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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Contemporary popular music > Country & western
In a recent poll (Harris 1996), the Statler Brothers, country and gospel music legends, were rated second only to Frank Sinatra as America's favorite singers. They are known as the most awarded act in the history of country music and are still going strong after 30 years. Their performances and the songs they write reflect where they were born--in the birthplace of gospel music, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Presented here in a clear format are the expected discography details plus additional information that Statler fans will find fun to read. This work contains the usual session and release information, single and album chart histories, television programs, awards, and indices for song titles, composers, and musicians plus extras such as album notes and Statler proverbs. This is a well-researched, documented, and concise work suitable for scholars and fans alike.
A favorite country music artist, Eddy Arnold has been recording since 1944. This work details each recording session, as well as the records on which each song appeared, and includes 104 songs that were never released. An appendix lists basic biographical information. Of interest to music historians, discographers, and fans, this is the most comprehensive discography available on Eddy Arnold, whose career spans six decades.
Jamboree To many country music fans the word conjures up memories of Saturday nights around the family radio listening to live broadcasts from that haven of hillbilly music, West Virginia. From 1926 through the 1950s, as Ivan Tribe shows in his lively history, country music radio programming made the Mountain State a mecca for country singers and instrumentalists from all over America. Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper, Little Jimmy Dickens, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Red Sovine, Blaine Smith, Curly Ray Cline, Grandpa Jones, Cowboy Loye, Rex and Eleanor Parker, Lee Moore, Buddy Starcher, Doc and Chickie Williams, and Molly O'Day were among the many who came to prominence via West Virginia radio. Wheeling's "WWVA jamboree," first broadcast in 1933, attracted a wide audience, especially after 1942, when the station increased its power. The show's success spawned numerous competitors, as new stations all over West Virginia followed WWVA's lead in headlining country music. The state also played an important role in the early recording industry. The Tweedy Brothers, Frank Hutchison, Roy Harvey, Blind Alfred Reed, Frank Welling and John McGhee, Cap and Andy, and the Kessinger Brothers were among West Virginians whose waxings contributed to the state's reputation for fine native musicianship. So too did those who sought out and recorded the Mountaineer folksong heritage. As Nashville's dominance has grown since the 1960s, West Virginia's leadership in country music has lessened. Young performers must now seek fame outside their native state. But, as Ivan Tribe demonstrates, the state's numerous outdoor festivals continue to keep alive the heritage of country music's "mountain mama."
Now available in paper with a new afterward, Kentucky Country is a lively tour of the state's indigenous music, from the days of string bands through hillbilly, western swing, gospel, bluegrass, and honkey-tonk to through the Nashville Sound and beyond. Through personal interviews with many of the living legends of Kentucky music, Charles K. Wolfe illuminates a fascinating and important area of American culture. The list of country music stars who hail from Kentucky is a long and glittering one. Red Foley, Bill Monroe, Loretta Lynn, Tom T. Hall, the Judds, Dwight Yaokum, Billy Ray Cyrus, Ricky Skaggs, John Michael Montgomery, and Keith Whitely -- all these and many others have called Kentucky home. Kentucky Country is the story of these stars and dozens more. It is also the story of many Kentucky musicians whose contributions have been little known or appreciated, and of those collectors, promoters, and entrepreneurs who have worked behind the scenes to bring Kentucky music to national attention.
Since its beginnings in the 1920s, country music has soared beyond an almost exclusively regional audience to become America's most popular form in the 1990s. Seventy years of regional modernization have framed it for broad appeal in today's popular culture. Here is a fascinating book that offers perspective on contemporary country music's stars, promoters, and fans. It probes deeply to learn how a vibrant country music culture evolved from rustic radio programs to become aggressive promotion of recording artists and an extended network of performers and fans unparalleled in other forms of popular music. Drawing upon a remarkably diverse range of sources--literary and scholarly works, fan magazines and music business publications, biographies of country music stars, recordings, radio and television programs, and motion pictures--"Country Music Culture" is based on firsthand observations of more than seventy-five live concerts and public events. It provides impressive evidence of the boundless devotion an immense audience extends to its favorite music, a music that defines the culture that produced it.
The folksongs of Texas's Mexican population pulsate with the lives of folk heroes, gringos, smugglers, generals, jailbirds, and beautiful women. In his cancionero, or songbook, Americo Paredes presents sixty-six of these songs in bilingual text--along with their music, notes on tempo and performance, and discography. Manuel Pena's new foreword situates these songs within the main currents of Mexican American music.
Offers a brief description of the life and career of the popular country and western singer, and includes interviews and an evaluation of Williams' music.
