In Rhythm Makers: The Legendary Drummers of Nashville in Their Own Words, Tony Artimisi documents through extensive interviews the work of some of the most influential drum kit players in popular music today, opening a window onto one of the most vibrant music scenes in modern American history. Telling their stories in their own words, each legendary figure walks readers through the realities of how musical opportunities arise in Nashville, how the recording process has changed over time, what it is like to drum behind some of the top artists in American music, and how one makes it as a professional drummer. Artimisi's subjects together have performed on literally thousands of recordings, from master recordings to demos, jingles to sound-alikes. Having played behind nearly everyone who passed through Nashville, from Dolly Parton and Elton John to Glen Campbell and Johnny Mathis, Eddie Bayers Jr. regales readers with stories of the many areas in the industry he worked to build his legendary career. Master drummer Jerry Kroon, whose credits include work with Ricky Skaggs, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and numerous others, shares his secret for maintaining good relationships with various personality types in music. Percussionist extraordinaire Tom Roady, who has recorded with Wilson Pickett, The Dixie Chicks, and Kenny Chesney-too name but a few-offers insights into what makes a drummer in his recollection of his career start. One of the most inventive instrumentalists, Kenny Malone, who has worked with Waylon Jennings, Garth Brooks, Johnny Cash and many more, discusses his own unique experiments in drumming technique in order to maintain his creative edge. Finally, Tommy Wells, whose career beginnings in Motown led him to Nashville, where he drummed for Charley Pride, The Statler Brothers, and The Charlie Daniels Band, offers a true insider's perspective offering insights into how jingle and sound-alike sessions operate, which can be a valuable part of the professional sideman's work. This work is the ideal for readers interested in the history of country music and the Nashville recording scene more generally, record and music production, popular music, and drumming as both art and profession.

George Jones' nearly 60-year recording and performing career has had a profound influence on modern country music and influenced a younger generation of singers, including Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Randy Travis, Tim McGraw, and Trace Adkins. As Merle Haggard said of Jones in Rolling Stone magazine, His voice was like a Stradivarius violin: one of the greatest instruments ever made. Jones' saga is a larger-than-life tale of rags to riches and back to rags again. He was born into near poverty in a backwater patch of East Texas. His formal education ended early; by his early teens, he was singing on the streets of Beaumont, Texas, for tips. After beginning to record in the mid-1950s Jones became, by sheer dint of his vocal prowess, one of Nashville's most celebrated honky-tonk singers. But from the start, Jones' life, as often reflected in his music, was shaped by misdirection, chaos, turmoil, and emotional strife aggravated by a ferocious appetite for alcohol. Fame and adulation seemed to merely intensify his personal travails. Jones' story has a relatively happy ending. With the help of fourth wife Nancy during the final decade and a half of his life, he got clean and sober, was feted as a much-revered elder statesman for the music, and, by most accounts, found peace of mind at long last.

An insightful and wide-ranging look at one of America's most popular genres of music, Walking the Line: Country Music Lyricists and American Culture examines how country songwriters engage with their nation's religion, literature, and politics. Country fans have long encountered the concept of walking the line, from Johnny Cash's "I Walk the Line" to Waylon Jennings's "Only Daddy That'll Walk the Line." Walking the line requires following strict codes, respecting territories, and, sometimes, recognizing that only the slightest boundary separates conflicting allegiances. However, even as the term acknowledges control, it suggests rebellion, the consideration of what lies on the other side of the line, and perhaps the desire to violate that code. For lyricists, the line presents a moment of expression, an opportunity to relate an idea, image, or emotion. These lines represent boundaries of their kind as well, but as the chapters in this volume indicate, some of the more successful country lyricists have tested and expanded the boundaries as they have challenged musical, social, and political conventions, often reevaluating what "country" means in country music. From Jimmie Rodgers's redefinitions of democracy, to revisions of Southern Christianity by Hank Williams and Willie Nelson, to feminist retellings by Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton to masculine reconstructions by Merle Haggard and Cindy Walker, to Steve Earle's reworking of American ideologies, this collection examines how country lyricists walk the line. In weighing the influence of the lyricists' accomplishments, the contributing authors walk the line in turn, exploring iconic country lyrics that have tested and expanded boundaries, challenged musical, social, and political conventions, and reevaluated what "country" means in country music.

