Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

Some years ago, the brains at Rolling Stone grappled to identify the first ever rock & roll record. In the final face-off, they picked Elvis Presley’s debut single That’s All Right, a cover of R&B singer Arthur Crudup’s song, over Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock (itself a cover, though the song was actually written for the former western swing singer).

It is, of course, a fruitless mission to identify a “first” rock & roll song, because the genre is a jumble of diverse influences that convened, not always simultaneously, in an untidy evolution. One might as well seek to pinpoint the first piece of classical music or identify the inventor of the wheel. There is no single originator; there cannot be, because rock & roll is not a recipe consisting of essential ingredients. The genre has always been diffuse, subject to a broad sweep of influences.

Rock & roll grew from various strands of what we broadly term R&B, gospel and country. Alas, the latter influences are often relegated to the incidental. Rock & roll might have received its name from Cleveland DJ Allan Freed as a crossover term for black music, but what the genre became is not what Freed had in mind in 1951, at least not musically.

Indeed, it could (and, indeed, should) be argued that more than a genre of music, rock & roll was an attitude, a new ethos, a response to the times. Rock & roll was an assertive posture, a rejection of prescribed inhibition and the formulae of social expectations. It was a cultural insurrection, and politically helped nudge America towards racial integration. A social (and sexual) revolt, and, briefly, a musical uprising.

A bid to emphasise the contribution of country music to the rock & roll revolution must not be seen as diminishing the absolute centrality of black musical genres in the narrative. Almost all American music, save perhaps for Appalachian broadside ballads, has its roots in black sounds. But country and R&B were not driving on so segregated tracks that there was no cross-pollination before rock & roll. The reality is that in the South, where the roots of rock & roll are so deeply embedded, the social boundaries always were crossed when it came to music. The notion of white and black workers singing together in the cotton fields (proverbial and otherwise) is documented fact.  Some blues of the 1920s or ’30s sounds much like some of what would come to be called country, and vice versa. Early country produced a huge number of songs with the word “blues” in the title, and these were indeed blues songs; not because these singers were consciously imitating black musicians (though they were profoundly influenced by them), but because the blues cut across the races. The father of country music, Jimmy Rodgers, had a catalogue full of blues songs. In short, as we saw in the first instalment of this series, early country owed a debt to black music, perhaps above all in the songs’ authenticity. The late soul singer Brook Benton once described country music as a form of gospel music, “the soul of the country”.

Jazz also influenced some country. Bob Wills, the biggest name in western swing, commented in the 1950s that he was doing rock & roll already 25 years earlier: “Rock & Roll? Why, man, that’s the same kind of music we’ve been playin’ since 1928! [...] But it’s just basic rhythm and has gone by a lot of different names in my time. It’s the same, whether you just follow a drum beat like in Africa or surround it with a lot of instruments. The rhythm’s what’s important.” Wills also provided a prototype for one of rock & roll’s most pivotal songs. Chuck Berry’s Maybelline, another perennial contender for the first rock & roll song, was a reworking of Bob Wills version of the fiddle number Ida Red (as featured in Copy Borrow Steal Vol 4).

It is striking that Rolling Stone named as the “first” rock & roll records those by singers whose roots were in country (if I had been asked, I’d have nominated any number of songs by the jump blues and jazzman Louis Jordan, who sounded and acted rock & roll long before it became a thing). Bill Haley was a western swing musician, and Elvis might have grown up in a small white enclave in Tupelo’s black ghetto and hung out in Memphis’ Beale Street, but his roots were in country. The first song Elvis ever sung in public, at 14, was Red Foley’s Old Shep.  After his handful of recordings at Sun, Elvis was signed to RCA by the label’s head of the country division, Steve Sholes; was often produced by country guitarist and producer Chet Atkins with legendary country pianist Floyd Cramer occasionally on the ivories and country harmonising quartet The Jordanaires on backing vocals.  And the b-side of That’s All Right was, of course, a country song, Bill Monroe’s Blue Moon Of Kentucky).

And surely there can be no denying the importance of rockabilly – a sub-genre of country that did not really sell well – in the rise of rock & roll. The most notable exponent of rockabilly was Carl Perkins, who was taught the guitar by bluesmen, but the musical styles rockabilly drew from had been around since the late 1930s. Buddy Jones’ 1939 song Rockin’ Rollin’ Mama (featured in A History Of Country Vol. 3) is generally regarded as the first rockabilly record.

Likewise, rock & roll would not have been quite the same without the “hillbilly boogie” of Moon Mullican, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Cliffie Stone, the Delmore Brothers, Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant, Merril Moore or The Maddox Brothers & Rose (who drew also from rockabilly). The slap bass, so integral to early rock & roll (imagine Elvis’ singles without Bill Black’s bass!), was standard in boogie, rockabilly and western swing.

Many leading rock & roll stars crossed over from country: Jerry Lee Lewis (whose piano style borrowed heavily from Merril Moore’s), Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Eddy Cochran, Roy Orbison, the Everly Brothers, Del Shannon, Ricky Nelson, Wanda Jackson and so on. Many of them intermittently returned to their country roots.

Several R&B performers were at home with country. Ike Turner (another regular “first” rock & roll song nominee) could do a mean country song, as could deep soul men Joe Tex and Solomon Burke. Ray Charles recorded a whole collection of country songs. Arthur Alexander, a massive influence on The Beatles, was known for his country-soul. Hank Ballard, another black rock & roll legend, identified as his most pivotal influence the singing cowboys, led by Gene Autry (of course, Hank was not his real name).

The mutual respect and shared sources of rock & roll may be summed up well by Carl Perkins. When he first heard Chuck Berry’s Maybelline, he recalled thinking: “Here is a man who likes country” – just as Carl loved the blues.

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And so on to the country songs of the incipient years of the rock & roll era, itself a golden age for the genre.Some of these songs are country classics, some a relatively obscure (especially a handful of rockabilly tunes). There is a symbolism in my choice of opening and closing track: Jerry Lee Lewis covering Ray Price’s big hit.

TRACKLISTING:
1. Ray Price – I’ll Be There If You Want Me
2. Webb Pierce – More And More
3. Rudy Gray – Hearts Made Of Stone
4. Lefty Frizzell – I Love You Mostly
5. Hank Snow - The Next Voice You Hear
6. Kitty Wells – Making Believe
7. Jimmy Heap and the Melody Masters – You’re Nothing But A Nothing
8. Doug Poindexter & the Starlite Ramblers – My Kind Of Carrying On
9. The Davis Sisters – Fiddle Diddle Boogie
10. Charlie Feathers – Peepin’ Eyes
11. Johnny Cash – Hey Porter
12. Carl Perkins – Movie Magg
13. Jess Hooper – Sleepy Time Blues
14. Tennessee Ernie Ford – Sixteen Tons
15. Eddie Bond – Double Duty Lovin’
16. Hank Locklin – Love Or Spite
17. Werly Fairburn – I Guess I’m Crazy (For Loving You)
18. Terry Fell – That’s What I Like
19. Merrill Moore – Rock-Rockola
20. Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant – Caffeine Patrol
21. Maddox Brothers & Rosie – I Gotta Go Get My Baby
22. The Farmer Boys - It Pays To Advertise
23. Jimmy Newman – Teardrops In My Heart
24. Marty Robbins – Maybelline
25. Cliffie Stone – The Popcorn Song
26. Bonnie Lou – Daddy-O
27. Buck Owens – Down On The Corner Of Love
28. Kitty Wells – I Don’t Claim To Be An Angel
29. Johnny Horton – Honky Tonk Man
30. Elvis Presley – How Do You Think I Feel
31. Eddy Arnold – I Wouldn’t Know Where To Begin
32. The Louvin Brothers – Kentucky
33. Jerry Lee Lewis & his Pumping Piano – Crazy Arms

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In this segment we briefly turn our focus on some of the individuals featured on this mix and the 1950/51 compilation. Pictured on the cover is the 1952 Cadillac in which Hank Williams died of heart failure on New Year’s Day 1953, aged 30 (though he always looked much older than that). His was the first of a series of young celebrity deaths that created legends for all times.

Among the more unexpected names in country must be that of Ole Rasmussen, a western swing bandleader who with his Nebraska Cornhuskers enjoyed success in the early ’50s. Rasmussen had a Bob Wills obsession; he was widely regarded as an imitator. Indeed, he would interject ad-libs into songs much like Wills (though not quite in a falsetto). Still, the quality of the music was fine, driven by Tex Atchison’s fierce fiddle. Atchison had previously been a member of the Prairie Ramblers, who featured in Vol. 4 of this series. It seems curious that a Danish-named country musician and businessman (more the latter than the former) would lead his band named after the state of Nebraska in sunny California.

