1. Introduction p. 3

Country music is one of the most important styles of music in the United States of America as it is not just the most popular and successful form of American music but also the rural folklore of the white Americans, which emerged from the settlers of the different European countries. The home of this genre are the Appalachian Mountains – from West Virginia down to Alabama. Today’s commercial and geographical center is in Nashville, Tennessee, called "Country Capital" and later also "Music City USA". The latter moniker showed up firstly in 1950 by accident when WSM announcer David Cobb coined the phrase while introducing a morning show featuring Grand Old Opry headliner Red Foley. The tiny, unique corner of Nashville known as Music Row is the most creative center in the world. This less than two square mile area houses all the mayor components of the country music industry.

It’s primarily the Anglo-Irish folklore that established itself and mainly still dominates today, diverging from the region and the influence of the different ethnic groups that come along with it. The consistent factor of the music’s production is its core audience of the southern working class and its representation of their lives and values. These values are real and idealized, comprising hard work, protestant Christianity, rural romanticism, good times in the preindustrial safe world, and the omnipresent struggle of love. Today, the following styles of music fall under the broad rubric of country music: old-time, honky-tonk, western swing, bluegrass, rockabilly, Bakersfield sound, outlaw, contemporary country, Texas country, country-pop, country-rock, folk-country, new traditionalism, hot country, and even insurgent country or alternative country.

So, this skilled work deals with country music and its development with a closer appraisal of one of the main characters on this genre, Johnny Cash.

　

　

2. Typical instruments

There is a great variety of instruments country music uses and after all there are some typical and characteristic ones like the autoharp, the five-string banjo, six-string or 12-string steel-guitars, the fiddle or the hammered dulcimer, especially the mountain dulcimer, occasionally also mandolins. Since country is a kind of music which was originally performed by the men on the street in former times, there even appear "instruments" which actually aren’t real instruments or instruments being used otherwise than they’re intended to be used because the musicians played every subject that made a proper sound in any way, such as hand-clapping, horse riding, using guitars as drums - Johnny Cash is famous for that -, etc. And not to be sneezed at is the pretty important aspect the voice plays being utilized either as singing or accompaniment.

　

3. History of country music

Country music came pouring out of the mountains and the hollows, the western plains, the river deltas and the rural routes of America in the first half of the 20^th century beginning as light music, a medium of expression for southern working-class whites that reflects the changes in their society. Its spread can be structured into 5 parts, the so called "spreads": at first sight it was a folk idiom and suddenly it became available on records and radio, and audiences could experience it in new and vivid ways. The way to what was later called "country music" began with record company scouts and radio executives making the first records of Southern Appalachian fiddle players in the 1910s when listening to the radio was free, of course. But recording cost at least 75 cents apiece, sometimes as much as $1.25. Record companies wanted to find new niche markets and they found them in two previously underserved and unexploited markets: black audiences and rural white audiences. For reaching black record buyers, they sought out black blues and jazz performers to make "race records" and for the whites they spied out genuine rustic talents in the hills and hollows of the rural southeast: fiddlers, string bands, singers of old folk ballads, and gospel quartets. This music was firstly known by many different names as the record companies struggled to define the new lucrative market they had discovered. It was called "Old Time Tunes" by OKeh Records, "Old Time Melodies of the Sunny South" by Victor Records, "Special Records for Southern States" by Vocalion Records, "Family Tunes" by Columbia Records, and finally and most typical, "Hillbilly Music". By that time, country was a term that comprised instrumental dance tunes, ballads, popular melodies, gospel hymns, and blues. So, with the time of industrialization the folk form quickly adapted commercialism and became a massive entertainment empire. Considering the style, the music ranges from old-time string-band music which dominated the country music scene for most of the 1920s to western swing and from blues decorated with yodels to smooth, pop-influenced vocals.

The second part describes the spread into the southwestern part of the nation, from western swing to Austin’s Cosmic Cowboys and the Austin City Limits, when the music was professionalized and new styles like swing came up.

The third one takes us farther west, to Hollywood and the Singing Cowboys, and to Bakersfield, where Merle Haggard and Buck Owens forged their hard-edged country sounds.

Nashville and its role as Music City U.S.A is the subject of the fourth step.

Finally, the fifth one comprises the music in the beginning of the 21^st century – embracing new technology at the same time that it looks back to its roots, spreading country music all over the world.

　

　

3.1. The beginnings

The roots of country music go back into the early 1910s, when musicians just took part in fiddling contests and recorded their tunes, mixtures of original compositions, mountain gospel music, and songs collected from the rural communities which were known as "the Old Music" at that time. They were recorded by scouts of record companies recording hillbilly musicians on their home turf in the so called "field-recording sessions" that took place from the 1920s into the 1940s and exponents like Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family, and Fiddlin’ John Carson, among many others, all first recorded in this fashion. The early days were a time of discovery and experimentation. Taking colorful names such as the Skillet Lickers, the Dixie Clodhoppers, or the Possum Hunters, they entertained listeners with old-time dance tunes, southern folk melodies and popular parlor songs of the 19^th century.

Both, Rodger’s signing to Victory Records on August 1, 1927 and the Carter Family’s first recordings for Ralph Peer, a talent scout for the Victory Talking Machine Company were the country music’s earliest star acts and most important causative incidences that formed the distinctive style of this genre. Especially Mother Maybelle of the Carter Family created a specific kind of playing the guitar with her distinctive "scratch style" which became a popular technique for musicians of that time. It involved picking the melody on the bass strings and adding rhythm by brushing downward strokes across the higher tones. The last recording session of this legendary group occurred on October 14, 1941. Sara married A.P. Carter’s cousin in 1943, moved to California, and the group disbanded but Maybelle continued to perform with her daughters Anita, Helen, and June, as "Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters" into the 1970, still being very influential.