An insightful and wide-ranging look at one of America's most popular genres of music, Walking the Line: Country Music Lyricists and American Culture examines how country songwriters engage with their nation's religion, literature, and politics. Country fans have long encountered the concept of walking the line, from Johnny Cash's "I Walk the Line" to Waylon Jennings's "Only Daddy That'll Walk the Line." Walking the line requires following strict codes, respecting territories, and, sometimes, recognizing that only the slightest boundary separates conflicting allegiances. However, even as the term acknowledges control, it suggests rebellion, the consideration of what lies on the other side of the line, and perhaps the desire to violate that code. For lyricists, the line presents a moment of expression, an opportunity to relate an idea, image, or emotion. These lines represent boundaries of their kind as well, but as the chapters in this volume indicate, some of the more successful country lyricists have tested and expanded the boundaries as they have challenged musical, social, and political conventions, often reevaluating what "country" means in country music. From Jimmie Rodgers's redefinitions of democracy, to revisions of Southern Christianity by Hank Williams and Willie Nelson, to feminist retellings by Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton to masculine reconstructions by Merle Haggard and Cindy Walker, to Steve Earle's reworking of American ideologies, this collection examines how country lyricists walk the line. In weighing the influence of the lyricists' accomplishments, the contributing authors walk the line in turn, exploring iconic country lyrics that have tested and expanded boundaries, challenged musical, social, and political conventions, and reevaluated what "country" means in country music.

A No Depression Most Memorable Music Book of 2022 A Pitchfork Best Music Book of 2022 Though frequently ignored by the music mainstream, queer and transgender country and Americana artists have made essential contributions as musicians, performers, songwriters, and producers. Queer Country blends ethnographic research with analysis and history to provide the first in-depth study of these artists and their work. Shana Goldin-Perschbacher delves into the careers of well-known lesbian artists like k.d. lang and Amy Ray and examines the unlikely success of singer-songwriter Patrick Haggerty, who found fame forty years after releasing the first out gay country album. She also focuses on later figures like nonbinary transgender musician Rae Spoon and renowned drag queen country artist Trixie Mattel; and on recent breakthrough artists like Orville Peck, Amythyst Kiah, and chart-topping Grammy-winning phenomenon Lil Nas X. Many of these musicians place gender and sexuality front and center even as it complicates their careers. But their ongoing efforts have widened the circle of country/Americana by cultivating new audiences eager to connect with the artists' expansive music and personal identities. Detailed and one-of-a-kind, Queer Country reinterprets country and Americana music through the lives and work of artists forced to the margins of the genre's history.

Like the rest of us, country music stars frequently experience mortifying, humiliating moments they would just as soon forget. Unlike the rest of us, however, when something embarrassing happens to an entertainer, it usually occurs in the bright glare of spotlights. Now, in Country Music's Most Embarrassing Moments, music journalist James Dickerson shares inside stories of some of those moments for twenty-four country entertainers, including legendary stars Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, Shania Twain, Chet Atkins, Janie Fricke, Terri Clark, Marty Stuart, and T. G. Sheppard. These painfully true stories from country music's elite are about moments that, for the first time, they have decided to share with their friends. Included are stories of forgetting the words to the national anthem, pants splitting open during concerts, being signalled by fans that one's fly is unzipped, tripping over electrical cords and destroying an entire percussion section and being arrested on stage as a prank set up by the band. Country music fans will enjoy this inside look at one of the occupational hazards of being an entertainer. Includes photographs and biographies of 25 country music stars.

These never-before-published poems by Johnny Cash make the perfect gifts for music lovers and fans alike. Edited and introduced by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon with a foreword by John Carter Cash, this poetry collection is illustrated with facsimile reproductions of Cash's own handwritten pages. Now an album with music by Rosanne Cash, Brad Paisley, Willie Nelson, Kacey Musgraves, Elvis Costello, and more. Since his first recordings in 1955, Johnny Cash has been an icon in the music world. In this collection of poems and song lyrics that have never been published before, we see the world through his eyes and view his reflection on his own interior reality, his frailties and his strengths alike. In his hallmark voice, he pens verses about love, pain, freedom, and mortality, and expresses insights on culture, his family, his fame, even Christmas. Forever Words confirms Johnny Cash as a brilliant and singular American literary figure. His music is a part of our collective history, and here the depth of his artistry and talent become even more evident.

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.

This true account of the rise of country music is told by a 1940s' band musician, Don Davis, who became a music business executive and worked with all the Grand Ole Opry stars. Johnny Cash, the Carter family, Waylon Jennings, Minnie Pearl, Roy Acuff, and many others were his friends and appear throughout the book. They played from Mobile to Nashville and back again to his beloved Alabama. This masterful storyteller recalls colorful songwriters, record personalities, and fans with real incidents over his sixty-year career, that will move readers from laughter to tears. View 100 photographs showing real people, places, and instruments that have become country music legends. The stories will inform the fans and inspire current musicians to keep to their roots and enjoy the music.

