What is Country?

In a strict sense Country music is, essentially, commercialized folk music. The "old-timey" or "mountain music" traditions from whence it came, are an amalgam of styles derived from immigrants of Europe and Africa (e.g. the banjo is African). The recording format of the early 20th Century containerized these styles into 3 minute concentrates that would eventually strive for mass appeal over the radio waves. Elvis, even his Sun years, can hardly be considered country -- circa 1920's Carter Family; now that's Country. Circa 1930's Bill Monroe; not country, that's Bluegrass (folk with elements of jazz). The stuff coming out nowadays on contemporary radio stations is more "Pop" that it is country, and IMO complete gutter-trash.

Alt. country, on the other hand, takes elements from old-timey Mountain music, adds the 60's Folk revival scene (popularized by folks like "The Kingston Trio"), and whips it all up with the DIY sensibilities of the punk era to form a contemporary style (for which, Uncle Tupelo is widely sighted as a guide stone).

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The commercialization of genre definitions.

Now how about that other style of music: Western. Anyone care to draw the line inbetween both types of music, Country AND Western?

Tracer, Ratt presenting a bluegrass version doesn't make it bluegrass, it only says that it's played in the bluegrass style (or as you indicate, transcription). Of course there are endless colloquialisms and variations upon styles with each region that make them inherently distinguishable.

That i mention jazz references bluegrass' tendency toward improvisation (the verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus format notwithstanding). I mean, most of Monroe’s legacy is defined by his re-inventing and extending of the genre. Virtuoso’s may be able to play a “classical” form without flaw, yet it is the true artist that can take the form beyond itself. Point is, the stretching out of artist solos in jazz is evident in the solos of Monroe, as well as it is many of the extended dance grooves in the Western Swing genre.

Commercialized Folk Music Myth #1:
...there was a "folk music" out there that was somehow pure and uncommercialized...

---Sure there was, and it still exists -- It can be as simple as singing songs around a campfire, but might be best realized in the small community setting where the music serves as both entertainment and annum. Point is, all music is routed in communication and I would argue that the medium couldn’t have been bastardized before the advent of the recorded medias.

Myth #2:
...The recorded history we have that makes up our picture of early folk music is shot through with deals, cons, hustles.

---Wrong. Largely, the documentation presented by outfits like Folkways Recordings is devoid of commercial motive. It was chosen for both it's variety and uniqueness, and thusly, we get everything from Mississippi field hollers to Pygmy hunting chants. But that the music can now get around, you're absolutely right, the only thing wrong I can see about this music being heard, is that it lacks the oral aspect of the tradition.

"D-I-V-O-R-C-E" was made to sell records – debating the difference between “commercial” and “commercialized” in this case, would prove to be case of semantics. Tammy Wynette style is, in a general sense, Country.

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Don't forget, none of them stinking drums!

I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison
And I went to pick her up in the rain
But by the time I got to the station in my pickup truck
She got run over by the damned old train.

While i've never really thought Folkways to be the commercial powerhouse you make it out be, let's then limit this aural argument to just the content supplied by the Lomaxes (et al) via the Library of Congress. If you believe that "...commercialism...was structured by...the documentation (by the Lomaxes)", then you've only strengthened the notion that Folk is a pure form.

In defining Country, one must first know the elements from which it came (which was most certainly folk).

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It's like the Opie's work on English nursery rhymes - fascinating as a scholarly collection of old and traditional rhymes, completely useless as any kind of guide to what 50s kids might actually have been singing or having sung to them cos it leaves out the advert jingles, pop songs, TV themes, etc etc which mix with the traditional stuff to make up 'folk' culture.

granted that recording one thing necessarily means NOT recording another so in this way Lomax et al are establishing some sort of hierarchy: but it can't be helped, I don't think there's anything sinister about it

Tom's comments (which sidelined my response) are interesting indeed, so further reflection is needed: pour me out another beer

"D.I.V.O.R.C.E" is a communication, whatever the reasons it was made. In what sense do field hollers, insofar as they still exist, communicate less? Less to whom?

I like Folkways — one of their recordings was of people who'd had tracheotomies speaking and singing, which is pretty hardcore — but obviously they were a business, and since they lasted a good deal longer than most indies do, they were obviously a smart business.

The need to label is of commercial origin. Genre-as-purity — narrowcast niche targeting — was formed by promotional campaigns, radio communities, the need for rival bands and musicians to define themselves clearly. Spelling consistency is a result of writing, but writing causes pronunciation drift. It's a dialectic: turning it into a moral fable is a sure way of stripping the history out of it.

B-but when Elvis sings a song written by Willie Nelson, isn't that country-ish?

Is Willie Nelson country?

Is country the only American musical form that has failed to be exported to other lands?

