In The Country Music Reader Travis D. Stimeling provides an anthology of primary source readings from newspapers, magazines, and fan ephemera encompassing the history of country music from circa 1900 to the present. Presenting conversations that have shaped historical understandings of country music, it brings the voices of country artists and songwriters, music industry insiders, critics, and fans together in a vibrant conversation about a widely loved yet seldom studied genre of American popular music. Situating each source chronologically within its specific musical or cultural context, Stimeling traces the history of country music from the fiddle contests and ballad collections of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the most recent developments in contemporary country music. Drawing from a vast array of sources including popular magazines, fan newsletters, trade publications, and artist biographies, The Country Music Reader offers firsthand insight into the changing role of country music within both the music industry and American musical culture, and presents a rich resource for university students, popular music scholars, and country music fans alike.

In the nearly eight decades since his death from tuberculosis at age thirty-five, singer-songwriter Jimmie Rodgers has been an inspiration for numerous top performers--from Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Bill Monroe and Hank Williams to Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Bob Dylan, and Beck. How did this Mississippi-born vaudevillian, a former railroad worker who performed so briefly so long ago, produce tones, tunes, and themes that have had such broad influence and made him the model for the way American roots music stars could become popular heroes?
In Meeting Jimmie Rodgers, the first book to explore the deep legacy of "The Singing Brakeman" from a twenty-first century perspective, Barry Mazor offers a lively look at Rodgers' career, tracing his rise from working-class obscurity to the pinnacle of renown that came with such hits as "Blue Yodel" and "In the Jailhouse Now." As Mazor shows, Rodgers brought emotional clarity and a unique sense of narrative drama to every song he performed, whether tough or sentimental, comic or sad. His wistful singing, falsetto yodels, bold flat-picking guitar style, and sometimes censorable themes---sex, crime, and other edgy topics--set him apart from most of his contemporaries. But more than anything else, Mazor suggests, it was Rodgers' shape-shifting ability to assume many public personas--working stiff, decked-out cowboy, suave ladies' man--that connected him to such a broad public and set the stage for the stars who followed him.
Mazor goes beyond Rodgers's own life to map the varied places his music has gone, forever changing not just country music but also rock and roll, blues, jazz, bluegrass, Western, commercial folk, and muchmore. In reconstructing this far-flung legacy, Mazor enables readers to meet Rodgers and his music anew--not as an historical figure, but as a vibrant, immediate force.

Country music in the Carolinas and the southern Appalachian Mountains owes a tremendous debt to freedom-loving Scotch-Irish pioneers who settled the southern backcountry during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These hardy Protestant settlers brought with them from Lowland Scotland, Northern England and the Ulster Province of Ireland music that created the essential framework for "old-time string band music." From the cabins of the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains to the textile mills and urban centers of the Carolina foothills, this colorful, passionate, heartfelt music transformed the culture of America and the world and laid the foundation for western swing, bluegrass, rockabilly and modern country music. Author Michael Scoggins takes a trip to the roots of country music in the Carolinas.

On New Year's Day 1953, Hank Williams-numbed by a deadly combination of whiskey and narcotics-died in the back seat of his Cadillac en route to a performance in Canton, Ohio. He was only twenty nine years old at the time of his death and his passing appeared to bring his rags-to-riches success and destructive lifestyle to an abrupt end. Few figures before or since have cast as long or as broad a shadow over American popular music. Today, Hank Williams is considered by many to be the greatest singer and songwriter in the history of country music, and it is the combination of his remarkable musical achievements, his tumultuous personal life, and his tragic and still-mysterious demise that make him such a compelling historical figure. As volume demonstrates, Williams's death was the beginning of an equally gripping second act: for more than sixty years, an ever-lengthening parade of journalists, family and friends, musical contemporaries, biographers, historians and scholars, fans, and novelists have attempted to capture in words the man, the artist, and the legend. The Hank Williams Reader, the first book of its kind devoted to this giant of American music, collects more than sixty of the most compelling, insightful, and historically significant of these writings. The selections cover a broad assortment of themes and perspectives, ranging from heartfelt reminiscences and shocking tabloid exposes to thoughtful meditations and critical essays. Featured authors include Hank Williams, Jr., Bob Dylan, Steve Earle, David Halberstam, Greil Marcus, Rick Bragg, and Lee Smith, to name but a few. The Hank Williams Reader also features a lengthy interpretive introduction and the most extensive bibliography of Williams-related writings ever published. Over time, writers have sought to explain Williams in a variety of ways, and in tracing these shifting interpretations, this anthology chronicles his cultural transfiguration from star-crossed hillbilly singer to enduring American icon.

