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8.5: Country Music

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    76243
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    Like many musical terms discussed in this chapter, Country Music has come to define a broad variety of musical styles encompassing Bluegrass, Hillbilly Music, and Contemporary Country among others. Generally speaking, most types of music that fall under this category originated in the American South (although it also encompasses Western Swing and cowboy songs) and features a singing style with a distinctly rural southern accent, as well as an instrumentation that favors string instruments such as the banjo, guitar, or fiddle.

    Screen Shot 2020-06-25 at 1.00.07 AM.png
    Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Hank Williams by WSM radio. Source: Wikimedia

    Bluegrass music is a variation of country music that developed largely in the Appalachian region; it features fiddle, guitar, mandolin, bass guitar, and the five-string banjo. Often associated with Appalachia, bluegrass combines many of the song forms that are common in the region’s Scottish/English musical heritage. For example, bluegrass blends the Scottish/English ballad with blues inflections. Some bluegrass songs are fast instrumental pieces featuring amazing technique by the performers. Listen to Ricky Skaggs and the Bluegrass Thunder perform via the link below.

    Ricky Skaggs, “Bluegrass Breakdown”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZIHSXpmilw

    Hillbilly music was an alternative to the jazz and dance music of the 1920s. It was portrayed as wholesome and as the music of the “good old days.” Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry radio show became a very successful weekly network radio broad- cast heard nationwide. Noticing an opportunity, record companies soon opened offices in Nashville. Country music became a source of big money for producers, song writers, and artists.

    The hillbillies – “Cluck old hen” 1927

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qizwcdHAWNU

    Honky-tonk music developed as Hillbilly music went west to entertain in saloons called “honky tonks.” Many of the songs dealt with subjects associated with honky tonks, such as infidelity and drinking. Although the first use of the term “honky tonk” referred to a ragtime-like piano style, it later came to refer to a country combo style that became quite popular in the 1940s and 1950s. Duane Eddy’s combo ex- ample of the honky-tonk style shows a more modern variation of honky-tonk:

    Hank Williams – “Honky Tonkin’” 1948

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88XvpkHS4UE

    Western Music refers to music composed about the Great American West, such as the cowboy songs heard in movies of the 1930s and 1940s by singers such as Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.

    One variation of this genre, Western swing, developed in Austin, Texas and other western cities and borrowed instruments from the dance band (saxophones, trombones, trumpets, piano, bass, and drums).

    Mitch Ballard & The Western swing machine, “Ace in the hole”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQawiRq-QDk

    Contemporary Country Music has become a mixture of rock rhythm sections and a singer singing with a country accent about many of the same topics that traditional country singers have used over the decades. Contemporary country artists often use electric guitars, electric steel guitar, electric bass, keyboards (often synthesizers), and drum set. Country music is still big business, selling millions of units per year. Watch and listen to the Carrie Underwood and Miranda Lambert performance linked below:

    Carrie Underwood and Miranda Lambert, “Something Bad”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RfT2KqPCoI


    This page titled 8.5: Country Music is shared under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Clark, Heflin, Kluball, & Kramer (GALILEO Open Learning Materials) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.