Of course, California had a vibrant country scene, due largely to the Dust Bowl migration in the 1930s. Spade Cooley, whom we met in Vol. 5, was based in LA. But California’s country capital was Bakersfield, whence the likes of Buck Owens, Merle Haggard and Gram Parsons would emerge. Another Bakersfielder, though by choice, was Ferlin Husky, a man of annoying accent and often sentimental lyrics (his maudlin The Drunken Driver is a stone-cold candidate for worst ever record). These shortcomings did not stop the D-Day veteran from having a string of country chart-toppers, and even a couple of top 10 pop hits.

His Korean war-themed duet with fellow Bakersfielder Jean Shepard was one of these country #1s and pop Top 10 hits. With it, 19-year-old Shepard set a record as youngest female country chart-topper until 14-year-old Tanya Tucker eclipsed her almost two decades later. Shepard, at one point one of only two female singers at the Grand Ole Opry (the other was Kitty Wells), went on to marry country singer Hawkshaw Hawkins, who died in the 1963 plane crash that also killed Patsy Cline and Cowboy Copas.

Another California-based country legend was Johnny Bond, who had a long career as a performer of cowboy songs (Gene Autry and the Sons of the Pioneers being particular influences), and with Jimmy Wakeley appeared in b-movies and on Autry’s radio show in the 1930s. Both went on to have successful careers in the ’40s; each has a song on the History of Country Vol. 4 compilation. Bond was also a productive songwriter, the oft-covered Cimarron probably being his best known song. By 1957, the 42-year-old was dropped from the Columbia Records roster. Soon he made a comeback with the rock & roll hit Hot Rod Lincoln, on Autry’s Republic label. In his later years, before his death in 1978, Bond wrote a biography of fellow singing cowboy Tex Ritter (father of the late actor John Ritter) as well as an autobiography. Incidentally, the Bond song featured in the 1950/51 mix – Sick, Sober And Sorry – was co-written by Tex Atchison, the fiddler in Ole Rasmussen’s band.

We met Cowboy Copas in The Originals Vol. 37 as the first to record Tennessee Waltz. He enjoyed success in the late ’40 and early ’50s, but then his recording career began to stutter. He made a comeback (in the charts; he had been a member of the Opry and a regular on the Ozark Jubilee TV show) in 1960, with the hit song Alabam. Things were looking up when he agreed to perform at a benefit on 3 March 1963 in Kansas City for a radio disc jockey who had died in a car crash a few months before. Copas and the other performers boarded the Piper Comanche aeroplane piloted by his son-in-law Randy Hughes, who was also Patsy Cline’s manager. Nobody on the plane survived the crash in a forest near Camden, Tennessee.

Half a year earlier and much less prominently, Leon Chappel died, also in tragic circumstances. Chappel was one of the shapers of western swing in the 1930s as a member of the Lone Star Cowboys. After a serious car crash in 1935 left him with long-term injuries, his career gradually fizzled out. During World War 2 he served as a policeman, but that career was cut short when he apparently was caught accepting bribes. He was jobbing as a pipe fitter and truck driver when Jimmy Davis, singing star and former governor of Louisiana, briefly revived Chappel’s career, this time in the honky tonk medium (though the great True Blue Papa shows traces of his western swing background). The resurgence didn’t last very long. Chappel disappeared from the scene. His music career gone, his injuries forcing him into retirement and marriage broken down, Chappel on 23 October 1963 put a revolver to his head and pulled the trigger.

The man with the greatest influence on country music was Hank Williams, but Lefty Frizzell’s contribution was nearly as significant as his erstwhile touring partner’s (even if Eddy Arnold was outselling both). Like Williams, Frizzell was a prolific songwriter; at one point in 1951, he had four songs in the country top 10. It was this artistic independence, his charisma, laid-back honky tonk stylings and soulful vocals that directly influenced future country giants as diverse as George Jones, Waylon Jennings, Roy Orbison (whose Traveling Wilbury name, Lefty, was a tribute to Frizzell), Merle Haggard, George Strait, Randy Travis and so on. Frizzell was also a hard drinker, and his abuse of alcohol contributed to his death at 47 in 1975.

Drinking can kill, and so does smoking. It’s a myth that until the 1960s people had no idea how poisonous cigarettes are. Tex Williams in the brilliant Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette), which he co-wrote with Merle Travis in 1947 and re-recorded in 1953 and 1960, admonishes: “Puff, puff, puff until you smoke yourself to death.”  In the same song he jokes: “I don’t reckon that it’ll hinder your health. I smoked ‘em all my life and I ain’t dead yet.” Tex frequently sang about smoking and advertised cigarettes, so after he died, the persistent story arose that he had died of lung cancer. It was in fact pancreatic cancer that did him in 1985 at the age of 68. While battling the cancer, he reportedly managed to cut down from two packets a day to one. He probably had disagreeable breath.

One might think that the title bestowed on Carl Smith, “Mr Country”, was a slice of hyperbole in an industry not known for its bashfulness. Smith, who died last year at 82, did have a string of quality hits which continued into the 1970s, including 30 country hits in the 1950s alone. But he is also a suitable Mr Country for his connections: he was married to June Carter before his good friend Johnny Cash, then married Goldie Hill, and from his first marriage was the father of Carlene Carter. Smith rarely bothered the pop charts, but there is no doubt that songs like Hey Joe (written by Boudleaux Bryant) helped influence the many country singers who would soon cross over into rock & roll.

Smith remained married to Goldie Hill until her death in 2005. Hill was in that first great wave of female country singers that came through in the 1950s, paving the way for future stars such as Loretta Lynn, Skeeter Davis, Patsy Cline and Tammy Wynette. I Let The Stars Get In My Eyes, an answer record to Perry Como’s Don’t Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes (featured here in Skeets McDonald’s hit version), topped the country charts, not long after Kitty Wells’s own million-selling answer record, It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels, eclipsed Hank Thompson’s The Wild Side Of Life. Suddenly the record company bosses saw commercial prospects in letting the gals sing. Unlike Wells, Hill’s career was relatively short-lived. When Goldie married Carl Smith in 1957, she retired from the music business, other than a brief and unsuccessful comeback attempt in the ’60s, to breed horses on the couples’ Tennessee farm.

Kitty Wells occupies a pivotal position in the history of country music. Already in her 30s and a mother of three when she became a star, she was the first female ever to top the country charts – though she was not the first female million-seller; that honour belongs to Patsy Montana. And in that first hit she made a statement that a woman need not be submissive (even if it was written by a man, JD Miller), and knocked off Hank Thompson’s slightly misogynist anthem off the #1 spot. Many women in country would peddle the submissiveness of their gender in song (Tammy Wynette, a victim of domestic abuse, sang the anthem), but Wells introduced feminist themes long before that was regarded as ordinary and articulated a female self-confidence that would become characteristic of many women who succeeded her – especially Loretta Lynn. Wells, who took her stage name from a 19^th century song, was country’s leading female singer every year from 1952-65.

We first encountered Stuart Hamblen in The Originals Vol. 22 as the writer and first performer of This Ole House, later hits for Rosemary Clooney and Shakin’ Stevens. Hamblen, who was born in 1908, started his career in the late 1920s as a cowboy song singer, before that sub-genre crossed over into Hollywood, taking Hamblen along as a sidekick to the great cowboy singers such as Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.  In Hollywood the Texan also became a close friend of John Wayne. The story goes that Hamblen was hunting with Wayne when they happened upon an abandoned cabin with the skeleton of a man inside, giving rise to This Ole House. Soon after that, the son of a Methodist preacher had a religious conversion. Billy Graham has credited Hamblen’s pulling power with getting his ministry off the ground. The conversion had consequences: he was fired as a radio DJ because he refused to have alcohol ads on his show. Hamblen also tried his hand in politics. In 1938 he stood, unsuccessfully, as a Democrat candidate for Congress; in 1952 he was the presidential candidate for the Prohibition Party. History records that Dwight Eisenhower was elected that year.

Where Hamblen represented an old age, Sonny James in some ways anticipated the advent of a new youth-driven musical form, if not in sound (he crooned mostly ) then in his look and public image. The fiddle-playing farm boy from Alabama had fought in Korea, but looked like he had been scrubbed up straight from college in a New York salon, not to look like a rock & roller but like one of those nice boys who, we often forget, were hugely popular too. He looked, one might say, like the 1950s, and it was his 1957 hit Young Love that introduced country to the teenage mainstream. It might be a coincidence, but the character Sonny in the film Grease looks not unlike Sonny James. James enjoyed a long and very successful career in country, hitting his peak in the early 1970s.

