Just as there are many substyles of country music, so, too, the precursors to the music are many. Today’s commercial country music did not evolve from a single strain of rural folk music but was a melding of a number of earlier musical types, including folk music, minstrel songs, jazz, ragtime, and the sentimental songs of Tin Pan Alley. The most well-known component of early country music, of course, was the folk music of the largely rural southern United States, much of which can be traced to the folk music of the British Isles.
Because a handful of folklorists were first among the few scholars to pay serious attention to country music, the strong link between early country (i.e., hillbilly) music and traditional folk music was long ago established. (In this article I use the term “hillbilly” non-pejoratively to refer to recorded country music of the period 1924–41. It is a term that was widely used in the industry at the time, though with varying degrees of deprecation.) John and Alan Lomax, in brochure notes to early LP reissues of 78-rpm recordings from the 1920s and 1930s, and D. K. Wilgus, Archie Green, Ed Kahn, and other folklorists, in the pages of the Journal of American Folklore, Western Folklore, and other scholarly publications, argued persuasively that early hillbilly recording acts in the years 1923–26 were folk musicians who learned their music orally from family and friends, as do any traditional folk artists. Pioneering scholars further argued that these performers’ repertoires were rich in Anglo-American folk ballads, songs, and fiddle tunes of the nineteenth century—even including a small but significant handful of older material of Anglo-Celtic origin. In support of their thesis, they pointed to early recordings of British BALLADS (e. g., “Barbara Allen” by VERNON DALHART, “Pretty Polly” by DOCK BOGGS, and “Knoxville Girl” by MAC & BOB), English or Irish fiddle tunes (numerous recordings of “Soldier’s Joy,” “Leather Breeches,” or “Devil’s Dream”), and traditional American ballads from the nineteenth century (“Omie Wise” by G. B. Grayson & HENRY WHITTER, “When the Work’s All Done This Fall” by CARL T. SPRAGUE, and “John Henry” by almost everyone). Wilgus, Green, and other scholars following their example expended considerable efforts in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s locating the hillbilly artists who had made the recordings of the 1920s and 1930s to document their careers and establish how traditional folk music became the basis for a commercially successful idiom.
In a general way, two standard patterns emerged, though many musicians fell between these two idealized extremes. On the one hand, record company A&R men (“artists and repertoire” men, the early term for producers), sought out well-known (and, incidentally, older) regional artists who, while not full-time professionals, had nevertheless established local reputations as popular performers at fiddlers’ conventions, political rallies, and other social events. These musicians—FIDDLIN’ JOHN CARSON, GID TANNER, Uncle Am Stuart, and Uncle Bunt Stephens among them—were happy to entertain on records as they did in person, but in most cases did not give up their day jobs. At the other extreme were a younger generation of artists—JIMMIE RODGERS, the CARTER FAMILY, CLAYTON MCMICHEN, BOB WILLS, and others—who cherished fervent aspirations of turning pro. These were the acts that provided the impetus for the changes in the styles of country music between the 1920s and 1940s. And, as the industry developed, the contributions of the “part-timers” diminished and their places were taken by those who made music their careers. In barest outline, this synopsis accounts for the emergence of a professional country music industry out of the casual efforts of semiprofessional folk artists—a transformation that took place in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
THE LESS-WELL-KNOWN WELLSPRINGS OF COUNTRY
In addition to traditional British-American folk music, other important strains of American popular music affected the music we have come to know as country—namely, the American commercial musical traditions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as minstrel shows, vaudeville, ragtime, blues, jazz, Tin Pan Alley sentimental balladry, and hymnody and gospel music, both African American and Anglo-American. These tributary streams are evident not only in the recordings by early hillbilly musicians (which are our most extensive, most durable, and certainly most tangible documentation) but also in the fragmentary gleanings from reports of live concerts, radio broadcasts, fiddlers’ conventions, and other public events featuring country music. (It is ironic that phonograph records, which are our primary sources of information, were justifiably regarded by most early hillbilly musicians as only of secondary or tertiary importance in terms of income potential.)
THE MINSTREL STAGE
If we ignore the problem of the origins of minstrel music—a problem that in the past engendered some mean-spirited (if not outright racist) denigrations of the contributions of African American entertainers to the genre—the fact remains that the minstrel stage was the first important commercial entertainment medium in the United States to have demonstrable influence on our folk culture. BLACKFACE MINSTRELSY has shaped folk and commercial entertainment in both form and content, in areas musical and nonmusical.