“Sy bly nog steeds ná 50 jaar in die vermaaklikheidsbedryf ’n nooi soos Min!” – André H. van Dyk

In hierdie pragboek word foto’s en memento’s uit Min Shaw se persoonlike fotoalbums en plakboeke opgeneem. Min se herinneringe aan haar kinderdae, haar transformasie van onderwyseres tot sang- en filmster, en die mense wat haar op haar pad na sukses gehelp het, word in haar eie woorde weergegee. Min deel verder snaakse staaltjies uit haar verlede, skoonheidsgeheime en interessante “Min-feite”. Sy vertel hoe haar geloof haar positief en plat op die aarde hou. Boodskappe aan Min van bekendes soos Corlea Botha, Franz Marx, Lance James en Leon van Nierop word ook ingesluit.

Before he achieved his dream of being an internationally known rock personality, Ryan Adams had a band in Raleigh, North Carolina. Whiskeytown led the wave of insurgent-country bands that came of age with No Depression magazine in the mid-1990s, and for many people it defined the era. Adams was an irrepressible character, one of the signature personalities of his generation, and as a singer-songwriter he blew people away with a mature talent that belied his youth. David Menconi witnessed most of Whiskeytown's rocket ride to fame as the music critic for the Raleigh News & Observer, and in Ryan Adams, he tells the inside story of the singer's remarkable rise from hardscrabble origins to success with Whiskeytown, as well as Adams's post-Whiskeytown self-reinvention as a solo act. Menconi draws on early interviews with Adams, conversations with people close to him, and Adams's extensive online postings to capture the creative ferment that produced some of Adams's best music, including the albums Strangers Almanac and Heartbreaker. He reveals that, from the start, Ryan Adams had an absolutely determined sense of purpose and unshakable confidence in his own worth. At the same time, his inability to hold anything back, whether emotions or torrents of songs, often made Adams his own worst enemy, and Menconi recalls the excesses that almost, but never quite, derailed his career. Ryan Adams is a fascinating, multifaceted portrait of the artist as a young man, almost famous and still inventing himself, writing songs in a blaze of passion.

In this ethnography of Navajo (Dine) popular music culture, Kristina M. Jacobsen examines questions of Indigenous identity and performance by focusing on the surprising and vibrant Navajo country music scene. Through multiple first-person accounts, Jacobsen illuminates country music's connections to the Indigenous politics of language and belonging, examining through the lens of music both the politics of difference and many internal distinctions Dine make among themselves and their fellow Navajo citizens. As the second largest tribe in the United States, the Navajo have often been portrayed as a singular and monolithic entity. Using her experience as a singer, lap steel player, and Navajo language learner, Jacobsen challenges this notion, showing the ways Navajos distinguish themselves from one another through musical taste, linguistic abilities, geographic location, physical appearance, degree of Navajo or Indian blood, and class affiliations. By linking cultural anthropology to ethnomusicology, linguistic anthropology, and critical Indigenous studies, Jacobsen shows how Navajo poetics and politics offer important insights into the politics of Indigeneity in Native North America, highlighting the complex ways that identities are negotiated in multiple, often contradictory, spheres.

Essays that overthrow stereotypes and demonstrate the genre's power and mystique. Contributions by Georgia Christgau, Alexander S. Dent, Leigh H. Edwards, Caroline Gnagy, Kate Heidemann, Nadine Hubbs, Jocelyn Neal, Ase Ottosson, Travis Stimeling, Matthew D. Sutton, and Chris Wilson Country music boasts a long tradition of rich, contradictory gender dynamics, creating a world where Kitty Wells could play the demure housewife and the honky-tonk angel simultaneously, Dolly Parton could move from traditionalist ""girl singer"" to outspoken trans rights advocate, and current radio playlists can alternate between the reckless masculinity of bro-country and the adolescent girlishness of Taylor Swift. In this follow-up volume to A Boy Named Sue, some of the leading authors in the field of country music studies reexamine the place of gender in country music, considering the ways country artists and listeners have negotiated gender and sexuality through their music and how gender has shaped the way that music is made and heard. In addition to shedding new light on such legends as Wells, Parton, Loretta Lynn, and Charley Pride, it traces more recent shifts in gender politics through the performances of such contemporary luminaries as Swift, Gretchen Wilson, and Blake Shelton. The book also explores the intersections of gender, race, class, and nationality in a host of less expected contexts, including the prisons of WWII-era Texas, where the members of the Goree All-Girl String Band became the unlikeliest of radio stars; the studios and offices of Plantation Records, where Jeannie C. Riley and Linda Martell challenged the social hierarchies of a changing South in the 1960s; and the burgeoning cities of present-day Brazil, where ""college country"" has become one way of negotiating masculinity in an age of economic and social instability.

