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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Contemporary popular music > Country & western
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.
(String Letter Publishing). Learn the fundamentals of bluegrass by
exploring its various styles and the masters who defined the genre:
Doc Watson, Clarence White, and Norman Blake. The book includes
background information, instruction and 12 classic songs,
including: Greenback Dollar * Kingdom Come * Lonesome Old River *
Midnight on the Stormy Deep * Up the Creek * Whiskey Before
Breakfast * and more. The CD includes demos of the exercises and
songs.
In August 1967, "Ode to Billie Joe," a B-side throwaway performed
by a total unknown, knocked the Beatles' "All You Need is Love" out
of the Billboard chart's top slot. Listeners obsessed over the
mysteries ensnarled in the song's haunting refrain: Billie Joe
McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge. Why did Billie Joe
kill himself? Is he the narrator's secret lover? Fans also wanted
to know: Who is this glamorous young woman who could boil air with
just a parlor guitar and voice low as the Mississippi moon? That is
a mystery as deep as the Tallahatchie's rushing water. Less than 10
years after bursting onto the world's stage with an album that
scored an unprecedented trifecta on the Pop, Country and Black
charts, the woman born Roberta Lee Streeter vanished from the
spotlight. This much we know: Gentry was an artistic polymath and
astute businesswoman. After "Ode," she wrote more music, DJed a
radio program, hosted a TV show and started her own publishing
company. Disenchanted with the record business, she produced
spectacular Las Vegas shows, writing the music, choreographing the
routines and designing the costumes. But despite working herself to
exhaustion, Gentry was unable to replicate the commercial sales of
her debut, and she disappeared. Bobbie Gentry has not been seen in
public for over 30 years. With unprecedented access to a treasure
trove of Gentry's memorabilia, Murtha excavates the mysteries of
"Ode to Billie Joe," in terms of both the record's production and
the effect of its success on Gentry. With input from the artist's
collaborators and contemporaries, Murtha argues that though Gentry
has every right to vanish, her role as a pioneering woman in the
music industry should not.
Soul music and country music propel American popular culture. Using
ethnomusicological tools, Shonekan examines their socio-cultural
influences and consequences: the perception of and resistance to
hegemonic structures from within their respective constituencies,
the definition of national identity, and the understanding of the
'American Dream.'
Contrary to popular belief, the roots of American country music do
not lie solely on southern farms or in mountain hollows. Rather,
much of this music recorded before World War II emerged from the
bustling cities and towns of the Piedmont South. No group
contributed more to the commercialization of early country music
than southern factory workers. In Linthead Stomp, Patrick Huber
explores the origins and development of this music in the
Piedmont's mill villages. Huber offers vivid portraits of a
colorful cast of Piedmont millhand musicians, including Fiddlin'
John Carson, Charlie Poole, Dave McCarn, and the Dixon Brothers,
and considers the impact that urban living, industrial work, and
mass culture had on their lives and music. Drawing on a broad range
of sources, including rare 78-rpm recordings and unpublished
interviews, Huber reveals how the country music recorded between
1922 and 1942 was just as modern as the jazz music of the same era.
Linthead Stomp celebrates the Piedmont millhand fiddlers,
guitarists, and banjo pickers who combined the collective memories
of the rural countryside with the upheavals of urban-industrial
life to create a distinctive American music that spoke to the
changing realities of the twentieth-century South.
Can you feel nostalgic for a life you've never known? Suffused with
her much-loved warmth and wit, Emma John's memoir follows her
moving and memorable journey to master one of the hardest musical
styles on earth - and to find her place in an alien world. Emma had
fallen out of love with her violin when a chance trip to the
American South introduced her to bluegrass music. Classically
trained, highly strung and wedded to London life, Emma was about as
country as a gin martini. So why did it feel like a homecoming?
Answering that question takes Emma deep into the Appalachian
mountains, where she uncovers a hidden culture that confounds every
expectation - and learns some emotional truths of her own.
A musician, documentarian, scholar, and one of the founding members
of the influential folk revival group the New Lost City Ramblers,
Mike Seeger (1933-2009) spent more than fifty years collecting,
performing, and commemorating the culture and folk music of white
and black southerners, which he called ""music from the true
vine."" In this fascinating biography, Bill Malone explores the
life and musical contributions of folk artist Seeger, son of
musicologists Charles and Ruth Crawford Seeger and brother of
folksingers Pete and Peggy Seeger. Malone argues that Seeger, while
not as well known as his brother, may be more important to the
history of American music through his work in identifying and
giving voice to the people from whom the folk revival borrowed its
songs. Seeger recorded and produced over forty albums, including
the work of artists such as Libba Cotten, Tommy Jarrell, Dock
Boggs, and Maybelle Carter. In 1958, with an ambition to recreate
the southern string bands of the twenties, he formed the New Lost
City Ramblers, helping to inspire the urban folk revival of the
sixties. Music from the True Vine presents Seeger as a gatekeeper
of American roots music and culture, showing why generations of
musicians and fans of traditional music regard him as a mentor and
an inspiration.
