, and string bass, also known as a double bass. The dobro, an amplified guitar made of wood or steel with internal resonators, was introduced in the late 1920s. It is also known as the Hawaiian guitar, because it can be played Hawaiian style by laying it across the lap. The drum set became part of country music through Western swing, which developed in the 1930s. Although brass wind instruments such as the saxophone and trumpet were a vital part of Western swing, they are rarely heard on other country recordings. The piano can be found on country records as early as 1925, but it did not become a lead instrument until the late 1940s, with the boogie-woogie recordings of singer and songwriter Aubrey “Moon” Mullican. The high-pitched sound of the steel guitar made its country recording debut in 1954 with the hit “Slowly” by artist Webb Pierce. By the mid-1990s country bands generally featured six to seven musicians, including a drummer, a keyboard player, an electric bass player, a steel guitarist, electric and acoustic guitarists, and a utility musician who plays fiddle, mandolin, banjo, and dobro, as needed.

III

Folk Music Origins

The roots of country music lie in the folk music that English, Irish, and Scottish settlers brought to the Appalachian Mountain region of the South in the 18th and 19th centuries. English ballads and Irish reels in particular had a major early influence. Such music was performed from colonial times in both religious and social contexts, including church services, weddings, and barn dances. In the early 1920s the first country recordings appeared, introducing the music of string bands. The string-band repertoire consisted mostly of traditional folk and gospel music and appealed mainly to people in the rural Southeast. During the 1920s the audience for this so-called hillbilly music expanded with the spread of small-town radio stations. With the wider distribution of music over radio, new regional styles, such as Louisiana’s cajun music, were incorporated into the folk and gospel core of country.

Important early country music artists included the Carter Family, a trio from rural Virginia, and the blues-oriented singer and songwriter Jimmie Rodgers, from Mississippi. From the late 1920s to the early 1940s the Carter family recorded old folk ballads, incorporating such instruments as the fiddle, banjo, and autoharp. Whereas the vocals in early folk and hillbilly music were usually of secondary importance compared with the instrumentals, the Carter trio used their instruments to provide a musical accompaniment that never took precedence over the simple harmonies of their vocal work. Rodgers, who recorded from 1927 to 1933, brought both folk and blues elements to country music through sentimental ballads and his so-called blue yodels, which introduced yodeling to a mainstream audience. Many credit the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers as the creators of commercial country music. Since the 1930s country and folk styles have continued to influence one another. Other major figures of folk-country music include singer and fiddle player Roy Acuff in the 1940s and 1950s, singer Johnny Cash from the 1960s into the 1990s, and country artists Lyle Lovett, the Judds, and Mary Chapin Carpenter in the 1980s and 1990s.

IV

Bluegrass

Bluegrass music developed in rural Kentucky during the 1920s and 1930s. It represented, primarily through its instrumentation, a return to the prerecording days of folk music. Characterized by the acoustic string-band sound of the Southeast, the bluegrass style usually features a banjo, fiddle, and mandolin in lead parts while a guitar and string bass provide accompaniment. Bluegrass vocals are often harmonized and emphasize a high-pitched tenor voice. Instrumental solos and improvisations may be featured between stanzas in a bluegrass song.

Singer and mandolin player Bill Monroe is known as the father of bluegrass music. A virtuoso mandolin player, Monroe combined traditional folk ballads and gospel songs with string-band music played at very fast tempos. Monroe, with his band The Blue Grass Boys, performed from the mid-1920s until Monroe’s death in 1996. Other well-known bluegrass performers include banjo player Earl Scruggs, who played with Monroe during the 1940s; the Osborne Brothers, a duo from Kentucky known for its work during the 1950s and 1960s; and more recently, artists Alison Krauss, Ricky Skaggs, and Vince Gill.