The title of George Morgan’s song in this mix is obviously appropriate for this blog. Morgan was best known for his 1947 hit Candy Kisses, which featured in A History Of Country Vol. 5. He worked the roses theme hard with songs such as Room Full of Roses, Red Roses For A Blue Lady and Red Roses From the Blue Side of Town. Morgan is also a great (and correct) trivia answer to the questions: Who is country singer Lorrie Morgan’s father? Who was the last singer to sing at the Grand Ole Opry’s legendary Ryman Theatre in 1974? Who was the first singer to sing at the new Grand Ole Opry House? Morgan died in 1975 at the age of 51.

As a bonus, I include a comedy bit by Archie Campbell from 1952. Campbell was a writer and star of the TV show Hee Haw. The bit here is one of his famous That’s Good/That’s Bad routines wherein Campbell would tell of an event, countering the straightman’s reactions of relief or alarm with a subsequent event that proves the opposite of that response.

The next instalment will look at country’s often underestimated influence on rock & roll. Some of the songs on this mix anticipate the new sound. Listen to Roy Hogsed’s She’s A Mean Mean Woman, Jaye Morgan & Hank Penny’s Fan It, Merrill Moore’s House Of Blue Lights (hear the influence on Jerry Lee Lewis) or Moon Mullican’s Rocket To The Moon.

TRACKLISTING
1. Tex Williams – Smoke, Smoke, Smoke
2. Eddy Arnold – I Wanna Play House With You
3. Roy Hogsed – She’s A Mean Mean Woman
4. Lefty Frizzell - Always Late (With Your Kisses)
5. Hank Thompson – The Wild Side Of Life
6. Kitty Wells – It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels
7. Hank Snow – (Now And Then) There’s A Fool Such As I
8. Cowboy Copas – Don’t Leave My Poor Heart Breaking
9. Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys – I Want To Be Wanted
10. Little Jimmy Dickens – No Tears In Heaven
11. Slim Whitman - Indian Love Call
12. Hank Williams – Kaw-Liga
13. Skeets McDonald – Don’t Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes
14. Goldie Hill – I Let The Stars Get In My Eyes
15. Kitty Wells – I Heard The Juke Box Playing
16. Webb Pierce - Back Street Affair
17. Jean Shepard & Ferlin Husky – A Dear John Letter
18. Hank Locklin – Let Me Be The One
19. Ernest Tubb – Counterfeit Kisses
20. Jaye P. Morgan with Hank Penny – Fan It
21. Jenks Tex Carman – Hillbilly Hula
22. Sonny James – I Need You
23. T. Texas Tyler – Bumming Around
24. Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant – Bryant’s Bounce
25. Carl Smith – Hey Joe
26. Hank Locklin – Empty Bottles, Empty Heart
27. Merrill Moore – House Of Blue Lights
28. Moon Mullican – Rocket To The Moon
29. Hank Williams – Take These Chains From My Heart
30. George Morgan – Half-Hearted

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After a hiatus of a few months we return to the history of country music. In the last narrative instalment (Volume 4) we noted the rise of female country singers; some of them will feature in this mix, which covers the years 1950-51, and its follow-up, 1952-53. In the course of the 1950s we will also review country’s contribution to rock & roll, and discuss some of the artists featured. What follows then is a brief overview of country music in the 1950s.

Country had always been a diverse genre. New forms emerged in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Bluegrass took country back to its rural roots, with a sound based primarily on the interplay of string instruments — banjo, guitar, fiddle, mandolin. The pioneer of bluegrass was Bill Monroe, a big fellow with a small mandolin, who in 1939 had formed a band called the Blue Grass Boys. The line-up kept changing, with the most consequential incarnation, in 1946/47, including the hitherto unknown Lester Flatt and Earl Sruggs, who soon would form their own band, have a massive hit with the instrumental Foggy Mountain Breakdown (revived later as a theme for the film Bonnie And Clyde), and enjoy long careers together and separately. Bluegrass has never become mainstream. Various revivals and dedicated musicianship have kept the sub-genre alive; it is possibly more popular now than it ever was, thanks to the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack  and the efforts of singers such as Ralph Stanley, Doc Watson, Ricky Skaggs, Del McCoury, Alison Krauss and Dolly Parton.

Rockabilly borrowed from western swing, boogie woogie and the new genre of black music, rhythm & blues. It had in fact been around for a while: the record commonly identified as the first ever rockabilly record was Buddy Jones’ Rockin’ Rollin’ Mama in 1939, with its boogie woogie piano solo and guitar work that anticipates the sound of the 1950s. The evolution of rockabilly is key to the birth of rock & roll as much as R&B. The slap bass style of playing which was so integral to early rock & roll was a common western swing and rockabilly technique (Bob Wills argued that he had been playing rock & roll since 1928). Western swing artist Bill Haley turned into a rock & roll pioneer via rockabilly. Carl Perkins was first and foremost a rockabilly musician. Elvis Presley was initially regarded as a rockabilly singer who also did R&B — and, as mentioned before, he was a regular on the Louisiana Hayride, having made one appearance at the Opry (supporting Hank Snow).

Other acts initially rooted in country would become rock & roll legends, such as the Everly Brothers  (who were so well served by Nashville songwriters Felice and Boudleaux Bryant), Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran. And the folk scene that had begun growing from New York City in the late 1940s (and would reach its zenith with the rise of Bob Dylan in the 1960s) had its roots in country. Woody Guthrie was initially regarded as a country artist (before the term was in wide use, the label “folk” was often employed to describe the genre).

The 1950s also saw a revival of cowboy music, with Marty Robbins enjoying some big success with his Gunfighter Ballads And Trail Songs and its pop #1 El Paso.

Finally, the 1950s launched the biggest, most important star in country: Johnny Cash. Cash’s influence on almost all areas of country cannot be underestimated. And it was Cash who pioneered a new trend in country: the outlaw movement.

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TRACKLISTING
1. Eddie Kirk – Sugar Baby
2. Moon Mullican – I’ll Sail My Ship Alone
3. Cotton Thompson – How Long
4. Red Foley – Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy
5. Tennessee Ernie Ford - Mr And Mississippi
6. Tex Williams - Wild Card
7. Ole Rasmussen – Sleepy Eyed John
8. Bill Monroe – Alabama Waltz
9. Jesse James – Rag Mop
10. Ted Daffan’s Texans - I’ve Got Five Dollars And It’s Saturday Night
11. Bill Strength – Black Coffee Blues
12. Lefty Frizzell – I Love You In A Thousand Ways
13. Leon Chappel - True Blue Papa
14. Stuart Hamblin – Remember Me, I’m The One Who Loves You
15. Tex Ritter – High Noon
16. Wilf Carter (Montana Slim) - Apple, Cherry, Mince And Choc’late Cream
17. Bill Haley - Rose Of My Heart
18. Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys – Brown Skin Gal
19. Carl Smith – Mr Moon
20. Hank Williams – Baby, We’re Really In Love
21. Lefty Frizzell - I Want To Be With You Always
22. Johnny Bond - Sick, Sober And Sorry
23. Flatt & Scruggs – Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’
24. Carolina Cotton with Bob Wills – You Always Keep Me In Hot Water
25. Pee Wee King’s Golden Cowboys – Slow Poke
26. Hank Snow & Anita Carter – Bluebird Island
27. Gene Autry – Peter Cottontail
28. Spade Cooley – Indian Summer
29. Cliffie Stone – Jump Rope Boogie
30. Tennessee Ernie Ford – Rock City Boogie

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As before, this album refers to artists and songs featured on both 1940s compilations.

The importance to country music of Ernest Tubb’s Walking The Floor Over You cannot be underestimated. It was not the first honky tonk record, nor the first to use the new-fangled electric guitar. But it was the first really big hit to use electric guitar solos, performed by Fay ‘Smitty’ Smith, and is considered the breakthrough record for honky tonk music, a label that was variously used for different genres, but now usually applied in country music.

Trouble is, honky tonk is difficult to define as an identifiable genre. One can identify the distinction between, say, barndance, bluegrass, and rockabilly, but barroom music (a honky tonk is a bar) has few definable characteristics. Honky tonk arguably is an attitude more than a genre. In fact, most of what would be defined as mainsteam country — from Tubb to Hank Williams to Hank Thompson to Lefty Frizzell to George Jones to the stetsoned gang of latter years — is honky tonk. But so are the Outlaw of the ’70s, such as Waylon Jennings, Tompall Glaser and Willie Nelson. But here we are moving ahead of ourselves.

