Kris Kristofferson is one of country music's most illustrious singer-songwriters. Seemingly destined for a distinguished military career, ex-Golden Gloves boxer and Rhodes scholar Kristofferson gave it all up to sweep floors in Nashville, began to pitch his songs to his musical heroes and finally became a star himself. Stephen Miller's biography perfectly captures the spirit of a single-minded but multi-talented man who has been inducted into both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. It details the 100 films Kristofferson has been in to date and talks about the people who he worked with including Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan to Barbra Streisand and Martin Scorcese and Sam Peckinpah. The story if brought right up to date as Kristofferson carries on working following heart bypass surgery and the death of his friends and fellow performers including Johnny Cash, The Highwaymen and Waylon Jennings.

"Fans of Arnold's mellow music will appreciate the intensely detailed record of his private life and public career. Others may find the vivid picture of country music's early decades (the many small-town radio stations and deejays that supported the music, the backroads tours, the struggling record labels) quite intriguing." --"Kirkus Reviews"

Illustrated with fifty-four photographs and featuring a comprehensive discography and sessionography, this book traces Eddy Arnold's origins from a cotton farm in western Tennessee to his legendary status in the world of country music. Michael Streissguth covers Arnold's success as a top-selling artist in the 1940s and 1950s and his temporary wane as listeners gravitated toward the rock & roll sound, embodied by newcomer Elvis Presley. Arnold (1918-2008) kept recording, however, and working on his craft. By the mid-60s, he reemerged as a pop crooner with his hit song "Make the World Go Away." His blend of country sentiments and pop stylings created the template for Nashville's modern country music sound. Throughout his career he was a major concert attraction and a radio and television star. Few other figures can claim to have had as great an influence on contemporary country and popular arranging.

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.

"Listening to the Beat of the Bomb" UPK author Charles Wolfe discusses his work and his new book Country Music Goes to War in the NEW YORK TIMES. While Toby Keith suggests that Americans should unite in support of the president, the Dixie Chicks assert their right to criticize the current administration and its military pursuits. Country songs about war are nearly as old as the genre itself, and the first gold record in country music went to the 1942 war song "There's a Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere" by Elton Britt. The essays in Country Music Goes to War demonstrate that country musicians' engagement with significant political and military issues is not strictly a twenty-first-century phenomenon. The contributors examine the output of country musicians responding to America's large-scale confrontation in recent history: World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, the cold war, September 11, and both conflicts in the Persian Gulf. They address the ways in which country songs and artists have energized public discourse, captured hearts, and inspired millions of minds. Charles K. Wolfe, professor of English and folklore at Middle Tennessee State University, is the author of numerous books and articles on music. James E. Akenson, professor of curriculum and instruction at Tennessee Technological University, is the founder of the International Country Music Conference. Together they have edited the collections The Women of Country Music, Country Music Annual 2000, Country Music Annual 2001, and Country Music Annual 2002.

Dolly Parton is the most famous person ever to have emerged from the American country music scene with her iconic cartoon image - mountainous blonde wigs, pumped up breasts and dazzling outfits. This is the first new and substantial biography for over 15 years. This book includes interviews with family members, musicians and producers who have worked with her over the years. It includes a detailed assessment of her music, as a songwriter and singer over the last forty years. It shows how she shrugged aside the male dominated world of Nashville in the 1960s, to take hold of her career, sell millions of albums and appear in films with Jane Fonda, Burt Reynolds and Sylvester Stallone. It will throw new light on her private life - her mysterious and closely guarded relationships with her husband Carl Dean and her lifelong friend Judy Ogle and her obsession with cosmetic surgery.

Texas Country Singers contains brief biographies of twenty-seven Texas singers. The artists chosen are traditional country singers like Ernest Tubb, Lefty Frizzell, Hank Thompson, Willie Nelson, and Ray Price. The authors have not included rockabilly artists, modern country-pop singers, singers of local or regional reputation, or singers of purely western songs. The twenty-seven singers are Texas born, admittedly an artificial discrimination, but one made necessary by the size of these small books.The authors include some almost forgotten names like Vernon Dalhart, the earliest Texas country singer to make a national name, and Moon Mullican, a singer/pianist who influenced Jerry Lee Lewis and other piano playing singers. Fans with long memories won't forget Adolph Hofner, Tommy Duncan, Milton Brown, and Stuart Hamblen (who once came in fourth in a race for President of the United States). And everyone still remembers Gene Autry, Jim Reeves, Tex Ritter, Buck Owens, Waylon Jennings, Tanya Tucker, Lee Ann Womack, and the contemporary king of Texas country, George Strait. Each sketch includes the best-known songs, as well as the awards and honors each earned.