Those early singers were influenced by religious music and church-sponsored singing schools. With the time, many other famous singers joined and became important ambassadors.

　

　

3.2. 1922: firs records, first radio broadcasts

The first commercial country records were produced in 1922 on Victory Records Label called "Sallie Gooden", "Arkansas Traveler" and "Turkey in the Straw" by fiddler Alexander Campbell „Eck" Robertson and Henry C. Gilliland. They are considered as the first traditional country musicians of the United States but actually they were not very successful. Here, the name Ralph Peer plays an important role. He was the person who worked for Victory Records and recorded and produced those early singers.

The first country music "hit" was "The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane" by Fiddlin’ John Carson, released in July 1923 by OKeh Records and in 1925 the first nationwide million seller was Vernon Dalhart’s recording called "Wreck of the Old ’97" for Victory Records.

Jimmie Rodgers made his first recording, also for Victory Records, in Bristol in 1927. He cut his very first hit, "Blue Yodel (T for Texas)", in the same year at Victory’s studio in Camden, New Jersey. Regarding female solo artists, Patsy Montana was the first to make a runaway hit with her 1935 recording of "I wanna be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart".

WBAP radio in Fort Worth, Texas, aired the very first Barn Dance Show on January 04, 1923.

With radio pioneer Dr. Humphrey Bate and his Dr. Bate’s Augmented String Orchestra, the first radio broadcast was done for WSM radio in October 1925. In 1928, station manager George D. Hay renamed the group into "the Possum Hunters".

The honor to perform country music on stage firstly seems to belong to Otto Gray and his Oklahoma Cowboys, a vaudeville group that integrated western ballads, rope tricks, and horse riding

　

　

3.3. The Grand Old Opry

There’s no other show that has been dominating the history of country music more than the Grand Old Opry. The Grand Ole Opry developed from WLS radio’s Barn Dance Show which aired on November 28, 1925 with 77-year old fiddler Uncle Jimmy Thomson as its first star. Among the early Opry stars were singers and musicians like harmonica player DeFord Bailey, Theron Hale and Daughters, Dr. Humphrey Bate and his Possum Hunters, but the major star of them all was Uncle Dave Macon.

This show was the brainchild of George D. Hay who was hired as program director of the then brand new WSM radio (which was sponsored by an insurance company, that’s why the abbreviation for its slogan: "We Save Millions") in early 1925. In 1927, the show was renamed into the Grand Ole Opry ("Ole" is just an anterior diction of "Old"), a name which was immediately successful with the press, the performers, and the fans and remains the longest living radio show in US-broadcasting history. In its early years the show was put on air from the WSM-studio, since 1943 from Ryman Auditorium, a former church long known as "Mother Church of Country Music" which comprises 3000 perches. During the 1950s, country music’s degree of respect lost its dimensions but anyhow the size of the Ryman Auditorium was too little, so the Grand Old Opry had to move to the newly built Grand Old Opry House at Opryland in 1974, fifteen miles from downtown Nashville. Its concert hall accommodates 4400 seats. However, there were even more changes of location that had to be survived.

Even today with shows every Friday and Saturday night, it carries the tradition and the music forward and it turns out to be country music’s most cherished institution and being a catalyst for industry growth by attracting artists, musicians, songwriters, promoters, booking agents, and music publishers to the city of Nashville it generated well-known stars like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, and many others. To this day playing the Grand Old Opry seems to be the ultimate goal of most aspiring country musicians.

　

4. Appearance of new styles

The years following World War II saw the emergence of Nashville as the center of country music industry. Long a central point of hard country music, exemplified by Roy Acuff and Ernest Tubb, Nashville became increasingly attracted to fusing country sounds with popular sounds. While the measures ensured the survival of the industry in the years of the rock & roll onslaught and may have appealed to many Southerners prospering after the war, the smoothing out of the sound trapped many hard performers. The "Nashville Sound" or "country pop" replaced the heavily bowed fiddles and steel guitars with violins and vocal choruses. Nashville moved toward a smoother sound largely in an attempt to capture a portion of the pop market following the rapid rise of rock & roll. Rockabilly, as white rock & roll was called, liberally mixed country, blues, gospel, and popular styles to create a potent expression of postwar hopes and fears. The genre was largely dominated by men like Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis.

The following shall present a little range over the different categories of country music.

　

　

4.1. Bluegrass

With Bill Monroe, "the Father of Bluegrass" and his Blue Grass Boys, the new style of bluegrass being a traditionally orientated country music style appeared in 1946 with the former version of this band with Monroe (1911-1996) on mandolin, Lester Flatt on guitar, Earl Scruggs on banjo, Chubby Wise on fiddle, and Joel Price or Birch Monroe on bass. Monroe was simply a country singer with a distinctive style, most notably characterized by the way of banjo picking invented by "Bluegrass Boy" Earl Scruggs, setting it apart from its close cousin, the mountain music. This new style, named after the name of his band which, in turn, was named after his home state of Kentucky, the Blue Grass State, emphasized instrumental virtuosity and close harmony singing. There has been a considerable debate over what constitutes bluegrass. Yet the music has certain recognizable characteristics. Its many varieties are all artistic descendants of Monroe’s sound.