A pianist, arranger, and composer, William Pursell is a mainstay of the Nashville music scene. He has played jazz in Nashville's Printer's Alley with Chet Atkins and Harold Bradley, recorded with Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline, performed with the Nashville Symphony, and composed and arranged popular and classical music. Pursell's career, winding like a crooked river between classical and popular genres, encompasses a striking diversity of musical experiences. A series of key choices sent him down different paths, whether it was reenrolling with the Air Force for a second tour of duty, leaving the prestigious Eastman School of Music to tour with an R&B band, or refusing to sign with the Beatles' agent Sid Bernstein. The story of his life as a working musician is unlike any other-he is not a country musician nor a popular musician nor a classical musician but, instead, an artist who refused to be limited by traditional categories. Crooked River City is driven by a series of recollections and personal anecdotes Terry Wait Klefstad assembled over a three-year period of interviews with Pursell. His story is one not only of talent, but of dedication and hard work, and of the ins and outs of a working musician in America. This biography fills a crucial gap in Nashville music history for both scholars and music fans.

Bill Anderson is one of the most successful songwriters, performers, and personalities in country music history. Known as "Whisperin' Bill" to generations of fans, Anderson's soft vocalisations and spoken lyrics are the hallmarks of his style. A long-standing member of the weekly Grand Ole Opry radio program and stage performance in Nashville, he also discovered future Country Music Hall of Famer Connie Smith and wrote her first hits, toured with Johnny Cash, hosted his own television show, sang eighty charting singles and thirty-seven Top Ten country music hits, and wrote songs recorded by James Brown, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Louvin Brothers, Dean Martin, Aretha Franklin, and many more. Anderson's current and reinvigorated career is covered in this revision and expansion of his 1989 autobiography. Over the past twenty years, he has won two Country Music Association Song of the Year prizes, been nominated for GRAMMY awards, won the Academy of Country Music's Song of the Year distinction, and had works recorded by superstars Brad Paisley, Kenny Chesney, Alison Krauss, George Strait, Vince Gill, Elvis Costello, and many more. In 2001, he entered the Country Music Hall of Fame. Whisperin' Bill: An Unprecedented Life in Country Music presents a portrait of a long-gone Nashville and introduces readers to the famous and fascinating characters who helped build what is now known as country music. Richly illustrated with black-and-white photos of Anderson interacting with the superstars of American roots music, including such legends as Patsy Cline, Vince Gill, and Steve Wariner, this autobiography highlights Anderson's trajectory in the business and his influence on the past, present, and future of this dynamic genre.

Today, country music enjoys a national fan base that transcends both economic and social boundaries. Sixty years ago, however, it was primarily the music of rural, working-class whites living in the South and was perceived by many Americans as hillbilly music. In Smile When You Call Me a Hillbilly, Jeffrey J. Lange examines the 1940s and early 1950s as the most crucial period in country music s transformation from a rural, southern folk art form to a national phenomenon. In his meticulous analysis of changing performance styles and alterations in the lifestyles of listeners, Lange illuminates the acculturation of country music and its audience into the American mainstream. Dividing country music into six subgenres (progressive country, western swing, postwar traditional, honky-tonk, country pop, and country blues), Lange discusses the music s expanding appeal. As he analyzes the recordings and comments of each of the subgenre s most significant artists, including Roy Acuff, Bob Wills, Bill Monroe, Hank Williams, and Red Foley, he traces the many paths the musical form took on its road to respectability. Lange shows how along the way the music and its audience became more sophisticated, how the subgenres blended with one another and with American popular music, and how Nashville emerged as the country music hub. By 1954, the transformation from hillbilly music to country music was complete, precipitated by the modernizing forces of World War II and realized by the efforts of promoters, producers, and performers.

Each year over 7,000,000 visitors come to Branson, Missouri. The town is home to over 100 shows and attractions ranging from country to pop, big band to magic. This book takes a look at a cross section of people who make Branson's entertainment community unique, from its pioneer entertainers to the superstars who've made the town their home to the performers who delight visitors day and night in theaters, restaurants and theme parks. It tells the story of a fruit truck driver who turned a vacant piece of land into a multi-million dollar entertainment mecca, a truck stop waitress from South Dakota who found the perfect place to wait tables while pursuing a singing and recording career, a country music superstar who tried to avoid Branson but eventually opened his own theater on the city's 76 Country Boulevard and others who have helped make the music show capital unique in all the world. Their stories are seen through the eyes of a veteran broadcaster who has spent thousands of hours over three decades interviewing hundreds of artists, business leaders and fans. His unique insights give an intimate account of the lives of these fascinating personalities.