In the last century, authors and psychologists like Robert Graves, Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell reminded us that folklore is often full of deep symbolic truths, truths that the 'folk' themselves are usually unaware of. And they also taught us - just as Plato did, 2400 years ago -- that myth and folklore constitute a 'philosophical' language, where images (as in dreams, holy icons, and symbolic poetry) can carry a great burden of meaning. Few seem to realize, however, that certain works of art conventionally considered to be unconscious products of the 'folk imagination' were quite consciously and deliberately constructed, by highly-informed individuals, to transmit specific items of spiritual lore. Among these 'few' was Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, who said: The content of folklore is metaphysical. Our failure to recognize this is primarily due to our own abysmal ignorance of metaphysics and of its technical terms.. The true folklorist must be not so much a psychologist as a theologian and metaphysician, if he is to 'understand his material'.. Traditional man lived in a natural environment he could read like a book - a book written in primordial symbols of Divine Reality (the Sun, the Rain, the Mountain, the Eagle) - as well as in a man-made environment that was in large part deliberately constructed to remind him of that Reality, and teach him the nature of it (just as our own human world, with its 'weapons of mass distraction', seems ingeniously contrived to make us forget it). Through song, dance, gesture, poetry, architecture, proverbs, jokes, riddles, stories, games, toys, medicine, painting, sculpture, weapons, tools, scriptures, sacred rites, and the traditional forms and rhythms of daily life, we were always in the presence of reminders of the Sacred; all fingers (or almost all) pointed to the Moon. That deliberately-constructed sacred environment is now largely a thing of the past. Dedicated artists may work to keep traditional arts and crafts alive, but the cultural context that could reveal their relevance and tap their spiritual power is usually missing; even the 'folk memory' itself has now largely been replaced by the Internet. However, it is still possible to approach ancient artistic constructions, like the traditional ballads which are the subject of this book, in spiritually fruitful ways. The great myths, such as are transmitted by certain 'folk' songs, were received in the Age of Revelation -- now, however, we live in the Age of Exegesis. As the profound meanings of these songs are unwrapped, they escape from our hands like freed birds, back to the Source they came from. And they challenge us to follow them.

"Ragging It" takes the reader on a lively, historical journey back to the days of vaudeville, fancy women, amusement parks, lynch mobs, saloons, and cabarets--a time when the upbeat music of ragtime was a craze that permeated our culture.

Author H. Loring White, a former history professor, focuses on the vastly contrasting biographies of Theodore Roosevelt and Scott Joplin, while showcasing the uniqueness of ragtime--the first popular syncopated music of the masses. In 1900, times began to move more quickly. With citizens no longer isolated on farms, ragtime was eagerly accepted by the world's first generation of popular culture, which also reveled in cakewalks; coon songs; and animal dances, such as the Grizzly Bear, Turkey Trot, and Bunny Hug. White recounts true stories about show business, political events, the repression of African-Americans, the world's fairs, and the triumphs of technology.

Although ragtime disappeared abruptly in just a few years with the emergence of jazz, White never lets you forget the vital role that ragtime played in the Progressive Era of American culture. With its new and vital interpretation of the Roosevelt era, he will take you back to a lively time in history when everyone was "Ragging It"

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 aculturation 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.

From the smiling, sentimental mothers portrayed in 1930s radio barn dance posters, to the sexual shockwaves generated by Elvis Presley, to the female superstars redefining contemporary country music, gender roles and imagery have profoundly influenced the ways country music is made and enjoyed. Proper male and female roles have influenced the kinds of sounds and images that could be included in country music; preconceptions of gender have helped to determine the songs and artists audiences would buy or reject; and gender has shaped the identities listeners made for themselves in relation to the music they revered.

This interdisciplinary collection of essays is the first book-length effort to examine how gender conventions, both masculine and feminine, have structured the creation and marketing of country music. The essays explore the uses of gender in creating the personas of stars as diverse as Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline, and Shania Twain. The authors also examine how deeply conventions have influenced the institutions and everyday experiences that give country music its image: the popular and fan press, the country music industry in Nashville, and the line dance crazes that created the dance hall boom of the 1990s.

From Hank Thompson's "The Wild Side of Life" to Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue," from Tammy Wynette's "Stand by Your Man" to Loretta Lynn's ode to birth control, "The Pill," "A Boy Named Sue" demonstrates the role gender played in the development of country music and its current prominence.

Kristine M. McCusker is a professor of history at Middle Tennessee State University.

Diane Pecknold is an independent scholar in Chicago, Illinois.