On January 13, 1968, Johnny Cash (1932-2003) took the stage at Folsom Prison in California. The concert and the live album, At Folsom Prison, propelled him to worldwide superstardom. He reached new Audiences, ignited tremendous growth in the country music industry, and connected with fans in a way no other artist has before or since. Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece, Revised and Updated is a riveting account of that day, what led to it, and what followed. Michael Streissguth skillfully places the album and the concert in the larger context of Cash's artistic development, the era's popular music, and California's prison system, uncovering new angles and exploding a few myths along the way. Scrupulously researched, rich with the author's unprecedented archival access to Folsom Prison's and Columbia Records' archives, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison shows how Cash forever became a champion of the downtrodden, as well as one of the more enduring forces in American music. This revised edition includes new images and updates throughout the volume, including previously unpublished material.
Neil V. Rosenberg met the legendary Bill Monroe at the Brown County Jamboree. Rosenberg's subsequent experiences in Bean Blossom put his feet on the intertwined musical and scholarly paths that made him a preeminent scholar of bluegrass music. Rosenberg's memoir shines a light on the changing bluegrass scene of the early 1960s. Already a fan and aspiring musician, his appetite for banjo music quickly put him on the Jamboree stage. Rosenberg eventually played with Monroe and spent four months managing the Jamboree. Those heights gave him an eyewitness view of nothing less than bluegrass's emergence from the shadow of country music into its own distinct art form. As the likes of Bill Keith and Del McCoury played, Rosenberg watched Monroe begin to share a personal link to the music that tied audiences to its history and his life--and helped turn him into bluegrass's foundational figure. An intimate look at a transformative time, Bluegrass Generation tells the inside story of how an American musical tradition came to be.
More than forty people who knew Johnny Cash best offer their rememberences of the Man in Black and provide an insider's view of the heart and soul of the friend they knew simply as John. The tapestry they weave reveals both the public and private sides of a wonderfully adept and complex man.
In the vast, sparsely populated area of West Texas known as the Big Bend, life takes place on a different scale. The nearest neighbor can be forty miles away, perhaps located not just in another town but another country, the border historically less obvious than it is today. In the small-town, bicultural atmosphere of the Big Bend, musicians from both sides of the Rio Grande come together, creating music that spans genre, culture, and international borders.From Ojinaga, Mexico, to Alpine, Texas, and most points in between, writer Marcia Hatfield Daudistel and photographer Bill Wright have gathered, through hours of interviews, a trove of anecdotes, images, and personal recollections that explore what makes music - and musicians - in the Big Bend slightly different from anything found elsewhere. Playing big band music one night for a dance at Marfa Army Air Field and border polkas the next evening at a quinceaNera; playing a traditional norteNo and conjunto but throwing in the saxophone to change the dynamic; making a living with their music or keeping their day jobs and playing when they can: these are the stories that demonstrate the cultural and musical versatility required for musicians in the Big Bend. From the porch at Terlingua's Starlight Theatre to the jukebox at Lajitas, Across the Border and Back: Music in the Big Bend features the people, the history, the local color, the venues, and, above all, the distinctive attitude that have defined music-making in this place, at once one of the most remote and most unique in the country.
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.
A No Depression Most Memorable Music Book of 2022 Roland White's long career has taken him from membership in Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys and Lester Flatt's Nashville Grass to success with his own Roland White Band. A master of the mandolin and acclaimed multi-instrumentalist, White has mentored a host of bluegrass musicians and inspired countless others. Bob Black draws on extensive interviews with White and his peers and friends to provide the first in-depth biography of the pioneering bluegrass figure. Born into a musical family, White found early success with the Kentucky Colonels during the 1960s folk revival. The many stops and collaborations that marked White's subsequent musical journey trace the history of modern bluegrass. But Black also delves into the seldom-told tale of White's life as a working musician, one who endured professional and music industry ups-and-downs to become a legendary artist and beloved teacher. An entertaining merger of memories and music history, Mandolin Man tells the overdue story of a bluegrass icon and his times.
