Country music was brought over by the first European settlers. In medieval times, storytelling was a tradition that allowed history to be recorded when few were able to read and write. When the first British settlers came to America, they brought this tradition with them, along with songs that they had learned in Europe. The people who settled the Appalachian Mountains and the West did not have an easy life and their music gave them an outlet to express their hardships.
When country music bean in America, there were no professional musicians. The typical musician sang only to entertain himself, his family, or at local events. At first, most country music was sung unaided or played on a lone fiddle or banjo. At the turn of the century, Sears, Roebuck & Co. began advertising affordable guitars in its nationally available catalogs, as well as sheet music and songbooks. The mandolin also became available and soon string bands were being formed with different combinations of instruments.
As vaudeville grew in the early 1900’s, it was mainly composed of northern performers. However, their example showed southern performers that one could make music playing in public. This realization spawned the first generation of “hillbilly” performers. The term “hillbilly” was popularized in the 1920’s after a musician by the name of Al Hopkins. He told his producer to name his band whatever he liked because they were just a bunch of hillbilly’s from North Carolina and Virginia.
As the popularity of the phonograph grew, people across the countrybegan to buy their through the mail. Originally, the music consisted mainly of classical singers and orchestral agreements of sentimental songs. One day in 1922 two Texan fiddlers named Alexander Campbell “Eck” Robertson and Henry Gilliland traveled from Atlanta to New York City to get their music recorded.
Alan Shapiro is a poet whom uses the sorrowful tragedies that occurred in his lifetime and turns them into beautiful poems in which he greatly expresses through his poetry. Most of his poems symbolize either a type of sorrow or tragic death, and the expressions used throughout his poetry make it noticeable that Alan Shapiro endured a life of hardship and tragedy. While Shapiro was growing up he lost his brother and his sister in which the poem “Sleet” by Alan Shapiro beautifully encompasses his feeling of grief and sorrow due to the loss of his siblings.
George Harvey Strait, is a an American singer, actor, songwriter, and music producer, known as the “King of Country”, of the twentieth century to present. Strait was a vocalist blessed with good looks and a vibrant personality. He is one of the most influential and popular recording artists of all time. George was a 50s baby. He is also known for his neotraditionalist country style, cowboy look , and being one of the first and main country artists to bring country music back to its roots and away from the pop country era in the 1980s. George Strait has been a country music icon since the 1980s.
For almost 90 years, The Grand Ole Opry has withstood the test of time to become one of the tried and true traditions in country music. From the show's humble beginnings as an obscure radio program, to it's renowned place today as one of the premiere stages for music, The Grand Ole Opry has had an extremely colorful and interesting existence. Over the 88 years that have passed since the show's inception, The Grand Ole Opry has featured many talented performers. Those performers, along with social changes and economics, have all contributed to the growth and success of The Grand Ole Opry.
Country music is one of the most popular music genres in America. There is a reason it is called Country music: because it reflects the heart and soul of the entire country. This unique genre of music can trace its roots to the very beginning of Southern culture. Through its rich history, Country music has always represented the life of the American little-man, the working-class hero, and has spawned many other forms of American culture in music, movies, television and style.
in folk music. He began playing guitar and writing songs, which he sang at local folk
The blues emerged as a distinct African-American musical form in the early twentieth century. It typically employed a twelve-bar framework and three-lined stanzas; its roots are based in early African-American songs, such as field hollers and work songs, and generally have a melancholy mood. The blues can be divided into many sub-genres, including Classical, Country, and Urban. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the careers of two of Classical blues most influential and legendary singers: Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith.
For many Americans, country isn’t just a type of music. It’s a lifestyle. From sippin’ sweet tea on the porch, drinking beer at a tailgate or driving a pick up down the backroads, country music has made its way into the hearts and minds of many Americans. It is one of the only truly home grown American art forms. Its relatability and wide appeal has made country music one of the most commercially successful and popular genres in the United States. Using the work of scholars Tichi, Pecknold, and Ellison, I will show how country music grew from its rural southern roots into an integral part of American culture.
1786 - The first store or shop for the sale of merchandise was opened in Nashville in 1786 by Lardner Clark. Clark brought his goods from Philadelphia packed on ten horses. The store contained assorted items such as cheap calicoes, unbleached linens, and coarse woolens. He also operated a tavern out of the same establishment selling liquors to the local citizens. With little or no money in the early settlement, Clark took pelts in exchange for goods.
Although he later denied that he ever said it, Sam Phillips-the man who discovered Elvis Presley-is reputed to have said, “if I could find a white man who had the Negro sound the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars” (Decurtis 78). Certain radio stations would not play the work of black artists in the segregated America of the 1950s. But, nevertheless, rock ‘n’ roll was an art form created by African-Americans. Little Richard, whose songs “Tutti Fruitti” and “Long Tall Sally” became hits only after white-bread versions were made by Pat Boone, said, “It started out as rhythm and blues” (Decurtis 78).
Originating in the south, country music is a mix of folk songs and sounds brought over from England by Anglo-Celtic immigrants in the 1700's. (1) It was established in the Appalachians and back-woods around the time of the revolution. To cure loneliness and isolation, mountain dwellers would sing songs that reminded them of home, keeping up with traditions. According to B.A. Botkin, " the folk…group is one that has been cut off from progress and has retained beliefs, customs and expressions with limited acceptance and acquired new ones in kind." (1)
Art Menius said, “The African-American music of the rural south provided the source for gospel, jazz, and blues, while the often ignored black contribution to country music and hillbilly music went far beyond providing the banjo and Charley Pride.” In 1928, A.P. Carter, the patriarch of the legendary Carter Family, the first family of country music, met a blues guitarist by the name of Lesley “Esley” Riddle. Lesley Riddle had created a unique picking and sliding technique on the guitar while he was recovering from an accident on the job. The Carter Family was looking for a new sound of music, and they were so overwhelmed by the sound that Lesley produced, they wanted him to teach them how to play that way. Lesley Riddle influenced Maybelle Carter’s style of guitar playing called the “Carter Scratch,” which became legendary. According to birthplaceofcountrymusic.org, Riddle’s influe...
...he country as very prominent musical genres. At the end of World War II, vocals-focused classic pop replaced big band/swing, although orchestras often accompanied the vocalists to provide depth. Around 1955, Mitch Miller began to set the course for the development of pop music (6). Incorporating many traditional genres, such as country, R&B, and folk music, into the standard popular music, Miller had many of his label’s most famous artists produce songs that adhered to the style of pop traditions. Miller himself often employed innovative arrangements that featured orchestral instruments or non-traditional sound effects. As a result, Miller’s work helped to maintain the popularity of the more traditional musical genres of the time. Another extremely prominent pop artist was Patti Page (7), whose music would eventually become some of the decade’s more popular songs.
Music was important to the Union and also to the Confederacy. The troops sang on battlefields, around campfires and while marching. They sang to make themselves feel better when things were not going well. Each side would often borrow the other’s lyrics and/or tunes from the others’ songs.
The street balladry of the people who began migrating to America in the early 1600s is considered to be the roots of traditional American music. As the early Jamestown settlers began to spread out into the Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky and the Virginias, they composed new songs about day to day like experiences in the new land.
With the turn of the century, society and technology evolved and so did the minstrel shows. The introduction of the television gave the shows a new platform to broadcast their content to more American audiences. While not as harsh as the shows in the 19th century’s shows, the modern minstrel shows were “vestiges of their racial stereotyping and performance aesthetics that persisted for decades in various performance mediums. ” (7).