(In Japan there is a genre called enka which Japanese will invariably describe as "Japanese country" but actually it sounds nothing like American country--though if it did that would be interesting--but is actually "traditional" Japanese songs.

Mark this is provocative but flatly untrue. Talking about songs may well be a product of commercialization. Songs themselves aren't. Whales have them, whether anybody hears/records them or not. So, according a number of fascinating anthropological texts, did primitive man. Your argument resembles Dworkin's claim that "male" and "female" are false designations whose sole purpose is to establish a dialectic whose catastrophic result is misogyny (not as lightly-flung epithet but in its true, hateful sense). Mind you I'm not saying "Hitler! Hitler!" or anything (lots of people hate Dworkin; I don't at all & think that her polemical skills are underrated) but the need to label isn't commercial: it's natural.

I ask that as a question because it seems wrong to me in lots of ways: I'm thinking I've misunderstood you.

--Tim, while words like "pure" and "unmediated" are just asking for trouble, I do think that the rise of the record industry (not any particular act by them: just their increasing prominence) changes a lot of things permanently beginning in the late thirties/early forties. Prior to the general, affordable availability of music-as-commodity, I think, yes, that there was a folk music which came to resemble what's now called "country" & that its origins/styles/tropes are pretty well-documented. So: yes and no, I mean: there's a folk music from which the genre "country" springs, and that folk music wasn't the creation of Capitol's publicity dept.

Peterson's argument (or part of it) is that the record companies / radio stations forged 'country' from a number of pre-existing folk forms and then sold it as authentic / old time.

BTW, even if you are right you should reconsider your time frame I think: 1920s rather than 1940s would probably fit yr argument better.

Haha actually this is quite a handy excerpt page, thanks Amazon!

Hm not sure that's any clearer but oh well.

Tom -- ...if the Lomaxes presented a folk music untainted by commerce it was so because the Lomaxes had filtered it that way (i.e. by leaving off the musicians they thought were too commercial) not because it existed that way already...

Filtering out the commercial stuff is just what makes a documentarian most effective. How that effected the commercial end of things is central to the discussion of defining what Country is.
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Obviously singing as a practice has existed for ever so long: and at some point in the past it encompassed everything from Gregorian chant to the Eldar Edda to shamanic chanting to madrigals to whatever. But the forces that meant that when we say "song", we mean something of a particular kind of structure and (above all) length, are historical, and among them are — obviously — market forces, for example the competition among jongleurs, minnesingers, troubadors and the like from the 13th-16th centuries to be the best, most popular, most employed, best paid etc etc (isn't this what Die Meistersingers is abt?). I accept that music forms in the Brazilian rainforest were maybe unaffected by these European trends (or even the equivalent locals trends, if there were any), but I refuse to accept a thesis which argues that on one hand, the arrival of a specific technology of documentation, broadcast and exchange (recording) had a massive transformational effect primarily driven by the market, and that another, earlier technology of documentation, broadcast and exchange (stave-music) had no effect whatever. The reason songs are four-six minutes long, not (for example) four-six days, is a (partial) product of how professional singers and songwriters plied their trades and made their living, between the 13th and the 20th centuries. Christoff is arguing that "commercialisation" effects *only* count if they are produced by one (latecome) wing of the industry, but he doesn't choose to argue this, he just waves his arms vaguely around and says "folk". The concept of "folk" — the word itself — arose mainly in the revolutionary struggles in Europe in the early parto f the 19th centiry, when nations were beginning to define themselves in terms of culture and territory and citizenship (rather than loyalty to this or that emperor/monarch/warlord). The cultural specificity built into the idea — that there is an irish or a finnish or a greek typos, say — was part of the self-identity manufactured, via published songs ("God save the Queen", "The Marseillaise" etc), and also via such information systems (of communication AND exchange) as newspapers (modern nationalism and a certain level of literacy — in other words, engagments with commercialised bastardisation of the spoken word — are closely intertwined). From the mid-19th century there was a great (primarily middleclass) movement to rescue the arts and crafts being lost to industry: this is when folksong collectors began their work. They were ideologically inclined to see the lost medieval community as one of fabulous unchanged harmony, juit now wrecked: their methods of documentation tended to mummify and distort the material, and the people being documented were invariably shrewd enough to adjust their music/craft whatever to suit the documenters, because this paid off better in the long run. The communities that trekked across America — who after all came from many places and class backgrounds — carried many many traces of these contradictory elements, though they had become unattached from their context of origin, since by definition none of this music was chthonic pure place-bound culture in the Pygmy Rituals sense — it all came from afar.

