(country) &/or (western)

i just got a compilation of different country stuff from the last 11 years of bloodshot records releases which i really like, i guess a lot of those people are making country music right now.

Western music is its own genre now, very swing-fiddle oriented, mostly alive in the far west, got its own award show and everything. "Cowboy Up" is a good example, except only in its original version by the great Joni Harms, the Songbird of Clackamas County.

1)the Western in C&W loudly survived through the 70s w/western swing influenced country rock bands like Asleep at the Wheel and Commander Cody. Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings memorably paid tribute to Bob Wills. (Is the Bakersfield sound country or western or both? Discuss) Some of George Strait's commercial country hits from the 80s move with definite Texas rhythm. So maybe the answer is Western merged into Country becoming part of its fabric.

2) you should have asked this first.

3) named "hillbilly music' at birth by pioneering talent scout Ralph Peer in the 20s. Billboard magazine began publishing Country charts in 1944. Western music refers not only to regional folk and cowboy songs but the jazzy innovative Western Swing sound of Texas dacne bands like Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys. "Pistol Packing Mama" by Al Dexter & his Troopers made Western Swing a national sensation just before WW2.

4) This speaks volumes. What did they play?

5) I guess so. Sounds like you don't.

6) Moe Bandy.

7) you tell us

8) Countrypolitan refers to the reigning approach to record-making in Nashville during the 70s. (Shit what a bad sentence sorry.) It was a further refinement of the so-called Nashville Sound of the 60s (which itself was derided as too slick). The Outlaw movement existed in opposition, sorta working as the new wave or alt rock of Country. It all started when Willie Nelson started smoking pot, quit Nashiville and moved to Austin Texas.

9) the latter

3A)actually that Billboard chart from 1944 was a catch-all category called Folk. It was changed to Country & Western in 1949.

wasn't it at one time refered to in as the Hillbilly Charts? Or am I just making that up, because at the same time they had a "Race Chart"?

the term race music was also coined by Ralph Peer. like hillbilly, it was a demographic description, a marketing convenience not a slur. but i don't believe there was a separate "hillbilly" chart.

Don't forget the elaoborate harmonies of some lineups of Sons Of The Pioneers, who can seem like ancestors of the Beach Boys, esp. Brian's artier arrangements. And Chris LeDoux, who could be smooth as Strait, but also described some of his live show as going for"Aerosmith in a cowboy hat."(Hence Garth's interest in him, on both counts.)And I guess there's Latin cowboy or cowpop. (Ha*ash, mebbe? Judging by their thread). But usually(not always), the more Latin, the less I hear (hosses, hosses, hosses), thus the less I think "cow"-anythang.(Campesino? No, not usually.) Not that cows and hosses might not be scared off by Aerosmith in a cowboy hat, or maybe even arty harmonies, for that matter(especially if these made them think Brian was coming). But still.

> Not that cows and hosses might not be scared off by Aerosmith in a cowboy hat,<

Even if they're back in the saddle again?

i dunno , i've always had a jones for western swing. there are some just amazing tracks out there. you gotta know how to truck and swing! it was the equivalent of hip hop acts doing country songs, or vice versa -- i suppose western swing was all white guys, after all. or combining the two, if not in personnel, then in the music. the same band doing "take the 'a' train," "up the lazy river" and "san antonio rose." electric mandolin, i mean c'mon!!!!!

from the story i've heard told of it, the record labels started calling the further elaborations of folk music "country" music in the 50s, to distinguish it from the black-associated -- and communist-associated -- "folk" music. is the understanding i have of it, at least.

i can tell by your hair
you was born in a monkey lair
you're bound to look like a monkey when you grow old (when you grow old)
whn you grow old (when you grow old)
when you grow old (when you grow old) ...
you're bound to look like a monkey when you grow old!

i can tell by your knees
you've been climbin trees

i can tell by your clothes
you've got a monkey nose

you're bound to look like a monkey when you grow old!

the label "country & western" didn't have hegemonic power until the 1950s. before that there were many labels. a good way to sort this stuff out would be to look at magazines that monitored radio play and records sales and see what sort of categories they came up with and how they shifted over time. different magazines had different names for what we'd now call "c&w." "hillbilly" was at least as popular as any variant of "country" . i'm not sure if there were ever separate "country" and "western" charts in the same magazines but i wouldn't doubt it. record catalogs also show how producers, at least, classified the music, although historically record labels had less interest in promoting a unified classification than radio programmers and magazines. there's a lot of (relatively) unwritten history here to plumb through, if you aren't sated by ilxors' response to your questions.

x-post with tracer hand

by the way tracer hand is right, there was a moment when what we now think of as "country" music was frequently classified as "folk" music before that label was ceded to the Left (and then handed down to the counterculture, which then becomes the majority culture). the late '40s/early '50s would thus be a fascinating period to study in terms of a crisis of self-identity on the part of the producers of "this" music.

a related note: what anthony refers to as "underground culture" was just "culture" until, i dunno, cable television.

considering that i mentioned going to the rodeo today, that would be good reading, A.

You could call it "unnoticed culture," meaning unnoticed except by the people directly participating in it (the sort of thing Tom Wolfe loved to write about in the '60s).

underground was wrong...but it is unnoticed--but then almost all rural culture is these days.

on wife swap tonite a woman yelled at this hippe animal rights woman about how hunting was about literal hand to mouth surrival, how if they didnt hunt in the winters, then they starved; and we also saw the hippie refuse to eat, serve, enagage in meat, and the husband of the woman who pointed out about starvation said fuck it--and just shot a rabbit, dressed it etc...

i dont know what this has to do w. anything, but i think its the (second) time i have seen hunting on mainstream television, and the only time i have seen it framed as a question of physical surrival...

In the 60s, even in the Deep South, country music was pretty much marginalized. There were often a few crossover hits or semi-hits somewhere in the Top 40, but I don't remember any country-based bands playing at the teen clubs, or even at school- and church-sponsored thangs. Mebbe cos this was and is a town with a lot of Air Force dependents, not that thrilled with being in Cali or Florida or Europe one year, and here the next. Like I've read that there are a lot of people who come to *work* in Nashville or Dallas, and don't want to listen to the music that reminds them of where they are, which represents Hicksville to them. But ditto for us native teens! Until the Johnny Cash Show came on TV, anyway. (That was more interesting than Dylan's Nashville Skyline, or the original Sweetheart Of The Radio, with Gram mixed way down. I did think that Buck Owens sounded kinda like Neil Young, which made me pay more attention to both.)

o-t, sorry, but i don't spose anyone else is watching the CMAs? they sort of rule so far.

i am!