It combines elements of old-time mountain modal music and ballad singing, square dance fiddling with some western swing influence, blues, and gospel music. In its jazz-influenced performance format instrumental soloists take turns playing improvisational variations on the melody while at other times backing the vocals or instrumental solos. In general, bluegrass bands consist of a fife-string banjo, a fiddle, a mandolin, a six-string guitar, and a bass. Later, Jimmy Martin, Red Allen, and others adopted elements of honky-tonk music to the style and today, groups such as Alison Krauss & Union Station, Rhonda Vincent & the Rage, the Del McCoury Band, and others mix traditional bluegrass with elements of jazz, pop, and rock what is broadly called "newgrass".

Though bluegrass and country were once accepted to be different strains of the same musical style, both today exist in loosely connected but separate cultures. Country stars like Vince Gill, Marty Stuart, and the Dixie Chicks come out of the bluegrass tradition whereas e.g. Patty Loveless and Dolly Parton have returned to their bluegrass and mountain roots. Bluegrass has its own trade organization, its own record labels but bluegrass players frequently appear on country recordings.

　

　

4.2. Traditional Country

After the spreading of mountain music, also called "early country", and the flourishing of the Grand Old Opry, the music of the people settled into traditions, drawing its tone mostly from that mountain music, updating it for newer audiences by blending and merging styles. It obviously contained hints of other styles and the later country music movements but it boils it down to its basics, and that’s were you’ll find the old fiddles, pedal steel, and guitar rhythms of solid, down-home, old-time traditional country music. Traditional country, also being called "old-time music", is generally used to refer to the styles and repertoires that dominated commercial country music’s first decade, roughly from 1924 to 1935. Old-time music embraced several diverse styles during this first decade. One was stringband music, either in bands (such as the Skillet Lickers) or as fiddle-guitar duet (such as the Kessinger Brothers). A second was group harmony singing, represented by artists such as the Carter Family or by the later duet singers like the Delmore Brothers. A third was a form of white blues and related yodeling, best represented by Jimmie Rodgers and Cliff Carlisle. A fourth was a solo singing tradition in which artists adapted traditional material to various instrumental accompaniments, such as Bradley Kincaid or Uncle Dave Macon.

　

　

4.3. Western Swing

Western swing is an amalgamation of old-time string, blues, early jazz, and Mexican-American styles augmented with big band horn ensembles. Most famous of western swing are the Texas Playboys, led by Bob Wills. He combined fiddles, guitars, banjos, piano, bass, and drums with reeds and brass to play a hybrid music that smoothly integrated elements of big band swing, old-time fiddling, Dixieland jazz, blues, and Mexican music. The seeds of this musical style were sown in Fort Worth, Texas, when Bob Wills and singer Milton Brown began performing together on radio and at dance clubs. This style was in its heyday during World War II during the era of big band swing, combining the popular rowdy dancehall music with the western sound of the cowboy, making a bouncy joyous sound that practically demands getting out on the dance floor. In fact, the term "western swing" was originally used to distinguish the dance orchestras of traditional swing or dance music from that of western dance bands. This style has nothing to do with the "western music". Western music rather is a style of the "cowboy music" which is pretty diverging from the hillbilly music.

　

　

4.4. Honky-tonk

In the years following World War II honky-tonk became a central sound of country music and it is sometimes referred to "beer-drinking music". It reflects the environment of its birth and is the more simply "dance form" of western swing, a robust combination of plain cowboy music and themes with the bounding dance steps that were filling dance halls all over the country. "Honky-tonk" is a term that is now used to describe a style of country music whose beat, rhythm, and mood evoke the ambience and flavor of the working-class beer and dancing clubs where the style was born. Starting at the oil boom areas of Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma, the music was based around a dance beat that could be heard above the noise of the beer joints that had opened up in "wet" counties in the state, particularly in the rough oil field towns of East Texas where money was available. Neither the origin nor the precise meaning of the term "honky-tonk" have been sufficiently determined, although singer and folklorist Oscar Brand has speculated that it may refer to clubs where Tonk^® pianos were used. Thematically, honky-tonk revolves around perennial themes of wine, women, and good times but also reflected a lurking fatalism. It is an urban music, created for people moving into the modern industrialized area. Among the most important stars were Ernest Tubb, Hank Williams, and Johnny Bond who is often best remembered for his comic lyrics, contributed to "beer joint" repertoire such songs as "I’ll Step Aside", "Set ‘Em Up, Joe", and "Love Song in 32 Bars", which fused comedy and pathos.

　

　

4.5. Rockabilly

In the mid-fifties was a fairly distinct line between "white music" and "black music" when Elvis Presley walked into Sun Studios and was famously discovered. Rockabilly is a transition between two styles, the honky-tonk and country boogie styles and is what later became rock & roll. Blues guitar, a heavier dose of r&b tunes, and the driving bluegrass rhythms of Bill Monroe were added to Rockabilly, whereas country boogie was a cousin of honky-tonk, centering on a boogie-woogie beat. Hereby a new sound was created that actually didn’t last very long, rapidly turning into other styles and genres but the impact it had on country music is not deniable. There’s no artist to be able to claim to have firstly played rockabilly. In the early 1950s various obscure southern performers were evolving toward that sound. Near Jackson, Tennessee, Carl Perkins and his band performed in bars with Perkins singing fast songs filled with his stinging blues guitar, boogie, and bluegrass rhythms. In Texas, Sid King & His Five Strings mixed honky-tonk with r&b. In Memphis in 1954, Elvis Presley and Memphis honky-tonk musicians Scotty Moore and Bill Black created a sparse sound built around Presley’s hypnotic country-blues vocals. With his breakthrough in 1954-55 at Sun Studios, Elvis became the commercial catalyst for the rockabilly style.