Contrary to popular belief, the roots of American country music do
not lie solely on southern farms or in mountain hollows. Rather,
much of this music recorded before World War II emerged from the
bustling cities and towns of the Piedmont South. No group
contributed more to the commercialization of early country music
than southern factory workers. In Linthead Stomp, Patrick Huber
explores the origins and development of this music in the
Piedmont's mill villages. Huber offers vivid portraits of a
colorful cast of Piedmont millhand musicians, including Fiddlin'
John Carson, Charlie Poole, Dave McCarn, and the Dixon Brothers,
and considers the impact that urban living, industrial work, and
mass culture had on their lives and music. Drawing on a broad range
of sources, including rare 78-rpm recordings and unpublished
interviews, Huber reveals how the country music recorded between
1922 and 1942 was just as modern as the jazz music of the same era.
Linthead Stomp celebrates the Piedmont millhand fiddlers,
guitarists, and banjo pickers who combined the collective memories
of the rural countryside with the upheavals of urban-industrial
life to create a distinctive American music that spoke to the
changing realities of the twentieth-century South.
When George Jones recorded "He Stopped Loving Her Today" more
than thirty years ago, he was a walking disaster. Twin addictions
to drugs and alcohol had him drinking Jim Beam by the case and
snorting cocaine as long as he was awake. Before it was over, Jones
would be bankrupt, homeless, and an unwilling patient at an Alabama
mental institution. In the midst of all this chaos, uber producer
Billy Sherrill--the man who discovered Tammy Wynette and co-wrote
"Stand by Your Man"--would somehow coax the performance of a
lifetime out of the mercurial Jones. The result was a country
masterpiece.
In "He Stopped Loving Her Today," the story behind the making of
the song often voted the best country song ever by both critics and
fans, offers an overview of country music's origins and a search
for the music's illusive Holy Grail: authenticity. The schizoid
bottom line--even though country music is undeniably a branch of
the make-believe world of show biz, to fans and scholars alike,
authenticity remains the ultimate measure of the music's
power."
There is a stream that courses through American roots music. Its
source is in the Appalachian foothills in a place called Maces
Springs, Virginia. It was there that A.P. Carter, his wife Sara,
and his sister-in-law Maybelle began their careers as three of the
earliest stars of country music. These three didn't just play the
music emerging from their hill country upbringing. They helped
invent it. The stream these three created turned into a rushing
river and moved through several generations of musicians, most
notably touching the life of one Johnny Cash who first heard the
Carters - including a young June Carter - over the airwaves. It was
a wonderful twist of fate when Cash, as a Sun Records artist, first
met Mother Maybelle and her girls. the Carter Sisters. and vowed to
June that "I'm gonna marry you someday." The Winding Stream is an
oral history that tells the tale of this important music dynasty.
In their own words, family and friends, musicians and historians
offer first-hand recollections and insightful observations that
illuminate the Carter and Cash contributions to American popular
culture.
A collection of common Texas style fiddle tunes, arranged for the
mandolin.
Every now and then, a song inspires a cultural conversation that
ends up looking like a brawl. Merle Haggard's Okie from Muskogee,
released in 1969, is a prime example of that important role of
popular music. Okie immediately helped to frame an ongoing
discussion about region and class, pride and politics, culture and
counterculture. But the conversation around the song, useful as it
was, drowned out the song itself, not to mention the other songs on
the live album-named for Okie and performed in Muskogee-that
Haggard has carefully chosen to frame what has turned out to be his
most famous song. What are the internal clues for gleaning the
intended meaning of Okie? What is the pay-off of the anti-fandom
that Okie sparked (and continues to spark) in some quarters? How
has the song come to be a shorthand for expressing all manner of
anti-working class attitudes? What was Haggard's artistic path to
that stage in Oklahoma, and how did he come to shape the industry
so profoundly at the moment when urban country singers were playing
a major role on the American social and political landscape?
Its strains may be haunting, but western swing is alive and on the
upswing, enjoying a renaissance among musicians too young to recall
or even comprehend its heyday. For them, the term may evoke the
nationally known country music of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys
and the Spade Cooley Band. Yet on the local level, western swing
bands dominated the airways and dance halls in every town and rural
setting throughout the Southwest in the 1930s and by the 1940s had
spread their influence and music to California. Jean A. Boyd
presents the history and music of those bands that did not garner
national fame, but were local sensations to thousands of
southwesterners hungry for diversion and good dancing during the
depression and World War II. Devoted fans who travel the festival
circuit will surely appreciate the histories and recollections Boyd
has carefully compiled, while musicologists will welcome her
musical analysis and her transcriptions of recorded performances.
Performers, as well, may learn new licks and tricks from the
ubiquitous swing jazz artists of a time not yet forgotten,
preserved here for another generation's enjoyment and edification.
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