(Of course we now know that a great deal of cultural exchange went on up and down within for example Africa prior to the arrival of colonialism, not least because local wars were settled by exchange of slaves and slaves are very often primary cultural workers — nurses telling stories and singing lullabies for example — so that the idea of pre-literate oral culture as a monolithic unchange resource since the Stone Age is also basically a self-regarding European myth: only the white man knows progress, this kind of nonsense, easily flipped on its head when you want to denounce progress... John Miller Chernoff, in his book on Ghanaian Drumming culture, asks one of the drum masters if he plays the same music as was played by drum masters a hundred years before. Of course not, the drummer says: it always changes. And in a hundred years time, asks Chernoff? It will have changed again.)

(Haha it's possible the drummer just told him that because he guessed it;s what he wanted to hear, but Chernoff presents it as something that surprises him...)

Naming is natural. Labelling is something you only need when you're distinguishing one product from another: "I sing ballads, he sings lays. Lays suxoR so hire me... "

Somewhat akin to what Ray Charles did with Country (i.e. transform it into Soul), most of the Country material performed by Elvis was transformed through R&B into Rock. In the early days, Elvis turned just about everything into Rock (albeit, many times of the Adult Contemporary variety) -- conversely how Johnny Cash (in recent years) has turned a lot of Rock back into Country.

I would say that Willie Nelson is mostly country, though, he also has a long string of Adult Contemporary.

As far as the export of Country goes, have you ever heard of Germany's Bear Family Records? These guys put out some of the most comprehensive box sets in the industry and include acts like Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash, and, i understand they do a fairly brisk amount of European business. As far as the Japanese flavors you speak of; i haven't heard a thing.

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So what's R&B then?

Surely i'll step forward and praise the documentarists. I wouldn't be so naive as to suggest that these recorded pieces are completely comprehensive, but to this point, it's the best reference material we have and which to base our musilogical history. As for their alleged prejudicial recording process -- who cares; take the material for what it's worth (i for one tend to enjoy it). Without their work we'd be as ignorant as you clalm Chernoff may have been in his analysis of the Ghanaian Drumming culture.

Since you ...accept that music forms in the Brazilian rainforest were maybe unaffected by these European trends..., let's look to the East whose culture developed in moderate to total isolation. The Aborigines performed ritual music (as did many). Ritual music in itself belays your notion of the 4-6 minute song -- and don't say that these ritual performers weren't any more professional than the Orissi dance troupes of India or the members of the Greek Rebetika (as Lord Custos Alpha so appropriately illustrates that commerce is at best fluid).

Music has always been an organic pursuit. The weather changes the acoustics of the instruments as war encourages more strident rhythms. Maybe somewhere along the way a couple-a-hillbillies thought they could make some spare change if they played a few tunes on a street corner -- and dad-burn-it if'n they didn't get more copper for the more differ'nt songs that they could play. 'N for dances, shoot, ever'body gots a differ'nt song that they'd-a-rather hear. ...Country, dear friend, Country started well after these things.

...But if you want to keep pushing this thing back to when the first knuckle-dragging Neanderthal starting beating some bones on a log; you seem more than qualified to undertake the task.

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So what's R&B then?

You're really asking for a mess now aren't you?

I think i might just like you.

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" 'I've had fun here.' - JFK Jr. 'Sexiest Man Alive' spends weekend in Clarksdale visiting blues sites, cotton harvest."

I think Sterling might have been on to something up there with the "Christian pop for the fallen" thing but he lost me when he nullified the 70's Hurtin-Beard.

Both the historian and the documentarian share a purpose, though - only the tense changes. The purpose is to record what happens/what did happen, not what should have happened or should be happening. The historian has an extra purpose which is to explain why things happened, and this includes an assessment of the ways in which the documentarian failed.

The work of a bad historian or a bad documentarian can still be valuable and enjoyable, but that's not the same thing.

P.S I know that it is a male singer

I'm interested; where does good "Country" exist in the current zeitgeist? The popular acts have zero cred, so where's the true cache?

Gillian Welch is and easy choice, so are the Black Twig Pickers. Cast King, Whitey Morgan

Resurrect this son-of-a-bitch with some genuine earthiness!

What?

The popular acts have zero cred,

I've seen trolls uglier than this.

1925 - The Rice-Kellogg research paper was published, establishing the basic principle of the direct-radiator loudspeaker with a small coil-driven mass-controlled diaphragm in a baffle with a broad midfrequency range of uniform response. On Nov. 28, WSM in Nashville ("We Shield Millions" slogan of owner Edwin Craig's National Life and Accident Insurance Co.) began its Barn Dance radio show (hosted by George D. Hay who had previously hosted the WLS Barn Dance show) that in 1927 became the Grand Ole Opry broadcast from WSM's Studio B on the new NBC network. The Grand Ole Opry moved to the the Ryman Auditorium in 1943 and with the Acuff-Rose 1942 studio and WSM's 1947 Castle Studio would attract recording companies to Nashville's Music Row.

this is from an incredibly excellent page with all sorts of links on it --> http://history.acusd.edu/gen/recording/notes.html

(looking forward to reading longer posts, especially by mark s, later today)

The popular acts have zero cred

I suppose you think current R&B acts have zero cred because they don't sound exactly like Sam Cooke.

