Country music in America has long marketed towards and embodied an eclectic blend of common folk: typically, southern, lower-class, God-fearing, hard-working, blue-collar white men, found in Appalachian homes and hollers scattered well beneath the Mason-Dixon line. From the earliest decades […]
Bluegrass emerged out of a bubbling world of country music that was changing from a simply regional music in the 1920s into what became known as Country & Western and was sold to the world as appealing to a strong, but […]
Spring is supposed to be a time of renewal, so what, thinks I, could be better that a trip to a record fair to pick up some vinyl that could use a new life? The venue was in Reading, a […]
This is a tale of two historic and enduring country music institutions based in Nashville, Tennessee. The Grand Ole Opry-the longest running live radio broadcast in America and Ryman Auditorium-where the Opry called home for thirty years. Today they […]
When Roy Acuff signed a contract with Capitol Records in 1953, he was 50 years old and a country music superstar, even though he hadn’t had a hit in many years. He ruled the roost every Saturday night on the […]
