Country, Western

This article is about the genre of popular music from the United States. For other music genres that are sometimes described as country music, see Country music (disambiguation) more...

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In popular music, country music, also called country and western music or country-western, is an amalgam of popular musical forms developed in the Southern United States, with roots in traditional folk music, Celtic music, blues, gospel music, and old-time music that began to develop rapidly in the 1920s. The term country music began to be widely applied to the music in the 1940s and was fully embraced in the 1970s while country and western declined in use .

However, country music is actually a catch-all category that embraces several different genres of music: Nashville sound (the pop-like music very popular in the 1960s); bluegrass, a fast mandolin, banjo and fiddle-based music popularized by Bill Monroe and by the Foggy Mountain Boys; Western, which encompasses traditional Western ballads and Hollywood cowboy music; Western swing, a sophisticated dance music popularized by Bob Wills; the Bakersfield sound (popularized by Buck Owens and Merle Haggard); outlaw country; Cajun; zydeco; gospel; oldtime (generally pre-1930 folk music); honky tonk; Appalachian; rockabilly; neotraditional country and jug band.

Each style is unique in its execution, its use of rhythms, and its chord structures, though many songs have been adapted to the different country styles. One example is the tune "Milk Cow Blues", an early blues tune by Kokomo Arnold that has been performed in a wide variety of country styles by everyone from Aerosmith to Bob Wills to Willie Nelson, George Strait to Ricky Nelson and Elvis Presley.

History

Vernon Dalhart was the first country singer to have a nationwide hit (May 1924, with "The Wreck of Old '97") (see External Links below). Other important early recording artists were Riley Puckett, Don Richardson, Fiddling John Carson, Ernest Stoneman, Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers and The Skillet Lickers.

The origins of modern country music can be traced to two seminal influences and a remarkable coincidence. Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family are widely considered to be the founders of country music, and their songs were first captured at an historic recording session in Bristol, Tennessee on August 1, 1927, where Ralph Peer was the talent scout and sound recordist. It is possible to categorize many country singers as being either from the Jimmie Rodgers strand or the Carter Family strand of country music:

Jimmie Rodgers' influence

Jimmie Rodgers' gift to country music was country folk. Building on the traditional ballads and musical influences of the South, Rodgers wrote and sang songs that ordinary people could relate to. He took the experiences of his own life in the Meridian, Mississippi, area and those of the people he met on the railroad, in bars and on the streets to create his lyrics. He used the musical influences of the traditional ballads and the folk to create his tunes. Since 1953, Meridian's Jimmie Rodgers Memorial Festival has been held annually during May to honor the anniversary of Rodger's death. The first festival was on May 26, 1953.

Read more at Wikipedia.org