Belleville is a small town in downstate Illinois, south-east of St. Louis. Like a lot of mid-western towns, it was hit hard in the 1980s by the twin whammy of closing factories and faltering family farms. If punk-rock is the sound of factories and if country music is the sound of farms, it makes sense that a successful ...
Uncle Dave Macon (1870–1952) was the first star of country music. Other artists got on disc first: men like Eck Robertson, Henry Whitter, Fiddlin’ John Carson, Gid Tanner and Riley Puckett. Uncle Dave didn’t enter a recording studio until July 1924 – whereupon he proved to be quite productive – but he had another route to the affections ...
(Fiddle, 1848–1931) The first man to play on the Nashville radio station that would house the Grand Ole Opry, Thompson was a Tennessee-born, Texas-raised fiddler with many contest rosettes to his name when he sat down at a WSM microphone in November 1925. Accompanied by his daughter Eva, who played piano or danced, he toured small-town ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1942) Peter Rowan was a member of Bill Monroe And The Blue Grass Boys from 1964 to 1967 and that stint gave him a solid, traditional foundation for everything he did after that, no matter how wild, whether it was the art-rock band Earth Opera (with David Grisman), the folk-rock band Sea Train ...
The Research Triangle, a cluster of three major universities (Duke, North Carolina and North Carolina State) in the Appalachian foothills, was a natural breeding ground for an alt.-country scene, thanks to its rural Southern setting and its density of bohemians. It had been an outpost of the Georgia-centered alternative-rock scene that had produced R.E.M ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1994–present) Frontman and principal songwriter Jeff Tweedy formed Wilco – John Stirratt (bass), Nels Cline (guitar), Glenn Kotche (drums), Pat Sansone (various instruments) and Mikael Jorgensen (keyboards) – after disbanding country heroes Uncle Tupelo. Throughout countless personnel ‘changes’ and label squabbles they made a series of five albums (culminating in 2005’s A Ghost Is Born) that moved further ...
There have always been avant-garde artists and bands that take elements of country and fuse them with other musical idioms to make their own highly original, often idiosyncratic styles. Many of these artists also address controversial issues that are taboo in the politically correct country mainstream. It was the late-1960s and early 1970s, when America’s anti-war ‘alternative’ sub-culture was ...
Hank Williams and George Jones would have found the whole notion of alt-country unfathomable. Why would anyone seek an alternative to bestselling country records ? For these sons of dire southern poverty, the whole point of making country records was to sell as many as possible and maybe catch hold of the dignity and comfort that a middle-class life might ...
When Steve Earle (b. 1955) was released from prison on 16 November 1994, it had been four years since he had released a studio album and three years since he’d done a tour. During that time lost to heroin and crack, much had changed in the world of country music. The charismatic but mainstream-pop-oriented Garth Brooks (b. 1962) was ...
Just as sports have their pantheon of greats, the country-music industry established its own Hall Of Fame in 1961 to honour its most influential figures and deepen public understanding and appreciation of the music’s rich heritage and history. A Pantheon Of Country Stars As of 2005, 62 artists and industry leaders – starting with Jimmie Rodgers (1897–1933) and songwriter ...
Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry is the oldest continuously broadcast live music programme in the world. Since it hit the airways in 1926, it has served as a springboard for dozens of key artists’ rise to national fame. Its presence in Nashville was central to the growth of the city’s music industry. Opry Origins The Opry started almost by accident one ...
The singing cowboys did not have the monopoly on country music on the silver screen, although it was their breed that first caught Hollywood’s attention. By the time the 1940s rolled around, several of Nashville’s top stars found that they could expand their careers by bringing their talents to the vast new audiences. Singing Stars In the earlier decade ...
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band started out in 1966 as a student jug band in Los Angeles, and in an early incarnation it included a teenage Jackson Browne. Among the group’s founder members was singer and guitarist Jeff Hanna. Both Hanna and multi-instrumentalist Jimmie Fadden are still Dirt Band members 40 years on. The extremely ambitious Will The Circle Be ...
From its roots, country music has been associated with simplicity – in melody, in subject-matter and in instrumentation, and it is this that has perhaps ensured its longevity. However, all good musicians make their craft look simple, and the history of country music is packed with virtuosos, from the pioneering banjoist Earl Scruggs, through ...
Acoustic Guitar Throughout its history, the guitar has – perhaps more than any other instrument – managed to bridge the gap between the often disconnected worlds of classical, folk and popular music. Its roots go back to Babylonian times; by the 1500s it was prevalent in Spain, and is still sometimes called the Spanish guitar. Medieval versions – ...
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