The histories of baseball and country music ran in parallel tracks through most of the twentieth century. America's sport and America's music moved from the fringes to the mainstream, gaining exposure and building heroes, first via radio broadcasts and then on the television screen. Both evolved with American society through wartime, the Civil Rights movement, and into the age of multimillion dollar superstars. Don Cusic offers an engaging and insightful analysis that addresses race, gender, class, ethnicity, business practices and marketing, performance, media, and the cult of celebrity.

For the past half century, Ralph Emery's incredibly popular radio and television programs have allowed millions to tune into the newest hits and savor their old favorites. Now Ralph combines his unique perspective with an encyclopedic wealth of country lore as he examines the changing face of the music he loves. From Hank Williams, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, and Johnny Cash to Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, and the Dixie Chicks, he chronicles the lives and careers of the stars, many of them his close friends. He shows how country music has changed over the years, but also reveals how its eternal themes and timeless melodies have kept this quintessentially American genre alive and well for fans of all ages.

Willie Nelson is more than just a singer whose albums have captures this country's imagination for more than thirty years: he is the nearest thing we have to the poet laureate of America's heart and the heartland. Told with frankness, warmth and earthy humor, here is Willie's story: his depression ere childhood; his stormy marriages; his will experiences with drugs, booze and women; his long rise to stardom; his musical and personal experiences with Waylon Jennings, Julio Iglesias, Kris Kristopherson, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Loretta Lynn, George Jones, Frank Sinatra and Linda Ronstadt.

In her provocative new book Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music, Nadine Hubbs looks at how class and gender identity play out in one of America's most culturally and politically charged forms of popular music. Skillfully weaving historical inquiry with an examination of classed cultural repertoires and close listening to country songs, Hubbs confronts the shifting and deeply entangled workings of taste, sexuality, and class politics. In Hubbs's view, the popular phrase "I'll listen to anything but country" allows middle-class Americans to declare inclusive "omnivore" musical tastes with one crucial exclusion: country, a music linked to low-status whites. Throughout Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music, Hubbs dissects this gesture, examining how U.S. provincial white working people have emerged since the 1970s as the face of American bigotry, particularly homophobia, with country music their audible emblem. Bringing together the redneck and the queer, Hubbs challenges the conventional wisdom and historical amnesia that frame white working folk as a perpetual bigot class. With a powerful combination of music criticism, cultural critique, and sociological analysis of contemporary class formation, Nadine Hubbs zeroes in on flawed assumptions about how country music models and mirrors white working-class identities. She particularly shows how dismissive, politically loaded middle-class discourses devalue country's manifestations of working-class culture, politics, and values, and render working-class acceptance of queerness invisible. Lucid, important, and thought-provoking, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of American music, gender and sexuality, class, and pop culture.

Texas is the land of Stevie Ray Vaughn, Willie Nelson, Buddy Holly, Janis Joplin, Roy Orbison and Ornette Coleman. This publication covers all of these artists and more in this history of music in the Lone Star State.

Country music has exploded across the U.S. and undergone a sweeping revolution, transforming the once ridiculed world of Nashville into an unlikely focal point of American pop culture. Bruce Feiler was granted unprecedented access to the private moments of the revolution. Here is the acclaimed report: a chronicle of the genre's biggest stars as they change the face of American music.

From the historic stage of the Grand Ole Opry to the dim light of a recording studio, here is a ruggedly authentic behind the scenes tour that takes you places outsiders have never been allowed to go. Part social history, part backstage pass, this penetrating and graceful book presents the most comprehensive portraits yet painted of Garth Brooks and Wynonna Judd-two of the most celebrated artists of our times-as well as a touching picture of Wade Hayes, a young man who hopes to follow them to the exalted heights of one of America's richest traditions: the world of country music.

Duncan McLean traveled from Orkney, Scotland, to Texas in search of the extraordinary mix of jazz, blues, country, and mariachi that is Western Swing. This account of his travels takes in barbed-wire museums, onion festivals, hoe-downs, ghost towns, dead dogs, and ten thousand miles of driving through the Lone Star State. A constant soundtrack of vintage music from bands like the Texas Top Hands, The Lightcrust Doughboys, and the Modern Mountaineers cheers McLean as he tries, with great difficulty, to track down any trace of his greatest heroes: Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.

A cogent blueprint for the development of a "public philosophy" that integrates shared principles and values into our troubled social structure and articulates a consensus vision of society's future.

The continuing vitality of American thought stems, to a large extent, from the application of its historical roots embedded in contemporary problems and issues. Yet for some time the signal contributions of Josiah Royce (1855-1916) have been overlooked in the formulation and shaping of critical areas of public policy. In this brilliantly articulated new book, ethicist Jacquelyn Kegley carefully explicates and enlarges the scope of Roycean thought and shows that Royce's views on public philosophy have direct and valuable application to current social problems.

