Country for Dummies

Rock audiences have historically shown little interest in country music proper, whose knowledge is almost always confined to giants like Johnny Cash and Hank Williams.

This is nonetheless odd, considering how many artists have won over both the masses and critics by blending rock and country: Byrds, Gram Parsons, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Neil Young, Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, the entire southern rock scene from Lynyrd Skynyrd to the Allman Brothers, much of the West Coast sound (from the Grateful Dead to the more radio-friendly America), and so on.

So we set out to compile a list of ten names that might serve as an introduction to country music for those who have always loved these crossovers. The trouble is that roughly half a century passed between the birth of country and the point when it became hard to draw a clean line between it and rock (more or less during the Seventies).

Summing up five decades of music in ten names is, as you can imagine, impossible. There's no pretense here of passing off these ten chosen artists as the greatest in the history of country. The aim is different: to identify the genre's main sub-currents across the period in question, and for each one to point to a name that can serve as a way in.

A great many artists who left their mark on the genre's history have therefore been set aside, among them Jimmie Rodgers, Red Foley, Tex Williams, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Hank Snow, Marty Robbins, Slim Whitman, George Jones, Hank Thompson, Faron Young, Johnny Horton, Don Gibson, Patsy Cline, Roger Miller, Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Bobbie Gentry, and many more besides.

The hope is to return to each of them sooner or later for a closer look; in the meantime, here are the ten names that, should you take a liking to them, we hope will push you to keep exploring this wonderful universe.

Carter Family

Convention holds that country music was born in the summer of 1927, when Ralph Peer, a Victor Records talent scout, arrived in Bristol, Tennessee, and recorded a handful of tracks on location by Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family. Won over by their talent, he arranged new sessions with both acts the following year, held directly at the Victor Studios in Camden, New Jersey.

That second round produced "Blue Yodel" for Rodgers and "Wildwood Flower" for the Carters, astronomical hits that each sold a million copies and thrust the two names into the imagination of small-town America.

The Carters were chosen not because Rodgers was inferior to them (ranking the two would be pointless and biased), but because his music still carried a strongly marked "Black" component. The Carters, by contrast, already had that aura of music played "by white people, for white people" that would go on to define much of country music, setting it clearly apart both from Black acoustic blues and from the white folk revival that Greenwich Village would take as its model decades later.

The Carter Family was made up of Sara (vocals, autoharp) and Maybelle (guitar, backing vocals), with occasional vocal contributions from Sara's husband, Alvin Pleasant (better known by his initials, A.P.).

Despite a limited hands-on role in the actual recordings, A.P. was the glue holding the Carter Family together: he organized the concerts and recording sessions, and above all drew on a boundless repertoire of traditional songs, picked up while roaming the United States selling fruit trees, before he turned to music as a career.

The original Carter Family lineup would remain active until 1944, though the name was later revived by Maybelle and her daughters (among them June Carter, future wife of Johnny Cash).

Five songs to start with: “Wildwood Flower” (1928), “Keep On The Sunny Side” (1928), “John Hardy Was a Desperate Little Man” (1928), “I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes” (1929), “Can The Circle Be Unbroken?” (1935)

Recommended compilations: “Wildwood Flower” (Living Era, 2000) is the best one, but it's now out of print. It can be replaced by combining “A Proper Introduction to the Carter Family: Keep On The Sunny Side” (Proper, 2004) with “Can The Circle Be Unbroken: Country Music’s First Family” (Columbia, 2000).

Roy Acuff

Universally regarded as the voice of the Grand Ole Opry, Roy Acuff performed on Nashville's famous radio program from 1938 to 1946, and again from the Sixties through the Eighties. Praised in his lifetime by several U.S. presidents (Nixon and Reagan chief among them), he died in 1992 at the age of 89.