　

　

4.6. Nashville Sound

"Nashville Sound" is a phrase that denotes a style of country music and an era in which that style was especially influential. This phrase has been employed to convey the notion of a special mystique surrounding record-making in Nashville, and in this sense has been an important tool in marketing Nashville as a uniquely creative music center. This denotation was firstly used in Music Reporter in 1958.

At the time when some country artists made their way into the big band halls, blending their hill country sound with the ballroom orchestra tunes made popular by Glen Miller and other band leaders during the war years, the Nashville Sound took typically honky-tonk and hillbilly singers and combined them with the lush sound of strings and horns to appeal to a wider audience. So the term referred to the special magic that could be found in Nashville studios. This style was mainly founded by Roy Acuff, Chet Atkins, Floyd Cramer, Boots Randolph, Lloyd Green, and Jim Reeves.

　

4.7. Country-rock

"Country-rock" refers to a blend of country and rock music that came to the fore in the late 1960s. It has been a source of controversy, the main debate being whether the introduction of rock into country and country into rock was either diluting or strengthening the music. In the 1970s, rock came back to its roots, turning it into a sound that sounds more country itself since the incursion of the Nashville Sound. Especially the Beatles and those who followed them, bands like the Eagles, the Everly Brothers, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, or the Byrds were very centric.

　

　

4.8. Bakersfield Sound

The Bakersfield sound really isn’t very diverging from the honky-tonk sound, although it tends to rock a little more but as its heart, Bakersfield music also combines swing and hillbilly to make dance music for the working man. This sound was honed in the so called "drinking and fighting clubs"¹ in the 1950s. That harder-edged musical style contrasted with and commercially rivaled the smoother Nashville sounds. Some key players on this scene were Ferlin Husky, Tommy Collins, Wynn Stewart, and especially Buck Owens and Merle Haggard were the two main characters to bring it to a wide audience through the medium of television. Owens built up his own Bakersfield-based empire (radio stations, publishing companies, and the management of local talent) spreading the notion of Bakersfield as an upstart country music center. Its effects can bee seen in country music from Bakersfield to Austin, Texas.

　

　

4.9. Outlaw

Outlaw came about as direct result of the encroaching Nashville sound. Artists who wanted to have their own arrangements and their own musicians balked at the heavy handed producers and orchestral making that Nashville wanted in its country, fought against Nashville at every level until Willie Nelson released his critically acclaimed "Red-Headed Stranger". The term "Outlaw" was probably first used by Nashville publicist Hazel Smith in 1973. Mrs. Smith had been asked by a North Carolina radio station to devise an apt designation for music produced by Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings & Jessi Colter, Tompall Glaser, and their comrades, such as Johnny Paycheck, Johnny Cash, and Hank Williams Jr. at the time. She recalled Jennings’s 1972 hit "Ladies Love Outlaws" and decided that the term and the image fit. Until 1976 the most common term in usage was "progressive country" whereas some music critics alternately used "cosmic cowboy music".

　

　

　

4.10. New Traditionalism

Outlaw carried country music into the ‘80s and then faded before the same pressures that continued to make the Nashville sound king. The term "new traditionalism" was coined in the mid-1980s to describe the phenomenon of young country artists like Ricky Skaggs, George Strait, Alan Jackson, Travis Tritt, Dwight Yoakam, and Randy Travis deliberately returning to older country styles, such as honky-tonk and bluegrass, and adapting them to the modern commercial environment. Traditional old-time country music was mixed with commercial elements e.g. the electric style of instrumentation that borrowed heavily from contemporary rock music. Especially Ricky Skaggs is well-known for his concerns about the moral image of modern country music, whereas other singers were not as self-conscious and concerned, but nevertheless, they became identified with the new traditionalist movement.

　

　

4.11. Tex-Mex Music

Unfortunately it’s not recorded, who was the first to make Tex-Mex music but for sure it must have been in the early 20^th century. The style of this music was influenced mainly by Mariachi music, the Huapangas, the Mexican soulful ballads and the Cajun music, the music of the French-speaking Cajun people of Louisiana.

Celebrated characters of this subgenre are Gilbert Ortega, Juan Raoul Davis "Johnny" Rodriguez, Flaco Jimenez, Janie C. Ramirez and bands like the Sir Douglas Quintet. The most famous interpreter seems to be Freddie Fender (born Baldermar Huerta) because with him, Tex-Mex music had its first biggest commercial successes. But also famous country singers like Linda Ronstadt, Marty Robbins recorded some songs in Tex-Mex style.

　

　

　

　

　

4.12. Alternative Country

Alternative country is a term used to describe a number of country music subgenres that tend to differ from mainstream or pop orientated country music. The term is sometimes known as alt-country and includes country music bands and artists that have incorporated influences ranging from American roots music, bluegrass, rock & roll, rockabilly, acoustic music, Americana, and honky-tonk to alternative rock, folk rock and punk rock which shows the openness of this genre.

The alternative country movement blossomed out of the 70’s country-rock sounds with artists such as Uncle Tupelo, Ryan Adams, Calexico, Neko Case, Giant Sand, Golden Smog, the Handsome Family, and Jason & The Scorchers that wanted to retain their independence and make the music the way they ought to. This subgenre is not a combination of alternative music and country music, as it is often misleadingly understood. While many alternative country artists could easily be defined in any other country music categories, their dogged determination to make the music they want without any limitations sets them as group apart.

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

5. Important Exponents

Country music created a great number of representatives since the early 1920s. To introduce a few of the most important, I want to start with Henry C. Gilliland and Alexander Campbell "Eck" Robertson as the first recorders of traditional music and as traditional music being the basis for the country music industry, the originators of country music. Gilliland is considered to be the very first person to make a country music recording. He was born in Jasper County, Missouri, on March 11, 1845. In his early times he learned to play his brother’s fiddle and made acquaintance of many Oklahoma and Texas fiddlers, for one, his favorite, the legendary Mat Brown. He served the Army and worked as a city clerk until he began entering fiddling contests in southern Oklahoma and northern Texas in 1880, being prosperous with his satirical literally style humor and his fast, loud, and flawless fiddling.