Working from the assumption that issues of family, education, and health care are not merely exigent political tempests but areas of genuine, long-lasting concern, Kegley opens fresh perspectives on Royce's philosophy by introducing and applying his ideas to discussions of how we care for ourselves and our society today. She analyzes Roycean criteria that can be successfully used to nourish developmental stages within families, promote intellectual and social growth in schooling and scholarship, and sustain physical and mental well-being throughout the life cycle.

"Genuine Individuals and Genuine Communities" should be a springboard for the reassessment of contemporary public policy and the reapplication of the American philosophical legacy to current issues and decisions. Kegley's work serves as a solid contribution both to public philosophy and to the continued vitality of American thought, and it extends the range of both.

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."

This collection of essays examines modern country music in America, from its roots to today's music. Contributors look at aspects of the music as diverse as the creation of country culture in the honky tonk; the development of the Nashville music industry; and why country music singers are similar to the English romantic poets. Historians, sociologists, musicologists, folklorists, anthropologists, ethnographers, communication specialists, and journalists are all represented.

From the 1930s to the 1960s, the booming popularity of country music threw a spotlight on a new generation of innovative women artists. These individuals blazed trails as singers, musicians, and performers even as the industry hemmed in their potential popularity with labels like woman hillbilly, singing cowgirl, and honky-tonk angel.Stephanie Vander Wel looks at the careers of artists like Patsy Montana, Rose Maddox, and Kitty Wells against the backdrop of country music's golden age. Analyzing recordings and appearances on radio, film, and television, she connects performances to real and imagined places and examines how the music sparked new ways for women listeners to imagine the open range, the honky-tonk, and the home. The music also captured the tensions felt by women facing geographic disruption and economic uncertainty. While classic songs and heartfelt performances might ease anxieties, the subject matter underlined women's ambivalent relationships to industrialism, middle-class security, and established notions of femininity.

"Proud to Be an Okie" brings to life the influential country music scene that flourished in and around Los Angeles from the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s to the early 1970s. The first work to fully illuminate the political and cultural aspects of this intriguing story, the book takes us from Woody Guthrie's radical hillbilly show on Depression-era radio to Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee" in the late 1960s. It explores how these migrant musicians and their audiences came to gain a sense of identity through music and mass media, to embrace the New Deal, and to celebrate African American and Mexican American musical influences before turning toward a more conservative outlook. What emerges is a clear picture of how important Southern California was to country music and how country music helped shape the politics and culture of Southern California and of the nation.

A backstage audition led Mark Hembree into a five-year stint (1979-1984) as the bassist for Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys. Hembree's journey included playing at the White House and on the acclaimed album Master of Bluegrass. But it also put him on a collision course with the rigors of touring, the mysteries of Southern culture, and the complex personality of bandleader-legend Bill Monroe. Whether it's figuring out the best time for breakfast (early) or for beating the boss at poker (never), Hembree gives readers an up-close look at the occasionally exalting, often unglamorous life of a touring musician in the sometimes baffling, always colorful company of a bluegrass icon. The amusing story of a Yankee fish out of water, On the Bus with Bill Monroe mixes memoir with storytelling to recount the adventures of a Northerner learning new ways and the Old South.

In her provocative new book Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music, Nadine Hubbs looks at how class and gender identity play out in one of America's most culturally and politically charged forms of popular music. Skillfully weaving historical inquiry with an examination of classed cultural repertoires and close listening to country songs, Hubbs confronts the shifting and deeply entangled workings of taste, sexuality, and class politics. In Hubbs's view, the popular phrase "I'll listen to anything but country" allows middle-class Americans to declare inclusive "omnivore" musical tastes with one crucial exclusion: country, a music linked to low-status whites. Throughout Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music, Hubbs dissects this gesture, examining how U.S. provincial white working people have emerged since the 1970s as the face of American bigotry, particularly homophobia, with country music their audible emblem. Bringing together the redneck and the queer, Hubbs challenges the conventional wisdom and historical amnesia that frame white working folk as a perpetual bigot class. With a powerful combination of music criticism, cultural critique, and sociological analysis of contemporary class formation, Nadine Hubbs zeroes in on flawed assumptions about how country music models and mirrors white working-class identities. She particularly shows how dismissive, politically loaded middle-class discourses devalue country's manifestations of working-class culture, politics, and values, and render working-class acceptance of queerness invisible. Lucid, important, and thought-provoking, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of American music, gender and sexuality, class, and pop culture.