Billy Joe Shaver wrote ten of the eleven songs included on Waylon Jennings's landmark album Honky Tonk Heroes and played a dominant role in the origins and development of the Outlaw Country movement of the 1970s. He has been named by Ray Wylie Hubbard, alongside Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, as a member of the 'holy trinity' of Texas songwriters. He has exerted a Texas-sized influence on Texas music and especially Texas singer-songwriters, and is cited as a chief inspiration by at least two generations of artists. But although his influence has been profound, Shaver has the dubious honor of becoming, according to author Courtney S. Lennon, 'country music's unsung hero.'In Live Forever: The Songwriting Legacy of Billy Joe Shaver, Lennon seeks to give Shaver the recognition his prolific output deserves. She unfolds for readers the complexity and the simplicity of the artist who wrote the songs that Brian T. Atkinson, in his foreword, calls 'peaceful and pure, complex and convoluted, mad and merciful' - the musician who wrote 'You Just Can't Beat Jesus Christ' and 'That's What She Said Last Night,' 'Honky Tonk Heroes,' and 'Get Thee Behind Me Satan.' Based on in-depth interviews with Shaver and a host of notable singer-songwriters, this book reveals and celebrates the saint and the sinner, the earthy intellectual and the hard-drinking commoner, the poet and the cowboy.
At least since the rise of the "Nashville sound" in the 1950s, Tennessee's capital city has attracted numerous books and articles offering insight into the celebrity machine known as Music City. But behind the artist in the limelight are a host of support personnel and contributors who shape the artist's music. Of these myriad occupations within the music industry, only two have received significant attention: executives at the major labels and elite songwriters who have forged a path to the top of the charts. In Making Music in Music City, sociologist John Markert compiles and assesses more than one hundred interviews with industry professionals whose roles have been less often examined: producers, publishers, songwriters, management, studio musicians, and more. The book naturally pivots around the country music industry but also discusses Nashville's role in other forms of modern music, such as rock, Christian, and rap. Markert's in-depth interviews with key music professionals provide a fresh perspective on the roles of critical players in Nashville's music industry. This book sheds light not only on the complexities of the industry and the occupational changes taking place but on the critical role of those who work behind the scenes to shape the music that ultimately reaches the public. Through firsthand accounts, Making Music in Music City analyzes just what it takes to create, produce, and disseminate the Nashville sound.
Stories and songs from a childhood spent in a vanished world of revivals and road shows Anita Faye Garner grew up in the South-just about every corner of it. She and her musical family lived in Texarkana, Bossier City, Hot Springs, Jackson, Vicksburg, Hattiesburg, Pascagoula, Bogalusa, Biloxi, Gulfport, New Orleans, and points between, picking up sticks every time her father, a Pentecostal preacher known as 'Brother Ray,' took over a new congregation. In between jump-starting churches, Brother Ray took his wife and kids out on the gospel revival circuit as the Jones Family Singers. Ray could sing and play, and 'Sister Fern' (Mama) was a celebrated singer and songwriter, possessed of both talent and beauty. Rounding out the band were the young Garner (known as Nita Faye then) and her big brother Leslie Ray. At all-day singings and tent revivals across the South, the Joneses made a joyful noise for the faithful and loaded into the car for the next stage of their tour. But growing up gospel wasn't always joyous. The kids practically raised and fended for themselves, bonding over a shared dislike of their rootless life and strict religious upbringing. Sister Fern dreamed of crossing over from gospel to popular music and recording a hit record. An unlikely combination of preacher's wife and glamorous performer, she had the talent and presence to make a splash, and her remarkable voice brought Saturday night rock and roll to Sunday morning music. Always singing, performing, and recording at the margins of commercial success, Sister Fern shared a backing band with Elvis Presley and wrote songs recorded by Johnny Cash and many other artists. In her touching memoir The Glory Road, Anita Faye Garner re-creates her remarkable upbringing. The story begins with Ray's attempts to settle down and the family's inevitable return to the gospel circuit and concludes with Sister Fern's brushes with stardom and the family's journey west to California where they finally landed-with some unexpected detours along the way. The Glory Road carries readers back to the 1950s South and the intersections of faith and family at the very roots of American popular music.
Texas singer-songwriter Hayes Carll declared, "Ray would be at the top of the list if I were gonna read about somebody's life." In The Messenger: The Songwriting Legacy of Ray Wylie Hubbard, author, journalist, and music producer Brian T. Atkinson demonstrates why Carll and so many others hold Ray Wylie Hubbard in such high regard. Atkinson takes readers into and beyond the seedy bar in Red River, New Mexico, where the incident occurred that inspired Hubbard's most famous song, "Redneck Mother." Hubbard tells the stories, and Atkinson enlists other musicians to expound on the nature of his abiding influence as songwriter, musician, and unflinching teller of uncomfortable truths. Featuring interviews with well-known artists such as Eric Church, Steve Earle, Kinky Friedman, Chris Robinson, and Jerry Jeff Walker, and also mining the insights of up-and-comers such as Elizabeth Cook, Jaren Johnston, Ben Kweller, Aaron Lee Tasjan, and Paul Thorn, The Messenger makes clear why so many musicians across a wide spectrum admire Ray Wylie Hubbard. Readers will also learn why "Redneck Mother," the song that put Hubbard on the map for most listeners, is also a curse, of sorts, in its diminution of both his spiritual depth as a lyricist and his multidimensional musical reach. As Hubbard himself says, "The song probably should have never been written, let alone recorded, let alone recorded again.. . . the most important part of songwriting is right after you write a song, ask yourself, "Can I sing this for twenty-five years?'" Atkinson's work makes a convincing case that Ray Wylie Hubbard's truest and most lasting contributions will long outlive him. And, with a couple of good breaks, they may even outlive "Redneck Mother.