In 1922 he rubbed shoulders with Robertson, who was born on November 20, 1887 in Madison Country, Arkansas. He grew up on a farm near Amarillo and learned to play the fiddle at the age of five. He was well-known as an entertainer in the 1910s, rambling with travelling medicine shows. The two had been curious about making a phonograph record and they put it into effect in March 1923, with Robertson’s song "Sallie Gooden" which is deemed to be the first commercial country record ever. Gilliland died on April 21, 1924 and Robertson lived until February 17, 1975.

Another important character is the Singing Brakeman, America’s Blue Yodeler James Charles "Jimmie" Rogers, born on September 8, 1897 in Meridian, Mississippi, known as the "Father of Country Music"², "the man who started it all"³, was the first person inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1961, along with Hank Williams and Fred Rose. He was the son of a railroad section foreman but was attracted to show business. After he had run away with a travelling medicine show, his father retrieved him and put him to work on the railroad again. After developing tuberculosis in 1924, he began to devote full attention to his music. With his traditional melodies and folk music, early jazz, stage show yodeling, the work chants of railroad section crews, and, most importantly, African American blues, he involved a lasting musical style that made him immensely popular and very influential on generations of artists. Gene Autry, Ernest Tubb, Hank Snow, Lefty Fizzrell, Bill Monroe, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Tanya Tucker, and Dolly Parton are just a few of dozens of stars who have acknowledged the impact of his music. After wanting to fulfill his contract with Victory Talking Machine Company for twelve more recordings after having little success, he collapsed on the street as a result of complications with tuberculosis and passed away on May 26, 1933. Though he never appeared on a major radio show or played the Grand Old Opry during his lifetime, his significant influence on this genre is not only demonstrated by introductions into the Country Music Hall of Fame, but also into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970 and into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.

Another important role in the developing of country music played the Carter Family. As well, they received richly-deserved honors with elections into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970, into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1988, and they earned the honorable nickname "The First Family of Country Music", a tribute to their innovative sound and a profound ethic work that propelled them to the top of popular music for two decades. The family group was lead by Alvin Pleasant (A.P.) Carter, consisting of him, his wife Sara Dougherty Carter and his sister-in-law Maybelle Addington Carter, later also her daughters Anita, June, and Helen. They are said to be the first great stars of country music – though unlike the great stars since they never really saw the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The term "star" doesn’t fit any of them even loosely, although they certainly were stellar makers of music but they never wanted or participated in the kind of ego glorification at the core of today’s whole star concept. The Carter Family was not only famous for being the key players at the famous Bristol sessions; they also dominated the music during the first two decades of popularity.

Furthermore, there are a lot of other very important exponents this genre has created but it would go beyond the scope of this work to discuss each of them. Just in order to mention some other important artists, I want to name some of the most famous names that come into your mind, when you think about country music. Artists like Charley Pride, Dave Dudley, John Denver (born John Henry Deutschendorf Jr.), Tammy Wynette, and especially Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, and his good friend and frequent collaborator, Willie Hug Nelson as singers who have emerged as some of the most versatile, enduring, and influential talents in late twentieth-century country music are very well known and famous for their music. Marty Robbins must also be mentioned as an eminent stylist for western songs he has written himself. In addition he is - up to now - the only person to sing Hawaiian songs authentically. Among all those big stars Johnny Cash has his place. Below, he is ought to be examined more closely.

　

　

5.1. Johnny Cash

Measuring the success of this popular, legendary artist on the placement of the hit parade, he had little in the end of the 1970s. Yet with the hit parade being no measure of quality but only an indicator for the current flavor of the crowds, which doesn’t always have to be the best as the spirit of time mostly is steered by electric mediums, you can’t mensurate his importance for the American culture on the hit parade. Long ago, he turned out to be a downright album-artist who just seemed to enjoy his life after many stressful years and do just what he wanted to do: make his music, no matter if he had great successes or not. And even if he’d bid farewell to the music business, he would have his place between the great, epoch-shaping stars embodying both the freckling and the abysmal sides of the American dream. Cash was a very sensible artist, a poet, an exceptionally gifted singer but also a roughneck addicted to alcohol and pills, a religious and social engaged citizen, a cultic figure of contradiction. In the following, this great musician, who must be mentioned in one sentence with Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams, who beat the sales-records for platters in 1970, shall be introduced.

　

5.1.1. Life and career

Johnny Cash, actually J. R. Cash, was born on February 26, 1932 in a shack in Kingsland, Arkansas near Mississippi River. He is one of seven children belonging to Raymond Cash and Carrie Rivers Cash: Roy, the eldest, then Louise, Jack, he, Reba, Joanne, and Tommy, who also is a great star of country music today. They all grew up under poor and hard conditions, working in the cotton fields, first in Kingsland and from 1935 on in Dyess Government Resettlement Colony in northeast Arkansas where they moved in course of the New Deal and a program run by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration in which farmers like them who had been ruined by the Depression were to be resettled on land the government had bought. When they arrived in Dyess, "the entire family, my parents, two brothers and two sisters spent the first night in the truck under a tarpaulin"⁴, he recalls. Music was part of everyday life in the Cash household. With his mother singing mostly gospel-songs, religious songs, and also folk and country songs and his father being a member of the church choir, they sang all-together in the fields while picking cotton.