If there are three absolutely pivotal singers in country history, then consensus would surely be that they are Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams and Johnny Cash (though I’d insist on the group being enlarged to include the original Carter Family). Williams has become something of a litmus test for country authenticity, as in the title of Waylon Jennings’ protest against the sentimental, automated schlock churned out by the Nashville machine by the mid-70s: Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way? (No need to specify which of the genre’s many Hanks he meant). In his short career, from his first hit in 1947 to his death while touring on New Year’s Day 1953, Williams recorded 66 songs. Of these, 37 became hits – an astonishing strike rate. Williams’ death at 29 (though he always looked at least ten years older than that) established in him as an icon, much as the other three big premature deaths of the decade that followed did for James Dean, Buddy Holly and Marilyn Monroe.

Williams’ first hit, Move It On Over, was a rockabilly number that in parts sounds more than a little like Rock Around The Clock, and reflected Williams’ affection for and knowledge of blues. We’ll look at the extent of country’s parentage of rock & roll at a later stage, but no discussion on the futile question of “the first ever rock & roll record” is complete with a consideration of Move It On Over.

The song that borrowed from Williams’ debut hit is remembered as rock & roll’s big breakthrough. The performer, Bill Haley, came from country music, specifically the western swing scene. Just a couple of years before he started to shake, rattle and roll with his Comets, Haley was still churning out country records (of course, the likes of Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ricky Nelson, Everly Brothers and even Elvis had their roots in country as well, and would revisit that heritage periodically). Unlike most of the era’s country musicians, Haley was not a Southerner, even if his band, the future Comets, was known as the Saddlemen. Born in Detroit, he lived and gigged in Pennsylvania, where he was a director of music at a radio station in Chester, before becoming a rock & roll pioneer.

If Hank Williams was the live-fast-die-young prototype for the rock & roll lifestyle, then his favourite artist was among the most influential on the yet-to-be-conceived genre. Moon Mullican drew his influences widely—blues, honky tonk, jazz, western swing, folk, bluegrass, Tin Pan Alley—and reflected these in his versatile repertoire. Long before Elvis, Mullican could sound white or black or both at the same time. His piano-playing style directly inspired that of Jerry Lee Lewis. His first big hit, New Jole Blon, updated Harry Choates’ cajun-country hit.

In the 1940s, Bob Wills was still a big star, but he was being eclipsed by Spade Cooley, whose brand of California-based western swing was more pop oriented than the rest of the genre. Indeed, it is said that the term western swing was invented by Cooley’s manager, and after Cooley beat Wills in a Battle of the Bands contest (on Cooley’s hometurf), he modestly styled himself “King of Western Swing”. His appearance in 38 western films helped further to make Cooley a star, and by the late 1940s he hosted his own Emmy-winning variety television show. That show was dropped in 1956.

Five years later, his wife asked for a divorce. In a drunken rage, Cooley beat her to death. He served eight years of a life sentence. The night before he supposedly was to be paroled, he died backstage after playing a benefit concert in Oakland for the Deputy Sheriffs Association of Alameda County.

Al Dexter’s catchy Pistol-Packing Mama (“Now down there was old Al Dexter; he always had his fun, but with some lead she shot him dead; his honkin’ days are done”) was the first record to top what would become Billboard’s Hot Country & Western Sides Charts, but was initially known as the Most Played Juke Box Records chart, which was based, as the title suggests, not on sales but on juke box requests (today’s equivalent probably would be download charts). A huge World War 2 hit, Pistol-Packing Mama was also the theme song of the New York Yankees. Dexter, whose version was released by Okeh Records, shared the incipient top spot with the versions by the Andrews Sisters (on Decca) and Don Baxter (on Musicraft). Dexter was also at #5 with Rosalita. The other top 5 artists that week were Ted Daffan, Bob Wills and Floyd Tillman.

Ted Daffan’s Born To Lose was recorded in 1942, but became a hit only in 1943/44, distribution having been held up by a war-time shortage of shellac. Daffan is better known for having written Truck Drivers’ Blues (first a hit for Cliff Bruner), and Born To Lose is probably more famous in Ray Charles’ interpretation on his seminal Modern Sounds In Country & Western album of 1962. It was also covered by artists as diverse as Dean Martin, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Rosemary Clooney and Elton John & Leonard Cohen.

Perhaps the longest performing country musician today is Ralph Stanley of the Stanley Brothers, who feature on the 1947-49 compilation (or perhaps it is Charles Louvin of another brothers act that split due to one sibling’s mid-’60s death was born the same year as Stanley, or maybe it’s Earl Scruggs, now 86 years old). Stanley still recorded into the new millennium, playing a prominent role in the much-lauded bluegrass soundtrack for the Coen Brothers’ film O Brother, Where Art Thou. Now 83 years old, Stanley still performs.

The 1940s saw the rise of bluegrass with acts like the Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs (whose Foggy Mountain Breakdown featured so prominently in Bonnie And Clyde) and, of course, the virtual inventor of the genre, Bill Monroe, after whose band, The Blue Grass Boys, it was named. Founded in 1939 after Bill split from his brother Charlie as the Monroe Bothers, the band at its peak included Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, who lend their names to their distinctive guitar and banjo picking styles. Monroe, a mandolin maestro, resented other bluegrass acts for encroaching on his territory. So when the Stanley Brothers signed with Columbia Records, Monroe left the label in a huff for Decca. Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys performed for 57 years until a few months before his death in 1996. It was a Monroe song, Blue Moon Of Kentucky, that served as the b-side of Elvis Presley’s debut single.

As far as I can tell, the only other performer on this set still alive apart from Ralph Stanley and Earl Scruggs is Arthur ‘Guitar Boogie’ Smith, who was born in 1921 (he is a different Arthur Smith from the fiddlin’ one featured in Vol. 3). The instrumental song that gave Smith his distinguishing middle name – it draws from country, jazz and blues – sold 3 million copies and has been immensely influential; he was something like the Jimi Hendrix of his day. In Britain, the renamed Guitar Boogie Shuffle became a big hit for that country’s electric guitar pioneer Bert Weedon, who played an seminal role in a whole generation of kids picking up a guitar; some of whom formed part of the British Invasion. In 1955, Smith co-wrote a track titled Feudin’ Banjos, which would later be ripped off for the Duelling Banjos track in the film Deliverance. Smith successfully sued for copyright infgringement. His backing band, the Crackerjacks, comprised two more guys named Smith, none of them related, and Tommy Faile. Smith built a recording studio in Charlotte, North Carolina, in which counrtry artists such as Johnny Cash and Chet Atkins as well as James Brown (Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag was cut there).

Cindy Walker was a big star in the 1940s, one of the first female superstars of country. But she made an even bigger mark as a prolific songwriter. Her credits include Jim Reeves’ This Is It and posthumous megahit Distant Drums, Eddy Arnold’s Take Me In Your Arms And Hold Me and You Don’t Know Me (later a hit for Mickey Gilley), Roy Orbison’s Dream Baby, Dean Martin’s In The Misty Moonlight, Jack Greene’s You Are My Treasure, and more than 50 songs for Bob Wills. Walker died in 2006 at 87.

In 1964, the Beatles recorded a song, fronted by George Harrison, called Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby, which was a cover of Carl Perkins’ song. Perkins himself borrowed heavily from Rex Griffin’s song of the same title. Griffin’s song was first released in 1936 (that version will feature at a later stage in a different series, as will his suicide anthem Last Letter). The version here is a re-recording from 1944. By then Griffin was washed up. His alcohol abuse did not go well with his diabetes. His recording career over, he wrote for others in the 1950s. He contracted tuberculosis in the mid-50s, and died in 1959 at the age of 47.

The 1940s compilations feature two notable originals that may be better known in versions by others. Cool Water was written by Bob Nolan of the Sons of the Pioneers, but became a bigger hit in versions by Vaughn Monroe and Frankie Laine. And in 1948, T. Texas Tyler gave us Deck Of Cards, in which a GI uses playing cards — associated with gambling and immorality — as a Christian catechism. Perhaps not coincidentally, the song is set at the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino in Italy, the site of a series of brutal battles in World War II. Tyler had a #3 hit with it in 1948, and it would become a huge international hit for Wink Martindale in 1959.

Edit: On a point of housekeeping, reader Don B. has rightly pointed out that track 18 by Judy Hayden is in fact Feudin’ And Fightin’, the same song as track 9 by Dorothy Shay. The happy upshot of the unfortunate mix-up is that we get to compare two very different treatments of the same song, at a time when songs would be covered copiously soon after the initial release. The tracklisting below has been amended accordingly; should you feel it necessary, as I would, please do the necessary editing of filename and ID3-Tag (if that’s your thing).