During the 1940s, country music was rapidly evolving from traditional songs and string band styles to honky-tonk, western swing, and bluegrass, via radio, records, and film. The Blue Sky Boys, brothers Bill (1917-2008) and Earl (1919-1998) Bolick, resisted the trend, preferring to perform folk and parlor songs, southern hymns, and new compositions that enhanced their trademark intimacy and warmth. They were still in their teens when they became professional musicians to avoid laboring in Depression-era North Carolina cotton mills. Their instantly recognizable style was fully formed by 1936, when even their first records captured soulful harmonies accented with spare guitar and mandolin accompaniments. They inspired imitators, but none could duplicate the Blue Sky Boys' emotional appeal or their distinctive Catawba County accents. Even their last records in the 1970sretained their unique magical sound decades after other country brother duets had come and gone. In this absorbing account, Dick Spottswood combines excerpts from Bill Bolick's numerous spoken interviews and written accounts of his music, life, and career into a single narrative that presents much of the story in Bill's own voice. Spottswood reveals fascinating nuggets about broadcasting, recording, and surviving in the 1930s world of country music. He describes how the growing industry both aided and thwarted the Bolick brothers' career, and how World War II nearly finished it. The book features a complete, extensively annotated list of Blue Sky Boys songs, an updated discography that includes surviving unpublished records, and dozens of vintage photos and sheet music covers.
Believe it or not, Aggieland has witnessed a parade of musical icons over the years, each with an intriguing story attached. Picture a young Elvis Presley entertaining the Corps of Cadets at G. Rollie White Coliseum. Flash forward to the "Committee for Johnny Cash," originated by students after the country singer's post-Bonfire concert was canceled by the A&M administration amid controversy; despite official disapproval, the students brought him to perform off-campus. Revisit the sunbaked Texas World Speedway in the summer of 1974 and Willie Nelson's rowdy Fourth of July Picnic, complete with sex, drugs, and a grassfire that torched the car of a young Robert Earl Keen (who would later strike up a long-lasting friendship with fellow A&M student Lyle Lovett). Rewind to Garth Brooks landing at A&M to end an enormous 1998 world tour with three sold-out shows in the newly completed Reed Arena. And many other musical legends have produced memorable moments in the area, including Nat King Cole, R.E.M., and the Ramones. Live from Aggieland explores these stories, including photography and first-hand accounts of the shows and events. The book demonstrates how popular music has enhanced the cultural perspective of Bryan-College Station and has provided students, graduates, and residents with lasting musical memories.
In the sound of the 1960s and 1970s, nothing symbolized the rift between black and white America better than the seemingly divided genres of country and soul. Yet the music emerged from the same songwriters, musicians, and producers in the recording studios of Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee, and Muscle Shoals, Alabama--what Charles L. Hughes calls the ""country-soul triangle."" In legendary studios like Stax and FAME, integrated groups of musicians like Booker T. and the MGs and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section produced music that both challenged and reconfirmed racial divisions in the United States. Working with artists from Aretha Franklin to Willie Nelson, these musicians became crucial contributors to the era's popular music and internationally recognized symbols of American racial politics in the turbulent years of civil rights protests, Black Power, and white backlash. Hughes offers a provocative reinterpretation of this key moment in American popular music and challenges the conventional wisdom about the racial politics of southern studios and the music that emerged from them. Drawing on interviews and rarely used archives, Hughes brings to life the daily world of session musicians, producers, and songwriters at the heart of the country and soul scenes. In doing so, he shows how the country-soul triangle gave birth to new ways of thinking about music, race, labor, and the South in this pivotal period.