The tragic death of his brother Jack at age fourteen in 1944 had a dramatic effect on his life and would also have a lasting effect on the tone of his music. Cash once said "I always wanted to be like him"⁵. Jack was killed in an accident with a circular saw in the lumber mill, where he has been working.

After his graduation from Dyess High School in 1950 he jobbed as an automobile factory worker in Pontiac, Michigan. About a month later, he quit and signed up for the U.S. Air Force. He was posted to Germany, engaged as a radio intercept operator in Landsberg/Lech and became promoted to staff sergeant. There he organized his very first band, the "Landsberg Barbarians", and during that time he also wrote his great Folsom Prison Blues.

At the age of 22, on August 7, 1954 after he came back from the Air Force, he married Vivian Liberto from San Antonio, Texas, moved to Memphis with her and they went to have four daughters: Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy, and Tara.

He describes his life as a simple one: "cotton as a youth and music as an adult"⁶. To keep his head above water he began working as a door-to-door appliance salesman for the Home Equipment Company of Memphis, Tennessee.

Accidentally, he made acquaintanceship with automobile electrician Luther Perkins and car-service-manager Marshall Grant. Those three fellows started making music together and made their first record in 1955 at Sun label right after the disk records of a truck driver from East Tupelo/Mississippi, called Elvis Presley, came out. He made his first big life appearance in Memphis in August 1955 and his first hits with his band "the Tennessee Two" and shortly after they were asked all over the United States. The words "Hello, I am Johnny Cash", always were his first words to his audience. The group had to rush from concert to concert, from tour to tour and that burned Johnny out. He began taking amphetamines to stay awake and sleeping pills to calm down again.

The first time Johnny ever experienced the effect of mood-altering drugs was at the age of 11, when he was brought to the Dyess Hospital because of a severe and painful injury of his rips. Doctor Hollingsworth gave him an injection of morphine that killed the acute pain. From that time on he was fascinated and wanted to have some more of that sometime. The first amphetamine, a little white Benzedrine tablet he took in 1957 when he was on tour with Ferlin Husky had a thrilling impact on him. Finally it led him into addiction.

By the time of 1965 his amphetamine habit reached crisis point and during that time his life collapsed, he rampaged, slept very less or even didn’t sleep for days, ruined his family and worked hard on doing the same to himself and his grueling schedule of about 300 shows a year nearly destroyed him. Once he even was put into jail for three days for smuggling amphetamines into the US across the Mexican border. Another time he inadvertently started a forest fire which burned up 508 acres in California and cost him an $85,000 fine. Amazingly, he didn’t completely bust his career. Far from it, at that time he had great commercial success with "Ring of Fire" and also came up with favorable concept albums like "Ride this Train" or "Bitter Tears".

In the early 1960s June Carter, the daughter of Maybelle Carter from the Carter Family entered his life. With the help of her and her family he managed to overcome his addiction and he kicked his habits. In 1968 June Carter became Mrs. Cash. They have one child together: John Carter, the only son. June also brought two daughters, Carlene and Rosie to their marriage.

He rebuilt himself again and climbed further up the latter of success, especially with his "Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison", which is said to be one of the best life concerts ever recorded, and "Johnny Cash at San Quentin" albums. After remarkable records in the ‘50s and ‘60s, appearances on many top-rated network programs followed. With his network television spot, the Johnny Cash Show, which was premiered in 1969 on ABC he reached his final payoff.

At the age of 48, he became the youngest living inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame bestowed its honor on him in 1992. He remains the only performer besides Elvis Presley to have been inducted into both.

With Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and Waylon Jennings he formed the Highwaymen in 1985. With this group he had one of his last commercial successes.

His career took an unusual turn in 1994 when he signed up with rap producer Rick Rubin and his American Recordings. These 5 albums were prized with many awards: the first one, called "American Recordings", with a Grammy for the best contemporary folk album in 1994, the second one, "Unchained", earned a Grammy for the best country album in 1997, the third, "Solitary Man", was charged with a Grammy for best male vocal performance in 2001, the fourth, "The Man Comes Around", got three CMA awards in 2003. The last one, "A Hundred Highways", was published in 2006 after his death. He passed away at the age of 71 on September 12, 2003 at Baptist Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, from complications with diabetes. He still remains one of the only artists to sell over 90 million records.

　

　

2. His music

   His music was basically influenced by his mother’s folk songs and hymns and the working songs from the fields and nearby railroad yards but also by songs he had listened to on the radio. Most of his spare time, he spent in front of the radio and listened to country and gospel songs or had his sister Louise singing songs to him. He had a memory that absorbed songs like a sponge absorbs water. In later years he reflects on his early life in songs like "Pickin’ Time", "Five Feet High and Rising", and "Look at Them Beans"

   He made his first records with his band, the Tennessee Two, consisting of guitarist Luther Perkins and bass player Marshall Grant and later in 1960, when named the Tennessee Three, with W.S. "Fluke" Holland as drummer at Sun Records, run by Mr. Sam Phillips in Memphis, Tennessee. Initially, Cash presented himself as a gospel singer but Phillips turned him down and asked him to come back with something commercial. Phillips also was the person who later gave him the name Johnny. The first single "Cry, Cry, Cry" was launched in 1955 and his first big hit "I Walk the Line" in 1956 which made him become one of the most promising artists on the label. This song remained on the record charts for 42 weeks, ultimately selling 2 million copies. Since his first invitation to perform at the Grand Ole Opry in 1956, he managed to work more than 200 dates a year.

