Country Music

V

Honky-Tonk Music

The first truly urban form of country music, honky-tonk music originated in the roadside bars of Texas and Oklahoma in the 1930s and 1940s. Honky-tonk combined the often-sad ballads of folk music and older forms of country music with driving, up-tempo rhythms and the improvisational freedom of jazz music. Drums and steel and electric guitars were prominent. The new style developed as a result of several factors, including the urbanization of the rural South, the introduction of electric guitars, and a more relaxed public attitude toward drinking following the repeal of prohibition in 1933. Honky-tonk broadened the scope of country music lyrics, and songs about drinking, infidelity, and divorce became national hits for the first time.

The best-known early honky-tonk stars include Al Dexter and Ernest Tubb. Dexter’s “Honky Tonk Blues” of 1936 was the first song to use the term honky-tonk. Tubb’s honky-tonk single “Walking the Floor Over You” (1941) eventually sold more than 1 million records. Hank Williams combined honky-tonk, blues, and more traditional country singing; among his more than 100 songs are “Jambalaya” (1952) and “Your Cheatin’ Heart” (1953). Other honky-tonk artists include singer and songwriter Lefty Frizzell in the 1950s and 1960s, singer Randy Travis in the 1980s, as well as Alan Jackson and the duo of Brooks & Dunn in the 1990s.

VI

Western and Western Swing

During the 1930s and 1940s motion pictures about cowboys and the American West popularized the style known as Western music. Western music grew out of a 19th-century tradition of cowboy songs and string bands that was particularly strong in Texas and Oklahoma. This subcategory was influenced by the folk-country music of Tennessee and other Southeastern states, the jazz and blues music of Louisiana, and big-band dance music. Western music frequently features improvisation and a broad range of instruments, including wind instruments. The lyrics center on life on the Western frontier, especially the often romanticized life of the cowboy. Exemplars of the style include the singing cowboys Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, who acted and sang in Western movies of the 1930s and 1940s. Rogers was an original member of the Sons of the Pioneers, a band that appeared in over 80 Westerns between 1935 and 1948. The group’s style of three-part harmony singing, disseminated through motion pictures and recordings, became widely influential.

A variation on traditional Western music called Western swing developed in Texas and Oklahoma in the early 1930s. Western swing was a country version of the big-band jazz music popular during the 1930s and 1940s, a period known as the swing era. Western swing bands combined the string band with instruments used in jazz and blues, including the saxophone and trumpet. The style gained fame primarily through fiddler Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, a band that included as many as 18 players. They were a top musical attraction throughout the Southwest during the 1940s and 1950s. The fiddling style and musical arrangements of Wills had a major influence on later country artists, including singers Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, George Strait and the band Asleep at the Wheel.

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VII

Rockabilly

The economic boom that followed World War II (1939-1945) expanded the opportunities for the entertainment industry, including country music performances and recordings. Radio exposed a wider audience to country music while new, relatively inexpensive recording technology made records available at affordable prices. These forces helped create demand for country recordings in greater diversity and quantity than ever before.

One of the most successful responses to this new urban demand for country music was the style called rockabilly. An early form of rock and roll, rockabilly was a mid-1950s fusion of white hillbilly music and black rhythm-and-blues music (R&B). Generally played at faster tempos than other country styles, rockabilly often features a stand-up bass, as well as an electric guitar played with a noticeable twang. Rockabilly vocals emphasize rhythmic phrases and depart from straight singing with quick yelps, high-pitched whines, and other unconventional inflections. Rockabilly was popularized in the 1950s and 1960s by such artists as Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Conway Twitty, Buddy Holly, and the Everly Brothers.

VIII

The Nashville Sound and Country Pop

Soon after World War II, Nashville, Tennessee, became the recognized center for the production of country music. The “Nashville Barn Dance” was a country-music stage and radio show established by Nashville’s WSM radio station in 1925. By 1939 the show was named the Grand Ole Opry and had begun nationwide broadcasts. It drew to Nashville singers and musicians with hopes of having their music broadcast.