TRACKLISTING:
1. Cowboy Copas – Are You Honest?
2. Paul Howard’s Cotton Pickers – Drinking All My Troubles Away
3. Eddy Arnold – I’ll Hold You In My Heart (Till I Can Hold You In My Arms)
4. Hank Williams – Move It On Over
5. Bill Haley – Rovin’ Eyes
6. Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys – When You Are Lonely
7. Jack Guthrie – Oakie Boogie
8. Hank Thompson – Humpty Dumpty Heart
9. Dorothy Shay – Feudin’ And Fightin’
10. Merle Travis – Nine Pound Hammer
11. Sons Of The Pioneers – Cigarettes, Whiskey And Wild Women
12. Lonzo & Oscar – I’m My Own Grandpa
13. Harry Choates – Fais Do Do Stomp
14. Moon Mullican – Jole Blon’s Sister
15. Hank Williams - Honky Tonkin’
16. Arthur Smith and his Cracker-Jacks – Guitar Boogie
17. Spade Cooley – Fickle Woman
18. Judy Hayden – Feudin’ And Fightin’
19. Ernest Tubb – Forever Is Ending Today
20. T. Texas Tyler - Deck Of Cards
21. Roy Acuff and the Smoky Mountain Boys – Tennessee Waltz
22. Little Jimmie Dickens - Take An Old Cold Tater
23. Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs – Foggy Mountain Breakdown
24. Stanley Brothers - Let Me Be Your Friend
25. Tennessee Ernie Ford – Mule Train
26. Wayne Rainey – Why Don’t You Haul Off And Love Me
27. Tex Williams – With Men Who Know Tobacco Best (It’s Women Two To One)
28. George Morgan – Candy Kisses

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By the early 1940s the crooners had begun to make their mark, with Jimmie Davies — future Democrat governor of Louisiana — having led the way. Many of them had toiled and crooned in the 1930s. But with a world war slowly engulfing the globe, the market wanted, and got, romance. More than that, men took their country songs with them to the army and disseminated the music among their fellow soldiers. Country music thus found new fans, and its leading singers — Roy Acuff, Gene Autry, Red Foley, Tex Ritter, Eddy Arnold — gained a national audience. In 1945, Arnold even beat the mighty Frank Sinatra in a favourite-singer poll among GIs stationed in Germany.

Some singers hit temporary highs before disappearing, such as Ted Daffan, whose 1944 hit Born To Lose (actually recorded in 1942) would later be covered by Ray Charles on his seminal 1962 LP Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music. Other temporarily bright stars included Wesley Tuttle and Jack Guthrie. The latter, Woody Guthrie’s cousin, was very influential but died at the age of 32 of tuberculosis in 1948.

Western swing continued to grow in popularity. Not only was Bob Wills one of the biggest names in country, but artists such as Pee Wee King (like Wills a bandleader) made an impression. Spade Cooley took the genre towards a more pop-oriented style. Cooley in 1961 was convicted of murdering his wife, dying eight years later in jail (more about him in Vol 5).

Other new stars appeared on the scene. In 1941 Ernest Tubb recorded his first hit record (the honky tonk Walking The Floor Over You, which, unusually for the time, prominently featured the electric guitar, as would in 1948 Arthur Smith’s seminal Guitar Boogie) and the prolific songwriter and singer Cindy Walker hit the country and pop charts with her cover of Bing Crosby’s Long Star Trail. Helped along by the proliferation of hayride and barndance shows on radio, country went mainstream. The most influential of these of course was Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, which attracted the best and most popular stars from other shows, a policy it would follow well into the 1950s (when it nevertheless failed to spot the talents of Louisiana Hayride regular Elvis Presley, even after he appeared on the Opry as Hank Snow’s opening act). Augmenting the Opry line-up, headed and presented by Acuff, were comics such as the wildly popular Minnie Pearl. Not surprisingly, the novelty record was very much part of country music. Some of them, such a Lonzo & Oscar’s I’m My Own Granpa, were even funny.

As the US joined the war, some singers turned to the sort of jingoism which 60 years later Toby Keith exploited to lucrative effect, with a similar lack of tact or sophistication. Very soon after the Japanese attack on the US naval base in Hawaii, the Carson Robison Trio entreated their listeners to Remember Pearl Harbor, demanded that We’re Gonna Have To Slap The Dirty Little Jap and called to arms with Get Your Gun And Come Along (We’re Fixing To Kill A Skunk) — though neither sounded country, or any good, at all — while yodeller Elton Britt promised that There’s A Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere. The latter, recorded on 19 March 1942, narrated the desire of a handicapped country boy to fight in the war. This slice of maudlin patriotism became country music’s first gold single. Zeke Williams’ Smoke On The Water (also recorded by Red Foley) in 1944 represented the victory which within a year would become reality. Around the same time, Woody Guthrie — still in the country fold — threatened just comeuppance for fascists.

Most of the stars of the early 1940s not only survived the post-war years, but benefited from a boom which saw the emergence of new superstars in the late ’40s and early ’50s, such as Merle Travis, Hank Snow (a Canadian!), Webb Pierce, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Hank Thompson, Jim Reeves and so on. Two of these would be monumentally influential: Lefty Frizell and Hank Williams. Debuting in 1947 with the outstanding Move It On Over (which in parts sounded much like the later Rock Around The Clock), Williams scored 36 more hits before his death at 29 on New Year’s Day 1953. There might have been rock & roll without Hank Williams, but perhaps not quite the way we know it. Frizell was just as huge as Williams, at one point in 1951 scoring four simultaneous hits in the country top 10. Frizell exercised a profound influence on future giants of country such as George Jones, Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson.

The era also saw the slow rise of the female country singer. Such artists as Sara and Maybelle Carter, Patsy Montana, Louise Massey and Cindy Walker had enjoyed success in the preceding two decades, but there were very few women in country. The early 1950s produced the first enduring superstar, Kitty Wells, and a few others in whose footsteps the likes of Loretta Lynn, Wanda Jackson, Skeeter Davis and Tammy Wynette would walk. Molly O’Day had briefly attained star status in the 1940s, Goldie Hill was hugely popular for a while, Rose Maddox had a series of hits with her brothers. We will encounter them and others in volumes 6 and 7.

TRACKLISTING
1. Ernest Tubb – Walking The Floor Over You
2. Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys – Corrine Corrina
3. Hoosier Hot Shots – Dude Cowboy
4. Louise Massey and the Westerners – My Adobe Hacienda
5. Sons Of The Pioneers – Cool Water
6. Carson Robison Trio – Remember Pearl Harbor
7. Elton Britt – There’s A Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere
8. Jimmy Wakely – When It’s Round Up Time In Texas
9. Ted Daffan’s Texans - Born To Lose
10. Cindy Walker – Miss Molly
11. Bob Atcher & Bonnie Blue Eyes – Pins And Needles (In My Heart)
12. Roy Acuff and the Smoky Mountain Boys – Night Train To Memphis
13. Texas Jim Lewis – Too Late To Worry, Too Blue To Care
14. Rex Griffin – Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby
15. Al Dexter and his Troopers – Pistol Packin’ Mama
16. Red Foley – Smoke On The Water
17. Wilf Carter - A Sinner’s Prayer
18. Woody Guthrie & Sonny Terry – All You Fascists Bound To Lose
19. Bradley Kincaid and his Kentucky Mountain Boys – Ain’t We Crazy
20. Tex Ritter – There’s A New Moon Over My Shoulder
21. Gene Autry – Gonna’ Build A Big Fence Around Texas
22. Wesley Tuttle – With Tears In My Eyes
23. Floyd Tillman - Drivin’ Nails In My Coffin
24. Johnny Bond – So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed
25. Molly O’Day – When God Comes To Gather His Jewels
26. Merle Travis – Divorce Me C.O.D.
27. Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys – Keep A-Knockin’ But You Can’t Come In
28. Delmore Brothers – Freight Train Boogie
29. Harry Choates – Jole Blon
30. The Prairie Ramblers – I Don’t Love Anybody But You

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The second article in the history of country music covered the trends and artists of the depression and pre-war years, 1930-41. Here we’ll look at some of the songs of the era. The photo on the cover comes from a superb series of colour photos from the US in the 1930s and ’40s.