   When his first records reached the European market in 1955, where folks were used to listen to the sounds of Hank Williams, Hank Snow, Red Foley or Roy Acuff with the dominating fiddle and steel guitar, they where pretty shocked to hear his aggressive kind of music and the style of his deep baritone voice in front of a basic rhythmic background, that loping rhythm suggestive of a charging locomotive, called "boom-chicka-boom" that became the band’s trademark. It hasn’t been clear to the audiences, that something really new came into being because his records were not produced in Nashville but in blues-orientated Memphis.

   Finally, he managed to write about 500 songs and record more than 1,500 songs in which he applied his gritty voice to almost every kind of material. Blues, hymns, cowboy songs, American Indian ballads, railroad songs, children’s songs, spoken narratives, patriotic songs, love songs, and novelties were all delivered in a near-monotone way.

   　

   　

3. His influence on country music

For sure, Johnny Cash was and still is one of the most influential and imposing figures in post-World War II country, western, and folk music. He didn’t sound like Nashville, nor did he sound like honky-tonk or rock & roll. He created his own subgenre, falling halfway between the blunt emotional honesty of folk, the rebellious of rock & roll, and the world weariness of country. His career coincided with the birth of rock & roll and his rebellious attitude and simple, direct musical attack shared a lot of similarities with rock. There was a deep sense of history in his music that kept him forever tied with country.

For instance, there are two artists, who are still successful today. For one, Kristoffer "Kris" Kristofferson, who tried to establish himself as a songwriter in Nashville, just got famous and prosperous because of Johnny Cash’s singing version of his lyrics of "Sunday Morning Coming Down" and for another, Merle Haggard, who was sitting right in the front row as an inmate during Johnny’s concert in San Quentin State Prison in 1969. He later said that Johnny’s music provided such strength to him that he wanted to change his life and do it the way Johnny did.

Furthermore there are lots of other stars that were inspirited by Johnny Cash, also German stars like Gunter Gabriel, Martin Wolfe or Mandy Strobel.

Without a doubt, with his forceful and expressive voice, his intoxicating lyrics, and especially his success with his album "A Boy Named Sue" in 1970 which was not only dialed into the country music charts but also into the pop charts, he was the person who provided acceptance to country music. For his audiences he incarnated maleness, for them he was an unconquerable hero.

He often identified himself with minorities, with underdogs, with discarded, with the non-presentable, with the stranded and he gave concerts for Native Americans, for inmates and he donated a lot for orphan’s and children’s homes. Tough he was very successful, he never lost his connection to the general public. He always stayed a man of the public.

Comparing to the early times of country music, when Jimmie Rodgers showed the industry in 1920 and 1930, that it’s possible to deal with the music of the poor, there are parallels to the 1940s and 50s, when Hank Williams brought authentication to country music and eventually to the 1960s and 70s, when it was subjected to Johnny Cash to make country music noted and respected all over the world. With his extensive recordings on the country and pop charts he has extended the scope of country music and helped broaden its audience through his exploration of many themes and types of songs.

He was the first inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame at the age of 48 in 1980. No one ever has achieved that in such young days. He has also been honored for his commanding position in music history through election into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and as a recipient of 11 Grammy Awards and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999. In 2001 Cash received the National Medal of Arts, the country’s highest award for artistic excellence.

　

6. The situation today

Today, country music with its rebellious character is the preferred music of the conservatives, the closemouthed majority and its sales gave 16.7 percent of the prerecorded music market in the United States in 1995, which was the high watermark for the genre’s history. According to the Country Music Foundation statistics, country-formatted radio stations had 77.3 million adult listeners in 1993. In 1995, aggregate country record sales reached over $2 billion – half that of rock’s $4.1 billion in sales but well above the categories of pop ($1.23 billion), urban/contemporary ($1.39 billion), rap ($825 million), classical ($357 million), and jazz ($369 million). The same year, country concert revenues produced over $126 million, with the top ten tours, including Reba McEntire, Alan Jackson, George Strait, Brooks & Dunn, Vince Gill, and Tim McGraw.

Furthermore, Country Music Television provides regular country broadcasts to 46 million homes in fifty countries since 1994.

Statistics say, that there’s a certain impermanence in country music’s percentage of the music product consumer pie: plenty of money was made through 1995, then concerns arose about the sustainability of country’s current run; country showed five straight years of growth from 1990 through 1994 but then data released by various reporting organizations showed that country record sales had slipped 11 percent in the first 6 months of 1996, from the $2 billion in sales reported in 1995, and that country radio listenership declined by 20 percent over the previous three years.

Trough the course of its ninety-year history country music has reflected the changes in society and technology experienced by its core group of listeners, the southern white working class. Although often crassly commercial, country music has produced works of great depth and lasting significance and has spread its influence throughout the world.

　

7. Closing Words

I want to close my skilled work with some reasons for having chosen this particular topic about Johnny Cash and the general development of country music. First of all it’s the music that made me chose this theme, because it had and still has a great impact on my life and I wanted to have a closer look into this subject, wanted to learn a little more about the music and its history and I have to say, that I really did learn a lot about it. It has been quite formidable having learned such a huge amount of new facts about the music while concentrating on it.

I grew up with country music and I asserted that this is the kind of music I can identify myself with. I don’t know any other genre that can arouse such happiness inside of me and be so thought-provoking. What now doesn’t mean that I don’t listen to any other musical genres, of course. Referring to this sector I am very open minded.