Musically, minstrel traditions are most visible in the songs and tunes created for the minstrel stage that long outlived that form of presentation: songs by STEPHEN FOSTER (“My Old Kentucky Home,” “Old Black Joe”), Daniel D. Emmett (“Old Dan Tucker,” “De Blue Tail Fly,” “Jawbone,” and possibly “Dixie,” whose authorship has been strongly contested), B. R. Hanby (“Darling Nellie Gray”), Sam DeVere (“Carve Dat Possum”), and others. In the twentieth century these titles came to be associated with country music entertainers such as UNCLE DAVE MACON, SAM AND KIRK MCGEE, GRANDPA JONES, and STRINGBEAN; a number of them are still current in repertoires of BLUEGRASS musicians. Some of the most racially offensive songs mercifully have been stripped of their lyrics, surviving in hillbilly/country music only as instrumental pieces (e. g., “Turkey in the Straw,” published in 1834 as “Zip Coon”).
From a nonmusical standpoint, mistrelsy heavily influenced performance style. The three stock minstrel show figures—Mr. Interlocutor, the pompous master of ceremonies who played the straight man, and Mr. Tambo and Mr. Bones, the tambourine- and bone- or castanet-playing virtuosi who excelled at humorous repartee—can be found in the comedy routines of innumerable country and blue-grass acts. (ARCHIE CAMPBELL’s longtime favorite routine, “That’s Good, That’s Bad,” was a minstrel show standard.) The very essence of the minstrel show—namely, the interspersion of musical with nonmusical entertainment—became part and parcel of live country music shows for much of the twentieth century. A recent manifestation of the minstrel show format was the widely popular HEE HAW, a network and, later, nationally syndicated television series that combined country music with humor. Furthermore, a case has been made (though it is not indisputable) for the role of the minstrel stage in making the banjo and certain styles of banjo playing traditional in the southern mountains.
Finally, the defining minstrel technique of blacking one’s face with burnt cork to emulate—nay, caricature—the facial features of African American slaves became so taken for granted (even African American minstrel entertainers after the Reconstruction were obliged to use burnt cork!) that performers such as Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor continued the practice onstage well into the twentieth century. School and community groups routinely staged minstrel shows into the 1930s, and in more rural settings, “blacking up” survived in traveling musical troupes such as TENT SHOWS and MEDICINE SHOWS—entertainment media in which many early country music stars (Jimmie Rodgers, GENE AUTRY, Bob Wills, and ROY ACUFF among them) gained early experience.
TIN PAN ALLEY
In the late 1880s, the sheet music–publishing business became centralized on New York’s 28th Street. Out of this cluster of publishers, dubbed “Tin Pan Alley” by a newspaper reporter, came most of America’s popular music for more than four decades. Since a major product of this pop music industry during the 1880s and 1890s was the sentimental ballad, it has sometimes been convenient to use the terms “Tin Pan Alley music” and “sentimental songs” interchangeably, notwithstanding the lack of perfect congruity between these rubrics. Among the titles that were long current in hillbilly repertoires and also were frequently encountered by folk-song collectors “in the field” were “When You and I Were Young, Maggie” (written by Johnson and Butterfield, 1866; recorded, for example, by Fiddlin’ John Carson), “Little Rosewood Casket” (Goullaud and White, 1870; BRADLEY KINCAID), “Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane” (WILL HAYS, 1871; Carson), “Silver Threads Among the Gold” (Rexford and Danks, 1873; RILEY PUCKETT), “In the Baggage Coach Ahead” (Davis, 1896; GEORGE RENEAU), “The Letter Edged in Black” (Nevada, 1897; Vernon Dalhart), “Lightning Express” (Helf and Moran, 1898; BLUE SKY BOYS), and “Down By the Old Mill Stream” (Taylor, 1910; Cliff Carlisle. (Though only one recording artist has been noted for each of these songs; many others could also be cited.) Many of these compositions actually predate the geographic “Tin Pan Alley,” but they came from the same urbane professional songwriting tradition. Also important in this period were novelty songs—in particular “coon songs” composed in pseudo-Negro dialect. Most of these portrayed the African American in a deprecatory light, though a few (e.g., “Golden Slippers”) were fairly neutral.