* * *

Rock ‘n’ roll grew out of R&B and various shades of country, especially rockabilly, a sub-genre that peaked in the 1950s. But what is widely regarded as the first rockabilly number dates back to 1939, Buddy Jones’ Rockin’ Rollin’ Mama. It’s a futile exercise to identify “the first-ever rock ‘n’ roll record”, but any list of contenders must include Rockin’ Rollin’ Mama.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s list of “500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll” features shockingly few early country songs. One that is included is Jimmie Rodgers Blue Yodel No. 9, recorded in 1930 with Louis Armstrong, marking the first instance of a white country singer collaborating with a black musician. As the title suggests, the collaboration with Satchmo was preceded by eight blue yodels, which introduced an Alpine musical form into the crazy stew that also included influences as diverse as Hawaiian sounds and 18^th-century folk ballads from England. By collaborating with Armstrong, Rodgers also helped to introduce jazz to the mix, which would find fuller expression with the rise of western swing.

While Blue Yodel starts our 2-CD set, Red Foley’s Old Shep of 1941 almost bookends it. The maudlin ballad about a child’s dying dog is not really very good (and the sound quality here isn’t great), but it also merits consideration in the development of rock ‘n’ roll for helping to inspire a pre-pubescent Elvis Presley of Tupelo, Mississippi to take up music. In fact, Old Shep was the first song Elvis ever sang in public, at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show in Tupelo in October 1945 (he placed fifth in the talent show). After becoming a rock ‘n’ roll sensation, Elvis paid tribute to the song he once was obsessed with by recording it.

The terribly arbitrary and incomplete Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s list also includes Roy Acuff’s Wabash Cannonball — one of the many train songs in country. A folk song from the late 19^th century originally recorded by the Carter Family in 1929, it was Acuff’s breakthrough hit, launching a career that spanned four decades. In 1948 he reluctantly ran for governor of Tennessee on a Republican ticket (the idea initially was a publicity stunt), but lost to two-time governor Gordon Browning, who won 67% of the vote.

One country singer who did become a governor was Jimmie Davis, who governed Louisiana as a Democrat for two non-consecutive stints (1944–48, 1960–64). Davies’ signature tune, You Are My Sunshine, now is Louisiana’s state song. He even claimed to have written it as a school boy, but that is untrue (imagine that, a politician who tells lies). It was written by the Rice Brothers Gang of Shreveport, Louisiana but first recorded on 22 August 1939 by the Pine Ridge Boys of Atlanta. Davies, who recorded his version in 1940, put his co-composer credit on the song after buying the rights to it from the Rice brothers. At campaign rallies, Davies would sing the song while riding a horse called, of course, Sunshine.

Bob Wills had been co-inventing western swing for a few years before he scored his first national hit with New San Antonio Rose, a reworking of his 1938 instrumental song (his use of drums and horns when performing his hit at the Grand Ole Opry caused quite a bit of a stir in Nashville). Arguably the more influential Wills song, however, was 1936’s Steel Guitar Rag, written by Leon McAuliffe, which was pivotal in popularising the steel guitar, which gives country the Hawaiian sound (the steel refers to the slide held in the hand that holds the frets).

Roy Rogers is among Hollywood’s singing cowboys of the movies featured here (though songs by the original singing movie cowboy, Ken Maynard, are quite difficult to find). Rogers was a founder in 1933 of the Sons of the Pioneers. The original pioneers are long gone, but new generations of pioneers are keeping the name alive even now, led by Luther Nallie, who joined the group in 1968. But back in the ’30s, Rogers soon left for the big screen while the Sons of the Pioneers became both country staples and performers on the big screen, including the 1942 movie with Rogers named after the band. They recorded the first version of Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds — written by bandmember Bob Nolan, who first named it Tumbling Tumble Leaves — before Gene Autry made it famous. For his part, Autry was the first to record the standard That Silver-Haired Daddy Of Mine in 1931. A later compilation will feature the Sons’ other great original, 1946’s Cool Water (also written by Nolan).

Woody Guthrie (pictured) was regarded as a country singer before folk music went its own way. Guthrie of course influenced generations of folk singers; indeed, he spearheaded the folk movement with acolytes such as Pete Seeger. It arguably reached its zenith with the output of Bob Dylan in the 1960s. Dylan also owed a lot to the repository of blues and country. Other than Guthrie, it is evident that Dylan listened much to the original Carter Family. Their rendition of a traditional hymn, Can The Circle Be Unbroken, was covered by Dylan and many others (Carl Perkins also borrowed the chorus for his Daddy Sang Bass, later covered by Johnny Cash with the help of June Carter). Dylan adopted several traditional folk songs, including the Appalachian ballad Pretty Polly for Ballad Of Hollis Brown.

Lastly, Gid Tannen and his Skillet Lickers might have been the first disco musicians: in the introduction to Soldier’s Joy Breakdown, Tannen makes reference to shakin’ booties before his band launches into a remix of the song they first recorded in 1929.

TRACKLISTING
1. Uncle Dave Macon – All In Down And Out Blues
2. Wade Mainer & Zeke Morris - Train Carry My Gal Back Home
3. Arthur Smith Trio – Indian Creek
4. Lee O’Daniel and his Hillbilly Boys - Mellow Mountain Moon
5. Hackberry Ramblers – Cajun Crawl
6. Hoosier Hot Shots - Breezin’ Along With The Breeze
7. Roy Rogers – Hi Ho Silver
8. Bill Boyd and his Cowboy Ramblers – Jig
9. Coon Creek Girls - Banjo Pickin’ Girl
10. Hank Penny’s Radio Cowboys – Cowboy’s Swing
11. The Tune Wranglers – Dixie Moon
12. Patsy Montana with the Prairie Ramblers – Big Moon
13. Light Crust Doughboys – Gin Mill Blues
14. Roy Acuff and the Crazy Tennesseans – Wabash Cannonball
15. Buddy Jones – Rockin’ Rollin’ Mama
16. Swift Jewel Cowboys – Willie The Weeper
17. Cliff Bruner’s Texas Wanderers - Waiting At The End Of The Road
18. The Pine Ridge Boys – You Are My Sunshine
19. Jimmie Davis – Born To Be Blue
20. Delmore Brothers – Wabash Blues
21. Roy Acuff - Old Age Pension Check
22. Louise Massey and the Westerners – Put Your Little Foot Right Out
23. Bob Wills and his Texan Cowboys - New San Antonio Rose
24. Carter Family – My Home Among The Hills
25. Woody Guthrie – Talkin’ Dust Bowl Blues
26. Blue Sky Boys – Brown Eyes
27. Tex Ritter – Good-Bye My Little Cherokee
28. Red Foley – Old Shep
29. Texas Jim Lewis – Old Fashioned Hoedown

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The titles of posts in this series may be a bit confusing. They will refer to the timespan covered in the mixes. But this post looks at the era from about 1930 to about 1941. The next post will include the 1937-41 mix, but the text will be a sidebar to this article, also referring to 1930-41. I hope that makes sense…

Record sales collapsed dramatically with the Depression, with sales dropping from 104 million in 1927 to just 6 million in 1932. Some records still sold prodigiously, of course. Gene Autry’s That Silver-Haired Daddy Of Mine (released in 1931 but becoming a mega-hit a couple of years later, it is sometimes considered the first honky tonk record, a decade before that sub-genre really took hold) sold a million copies, as did Patsy Montana’s 1935 hit I Want To Be A Cowboy’s Sweetheart.

The 1930s saw the rise of the singing cowboys, combining the motion pictures with records.  There had been singing cowboys before, like the real cowherder Carl Sprague, and the frontier ballads (lovingly collected in the 1910s by John Lomax) contributed to the country repertoire. The breakthrough, however, came with the movie cowboys. The first was Ken Maynard, but more successful were Autry, Tex Ritter (father of the late actor John Ritter) and Roy Rogers, perhaps the most commercially savvy of the lot. Various other country stars made cameos in Hollywood over the years, including Patsy Montana, Pee Wee King, Red Foley, Bob Wills, Ernest Tubb and Jimmie Davis. The movie cowboy imagery had an enduring influence, especially in the Stetson hats that periodically become obligatory country uniform and the garish rhinestoned outfits taken to a ludicrous extreme in the 1960s by Porter Wagoner.  The cowboy song has made periodic comebacks, led by the likes of Marty Robbins in the 1950s and Willie Nelson in the ’70s. Apart from Patsy Montana (from Bill Clinton’s hometown of Hope, Arkansas), there were singing cowgirls too, such as Louise Massey and Kitty Lee. The era was a good time for harmonising sibling acts such as the Monroe Brothers (future bluegrass legend Bill and brother Charlie), the Allen Brothers, The Blue Sky Boys, the Delmore Brothers, and  the Coon Creek Girls (three of whose five members were the Ledford sisters).

