Trollheart

Given country's longevity and pedigree, while it has splintered into many, many sub-genres, which we'll be going into soon, it has also gone through, literally, separate generations, characterised as much by the times and the places it originated in as by the people who played it.

Note: This is just a primer. We will be delving deeply into each generation, sub-genre and of course artist during this history.

First Generation

The First Generation of Country Music (let’s not call it hillbilly, shall we?) - the Carters, Rodgers, Fiddlin’ Joe Carson, Cliff Carlisle - had originally to make the long trip to New York if they wanted to record: there were no studios down south. Many didn’t have the money to do that, most probably didn't care, happy to perform live. But the arrival of Ralph Peer changed all that and allowed them to finally get their music out there. Traditionally based on fiddle or banjo, country music reached something of a milestone after a chance meeting between Jimmy Tariton and famous Hawaiian guitarist Frank Fererra, leading to the development of what would become a staple of the genre, and still is: the steel guitar.

Gospel music of course played a large part in the genesis of country music, but we don’t want to stray too far, and the last time I walked into a church a statue nearly fell on me (true story! Well, maybe not…) so probably not going to wander off the beaten path that much. However, the influence of “the Lord’s music” on country can’t be overstated. Jazz and blues of course also played their part, and almost more than any other music, country is a mix of various other genres, artists taking what they wanted or needed and creating their own style.

Second Generation

First Generation artists had to make do with recording on wax, but by the 1930s a whole new media system had come into being, and the Second Generation had access to the new-fangled radio, which picked up on the country sensation and broadcast barn dances and country music shows, with the biggest and still the most famous being the Grand Ole Opry, which opened in 1923 and is still going. Guess where? Yup: Nashville. Accounting then, I guess, for the influx of country musicians to the studios there, and the city’s becoming the mecca of country music.

Cowboy songs recorded in the twenties were given new life by Hollywood, and the kings of the “Singing Cowboys” were Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, both of whom starred in almost one hundred movies between 1934 and 1953 and even went on to have their own television show. Westerns, which became hugely popular in the US and overseas in the 1930s and really stayed in vogue till around the late 1960s and even on into the 1970s, introduced a new audience to the music of country and western, spreading its influence further than radio ever could have done. As cowboy, or “western” music was often played alongside country music on the same radio stations, the two having similar characteristics, the term “country and western” was born.

The Second Generation was also the time when the women began to come out of the homestead and into the studio, so to speak. Although there had been the odd female performer in the First Generation - Eva Davis and “Aunt” Samantha Bumgarner became the very first female artists to record and release country songs, and of course there was The Carter Family, but they were definitely in the minority. As usual. It was from western films that this began to change, when cowgirl Patsy Montana had a hit with “I Want to be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart”, which sold over a million copies, and ten years later Jenny Carlson was the most prolific songwriter in country music.

During the Second Generation we get the birth of the sub-genre which came to be known as Western Swing, which incorporates elements of jazz and dance hall music. Western swing also seems to be the first example of country music wherein an electric guitar was used, whereas up to then if guitars were used at all they were acoustic. We also see the rise of “crossover” genres such as hillbilly boogie, which incorporated elements of, well, boogie into the music and was known for breaking the sacred country code of not using electric guitars as well as Honky Tonk, fusing Western Swing with Mexican ranchera music and blues, and seems to have used neither fiddle nor banjo in its recordings. Oddly enough, neither do pianos appear, though I’ve certainly heard of honky tonk piano. Must be in some other genre, or later on.

Third Generation

The Third Generation began in the 1950s, just as television was making its debut, and with it came the emergence of Bluegrass, a hillbilly offshoot of Appalachian folk music pioneered by Bill Monroe, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. Bluegrass is typically more banjo or fiddle-oriented, normally played at a faster pace than some of the more maudlin, slower country music, and with a great deal of exuberance - almost, you might say, the punk or speed metal of country. Maybe.To quote Monroe (and he should know) it’s “Scottish bagpipes and ole time fiddlin’. It’s Methodist and Holiness and Baptist. It’s blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound.” There are three sub-genres of bluegrass: traditional, progressive and gospel, but we’ll get to those later.

Politics, sometimes a uniting force but more usually a divisive one, proved the latter as country music tutted at its more rebellious brother, folk music, and particularly the folk revival movement, which was all about taking on the system, while the neo-conservatism of country music believed the system was just fine, and if you’re a-thinkin’ otherwise, well I got me two full barrels here! Few artists managed the crossover from folk to country, Western music, on the other hand, was just fine, standing back to back and shoulder to shoulder with country music against the rising tide of new young’uns, preserving the traditional values in a world in which those values were slowly being eroded away, or becoming less and less relevant. It reached its peak in 1959 with Marty Robbins’s hit “El Paso” getting to number one both in the country and pop charts.

Country had always been the music of the working-class man though, and for a lot of people working meant sitting behind the wheel, and so a new sub-genre was born at this time, which would become known as, you guessed it: trucker country. People like Red Sovine and Dave Dudley would bring a new type of country music to the downtrodden working stiff. In 1953 the first ever country music station was opened, in Lubbock, Texas. Yet another sub-genre, rockabilly, taking the precepts of rock and roll as its guide, would give us future giants such as Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and the King.

By the late 1960s the singing western, or musical western movie was on the way out. A new generation wanted more realism and less singing. They had grown up learning of the real fighting men of the west, and they knew that the true cowboy did not carry a guitar but a gun. They weren’t interested in gentlemanly cowboys who serenaded senoritas down Mexico way, or whistled happily as they drove the cattle rustlers before them to the jolly sheriff's office. As Homer once moaned “Oh no! They’re singing! Why are they singing? Why aren’t they killing each other? Their guns are right there!” Blood, guts, bravery, drama and above all action - proper action - this was what was needed. The generation that had swooned and sighed over Rogers and Autrey (some of the women were as bad), and bought their records, were retired now, and their successors wanted something different, something at least halfway believable.

And Hollywood responded, with Peckinpah and Leone, with a slew of “gritty” westerns like Ride the High Country, Hombre and of course The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; with tough-guy actors like Eastwood and Newman and Redford, and a whole new take on the Wild West. In these movies there was no room for singing cowboys: the themes were stark and haunting (who can forget Ennio Morricone’s theme to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?) and music very definitely took a second, or third seat to action, drama and violence. The day of the singing cowboy was over, and western music (as opposed to country) was on the decline. There would, however, be room for the cowboy ballad and honky-tonk music when the new outlaw country surfaced in the 1970s.

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