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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Contemporary popular music > Country & western
Beginning with the musical cultures of the American South in the
1920s and 1930s, this title traces the genre through its pivotal
developments during the era of Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys
in the forties. It also describes early bluegrass' role in postwar
country music, and its trials following the appearance of rock and
roll.
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.
In 1927, nineteen bands gathered for a recording session in
Bristol, on the Tennessee-Virginia border, including some of the
most influential names in American music - the Carter Family,
Jimmie Rodgers and more. Organized by Ralph Peer for Victor records
to capitalize on the popularity of ""hillbilly"" music, the Bristol
Sessions were a key moment in country music's evolution. The
musicians played a variety of styles largely endemic to the
mountain region. Rather than traditional sounds, Peer sought a
combination of their elements, an amalgam that would form the
backbone of modern country music. The reverberations of the Bristol
Sessions are still felt today, yet their influence is widely
misunderstood, and popular accounts of the event are more legend
than history. These 19 essays offer an examination and reevaluation
of the Bristol Sessions - from their germination, to the actual
sessions, to their place in history and continuing influence. The
first section discusses technological advances that resulted in the
unmatched quality of the Bristol recordings. The second examines
the people and bands involved, including Peer, responsible for many
of the mistruths long attached to the event. The third gives
first-hand accounts of the Bristol Sessions, while the fourth
presents musicological studies of two of the prominent acts. The
final section details subsequent recording sessions in Bristol and
nearby Johnson City, and explores the lasting local musical legacy.
This original collection of essays by experts in the field weave
together the first comprehensive examination of Nevada-born Willy
Vlautin's novels and songs, as well as featuring 11 works of art
that accompany his albums and books. Brutally honest, raw, gritty,
down to earth, compassionate and affecting, Willy Vlautin's writing
evokes a power in not only theme, but in methodology. Vlautin's
novels, The Motel Life, Northline, Lean on Pete and The Free
(2006-2014) chart the dispossessed lives of young people struggling
to survive in difficult economic times and in regions of the U.S.
West and Pacific Northwest traditionally viewed as affluent and
abundant. Yet as his work shows, are actually highly stratified and
deprived. Likewise, Vlauntin's songs, penned as lead singer of the
Americana band Richmond Fontaine chart a related territory of
blue-collar landscapes of the American West and Northwest with a
strong emphasis on narrative and affective soundscapes evocative of
the similar worlds defined in his novels. Featuring an interview
with Vlautin himself, this edited collection aims to develop the
first serious, critical consideration of the important novels and
songs of Willy Vlautin by exploring relations between region,
music, and writing through the lens of critical regionality and
other interdisciplinary, cultural, and theoretical methodologies.
In so doing, it will situate his work within its regional frame of
the American New West, and particularly the city of Reno, Nevada
and the Pacific Northwest, whilst showing how he addresses wider
cultural and global issues such as economic change, immigration
shifts, gender inequality, and the loss of traditional mythic
identities. The essays take different positions in relation to
considerations of both novels and music, looking for links and
relations across genres, always mindful of their specificity. Under
the Western Sky shows how although apparently rooted in place,
Vlautin's work traces diverse lines of contemporary cultural
enquiry, engaging in an effective and troubling examination of
regional haunting.
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