A massively influential form of country that infused the genre with jazz, blues and pop had its origins in the 1930s: western swing, a term that would be coined only in 1944. Its progenitor was Milton Brown. Brown had just found success when he was killed in a car crash in 1936 at the age of 33. Bob Wills, a member in Brown’s previous band, took the baton and popularised western swing. The charismatic fiddler (who adds the cartoonish falsetto asides in the records) and his Texas Playboys — with their country string and swing horn sections — had enduring success, but had their biggest hit early: 1940’s New San Antonio Rose, with Tommy Duncan on vocals. By then several western swing acts had come and and some already gone. Coming in the wake of Brown and Wills were acts such as cliff Bruner, Hartman’s Heartbreakers, the Light Crust Doughboys, Swift Jewel Cowboys, Hoosier Hot Shots, the Tune Wranglers and Hank Penny, who in his long career would staddle various forms of country. Some country artists, such as Patsy Montana and Louise Massey, would dabble in western swing occasionally.

1940s country legend Merle Travis defined western swing this way: “Western Swing is nothing more than a group of talented country boys, unschooled in music, but playing the music they feel, beating a solid two-four rhythm to the harmonies that buzz around their brains. When it escapes in all its musical glory, my friend, you have western swing.” When rock & roll broke big in the 1950s, Wills caustically remarked that he and his likes had been playing that already in the 1930s. Arguably, Uncle Dave Macon (born in 1870!) was the first rock ‘n’ roller; he was the first country singer to feature the word “rock” in a songtitle, back in 1927.

The Depression gave rise to a series of songs with socialist undertones (though nobody would call it that), and not only by Woody Guthrie. Socially critical songs preceded the Depression, of course. Bob Miller, a collaborator with Irving Berlin, wrote Eleven Cent Cotton and Forty Cent Meat in 1928, for example. In 1932 he called people to come out and vote in the election that brought Franklin D Roosevelt into the White House, with the promise that “the poor forgotten man” is “gonna cause a change”. Bob Miller also predicted the 1937 assassination of Louisiana’s wealth redistributing governor Huey Long in his 1935 song The Death Of Huey P Long. Even the fun-loving Uncle Dave Macon sang about living in hard times. Woody Guthrie was regarded as a country singer, and articulated the injustices of capitalism and society in ways that anticipated the schism between country and folk music.

TRACKLISTING
1. Jimmie Rodgers & Louis Armstrong – Blue Yodel No 9 (2:39)
2. Allen Brothers – New Chattanooga Blues (3:04)
3. Charlie Poole – It’s Movin’ Day (3:26)
4. Bud Billings & Carson Robison – When Your Hair Has Turned To Silver (3:45)
5. Ken Maynard – The Lone Star Trail (3:12)
6. Cowboy Ed Crane – Starving To Death On A Government Claim (2:58)
7. Three Tobacco Tags – Aint Gonna Do It No More (2:54)
8. Gene Autry & Jimmy Long - That Silver Haired Daddy Of Mine (2:46)
9. Glen Rice and his Beverly Hill Billies – Ridge Runnin’ Roan (3:12)
10. Jimmie Rodgers – I’m Free (3:05)
11. Delmore Brothers – Brown’s Ferry Blues (2:33)
12. Ernest V. Stoneman – All I Got’s Gone (2:54)
13. Sons Of The Pioneers - Way Out There (3:20)
14. Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers – Soldier’s Joy Breakdown (2:54)
15. Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies – Garbage Man Blues (2:42)
16. Shelton Brothers – Ridin’ On A Humpback Mule (2:37)
17. Patsy Montana and the Prairie Ramblers – I Wanna Be A Cowboy’s Sweetheart (3:07)
18. Carter Family - Can The Circle Be Unbroken (Bye And Bye) (3:10)
19. Coon Creek Girls - Pretty Polly (2:52)
20. Blue Sky Boys – I’m Here To Get My Baby Out Of Jail (2:54)
21. Milton Brown and his Brownies – Yes Sir (Just Because) (2:41)
22. Bob Wills - Steel Guitar Rag (2:46)
23. Hartman’s Heartbreakers – No Hugging Or Kissing (2:40)
24. Jimmie Davis - Mama’s Getting Hot And Papa’s Getting Cold (2:54)
25. Monroe Brothers – Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms (2:28)
26. Hartman’s Heartbreakers with Betty Lou – Feels Good (2:33)
27. Sons Of The Pioneers - Tumbling Tumbleweeds (2:35)

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After the first instalment of the country history series, it was suggested that I should have at least two compilations for each article. When I floated the idea on this blog’s Facebook page, a number of people approved of the idea. So here’s a second disc  for the Pioneer Years – 1920s selection.

…

In the first part of the history, we noted the first ever country recording: Sally Gooden by Eck Robertson, put to record on 30 June 1922 in New York. Ragtime Annie comes from the same session, recorded the following day, this time without the civil war veteran Henry C Gilliland, who played on Sally Gooden.

We also noted that a year later, Fiddlin’ John Carson scored the first country hit song with Little Old Cabin In The Lane. Carson features here again, and so does his daughter, Moonshine Kate (right), who had been touring with Carson since she was 15. It is a bit of a disappointment to report that Mr Carson was not some kind of proto hippie: Moonshine Kate was a stage name for Rosa Lee Carson, born in 1909. She died in 1992.

Samantha Bumgarner (one suspects a bureaucrat’s carelessness to be responsible for that name) probably was the first woman to record a country record. Her Shout Lou was recorded in 1924. Bumgarner, who was born in 1878, performed on the country and folk circuit until shortly before her death in 1961.

The first mix featured Uncle Jimmy Thompson, who in the mid-1920s already was in his 70s. Likewise, the fiddler Mellie Dunham started his recording career as a septuagenarian. Dunham was born in 1853 in Maine –not a traditional centre for Old Time Music (or any music, for that matter). He must have been at least faintly conscious of the Civil War, and probably was in his 50s when he saw the first automobiles (country fan Henry Ford later invited Dunham to his residence for a performance). That alone is intriguing, I think. Better still, by profession Dunham was a maker of snowshoes, and as part of that vocation he manufactured 60 pairs of snowshoes for Peary’s Arctic expedition.

Prince Albert Hunt is credited with having been the progenitor of Western Swing. He was not the only one, nor perhaps the first, to infuse jazz and blues into his Old Time Music sound, but as a Texan he might have had more influence than the others on Bob Wills, the king of western swing and leader of the Texas Playboys. Blues In The Bottle was recorded in 1928 in San Antonio (whence I presume Wills’ San Antone Rose hailed). Hunt was shot dead, apparently by a jealous husband outside a bar in Dallas in 1931. He was just 31.

Dan Hornsby , a music producer as well a singer-songwriter who frequently collaborated with Gid Tannen and his Skillet Lickers, gives a contemporary account of a minor disaster that made the news in the US in August 1928 after a building in Shelby, North Carolina collapsed, killing six and injuring 12.

This compilation features what may well be the first in the car songs genre. Oscar Ford’s song about his namesake’s Model A car preceded Frank Hutchison’s The Chevrolet Six y a few months (ford recorded his song on 11 April 1929; Hutchison his on July 9). Both preceded the Beach Boys by three decades and Springsteen by almost four.

And sensitive vegetarians might want to stay away from Gid Tannen’s Hog Killing Day, amusing though it is.

TRACKLISTING:
1. Eck Robertson – Ragtime Annie
2. Wendell Hall – It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’
3. Fiddlin’ John Carson feat. the Virginia Reelers – Arkansas Traveller
4. Samantha Bumgarner - Shout Lou
5. Kelly Harrell – I Wish I Was A Single Girl Again
6. Ernest Thompson – Are You From Dixie?
7. Charlie Poole and his North Carolina Ramblers – The Highway Man
8. Mellie Dunham and his Orchestra – Mountain Rangers
9. Harry McClintock – Hallelujah! I’m A Bum
10. Aiken County String Band – High Sheriff
11. Arthur Tanner and his Corn Shuckers - Knoxville Girl
12. Uncle Dave Macon – Rabbit In The Pea Patch
13. Jimmie Rodgers – Ben Dewberry’s Final Run
14. Prince Albert Hunt - Blues In The Bottle
15. Deford Bailey – John Henry
16. Gid Tanner’s Skillet Lickers – Hog Killing Day Pt 2
17. Uncle Eck Dunford – Old Shoes & Leggins
18. Dan Hornsby – The Shelby Disaster
19. John Dilleshaw – Farmer’s Blues
20. Carter Family – I’m Thinking Tonight Of My Blue Eyes
21. Tom Darby & Jimmie Tarlton – I Left Her At The River
22. Roy Harper & Earl Shirkey – The Bootleggers Dream Of Home
23. Oscar Ford – Henry Ford’s Model A
24. Frank Hutchison – The Chevrolet Six
25. Vernon Dalhart – Farm Relief Song
26. Moonshine Kate – My Man’s A Jolly Railroad Man

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Previously in A History of Country
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This is the first of a series in probably nine parts, aimed at providing a brief history of country music (all accompanied by an appropriate CD-sized mix). I hope it will not only inform those who have an interest in the genre, but also persuade those who resist becoming acquainted with country music to give it a chance, perhaps weakening resistance and preconceived notions which might be reduced to the stereoptypes of Confederation flags and the jargons of Hicksville. Of course it is very possible to dislike the sound of the steel guitar, the banjo, the fiddle or the yodel. But is country all that? I would propose that country is so broad a genre that it is nearly impossible to claim to hate all of it. I hope the mixes I have prepared for each chapter will illustrate the range of country music; perhaps even help convert some sceptics. I also hope that the country fan will find things to enjoy in these mixes, even though I have tried to concentrate on music that would be representative of the era covered in the text. Even so, some of the older recordings are fairly difficult to find, I think. Special thanks to reader Rick for sourcing a couple of particularly difficult-to-find tracks.