The reason for including and setting much of attention to Johnny Cash is just a personal decision according to my preference of the music that he made. Johnny Cash is a type of singer you can’t find anywhere else in the world, I think. He was a very special and legendary character with his distinctive and unrivaled voice and as far as I know he has helped a lot of persons to overcome their personal crises with his work and his music arouses emotions that can be identified by the razor-sharp, steady-going "boom-chicka-boom" rhythms of his music but also by lyrics that include some very contemplative and spiritual themes. Furthermore, he always was a man of the public. He related to the poor, the beaten down and fought for better conditions for them and other social condemned, for example prison inmates. He also spent a lot of money on orphanages and homeless children. And this is what I especially like about him. He wasn’t a musician just in order to get money from it and live a good life. He made his music up to his last days just for the music and in order to show the people living on the lower edge of society that there’s always a way to get a better live.

8. Bibliography and annotations

Literary Sources

• Cash, J. R., Johnny Cash – The Autobiography with Patrick Carr, 10 East 53^rd Street, New York, Harper Collins Publishers, 1997
• Mechthild von Schoenebeck/Gunter Reiß/Justus Noll, Musiklexikon, Cornelsen Scriptor, 1996/2
• Aaron A. Fox, Real Country – Music and Language in Working Class Culture, Duke University Press, Durham & London, 2007²
• Bill C. Malone, Don’t Get above Your Risin’ – Country Music and the Southern Working Class, Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois Press, 2002
• Walter Fuchs, Das neue große Buch der Countrymusik, Heel Verlag, 2005
• Das neue Lexikon der Musik, Band 1, Verlag J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart/Weimar, 1996
• Das neue Lexikon der Musik, Band 4, Verlag J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart/Weimar, 1996
• Dan Daley, Nashville’s Unwritten Rules – Inside the Business of Country Music, The Overlook Press/Peter Mayers Publishers, Inc., Woodstock, NY, 1998
• Johnny Cash 1932-2003 Memorial Songbook, Wise Publications, 2003
• The Encyclopedia of Country Music – Compiled by the Staff of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Nashville, Oxford University Press, Inc., 198 Madison Avenue, New York, 1998
• The Country Music Pup-Up Book, Universe Publishing, 300 Park Avenue South, New York, o.J.
• Das Lexikon der Musik, Band 1, Verlag J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart/Weimar, o. J.
• Fred Dellar/Roy Thompson, COUNTRY MUSIC FOUNDATION, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of COUNTRY MUSIC, Salamander Book, London, 1977
• Michael Streissguth, Johnny Cash – The Biography, Da Capo Press, Philadelphia, 2006

Audio sources

• Johnny Cash – The Interview, Sexy Intellectual, 2007
• www.johnnycashradio.com

Video sources

• Bestor Cram, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, ZDF/ARTE, 2008
• James Mangold, walk the line, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment LLC., 2006
• Johnny Cash at San Quentin, Granada TV, 1969/Sony BMG Music Entertainment, 2006

Internet sources

• http://www.roughstock.com/history/the-beginnings
• http://www.iwde.de/bios/tex_mex_music.htm
• http://www.iwde.de/bios/davedudley.htm
• http://www.iwde.de/bios/denver1.htm
• http://www.iwde.de/bios/waylon_jennings_15061937__1302.htm
• http://www.iwde.de/bios/merle_haggard.htm
• http://www.iwde.de/bios/tammy1.htm
• http://www.iwde.de/bios/original_carter_family.htm
• http://www.iwde.de/bios/stilarten_no_1.htm
• http://www.johnnycash.de
• http://celebrityrockstarguitars.com/rock/Johnny%20Cash.htm
• http://www.countrymusichalloffame.org/full-list-of-inductees/view/johnny- cash
• http://countrymusic.about.com/od/trivia/tp/HistoryofCountryMusic.htm
• http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eck_Robertson
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eck_Robertson
• http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ole_Opry
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Family
• http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/G/GI007.html
• http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/C/CO072.html
• http://www.arte.tv/de/woche/244,broadcastingNum=1047831,day=4,week=53, year=2009.html
• http://celebrityrockstarguitars.com/rock/Johnny%20Cash.htm
• http://countrymusic.about.com/od/artistsofcountrymusic/u/artists_styles.htm
• http://www.indiepedia.de/index.php?title=Johnny_Cash

Pictures

• p. 12, Alexander Campbell "Eck" Robertson: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9WXmjecFZLI/SocrJvekHZI/AAAAAAAADI8/UM3HJjLPQzE/s400/eck.jpg

• p.12, Jimmie Rodgers: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ewpEPV7ANWI/SRpODU50AKI/AAAAAAAAHxI/hNe6F7X4xXg/s400/jrpictbig.jpg
• p. 13, Original Carter Family: http://www.cmt.com/sitewide/assets/img/artists/carter_family/carterfamily01-430x250.jpg
• p.14, Johnny Cash:

http://www.country.de/_Bilder/Weblog/Artists/Johnny-Cash.jpg

　

Annotations

1 The Encyclopedia of Country Music – Compiled by the Staff of the Country

Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Nashville, p. 26

2 The Encyclopedia of Country Music – Compiled by the Staff of the Country

Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Nashville, p. 454

3 The Encyclopedia of Country Music – Compiled by the Staff of the Country

Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Nashville, p. 454

4 Johnny Cash 1932-2003 Memorial Songbook, p. 5.

5 Johnny Cash – The Interview, Sexy Intellectual, Track 1

6 Cash, J. R., Johnny Cash – The Autobiography with Patrick Carr, 10 East 53^rd

Street, New York, Harper Collins Publishers, p. 7

Ich erkläre hiermit, dass ich diese Facharbeit ohne fremde Hilfe angefertigt und nur die im Literaturverzeichnis angeführten Quellen und Hilfsmittel benutzt habe.

　

Steinbach am Wald, den 28.01.2010 …………………… (Ort) (Datum) (Unterschrift)