He was without doubt the most representative figure of traditional country music in the Thirties, back when it was simply known as hillbilly music. He rose to fame in 1936 with two songs from the Carter Family's repertoire: "Wabash Cannon Ball" (whose version by Acuff became the first country single to sell more than two million copies) and "The Great Speckled Bird" (with lyrics written from scratch by Acuff himself). A handful of originals followed, all of which more or less became classics, further proof of Acuff's talent.

The arrangements of his songs — initially just acoustic guitar, slide, fiddle and upright bass — grew richer after the war, though they only sporadically matched the quality peaks of his first decade of activity.

Five songs to start with: “The Great Speckled Bird” (1936), “Wabash Cannon Ball” (1936), “Eyes Are Watching You” (1939), “The Precious Jewel” (1940), “Waiting for My Call to Glory” (1946)

Recommended compilations: “The King of Country Music” (Living Era, 1998) is the best one, but it's now out of print. “The Essential Roy Acuff” (Columbia, 1992) can be an alternative, though the track selection is decidedly weaker, and for “Wabash Cannon Ball” it includes the 1947 version, which, however good, can't compare to the 1936 recording.

Sons of the Pioneers

American music in the Thirties was marked by the spread of Western music, which provided the backdrop for countless films of the era. These were popular-style songs, sometimes with an epic tone, whose arrangements started from the same instrumentation as traditional country before gradually opening up to outside influences, absorbing swing orchestras, Mexican tradition and more.

The Sons of the Pioneers were the most important group of the movement. They were founded in 1933 by Bob Nolan, Roy Rogers and Tim Spencer, three genuine legends: authors of a long string of classics (Nolan especially), singers, instrumentalists, actors, and later on even record executives.

Individually or as a group, they appeared in at least a hundred films. Rogers left the band in 1937, the other two in '49, leaving it in the hands of the musicians who had joined in the meantime. The name survives to this day, having seen roughly forty members pass through its ranks, though its most important legacy obviously remains that of its first two decades of activity.

Five songs to start with: “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” (1934), “Blue Prairie” (1936), “I’m an Old Cowhand” (1936), “Cool Water” (1941), “Riders in the Sky” (1949)

Recommended compilation: “Ultimate Collection” (Hip-O, 2002).

Ernest Tubb

Honky-tonk was the most widespread country subgenre throughout the 1940s and much of the 1950s. A direct continuation of the hillbilly tradition, it became famous for its swaying, rolling gait — often set to waltz time — and for making the electric guitar central to country music.

It was crystallized by Ernest Tubb, the Texas Troubadour, who reached the Billboard top-30 eleven times between 1941 and 1953 (no small feat for a country artist in an era commercially dominated by crooners and jazz orchestras).

His songs followed a fixed formula: all built on the same drawling cadence, all with lyrics somewhere between tragic and sarcastic, all streaked with a little electric guitar solo, all featuring him egging on whichever session man was soloing with wonderfully down-home catchphrases like “Rave on, brother” or “Tell the truth, son.”

Far from incidentally, in this endless self-replication, Tubb always came out on top. His singles from the first five years of his career in particular are moving in their blend of spontaneity and rigor. That said, he did allow himself the odd curious detour: consider the swinging 1949 collaboration with the Andrews Sisters.

Five songs to start with: “Walking the Floor Over You” (1941), “Our Baby’s Book” (1941), “You Nearly Lose Your Mind” (1942), “Give Me a Little Old Fashioned Love” (1950), “Thanks A Lot” (1963)

Recommended compilations: “The Definitive Hits Collection” (Collectors’ Choice, 2001), a double CD, is by far the best. Unfortunately it's out of print and currently only findable at rather unfriendly prices. You can make do with “The Definitive Collection” (MCA, 2006), which shares some of that superb material, though it's not nearly as complete.

Bill Monroe

Marked out by the technical mastery of its musicians, complex vocal harmonies, and the recurring, if not fixed, use of the mandolin, bluegrass remains to this day one of country's most distinctive strands, and one of the few to have generated any real interest among rock critics. The name comes from the Blue Grass Boys, the band that backed Bill Monroe from 1938 onward, though he himself described his own music simply as “mountain hillbilly” (from the mountains of Kentucky, to be precise, where he was born and raised).