Born dirt-poor (his family had the dirt floor to prove it), Waylon Jennings took all the grit of his hometown of Littlefield, Texas, into his soul and his sound. From childhood, this son of a farm laborer considered nothing else but playing music. Stubborn enough never to lose sight of his goal, dumb enough not to realize how long and hard the road, he started as a country disc jockey in Lubbock, then signed on as a protege of fellow Texan Buddy Holly, missing the plane crash that claimed Holly's life by an accident of fate. Cut in the mode of Hank Williams and Carl Smith, yet determined to infuse conservative country music traditions with the energy of rock and roll, Waylon broke the closed society of Nashville sessions in the sixties. Under the tutelage of legends like Porter Wagoner and Ernest Tubb, he shared living quarters with Johnny Cash, took songwriting tips from Roger Miller and encouragement (often unsolicited) from Willie Nelson, and hung out after hours with Kris Kristofferson and George Jones. In the wake of country's own distinctive counterculture, when southern-fried acid freaks met - and partied with - diehard good ol' boys, Waylon helped give America something genuinely new. His 1976 anthology album, Wanted: The Outlaws, was a stunning platinum success, heralding a sound and a mood that evoked the country's pioneer spirit, a restlessness always pushing at the horizon and looking toward the next ridge. But while the artist and performer devoured life and rewrote the rules of the nation's popular music, the star binged on an endless stream of cocaine and pills and staggered through three failed marriages. Ultimately - and inspiringly - Waylon triumphed over his drughabit, proving he would fight for the right to sing his song. At the same time, he ended his long search for the right woman and married Jessi Colter, a country-singing great in her own right and now Waylon's wife for more than a quarter of a century. Today, two-time Grammy winner and sixteen-time chart-topper Waylon Jennings keeps the country fires raging, joining fellow superstars Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson on their sold-out international tours as the Highwaymen.

With its rich but underappreciated musical heritage, Washington, D.C. is often overlooked as a cradle for punk, the birthplace of go go, and as the urban center for bluegrass in the Untied States. Capital Bluegrass: Hillbilly Music Meets Washington, D.C. richly documents the history and development of bluegrass in and around the nation's capital since it emerged in the 1950s. In his seventeenth book, American vernacular music scholar Kip Lornell discusses both well-known progressive bluegrass bands including the Country Gentlemen and the Seldom Scene, and lesser known groups like the Happy Melody Boys, Benny and Vallie Cain and the Country Clan, and Foggy Bottom. Lornell focuses on colorful figures such as the brilliant and eccentric mandolin player, Buzz Busby, and Connie B. Gay, who helped found the Country Music Association in Nashville. Moving beyond the musicians to the institutions that were central to the development of the genre, Lornell brings the reader into the nationally recognized Birchmere Music Hall, and tunes in to NPR powerhouse WAMU-FM, which for five decades broadcast as much as 40 hours a week of bluegrass programming. Dozens of images illuminate the story of bluegrass in the D.C. area, photographs and flyers that will be new to even the most veteran bluegrass enthusiast. Bringing to life a music and musical community integral to the history of the city itself, Capital Bluegrass tells an essential tale of bluegrass in the United States.

This book focuses on 50 of the most important entertainers in contemporary country music, providing a brief biography of each artist with special emphasis on experiences that influenced their musical careers. The work is divided into five distinct categories. ""The New Traditionalists"" features artists such as George Strait, Reba McEntire, and Clint Black, who established the mainstream country sound in the 1980s and delivered country music to urban America for the first time. ""Alternative Country"" features artists such as Steve Earle and Bela Fleck, who made country music on their own terms and explored radical or alternative sounds. ""Groups"" includes several ensemble acts, among them Alabama, The Dixie Chicks, and Rascal Flatts, that have carried on the tight-knit traditions of the Carter family and other prominent groups of the 1920s and 1930s. ""Country-Pop"" features artists such as Garth Brooks and Shania Twain who firmly established the ""countrypolitan"" sound as the cash cow of Nashville while also attracting a new generation of fans. Finally, ""New Country"" focuses on the next generation of country-pop artists, with particular attention paid to international megastars, such as Keith Urban, and teen sensations, including LeAnn Rimes and Taylor Swift.