I have consulted many sources, but I should single out two: the exquisitely compiled and illustrated book Country Music: The Complete Visual History, edited by Paul Kingsbury & Alannah Nash, and Roughstock’s History of Country Music. The Roughstock takes a different approach to the one I take here, so the histories are, I hope, complementary. Where I commit errors, I apologise. Where I emphasise one fact and omit another, feel free to share your insights in the comments section (and, of course, everybody who reads this is urged to leave a comment; even if it is a three-word feedback). And so to part 1, covering the early years before the Great Depression hit.

For the first few decades of its recorded history, country music was not even called that. Alternately, it was called things like Old Familiar Music, Hillbilly or folk, but the term “country” did not find any currency until the late 1940s. Whatever it was called and however one may define it, country music has its roots in the rural Southern Appalachian folk songs — the so-called broadside ballads, which geographical isolation had preserved for decades and even centuries — and in the minstrel shows which brought black music to white folks through the visual medium of blackface. It has its roots in the Christian revivalism of Billy Sunday (read up his story; it’s quite amazing) and Dwight Moody, in Calvinist church music, and in the gospel of the cotton fields. It has its roots in the French square dance, the quadrilles. It has its roots in the songs sung by cowboys, whose mobile lifestyle encouraged the use of small musical instruments, such as the mouth harmonica and the fiddle. And it has its roots in the popular music produced in urban New York’s Tin Pan Alley, whose songs travelled south via vaudeville shows. (For a fine series on country’s early roots, visit the River’s Invitation blog)

From the start, country was located in the South, with its socially inflexible but culturally promiscuous racial barriers. The fiddle and banjo, for example, were initially instruments of black music, though the banjo, an African instrument brought to America by slaves, was innovated on by whites to give it its present five-string form. The blues had a profound effect on country (in the 1920s and ’30s, many country songs incorporated the term blues in their titles). That, of course, did not inhibit the occasional incidence of coarse racism in country music. So it was not peculiar that the hugely popular and very influential string band Gid Tannen and the Skillet Lickers should release songs with regrettable titles like Run Nigger Run.

Still, forgotten black blues musicians such as Arnold Shultz and Rufus Payne had a huge influence on the development of country. Shultz, a fiddler and guitarist taught the future bluegrass legend Bill Monroe (I’ve heard rumours of Shultz recordings existing; but it seems that these are just a myth) and influenced the famous finger-picking guitar style of Merle Travis, while Hank Williams — perhaps country’s most pivotal figure — learned to play guitar from Payne. Bob Wills, another country pioneer with his Western Swing, incorporated the blues and jazz sounds he loved into his music. Uncle Dave Macon, meanwhile, claimed to have learned his song Rock About My Saro Jane from black stevedores along the Cumberland river in the 1880s.

The advent of accessible radio in the early 1920s was crucial in the rise of popular music, country included, as record companies started to seek new sounds. Indeed, radio was crucial in the long-term, with Nashville’s WSM Radio’s wide reach broadcasting the Grand Ole Opry shows from the city’s Ryman Auditorium almost nationwide from 1927, turning many country artists into household names even before the Opry’s syndication.

The first-ever country record was recorded on 30 June 1922 — not in a random southern location, but in New York City, at the Victor Talking Machine Company on West 38^th Street. The 35-year old Texan fiddler Eck Robertson put on record several tracks, accompanied on some by Henry C Gilliland, a 70-year old Civil War veteran. After a few months, Victor chose to release Robertson’s signature song, Sally Gooden. It made no impact whatsoever, nor did the fiddler’s four follow-up releases.

The first country hit came soon after, and it was recorded in the South. In March 1922, an Atlanta radio station, WSB, invited local fiddlers and other folk string musicians — pickers — to perform in its studio. The experiment proved popular, and the star performer was Fiddlin’ John Carson. He was heard by a visiting A&R man, Ralph Peer, who three years earlier had released one of the first blues records, Mamie Smith’s Crazy Blues. Peer, a key person in the development of country music, signed up Carson for the Okeh label. On 14 June 1923, in a make-shift studio on Atlanta’s Nassau Street, Carson recorded Little Old Cabin In The Lane, a minstrel song from the 1870s written by Will S Hays. Peer thought Carson’s vocals were nothing like anything he had heard before, and not in a good way. Yet, what Peer thought was “pluperfect awful” singing would provide a template for generations of country singers. The recording was a hit.

A year later, classically-trained tenor Vernon Dalhart’s The Wreck Of The Old ’97, backed with The Prisoner’s Song, became country’s first million seller. Country music was now a commercial proposition, and Dalhart was its first superstar. New stars now popped up. Uncle Jimmy Thompson, already 78 in 1925; Uncle Dave Macon, a trucker in his 50s (whose 1924 Hill Billie Blues gave the genre one of its names); Carl T Sprague, a genuine cowboy singing genuine western music; North Carolina’s Charlie Poole (country’s first celebrity death, in 1931 at 39); Riley Puckett, who was country’s first yodeller; Gid Tannen and his Skillet Lickers (of which the blind Puckett and his fiddling collaborator Clayton McMichen were also members) . And then, in 1929, the Carter Family — A.P., his wife Sara and her cousin Maybelle (a later incarnation, after Sara and A.P. divorced, included wider family members, including Maybelle’s daughters June and Anita) — broke through with the lovely Wildwood Flower. Along with Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills, the Carter Family would define the sound of country music.

If Dalhart was country’s first superstar, then Jimmie Rodgers was the genre’s first mega star. Discovered and signed to the Victor label by Ralph Peer (on 1 August 1927, the same day Peer signed the Carter Family), Rodgers first recorded in 1927, and found success with the Blue Yodel, which set a theme of yodelling sequels until his death at 35 in 1933. One of these yodel songs marked the first interracial country recording, 1930’s Blue Yodel No.9 with Louis Armstrong. And there was even a black country star, the harmonica, guitar and banjo virtuoso DeFord Bailey, who regularly appeared on the Opry until 1941 when he was abruptly dismissed, but whose recording career, like that of many others (including Eck Robertson)  ended with the onset of the Great Depression.

TRACKLISTING:
1. Eck Robertson – Sallie Gooden
2. Fiddlin’ John Carson – Little Old Cabin In The Lane
3. Ernest Stoneman – The Titanic
4. Vernon Dalhart – Wreck Of The Old 97
5. Charlie Poole – The Girl I Left In Sunny Tennessee
6. Carl T. Sprague – O Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie
7. Uncle Jimmie Thompson - Lynchburg
8. Charlie Poole – There’ll Come A Time
9. Uncle Dave Macon & His Fruit Jar Drinkers – Rock About My Saro Jane
10. Gid Tanner’s Skillet Lickers – Bully Of The Town
11. Vernon Dalhart – The Dying Girl
12. Ted Chesnut – He’s Only A Miner Killed In The Ground
13. Bradley Kincaid – Barbara Allen
14. Riley Puckett & Clayton McMichen – Old Molly Hare
15. Harry McClintock – Goodbye Old Paint
16. DeFord Bailey – Davidson County Blues
17. Jimmie Rodgers – Brakeman’s Blues (Blue Yodel No.2)
18. The Carter Family – Wildwood Flower
19. Tom Darby & Jimmie Tarlton – Lonesome Railroad
20. Uncle Dave Macon – Buddy, Won’t You Roll Down The Line
21. Wendell Hall – In The Big Rock Candy Mountain
22. Jimmie Rodgers – Hobo Bill’s Last Ride
23. Bentley Boys – Down On Penny’s Farm
24. Blind Alfred Reed – How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live
25. Clarence ‘Tom’ Ashley – The House Carpenter

(includes front and back covers)

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