A contact told me that back in the 50s where he was from, if you wanted to hear rocknroll, you had to tune to a country station. A lot of "pioneers" of country started as rocknrollers like George Jones, Charlie Rich, Buck Owens (called Corky Jones back then, had a minor hit called "Rhythm & Booze" and was a member of Gene Vincent's Bluecaps around 1957).
Artists as Johnny Cash rode that line between country and rocknroll but never quite fitting into either genre. Carl Perkins was no less country than the rest of them but got classified as a rocknroller. Wanda Jackson, the Delmore Bros., Rose Maddox, Skeets McDonald, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Hasil Adkins, Jerry Reed, Marvin Rainwater and (my hero) Johnny Horton were all doing things that were definitely rocknroll and yet there is no doubt that they were all country artists.
So country-rock always seemed to me to be an artificial genre if there ever was one. Look at Junior Brown. Country as they come and here he is doing his own version of "Foxey Lady". Country-Rock is redundant term.
With that, I don't care for the state of country today. Taylor Swift does nothing for me. I'd rather listen to a Steve Earle than a Taylor Swift any day of the week. It seems that the rock has gone out of country and none of the so-called fans seem to notice. I don't mean to be too judgmental, though. But things look pretty moribund from where I stand.
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