A prolific songwriter, skilled tenor and excellent mandolin player, Monroe led several lineups of the Blue Grass Boys, whose ranks over the years included legendary musicians such as banjo player Earl Scruggs and singer-guitarists Lester Flatt and Jimmy Martin. Many of their songs have since become genre standards.

Five songs to start with: “Kentucky Waltz” (1945), “Footprints in the Snow” (1945), “Blue Moon Of Kentucky” (1946), “Sweetheart You Done Me Wrong” (1947), “Gotta Travel On” (1959)

Recommended compilations: “The Father of Bluegrass” (Living Era, 1999), the best option for his 1940s recordings for Bluebird and Columbia, is out of print but still relatively easy to track down. For the Decca period (from 1950 onward), there's “The Definitive Collection” (MCA, 2005), which offers re-recordings of many of the earlier era's anthems in fresher, livelier form (it's not an uncommon opinion that these versions surpass the originals).

Eddy Arnold

More than the thirteen singles he placed in the US top-30 from 1947 onward, it's the 115 weeks spent at the top of the country charts specifically – a record still unbeaten today – that best conveys Eddy Arnold's iconic stature. Able to range from yodeling highs to the hushed tones of the crooner, Arnold displayed communicative skills superior to his contemporaries from early on in his career, marked by a string of breathtaking hits that, while retaining traditional country instrumentation, showed a distinctly pop-leaning dynamism.

Then in 1955, essentially as the first to do so, he ventured into a new, sophisticated orchestral style that within a few years would supplant honky-tonk's rough-hewn tones, establishing itself under the name Nashville sound. It's striking how often genre critics overlook this pioneering role of his, preferring instead to place the subgenre's big bang in Chet Atkins's admittedly superb 1957 productions.

It would nonetheless be under Atkins's wing that Arnold would live through the most commercially successful phase of his career, in the mid-1960s, built around a matured, baritone tone.

Five songs to start with: “It’s a Sin” (1946), “I’ll Hold You in My Arms” (1947), “Just a Little Lovin’” (1947), “The Cattle Call” (1955), “Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye” (1968)

Recommended collection: “Complete Original #1 Hits” (Real Gone Music, 2013).

Kitty Wells

She died in 2012 at the age of 92, and while she may not necessarily have been the greatest country singer of all time (that's not for us to decide), she was without a doubt the most important. Setting aside the Carter Family for traditional country and Patsy Montana for Western music, this world had remained a men-only game for more than two decades. It was Kitty Wells, in the early Fifties, who upended the status quo, setting off a chain reaction that would never fully die down. It's impossible to imagine the likes of Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette and Dolly Parton without Kitty pointing the way for them.

Rarely a songwriter herself, unlike some of the artists listed above, she nonetheless managed to carve out a distinctive style: at first a polished honky-tonk, later shaped by her native Nashville but without excess, she always seemed to move in a world of her own, barely touched by passing trends.

Today she's regarded as an important example of proto-feminism, thanks to the many songs she recorded about women's hardships. To put it plainly, at the time - especially in her own milieu - it was customary to pin the blame for men's infidelity entirely on women. Several of the songs our heroine performed instead put some of that responsibility back on the other sex.

Five songs to start with: “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” (1952), “Whose Shoulder Will You Cry On” (1955), “Amigo’s Guitar” (1959), “Will Your Lawyer Talk to God” (1962), “This White Circle” (1964)

Recommended collection: “God’s Honky Tonk Angel: the First Queen of Country Music” (Edsel, 2001). Out of print for years, it sadly remains the only comprehensive anthology ever devoted to Kitty Wells (box sets aside). If you manage to track it down at a reasonable price, don't pass it up.