The principal media of dissemination of Tin Pan Alley’s products were at first the song sheet and the stage show. The successor to the minstrel show (though it began in the 1860s) was “variety,” renamed in 1871 with the French term “vaudeville.” Tony Pastor (not to be confused with the 1920s–1950s orchestra leader of the same name) is generally credited with launching variety/vaudeville on the stage, and he vigorously laundered his productions to make them acceptable to women and children. Pastor also was the first to send vaudeville troupes on tour. In the 1920s, vaudeville shows in many southern and midwestern cities, such as Nashville, Cincinnati, and Birmingham, occasionally included hillbilly acts and thus increased opportunities for the blending of popular and folk repertoires.
RAGTIME
As the dance craze of the early 1900s seized the nation’s attention, instrumental and dance music began to supplement the sentimental ballads and songs of the Victorian era. The term “ragtime” is used in two different senses. Some writers apply it narrowly to the highly formal creations of classically oriented composers, such as Scott Joplin, James Scott, and Joseph Lamb; others use it more broadly to encompass a much larger body of popular compositions, instrumental or vocal, with certain kinds of syncopation. In any case, it now seems clear that there was an earlier style of syncopated, or ragtime, music that existed on a folk level, which professional composers drew on and formalized. Few formal rags entered hillbilly tradition—“Dill Pickles” (recorded by THE KESSINGER BROTHERS), “Black and White Rag” (Bill Boyd’s Cowboy Ramblers), “St. Louis Tickle” (Lowe Stokes & RILEY PUCKETT), and a few cakewalks were the principal ones. It seems, rather, that the ragtime influence entered folk/country music via the older African American folk ragtime tradition and expressed itself in pieces such as “Beaumont Rag” (Bob Wills, Bill Boyd), “East Tennessee Blues” (Al Hopkins & His Buckle Busters), and “Ragtime Annie” (W. LEE O’DANIEL & HIS LIGHT CRUST DOUGHBOYS). Other sheet music standards with ragtime elements or precursors that entered hillbilly tradition included Kerry Mills’s “At a Georgia Camp Meeting” (recorded by the LEAKE COUNTY REVELERS) and Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (Clayton McMichen’s Georgia Wildcats).
JAZZ
While its roots are older, jazz emerged in the 1910s as a style with major exposure and impact, to a large extent replacing ragtime as the most popular music in America. Many hillbilly musicians of the 1920s—notably younger ones, such as McMichen, Lowe Stokes, and Hoke Rice), all of North Georgia—were fascinated by jazz and persevered in incorporating it into their recorded repertoires, though with mixed success. Important early examples include “Farewell Blues,” “House of David Blues,” “Take Me to the Land of Jazz,” “Tiger Rag,” and “Twelfth Street Rag.” In the Southwest, this association was even stronger, with WESTERN SWING pioneers MILTON BROWN and Bob Wills regularly listening to, and borrowing from, jazz and blues hits of the day.
BLUES
Commercial recordings of country blues began in 1924. There is ample evidence that early hillbilly performers listened to the records of such black musicians as Blind Lemon Jefferson (e.g., listen to Larry Hensley’s remarkable 1934 recording “Match Box Blues,” reissued on CD in 1993), Blind Blake, the Mississippi Sheiks, and others. Still earlier were recordings of pop blues compositions by such writers as W. C. Handy, who created a formal style of blues out of folk tradition, much as did Scott Joplin with ragtime. Several of Handy’s compositions subsequently became hillbilly and/or early western swing standards (“Hesitating Blues” and “Beale Street Blues” were both recorded by CHARLIE POOLE & THE NORTH CAROLINA RAMBLERS; “St. Louis Blues” by Milton Brown and Bob Wills), as did other blues of the 1920s, including “Corrine” (recorded by Wills and Milton Brown, probably learned from Cab Calloway), “Sittin’ on Top of the World” (by Wills, Brown, BILL MONROE, and others, learned from the Mississippi Sheiks), and “(Steel) Guitar Rag” (originated by bluesman Sylvester Weaver and later popularized by Bob Wills’s band).
GOSPEL MUSIC AND HYMNODY
Even though some ninety years of recorded country music have witnessed the steady erosion of the barriers between country and pop in both musical style and lyrical content, one persistent difference is the extent to which country artists still incorporate religious songs into their performances and recordings. The distinction between a folk tradition and a more formal one is often difficult to discern in the sphere of religious music, yet there are many standard pieces in the early hillbilly repertoire that are unmistakably identified with sheet music or early concert-type recordings. Among them are “The Old Rugged Cross” (recorded by the Light Crust Doughboys, Mac & Bob, and others), “Shall We Gather at the River” (Uncle Dave Macon), “Sweet Bye and Bye” (SID HARKREADER & Grady Moore), and “Church in the Wildwood” (Carter Family, CHUCK WAGON GANG).
