Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

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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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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