WSM employees founded one of the first Nashville recording studios, Castle Studios, about 1946. In 1949 another important label, Sun Records, built its studio in Memphis, Tennessee. In 1952 musicians Owen and Harold Bradley set up Bradley Recording, one of the first independent recording studios in downtown Nashville. The Bradley brothers recorded country stars Ernest Tubb, Kitty Wells, and Patsy Cline, and rock star Buddy Holly. The commercial success of the Bradleys helped convince international record companies, such as Decca Records (now MCA Records), to build studios in Nashville. By the late 1950s numerous country songwriters, singers, and studio musicians had relocated to Music City, USA, as Nashville came to be known. The Country Music Association (CMA) was chartered in Nashville in 1958 to promote country music. In 1961 the Country Music Hall of Fame was founded in Nashville to commemorate the people who have made the most important contributions to country music.

In the 1950s and 1960s Nashville executives and music producers Owen Bradley and Chet Atkins created the Nashville sound, a style that describes the music of such artists as Eddy Arnold, Patsy Cline, and Jim Reeves. With the popularity of rock and roll soaring at this time, the Nashville sound was an attempt to attract a broader audience by combining elements of pop, rock, and country music. Although it featured country songs performed by country stars, the Nashville sound was produced with the technology and sophistication of popular music of the period. For example, full orchestral string sections often replaced traditional guitar, mandolin, and fiddle ensembles to create a lush accompaniment. A chorus of backup singers filled out the vocal tracks of a song. The use of synthesizers, overdubbing, reverb effects, and other studio techniques helped create a fuller, slicker, more marketable sound.

The big-label, large-studio approach has remained part of the country music industry, as has the overall tendency to combine popular and country music into a style often referred to as country pop. During the 1970s many so-called crossover artists, including Conway Twitty, Kenny Rogers, and Dolly Parton, combined pop and country styles to achieve mainstream success, often through remakes of earlier pop hits. Conversely, several mainstream popular music artists, including John Denver, Olivia Newton-John, and Ray Charles, have made successful recordings of country songs over the years.

IX

Country-Rock and Outlaw Country

Country and rock music have borrowed musical elements from one another since the late 1950s. In fact, rock and roll, the earliest form of rock music, combined Western swing, the hillbilly style, and R&B music, while Elvis Presley and other early rock music artists began their careers in country music. During the late 1960s and 1970s Gram Parsons, the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, the Eagles, and other bands led a movement to merge country and rock styles. The resulting style, known as country-rock, characteristically takes country melody, harmony, and lyric themes and adds the percussive beat, rhythms, and electric instrumentation of rock. The most successful country rock group of the 1980s and 1990s was the foursome Alabama.

The so-called outlaw-country movement developed parallel to country-rock. It emerged in the mid-1970s in reaction against the Nashville sound and the record companies that had streamlined and institutionalized the Nashville style. Some artists sought to break away from the recording formulas and generic productions that by the 1970s dominated the industry. These artists wanted more control of the recording process, and many of them called for a return to the acoustic instruments, small bands, and natural-sounding vocals of country music’s past. Early exponents of outlaw country—Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, and David Allan Coe—embodied this spirit of rebellion through their music and their behavior, dressing in frayed blue jeans and T-shirts and using illicit drugs. As country artists moved away from Nashville, smaller, independent recording studios and labels were established in Bakersfield, California; Austin, Texas; and other cities.

Established country music labels such as Capitol, RCA, and MCA at first refused to support outlaw country music. As live performances and radio coverage popularized the music of outlaw artists, however, healthy sales of this music eventually convinced the more prominent labels to allow their artists to produce and coproduce their own albums on a regular basis. In 1976 RCA’s album Wanted—The Outlaws, a compilation of songs from artists Nelson, Jennings, Tompall Glaser, and Jessi Colter, became country music’s first platinum album, selling more than 1 million copies. Outlaw artists of the 1980s and 1990s included Steve Earle, Dwight Yoakam, and Travis Tritt.

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