THE EARLY INFLUENCE OF POPULAR RECORDINGS
Because hillbilly music was largely (though not exclusively) an aural/oral tradition, it is not surprising that recordings influenced pioneering hillbilly musicians far more than sheet music did. Wind-up cylinder and disc-playing machines found their way into many homes in the rural and small-town South early in the twentieth century. We also have the word of several artists who bought and listened to early records. Charlie Poole was captivated by the banjo playing of the oft-recorded turn-of-the-century virtuosi Fred Van Eps and Vess L. Ossman; Clayton McMichen doted on classical violinist Fritz Kreisler; Jimmie Rodgers learned “Bill Bailey” from an early pop recording; and Dorsey Dixon learned “The Preacher and the Bear” in the same manner. Nonprofessional singers, too, absorbed songs and styles from the early records they played on their wind-up machines.
On the other hand, pianos and sheet music were not unfamiliar in rural southern homes. So the mere occurrence of a hillbilly recording of a song that had been recorded previously by popular entertainers does not necessarily prove that the song was learned from the early recording, if sheet music were also available. But in some cases, particularly if the vocal nuances of a hillbilly recording are strikingly reminiscent of an earlier pop recording, we can confidently assert a direct aural influence. Examples would be “Moving Day” (compare Arthur Collins’s version with the later Charlie Poole rendition); “Ticklish Reuben,” written and popularized by Cal Stewart (“Uncle Josh”) and recorded by many hillbilly singers; and “Sleep, Baby, Sleep” (recorded by Jimmie Rodgers at his first session), with its ubiquitous yodel on both hillbilly recordings and earlier pop ones. Directly or indirectly, the numerous pop recordings of “Listen to the Mocking Bird” must have left their mark on (ARTHUR “GUITAR BOOGIE” SMITH, CURLY FOX, and others), since there is nothing in sheet-music sources to suggest the elaborate bird imitations that have become a standard part of the piece.
In certain instances, we can reasonably assume an influence by a phonograph recording simply on the grounds that the recording was much more popular and widespread than the sheet music for the same song. This would seem to be the case for Uncle Josh’s “Monkey on a String” (covered by Charlie Poole) and “I’m Old but Awfully Tough” (the latter has been recorded by traditional folk artists but not commercially by hillbilly musicians), “Whistling Rufus,” and various “laughing” and “crying” novelty records. On the other hand, while numerous pop recordings of the dialog “Arkansas Traveler” may have prompted hillbilly artists such as Gid Tanner & Riley Puckett, EARL JOHNSON & His Clodhoppers, J. W. Day, Clayton McMichen & Dan Hornsby, and the Tennessee Ramblers to record this humorous sketch, the textual variations suggest that the piece was known from other sources—probably oral tradition. With pre–World War I pieces such as “Casey Jones” and “The Bully” that were equally popular in sheet music and on record, it is difficult to assert the priority of disc influence. But by the 1920s, the influence of records had, in general, come to outweigh that of sheet music so preponderantly that an aural source can in most instances be assumed. WENDELL HALL’s “It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’” is a case in point. It must have been his recordings rather than the sheet music that inspired so many early folk and hillbilly singers (including Gid Tanner, THE TUNE WRANGLERS, and HANK PENNY) to cover it.
As we have seen, along with the many songs derived from pieces like “Barbara Allen,” “John Henry,” and “Devil’s Dream,” there are just as many in the repertoires of early country/hillbilly musicians similar to “Letter Edged in Black” and “My Old Kentucky Home” whose paternities have indisputable genetic markers that still smell of the printer’s ink or the turntable’s wax. As country music became a commercially viable product, songs and ballads of regional interest gave way to lyrics with national appeal; local dialects and accents yielded to more homogeneous singing styles; and rustic instruments (banjo, mandolin, dulcimer, even fiddle) were supplemented if not replaced by various guitars, basses, pianos, and percussion instruments. As the 1930s wore on, most hillbilly artists who strove to establish professional careers with their musical skills exhausted their supply of old standards learned in childhood, from friends and relatives, or from early 78s and cylinders played on family phonographs and gramophones. Naturally, performers turned to composing their own material or to using songs crafted by professional tunesmiths. In the decades after World War II, such newly minted songs have become predominant in country music.
Written by Norm Cohen in "Encyclopedia of Country Music", compiled by the staff of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Oxford University Press, New York, USA,2012. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.