From his first performance in the late 1940s until his early death in 1982, Marty Robbins established himself as one of the most popular and successful singer/songwriters in the latter half of the 20th century. On the country charts, he racked up 15 #1 hits, including the crossover smashes El Paso and A White Sport Coat (and a Pink Carnation). A beloved entertainer, Robbins received honors from every major music association. El Paso became the first Grammy ever awarded to a Country song, while My Woman My Woman My Wife received the 1970 Grammy for Best Country Song. In 1969 Robbins was named artist of the decade by the Academy of Country Music. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1975 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1982. In addition to his success as a singer/songwriter, Robbins loved car racing. In the early 1970s he joined the NASCAR circuit and raced the rest of his life. In Marty Robbins: Fast Cars and Country Music, author Barbara J. Pruett provides an exhaustive overview of Robbins' life and career. Nearly half of the book is a chronological listing (starting in 1948) of more than 2,000 magazine and newspaper articles and other sources of information about Robbins. Another section provides a basic discography of his hundreds of recordings, including both albums and singles released in his lifetime and after. The book also features a list of all of the songs he copyrighted, stories about his stock car racing activities, several previously unpublished photographs, and interviews with those who knew and worked with him-and even an extensive interview with Robbins himself. As a tribute to a great entertainer, this volume will be of interest not only to entertainment writers and researchers, but also to Marty Robbins fans worldwide.

This volume focuses on fifty of the most important entertainers in the history of country music, from its beginnings in the folk music of early America through the 1970s. Divided into five distinct categories, it discusses the pioneers who brought mountain music to mass audiences; cowboys and radio stars who spread country music countrywide; honky-tonk and bluegrass musicians who differentiated country music during the 1940s; the major contributions that female artists made to the genre; and the modern country sound which dominated the genre from the late 1950s to the mid - 1980s. Each entry includes a brief biography of the chosen artist with special emphasis on experiences which influenced their musical careers. Covered musicians include Fiddlin' John Carson, Riley Puckett, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Bob Willis, Bill Monroe, Hank Williams, Sr., Dale Evans, June Carter Cash, Loretta Lynn, Buck Owens, Roy Clark, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard.

The story behind the story of American country music goes back to Appalachian roots and the people who sang for local audiences and early radios in the early 20th century. No matter what you call the songs now--country, folk, traditional, old-time, hillbilly, and bluegrass--it is the music of a special breed of talented people who were part of one of the most interesting musical and entertainment stories in America's history. In their own words and those of family members, these tales relate the hard work, luck, and do-it-yourself independence of the pioneers of this music. Some became household names while others were important but remained almost totally unknown to the general public. Here you meet the Carter family, Jack Jackson, Bob Douglas, Grandpa Jones, Bashful Brother Oswald, Mac Wiseman, Earl Scruggs, Raymond Fairchild, and other greats of the field. Their touching personal stories and 190 photographs showing the artists with their instruments, families, and audiences, bring this musical heritage to life for modern listeners.

In October 2001, an unlikely gathering of musicians calling itself the MuzikMafia took place at the Pub of Love in Nashville, Tennessee. "We had all been beat up pretty good by the 'industry' and we told ourselves, if nothing else, we might as well be playing muzik," explains Big Kenny of Big and Rich. For the next year and a half, the MuzikMafia performed each week and garnered an ever-growing, dedicated fan base.

Five years, several national tours, six Grammy nominations, and eleven million sold albums later, the MuzikMafia now includes a family of artists including founding members Big and Rich, Jon Nicholson, and Cory Gierman along with Gretchen Wilson, Cowboy Troy, James Otto, Shannon Lawson, Damien Horne (Mista D), Two-Foot Fred, Rachel Kice, and several more in development.

This book explores how a set of shared beliefs created a bond that transformed the MuzikMafia into a popular music phenomenon. David B. Pruett examines the artists' coalition from the inside perspective he gained in five years of working with them. Looking at all aspects of the collective, "MuzikMafia" documents the problems encountered along the ascent, including business difficulties, tensions among members, disagreements with record labels, and miscalculations artists inevitably made before the MuzikMafia unofficially dissolved in 2008. A final section examines hope for the future: the birth of Mafia Nation in 2009.

"Voices of the Country" presents interviews with innovative musicians, producers, and songwriters who shaped the last 50 years of country music. From Eddy Arnold's new, smoother approach to song delivery to Loretta Lynn's take-no-prisoners feminism, these people opened new vistas in country music and American culture. Each has a unique, individual voice, including Chet Atkins's self-effacing modesty, Lynn's audacious storytelling, Charley Pride's proud knowledge of his landmark status as among the only African-Americans to break through country's racial barrier, and Sheb Wooley's optimism that "dreams will come true" - if you only choose the right goals. "Voices of the Country" will appeal to all fans of country music and the American scene that nurtured it.