It remains one of the most remarkable breakthroughs in music history. The nervous and dishevelled figure who played his punk-blues song 'Dog House Boogie' before Jools Holland and his dumbstruck Hootenanny audience that New Year's Eve 2006 seemed to have emerged from nowhere. Apparently a sixty-five-year-old former hobo, Steve played his trademark threestring guitar (aka The Three-String Trance Wonder) and stomped on a wooden box with a Mississippi motorcycle plate stuck on (aka The Mississippi Drum Machine). His Norwegian studio had recently failed, he'd had a heart attack, and he was only known among a tiny community of hardcore blues fans, yet by the next morning he was famous. His album Dog House Music, recorded in his kitchen, sold out overnight. 2007 brought a MOJO, Reading and Glastonbury, and 2008 worldwide success and his major label debut. The rest, they say, is history. Or perhaps not. Everyone loved the grit and authenticity of Steve's songs about life on the road. His roots in the Deep South were celebrated across the media, and BBC Four took Steve round Mississippi for a documentary. But look a little closer, and a very different musical - and personal - journey rears its head. In this groundbreaking new biography, Matthew Wright draws on new information and some musical collaborators to create a startling life story, teasing out crucial details to turn the regular story of a hobo's wanderings in the wilderness on its head and bring Seasick Steve's life in from the cold. The real Steve was not a blue-collar amateur who got lucky, but a committed professional, steeped in a variety of ever-changing, era-defining musical traditions throughout his life, from the moment his dad played him boogie-woogie piano as a baby. This is a career that's touched an astonishing range of lives, from Albert King and Lighnin' Hopkins to Jimi Hendrix, from Janis Joplin to Kurt Cobain and Slash of Guns N' Roses. Ramblin' Man tells the tale of the extraordinary life of this musical polymath, as he wound a course through some of the most epochal moments in music history of the twentieth century. The myth was astonishing; the real story is even better.
Born in Texas and raised in Arizona Buck Owens eventually found his way to Bakersfield California. Unlike the vast majority of country singers songwriters and musicians who made their fortunes working and living in Nashville the often rebellious and always independent Owens chose to create his own brand of country music some 2 000 miles away from Music City a racking up a remarkable 21 number-one hits along the way. In the process he helped give birth to a new country sound and did more than any other individual to establish Bakersfield as a country music center.THIn the latter half of the 1990s Buck began working on his autobiography. Over the next few years he talked into the microphone of a cassette tape machine for nearly one hundred hours recording the story of his life. With his near-photographic memory Buck recalled everything from his early days wearing hand-me-down clothes in Texas to his glory years as the biggest country star of the 1960s; from his legendary Carnegie Hall concert to his multiple failed marriages; from his hilarious exploits on the road to the tragic loss of his musical partner and best friend Don Rich; from his days as the host of a local TV show in Tacoma Washington to his co-hosting the network television show EHee HawE; and from his comeback hit Streets of Bakersfield to his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame.THIn these pages Buck also shows his astute business acumen having been among the first country artists to create his own music publishing company. He also tells of negotiating the return of all of his Capitol master recordings his acquisition of numerous radio stations and of his conceiving and building the Crystal Palace one of the most venerated musical venues in the country.
Country music evokes a simple, agrarian past, with images of open land and pickup trucks. While some might think of the genre as a repository of nostalgia, popular because it preserves and reveres traditional values, Jeremy Hill argues that country music has found such expansive success because its songs and its people have forcefully addressed social and cultural issues as well as geographic change. Hill demonstrates how the genre and its fans developed a flexible idea of ""country,"" beyond their rural roots, and how this flexibility allowed fans and music to ""come to town,"" to move into and within urban spaces, while retaining a country ""character."" To understand how the genre has become the far-reaching commercial phenomenon that it is today, Hill explores how various players within the country music fold have grappled with the notion of place. He shows both how the industry has transformed the city of Nashville and how country music -- through song lyrics, imagery associated with the music, and branding -- has reshaped ideas about the American landscape and character. As the genre underwent significant change in the last decades of the twentieth century, those who sought to explain its new styles and new locations relied on a traditional theme: ""You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy."" Hill demonstrates how this idea -- that you can still be ""country"" while no longer living in a rural place -- has been used to expand country's commercial appeal and establish a permanent home in the urban space of Nashville.
Relying on facts, opinions and personal testimonies from the artists themselves, this book takes a detailed look at the huge impact that Mexican music and culture has had - and continues to have - on Country music in its various forms. Although this very American cultural expression has changed significantly over the last few years, Mexico - with its border towns, beaches, colonial architecture and ancient ruins conjuring up a range of powerful images - has remained an influential presence in Nashville, Texas, and even places like Australia and South Africa. Featuring contributions from Merle Haggard, Jimmy Buffett, Randy Travis, Dwight Yoakam, Jessi Colter, Johnny Rodriguez and Flaco Jimenez, this book lifts the lid on the unique and largely undocumented relationship between "America's Music" and Mexico. |
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