Lyrically, we start getting trucker songs. This is the Country that caused Willie Nelson to leave Nashville.īakersfield: Recorded in California not Tennessee. Think Patsy Cline for the best side, and post-Army Elvis for the part I hate but you might not. Electric guitar with tape delay giving "slapback", acoustic bassists getting percussion by slapping strings against the fingerboards.Ĭountrypolitan: I love Chet Atkins as a player, but as producer and label head, we get strings instead of fiddles, smooth instead of rocking, and the Jordanaires pouring syrupy harmonies behind the singers. Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis. Small bands with each player playing as much as possible. Rockabilly: Instead of "Country", the genre was called "Hillbilly", and if you follow "Rocket 88" into the future, you get Rockabilly. This is where the electric guitar started coming in, and the beginnings of pedal steel. In Country the same thing was happening, and that was Honky Tonk. Honky Tonk: In the 40s, Swing got boiled down to the essence, with less emphasis on virtuosity, and it was called Jump Blues. Bill Monroe formed the Bluegrass Boys, playing Peer-era during band music at faster tempos and higher keys (B, high for a male singer, for the "High Lonesome Sound), with mandolin, acoustic guitar, fiddle, Dobro, and acoustic bass. Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys are the basis, and currently the standard is Asleep At The Wheel.īluegrass: The last purely acoustic genre in country. You're seeing the entry of pianos and drum kits, archtop guitars playing Freddie Green chords, fiddles trying to play sax leads and console steel guitar doing the horn sections. Western Swing: The elements are in the name - "Western" pointing to silver screen singing cowboys and "Swing" coming from white musicians trying to play jazz. Jimmie Rodgers is essentially a blues singer with additional yodelling. Mother Maybelle created the Carter Scratch, where the melody is played on the low strings, with harmony and a snare-like rhythm on the higher strings. Instrumentation is acoustic instruments, like acoustic guitar, autoharp, and fiddle (books have been written about old-time fiddle styles), and close harmonies, with repertoire largely collected from local communities. The Origin: Ralph Peer goes to Bristol, TN, to record local musicians, including Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family. There are many eras and styles of country music, and each has characteristic rhythms, instrumentation and techniques. It is interesting to note that the Father of Country Music is widely recognized as Jimmie Rogers, "The Singing Brakeman." One of three men with the same name in 20th Century Music, (the others were a wonderful Afro-American blues great, and a very popular white folk singer,) he recorded with the likes of Louis Armstrong and contributed almost as much to the origins of the blues as he did to the form he is said to have fathered. This is just a cursory review of a few of the characteristics of the form. The accent used by Country singers usually reflects a background from parts of the country with large farm populations - the rural south, the mid west and the southwest. The singing style typically includes scooping, in the manner of the 2-3 hammer on described above. Nostalgia is a strong motif in Country songs. I would leave that to a percussionist to describe well.īecause this form is grounded in rural folk music, the lyrics of songs concern themselves with the problems of rural people, or often the problems of rural people who have moved to the city. There are a number of characteristic rhythms that identify the form. However, the country piano lives by this figure, as you will hear in the works of Floyd Cramer. It is most often played with bent strings on guitar, or by pedal manipulation on a steel guitar or by a glissando on the fiddles. Probably the most prominent feature would be the hammer on suspension from the second to the third degree of the scale. However, there are identifiable characteristics of American Country Music, as long as you understand you will often see those very characteristics in blues, rock and roll and other popular forms with a common heritage. All music styles are overlapping hybrids, so you consistently find elements of one in another.
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