Southwest Shuffle documents an important period in country music. During the '30s and early '40s, hundreds of thousands of 'Okies', "Arkies", and other rural peoples from around the Southwest resettled in California, in search of work. A country music scene quickly blossomed there, with performers playing Western Swing, Cowboy, and Honky Tonk country. After World War II, these styles rocked country music, leading to the innovations of '60s performers like Buck Owens and Merle Haggard in creating the so-called 'Bakersfield Sound'. These stories are based on original interviews and archival research by one of the most respected writers on this period of country history. Kienzle writes vibrantly, reflecting his long-time love for these musical styles.

Southwest Shuffle documents an important period in country music history. During the '30s and early '40s, hundreds of thousands of "Okies," "Arkies," and other rural folks from around the Southwest resettled in California, in search of work. A country music scene quickly blossomed there, with performers playing Western Swing, Cowboy, and Honky Tonk country. After World War II, these styles rocked country music, leading to the innovations of '60s performers like Buck Owens and Merle Haggard in creating the so-called "Bakersfield Sound." These stories are based on original interviews and archival research by one of the most respected writers on this period of country history. Kienzle writes in a vibrant style, reflecting his long-time love for these musical styles.

Documentaries of over one hundred vintage dance halls and their communities are explored in Dance Halls and Last Calls. Many entertainers, booking agents, club owners, and country music fans were interviewed for this book. In a day when there was no competition from television or video players, these shrines gleamed proudly each weekend. Today a new generation of Texas music lovers has helped these halls enjoy a resurgence in popularity.

This fascinating autobiography of the country music legend recounts the highs and lows, the struggles and hard-won triumphs of his remarkable life. The story takes us from Johnny Cash's childhood on an Arkansas cotton farm to his early years at Sun Records. We read of his life on the road and meetings with, and performances for, world leaders. There is also the darker side of his life: the years of addiction to amphetamines and pain killers, a suicide attempt and the spiritual awakening that pulled him through. He looks unsparingly at his turbulent past, but remains a man of honesty, humility and humour. His memoir reveals his friendships with Roy Orbison, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan and Billy Graham.

As told by the musicians who made it happen, Desperados: The Roots of Country Rock revisits country rock's rise to the top of the charts. Music scholar John Einarson delves into the years from 1963, when Buck Owens and his Buckaroos brought an electric edge to their Texas honky-tonk tunes, to 1973, when The Eagles released their album "Desperado" on David Geffen's label. Einarson examines how folk, rockabilly, blues, Nashville country, Tejano, bluegrass, and other musical idioms influenced a generation of journeyman musicians. He traces the paths taken by the songsmiths, the bands in which they served their apprenticeships, and the songs they wrote together, as they steadily shaped the country rock sound. The protagonists of this story include talented but troubled Gram Parsons, a virtuoso determined to burn out before he faded away; the versatile and appealing Linda Ronstadt; Mike Nesmith, the Monkee from Texas who returned to his musical roots with a trilogy of country-rock albums; TV heartthrob turned country rocker Rick Nelson; folkie songbird Emmylou Harris before she made it in Nashville; and many others.

Long before Garth Brooks and Shania Twain, the original pioneers of country music paved the way for future country artists. Country music authority Charles Wolfe gathers together his profiles of 50 legends of country music.
Based on interviews with the musicians and those who knew them, this collection provides insights into the history of country music which will fascinate not only fans and scholars of country music, but anyone interested in the roots of American popular music.

"The Starday Story: The House That Country Music Built" is the first book entirely dedicated to one of the most influential music labels of the twentieth century. In addition to creating the largest bluegrass catalogue throughout the 1950s and '60s, Starday was also known for its legendary rockabilly catalogue, an extensive Texas honky-tonk outpouring, classic gospel and sacred recordings, and as a Nashville independent powerhouse studio and label.

Written with label president and co-founder Don Pierce, this book traces the label's origins in 1953 through the 1968 Starday-King merger. Interviews with artists and their families, employees, and Pierce contribute to the stories behind famous hit songs, including "Y'all Come," "A Satisfied Mind," "Why Baby Why," "Giddy-up Go," "Alabam," and many others. Gibson's research and interviews also shed new light on the musical careers of George Jones, Arlie Duff, Willie Nelson, Roger Miller, the Stanley Brothers, Cowboy Copas, Red Sovine, and countless other Starday artists. Conversations with the children of Pappy Daily and Jack Starns provide a unique perspective on the early days of Starday, and extensive interviews with Pierce offer an insider glance at the country music industry during its golden era.

Weathering through the storm of rock and roll and, later, the Nashville Sound, Starday was a home to traditional country musicians and became one of the most successful independent labels in American history. Ultimately, "The Starday Story" is the definitive record of a country music label that played an integral role in preserving our nation's musical heritage.