A social history of country music from the 1920s to the present, discussing such artists as Patsy Cline, Grandpa Jones, Dolly Parton, and Garth Brooks.

DIVAn ethnographic study of country music, and the bars, life, and everyday speech of its rural fans./div

A close-up look at country music argues that it has become a national art form, reflecting the same themes that have characterized American art and literature over three centuries

Now in its sixth decade, country music studies is a thriving field of inquiry involving scholars working in the fields of American history, folklore, sociology, anthropology, musicology, ethnomusicology, cultural studies, and geography, among many others. Covering issues of historiography and practice as well as the ways in which the genre interacts with media and social concerns such as class, gender, and sexuality, The Oxford Handbook of Country Music interrogates prevailing narratives, explores significant lacunae in the current literature, and provides guidance for future research. More than simply treating issues that have emerged within this subfield, The Oxford Handbook of Country Music works to connect to broader discourses within the various fields that inform country music studies in an effort to strengthen the area's interdisciplinarity. Drawing upon the expertise of leading and emerging scholars, this Handbook presents an introduction into the historiographical narratives and methodological issues that have emerged in country music studies' first half-century.

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,5, Dresden Technical University (Unstitut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: Readings in North American Cultural Studies, 14 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: In my term paper I will examine the question "Why is Country Music in America so popular?" Therefore, I will concentrate on the development of country music from traditional folk music to commercial music. I will reflect on the influences of the immigrants who entered the USA to build a brave new world, different to the old wo rld of Europe, which they assumed to be overpopulated and morally corrupt. On the basis of several selected books and articles, like those of Bill Malone, Seymor Martin Lipset and Rachel Rubin, I will emphasize the meaning of the most traditional music of America. Analyzing changes in the musical development, I will explain them as a consequence of the country's changing social circumstances by using the example of the Bakersfield movement in the 1930s. I will furthermore outline the most important facts and events regarding the music, including the life and work of Merle Haggard, who perfectly represented the theme of nostalgia in country music. At the end, I will emphasize the commercial aspect of country music, its Western image and the high efficiency of the Nashville music publishing industry.

Introduction: Dolly mythology -- "Backwoods Barbie": Dolly Parton's gender performance -- My Tennessee mountain home: early Parton and authenticity narratives -- Parton's crossover and film stardom: the "hillbilly Mae West"--Hungry again: reclaiming country authenticity narratives -- "Digital Dolly" and new media fandoms -- Conclusion: brand evolution and Dollywood

Written by an experienced teacher and renowned scholar of the genre, Country Music: A Cultural and Stylistic History, Second Edition, offers a chronological narrative that explains country music's origins, development, and meaning from the first commercial recordings of the 1920s up to the present. It highlights significant performers, songs, and institutions throughout the history of country music. It also considers key social, political, and musical issues that span many decades of evolution within the genre.

In her provocative new book Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music, Nadine Hubbs looks at how class and gender identity play out in one of America’s most culturally and politically charged forms of popular music. Skillfully weaving historical inquiry with an examination of classed cultural repertoires and close listening to country songs, Hubbs confronts the shifting and deeply entangled workings of taste, sexuality, and class politics. In Hubbs’s view, the popular phrase "I’ll listen to anything but country" allows middle-class Americans to declare inclusive "omnivore" musical tastes with one crucial exclusion: country, a music linked to low-status whites. Throughout Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music, Hubbs dissects this gesture, examining how provincial white working people have emerged since the 1970s as the face of American bigotry, particularly homophobia, with country music their audible emblem. Bringing together the redneck and the queer, Hubbs challenges the conventional wisdom and historical amnesia that frame white working folk as a perpetual bigot class. With a powerful combination of music criticism, cultural critique, and sociological analysis of contemporary class formation, Nadine Hubbs zeroes in on flawed assumptions about how country music models and mirrors white working-class identities. She particularly shows how dismissive, politically loaded middle-class discourses devalue country’s manifestations of working-class culture, politics, and values, and render working-class acceptance of queerness invisible. Lucid, important, and thought-provoking, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of American music, gender and sexuality, class, and pop culture.

An insightful and wide-ranging look at one of America’s most popular genres of music, Walking the Line: Country Music Lyricists and American Culture examines how country songwriters engage with their nation’s religion, literature, and politics. Country fans have long encountered the concept of walking the line, from Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line” to Waylon Jennings’s “Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line.” Walking the line requires following strict codes, respecting territories, and, sometimes, recognizing that only the slightest boundary separates conflicting allegiances. However, even as the term acknowledges control, it suggests rebellion, the consideration of what lies on the other side of the line, and perhaps the desire to violate that code. For lyricists, the line presents a moment of expression, an opportunity to relate an idea, image, or emotion. These lines represent boundaries of their kind as well, but as the chapters in this volume indicate, some of the more successful country lyricists have tested and expanded the boundaries as they have challenged musical, social, and political conventions, often reevaluating what “country” means in country music. From Jimmie Rodgers’s redefinitions of democracy, to revisions of Southern Christianity by Hank Williams and Willie Nelson, to feminist retellings by Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton to masculine reconstructions by Merle Haggard and Cindy Walker, to Steve Earle’s reworking of American ideologies, this collection examines how country lyricists walk the line. In weighing the influence of the lyricists’ accomplishments, the contributing authors walk the line in turn, exploring iconic country lyrics that have tested and expanded boundaries, challenged musical, social, and political conventions, and reevaluated what “country” means in country music.

One of Oprah Daily's 20 Favorite Books of 2021 • Selected as one of Pitchfork's Best Music Books of the Year “One of the best books of its kind in decades.” —The Wall Street Journal An epic achievement and a huge delight, the entire history of popular music over the past fifty years refracted through the big genres that have defined and dominated it: rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance music, and pop Kelefa Sanneh, one of the essential voices of our time on music and culture, has made a deep study of how popular music unites and divides us, charting the way genres become communities. In Major Labels, Sanneh distills a career’s worth of knowledge about music and musicians into a brilliant and omnivorous reckoning with popular music—as an art form (actually, a bunch of art forms), as a cultural and economic force, and as a tool that we use to build our identities. He explains the history of slow jams, the genius of Shania Twain, and why rappers are always getting in trouble. Sanneh shows how these genres have been defined by the tension between mainstream and outsider, between authenticity and phoniness, between good and bad, right and wrong. Throughout, race is a powerful touchstone: just as there have always been Black audiences and white audiences, with more or less overlap depending on the moment, there has been Black music and white music, constantly mixing and separating. Sanneh debunks cherished myths, reappraises beloved heroes, and upends familiar ideas of musical greatness, arguing that sometimes, the best popular music isn’t transcendent. Songs express our grudges as well as our hopes, and they are motivated by greed as well as idealism; music is a powerful tool for human connection, but also for human antagonism. This is a book about the music everyone loves, the music everyone hates, and the decades-long argument over which is which. The opposite of a modest proposal, Major Labels pays in full.