Buck Owens

Although he never racked up huge sales, he dominated the country charts and was one of the pillars of Sixties country. Regarded as a pioneer and figurehead of the Bakersfield sound, which in that decade tried to counter Nashville's commercial grip, he showcased a lively, driving brand of country built on the ringing tone of the Fender Telecaster, and laid the groundwork for the fusion with rock that the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Bros would carry out just a few years later.

His influence, vast and proudly acknowledged by all his followers, starting with Merle Haggard, also crossed the Atlantic: even the Beatles would try their hand at his songs.

He later became an icon for the neo-traditionalists of the Eighties, from Randy Travis to Dwight Yoakam, as well as for the alt-country wave that over the past two or three decades has won itself a special place in the hearts of indie-rock audiences.

Five songs to start with: “Foolin’ Around” (1961), “Act Naturally” (1963), “My Heart Skips a Beat” (1964), “I’ve Got a Tiger By the Tail” (1964), “Sam’s Place” (1967)

Recommended collection: “40 Greatest Hits: Streets of Bakerfield” (Double Platinum, released in 1999 and reissued in 2006), double CD. Despite the rather tacky cover, it's by far the best anthology available.

Glen Campbell

If the term countrypolitan is generally regarded as a synonym for the Nashville sound, there's also a school of thought that prefers to use it to indicate the strand built around mammoth orchestral arrangements that developed from the mid-Sixties onward, effectively representing a further step in country's evolutionary line.

The embodiment of this style goes by the name of Glen Campbell, one of the biggest stars in country music (between 1967 and 1977 he racked up album and single after album and single in both the US and UK top 10). Among his illustrious collaborators were Jimmy Webb, who wrote several of his most famous songs, and Al De Lory, producer and arranger.

An extraordinary guitarist often employed as a session man (in the Sixties you'll find him on everyone's records: he even played on five tracks of “Pet Sounds“), as well as a sublime performer, Campbell won over audiences with a particularly elaborate formula. His songs, with arrangements bordering on the baroque pop of the era, alternate grandiose ballads with intimate moments, airy accelerations with delightful flourishes of virtuosity. More than once you can spot connections with the early albums of Scott Walker.

Five songs to start with: “If This Is Love” (1967), “Wichita Lineman” (1968), “Dreams of the Everyday Housewife” (1968), “Galveston” (1969), “Southern Nights” (1977)

Raccolta consigliata: “The Capitol Years 65/77” (EMI, 1998), doppio CD.

Tom T. Hall

If the Nashville sound found its nemesis in Bakersfield, the baroque taste of singers like Charlie Rich, Bobbie Gentry and Campbell himself found its polar opposite in the school of progressive country. This curious label was used to describe a mishmash of various styles far removed from Nashville's dictates, to which was added, for the first time, the concept of the politically engaged singer-songwriter (this was, after all, the height of the Dylan revolution, even if country singers often expressed ideas quite far removed from his).

The famous outlaw country movement that arrived a few years later would be the direct consequence of these developments, but at that point the line between country and rock would become impossible to draw, so we'll end our journey here, at the dawn of the Seventies.

Tom T. Hall is perhaps the name best suited to represent this terminal vision of pure, hardcore country. His warm voice, halfway between George Jones and Johnny Cash, adds further color to songs that are already extremely compelling on a purely instrumental level (clean production and arrangements furrowed with exquisite guitar flourishes). The lyrics, essentially little films in themselves, often tell street stories from his native Kentucky.

Five songs to start with: “Ballad Of Forty Dollars” (1968), “Homecoming” (1969), “A Week In A Country Jail” (1969), “Shoeshine Man” (1969), “The Year Clayton Delaney Died” (1971)

Recommended compilations: “Tom T. Hall’s Greatest Hits” (Mercury, 1972) is perhaps a bit short, but features an excellent selection. If you want, you can round it out with “Greatest Hits Vol. 2” (Mercury, 1975).

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