I suppose you think current R&B acts have zero cred because...

...Advance directly to Frank Ocean

Recording Technology History page mentioned upthread is now hosted here: http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/recording.technology.history/notes.html

(It seems to move around a lot. The author is one Steven Schoenherr in case we need to look for it again, and to give credit where credit is due)

Related links here, although a few are broken: http://ncrtv.org/?page_id=52

Great link to the Recording History site -- thx Redd; what new technologies will we again need to transfer to? I'm sticking to vinyl.

The popular acts have zero cred

I don't have any problems with Nashville pop acts these days, more or less. Some of it catches my ear, a lot of it doesn't. I seriously balk at the notion it should still be called country music, though. Like, whoever...The Band Perry or Blake Shelton or Dierks...are the John Waites and Pat Benatars and Bon Jovis of the 21st century. Corporate rock is still corporate rock, except the center of gravity is now on Music Row instead of Vine.

Reviving this thread to discuss the recently re-discovered 1891 Louis Vasnier cylinder recording "Thompson's Old Gray Mule," which pertains to the thread in that the label that's doing the reissue, Archeophone, has marketed this as "the first country record"

Here's the label copy:

Thirty years before some fiddlers from Texas, Oklahoma, and Georgia started recording a new genre of music called “hillbilly,” a Creole of color from the Seventh Ward of New Orleans named Louis Vasnier (1858–1902) beat them to the punch. Recorded in 1891, “Thompson’s Old Gray Mule” is the most raucous version of a song that, better known as “Johnson’s Old Gray Mule,” would enter the country music canon. But Vasnier did more than give us what is arguably the oldest country record in existence. For the short-lived Louisiana Phonograph Company he also waxed sermons by a fictional preacher named Brudder Rasmus, and “Adam and Eve and de Winter Apple” joins “Thompson” on this 45-rpm vinyl single. Vasnier’s two surviving cylinders are the earliest extant sounds from New Orleans. In them, he summons up the atmosphere and the culture of the Crescent City during the time Buddy Bolden was still a teenager.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUgfhU8Tt0s

Obviously part of this is the label generating buzz (and who can blame them), but the narrative -- "Actually, it was a black man who made the first country record" -- also seems to fit nicely into the post-2020 zeitgeist, when artists like Rhiannon Giddens and Amythyst Kiah have come to prominence while highlighting the importance of African Americans in the development of what has often been thought of largely as a "white" music. (Not that they are the first to do so, but my feelers tell me that certain parts of the culture are more amenable to these narrative re-contextualizations than perhaps they ever have been.)

I guess what I'd say is that, for me, this feels more like a stray vestige of vaudeville than it does the heralding of the birth of Country Music as we know it in the '20s and '30s. It seems more like a fascinating and important window into the patchwork of American music in the nineteenth century than it does some sort of missing link or Rosetta Stone. I'm not going to try to formulate a waterproof definition here, but to me the narrative that country music emerged from an attempt in the 1920s to market and commercialize old-time music -- and in the process, get it all slick and dolled up -- more or less feels right, although it's admittedly something I haven't spent a ton of time investigating.

So, what do you think? Does this 1891 recording by Louis Vasnier compel you to feel any kind of way about what country music is?

Andrew Hickey had a really good point of view on this. I can’t remember how he said it, but the gist was that the audience for the music determines how the music is labeled. Which is obvious I guess, but I had never thought of it that way.

Dylan has recorded all kinds of music but because he’s embraced by rock audiences he is a rock musician that sometimes records country and folk songs. Hickey said it better.

Also, hence "country rock" as its own sub genre. Like, the Eagles, I guess.

xp a similar argument is made by Kelefa Sanneh in Major Labels that boils down to Country is music made for a certain slice of white America. He points to the ever evolving sound of country that mirrors shifts in popular music (eg synths in the 80s, hip hop beats in the 10s) as an indication that it ain’t the fiddles. I’ll try to dig it out and find the passage.

There's an excerpt here:
https://lithub.com/kelefa-sanneh-what-actually-is-country-music/

Andrew Hickey had a really good point of view on this. I can’t remember how he said it, but the gist was that the audience for the music determines how the music is labeled. Which is obvious I guess, but I had never thought of it that way.

This is def true on some level but I also think it's part of a critic's job to question and complicate audience judgements on this stuff ("you just don't want this artist to be in your genre because they're black" being only the most obvious example).

xp thanks!