Smile when You Call Me a Hillbilly

Smile when You Call Me a Hillbilly PDF

Author: Jeffrey J. Lange

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780820326238

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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 acculturation 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.

Nashville Cats

Nashville Cats PDF

Author: Travis D. Stimeling

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-04-01

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0197502822

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The Nashville Cats bounced from studio to studio along the city's Music Row, delivering instrumental backing tracks for countless recordings throughout the mid-20th century. Music industry titans like Chet Atkins, Anita Kerr, and Charlie McCoy were among this group of extraordinarily versatile session musicians who defined the era of the "Nashville Sound," and helped establish the city of Nashville as the renowned hub of the record industry it is today. Nashville Cats: Record Production in Music City is the first account of these talented musicians and the behind-the-scenes role they played to shape the sounds of country music. Many of the genre's most celebrated artists-Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves, Floyd Cramer, and others immortalized in the Country Music Hall of Fame and musicians from outside the genre's ranks, like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, heard the call of the Nashville Sound and followed it to the city's studios, recording song after song that resonated with the brilliance of the Cats. Author Travis D. Stimeling investigates how the Nashville system came to be, how musicians worked within it, and how the desires of an ever-growing and diversifying audience affected the practices of record production. Drawing on a rich array of recently uncovered primary sources and original oral histories,Âinterviews with key players, and close exploration of hit songs, Nashville Cats brings us back into the studios of this famous era, right alongside the remarkable musicians who made it happen.

With Amusement for All

With Amusement for All PDF

Author: LeRoy Ashby

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2006-05-12

Total Pages: 686

ISBN-13: 0813171326

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With Amusement for All is a sweeping interpretative history of American popular culture. Providing deep insights into various individuals, events, and movements, LeRoy Ashby explores the development and influence of popular culture -- from minstrel shows to hip-hop, from the penny press to pulp magazines, from the NBA to NASCAR, and much in between. By placing the evolution of popular amusement in historical context, Ashby illuminates the complex ways in which popular culture both reflects and transforms American society. He demonstrates a recurring pattern in democratic culture by showing how groups and individuals on the cultural and social periphery have profoundly altered the nature of mainstream entertainment. The mainstream has repeatedly co-opted and sanitized marginal trends in a process that continues to shift the limits of acceptability. Ashby describes how social control and notions of public morality often vie with the bold, erotic, and sensational as entrepreneurs finesse the vagaries of the market and shape public appetites. Ashby argues that popular culture is indeed a democratic art, as it entertains the masses, provides opportunities for powerless and disadvantaged individuals to succeed, and responds to changing public hopes, fears, and desires. However, it has also served to reinforce prejudices, leading to discrimination and violence. Accordingly, the study of popular culture reveals the often dubious contours of the American dream. With Amusement for All never loses sight of pop culture's primary goal: the buying and selling of fun. Ironically, although popular culture has drawn an enormous variety of amusements from grassroots origins, the biggest winners are most often sprawling corporations with little connection to a movement's original innovators.

A&R Pioneers

A&R Pioneers PDF

Author: Brian Ward

Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press

Published: 2018-06-26

Total Pages: 533

ISBN-13: 0826504043

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Association for Recorded Sound Collections Certificate of Merit for the Best Historical Research in Recorded Roots or World Music, 2019 A&R Pioneers offers the first comprehensive account of the diverse group of men and women who pioneered artists-and-repertoire (A&R) work in the early US recording industry. In the process, they helped create much of what we now think of as American roots music. Resourceful, innovative, and, at times, shockingly unscrupulous, they scouted and signed many of the singers and musicians who came to define American roots music between the two world wars. They also shaped the repertoires and musical styles of their discoveries, supervised recording sessions, and then devised marketing campaigns to sell the resulting records. By World War II, they had helped redefine the canons of American popular music and established the basic structure and practices of the modern recording industry. Moreover, though their musical interests, talents, and sensibilities varied enormously, these A&R pioneers created the template for the job that would subsequently become known as "record producer." Without Ralph Peer, Art Satherley, Frank Walker, Polk C. Brockman, Eli Oberstein, Don Law, Lester Melrose, J. Mayo Williams, John Hammond, Helen Oakley Dance, and a whole army of lesser known but often hugely influential A&R representatives, the music of Bessie Smith and Bob Wills, of the Carter Family and Count Basie, of Robert Johnson and Jimmie Rodgers may never have found its way onto commercial records and into the heart of America's musical heritage. This is their story.

Categorizing Sound

Categorizing Sound PDF

Author: David Brackett

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2016-07-19

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0520291611

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"Categorizing Sound addresses the relationship between categories of music and categories of people: in other words, how do particular ways of organizing sound become integral parts of whom we perceive ourselves to be and of how we feel connected to some people and disconnected from others? After an introduction that discusses the key theoretical concepts to be deployed, Categorizing Sound presents a series of case studies that range from foreign music, race music, and old-time music in the 1920s up through country and rhythm and blues in the 1980s. Each chapter focuses not so much on the musical contents of these genres as on the process of 'gentrification' through which these categories are produced."--Provided by publisher.

The Country Music Reader

The Country Music Reader PDF

Author: Travis D. Stimeling

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015-01-02

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 0190233737

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In The Country Music Reader Travis D. Stimeling provides an anthology of primary source readings from newspapers, magazines, and fan ephemera encompassing the history of country music from circa 1900 to the present. Presenting conversations that have shaped historical understandings of country music, it brings the voices of country artists and songwriters, music industry insiders, critics, and fans together in a vibrant conversation about a widely loved yet seldom studied genre of American popular music. Situating each source chronologically within its specific musical or cultural context, Stimeling traces the history of country music from the fiddle contests and ballad collections of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the most recent developments in contemporary country music. Drawing from a vast array of sources including popular magazines, fan newsletters, trade publications, and artist biographies, The Country Music Reader offers firsthand insight into the changing role of country music within both the music industry and American musical culture, and presents a rich resource for university students, popular music scholars, and country music fans alike.

Record Cultures

Record Cultures PDF

Author: Kyle Barnett

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2021-07-26

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 047203877X

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Tracing the cultural, technological, and economic shifts that shaped the transformation of the recording industry

Jim Reeves

Jim Reeves PDF

Author: Larry Jordan

Publisher: JIM REEVES: HIS UNTOLD STORY

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 674

ISBN-13: 0615524303

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A 672 page, award-winning biography of country music singer Jim Reeves based on hundreds of interviews and Jim's private diaries. Virtually a day by day account of the life of this internationally renowned star.

Ernest Tubb

Ernest Tubb PDF

Author: Ronnie Pugh

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 518

ISBN-13: 9780822321903

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Paperback edition of Fall '96 title.

The Hayloft Gang

The Hayloft Gang PDF

Author: Chad Berry

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 0252075579

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An astute collection of inquiries into the rich history and impact of the National Barn Dance