Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

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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Previously in A History of Country
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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.

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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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