War Years

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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 day in 1926 when George D. Hay – station director at Radio ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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During the 1940s and 1950s country music coalesced from various and disparate sub-styles of regional music and emerged as a distinct genre. Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry was central to this newfound sense of identity, as it rose in popularity from an obscure local radio broadcast to a national entertainment institution. For decades, beginning in the 1930s, country music became almost synonymous with the Grand Ole Opry, as its weekly broadcast ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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(Vocals, songwriter, 1905–84) Born Clarence Albert Poindexter, in Troup, Texas, Dexter recorded a string of hits that were part of the early foundation of honky-tonk, including ‘Pistol Packin’ Mama’ (1944), ‘So Long Pal’ (1944), ‘Guitar Polka’ (1946), ‘Wine, Women And Song’ (1946) and ‘Honky-Tonk Blues’ (1936). Styles & Forms | War Years | Country Personalities | Little Jimmy Dickens | War Years | Country ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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(Vocals, multi-instrumentalist, 1906–2001) Born near Ripley, West Virginia, Oby Edgar Starcher performed on radio stations in Baltimore and elsewhere. From the 1940s until the late 1960s, he recorded for various labels and wrote songs such as ‘You’ve Still Got A Place In My Heart’ and ‘I’ll Still Write Your Name’, many of which were popularized by other singers. Styles & Forms | War Years | Country Personalities | Ernest Tubb | War Years ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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(Vocals, b. 1927) Born in Maynardville, Tennessee, Smith’s earliest hits – including ‘Let’s Live A Little’ (1951), ‘Let Old Mother Nature Have Her Way’ (1951), ‘(When You Feel Like You’re In Love) Don’t Just Stand There’ (1952) and ‘Hey Joe’ (1953) – came in the early and mid-1950s. As a singer, Smith started out in the honky-tonk mode of Ernest Tubb and his friend Hank Williams, but eventually matured into a ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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(Vocals, guitar, 1913–63) A talented Ohio-born singer and flat-top-style guitarist, Lloyd Copas was a regular performer on the Grand Ole Opry from 1944 until his death in the same plane crash that killed Patsy Cline. Copas is best known for honky-tonk hits like ‘Filipino Baby’ and ‘Tragic Romance’. Styles & Forms | War Years | Country Personalities | Ted Daffan | War Years | Country ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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(Vocal duo, 1930s–60s) For years, husband and wife vocal team Andrew John Smik (b. 1914) and Jesse Wanda Crupe (b. 1919) sang on WWVA Jamboree, in Wheeling, West Virginia, and earned regional popularity within that radio show’s wide broadcast area. The Williamses were champions of old-time country music and their band The Border Riders created a unique sound that relied heavily on fiddle and accordion. Styles & Forms | War Years | ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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Born in Henderson, Tennessee, in 1918, Eddy Arnold has not only shown remarkable longevity as an artist (his career spans seven decades and he has sold more than 80 million records); he was also a pivotal figure in country music’s dramatic stylistic shift during the 1950s from rough and rural to urbane and sophisticated. Speaking Through Song A farmer’s son, Arnold discovered his penchant for singing at a very early age when ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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One of honky-tonk’s most enduring and beloved figures, Ernest Tubb (1914–84) was born near Crisp, Texas, one of five children from a broken home. He began his career singing at local radio stations and working a string of day jobs – among them a ditch digger, drugstore clerk and brewery worker. As a young man, in 1928, he fell under the spell of white country-blues master Jimmie Rodgers and listened ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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(Vocals, 1932–96) Young reigned as one of country music’s most popular figures, frequently topping the charts with honky-tonk anthems like ‘Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young’ (1955), ‘I’ve Got Five Dollars And It’s Saturday Night’ (1956) and the Willie Nelson-penned ‘Hello Walls’. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he also had success with mellow Nashville sound hits like ‘Wine Me Up’ (1969) and ‘It’s Four In The Morning’ (1971). Styles & ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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(Music publisher, songwriter, 1898–1954) Born in Evansville, Indiana, Fred Rose was a key figure in Nashville’s rise from a provincial backwater to an international musical capital. Rose penned a number of country standards, including ‘Wait For The Light To Shine’ and ‘Blue Eyes Cryin’ In The Rain’. He began his career in Chicago as a jazz songwriter. In 1933, he moved to Nashville, where he continued to write pop and jazz ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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(Vocals, banjo, 1913–98) Born in Niagara, Kentucky, Louis Marshall Jones was one of the Grand Ole Opry’s most beloved figures for more than 50 years, as well as a popular cast member of Hee Haw, a nationally syndicated country-music television comedy show that aired from 1969 to 1994. Styles & Forms | War Years | Country Personalities | Lonzo & Oscar | War Years | Country ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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(Radio emcee, 1912–91) The Texas-born ‘Voice of the Grand Ole Opry’ served as an announcer on the famed Nashville radio show for nearly 50 years – an accomplishment that led to his becoming the first radio personality to be inducted into the Country Music Hall Of Fame (in 1981). Styles & Forms | War Years | Country Personalities | T. Texas Tyler | War Years | Country ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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(Vocals, 1914–99) This Nova Scotia-born singer was one of country music’s most popular figures in the 1950s and 1960s, and a Grand Ole Opry headliner for a half century. He recorded over 100 albums and had nearly as many chart singles. For more than a decade he recorded for the Canadian Bluebird label before breaking through in the USA in the early 1950s with hits like ‘I’m Moving On’ (1950), ‘The ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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Rural Alabama-born Hiram Williams (1923–53) has emerged in the half-century since his death – at age 29 – as the archetypal honky-tonk artist and arguably the single most influential artist in modern country music. The songs that Williams wrote and sang in the course of his short and none-too-sweet life – ‘Hey Good Lookin’,’ ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’, ‘Cold Cold Heart’, ‘Lost Highway’, ‘I Can’t Help It’– have ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
830 Words Read More
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