Wednesday, November 10, 2010

I'm Backkkkkk!!!!

We have a pretty big week coming up on the station because the CMA's are this week! I'm not a huge country fan, but I'm trying, I promise I really am. I mean I am interning at a country station so I should probably get used to it and learn to like it. What I have I learned about country so far? Here is is! (Source:http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/662845.html)

1. "Atlanta, rather than Nashville, should have become "Music City, U.S.A." Not only was there was more local talent in Atlanta, but more importantly, in the mid-1920s the five elements that together made commercial country music possible: radio, record making, live touring, song writing, and song publishing, all came together in Atlanta."

2. "Jimmie Rodgers, the "Father of Country Music," didn't think he was the father of anything but three daughters. When "discovered" by Ralph Peer of RCA he was just trying to be a snappy southern vaudeville act. In a letter to his wife, Carrie, he said derisively of the music Peer wanted him to perform: "If I can't get 'em in town, we'll go to the woods." In the same year—1927—Peer also "discovered" the Carter Family."

3. "Henry Ford, the auto maker, put more money into promoting country music in the 1920s than anyone else. Ford was frightened by what he saw as the urban decadence of couples jazz dancing. In response he organized fiddling contests and promoted square dances across the country to encourage what he saw as the older, more wholesome forms of entertainment."

4. "How did "western" get linked to "country"? Credit (or blame) Hollywood. Luckily, Hollywood didn't call the tune, just the dress code. Gene Autry and other Western-cowboy-outfitted artists were much more popular in B films of the 1930s and 1940s than were their Southern-hillbilly-styled counterparts like Roy Acuff. So, emerging honky-tonk artists like Patsy Montana, Ernest Tubb, Hank Snow, Rex Griffin, and Webb Pierce donned cowboy-styled outfits to sing their hillbilly songs of life's travails. Increasingly backed by hot, electrified instruments, they shaped the sound, lyric, and look that has been at the core of country music ever since."

5. "Why is country music called "country?" Joe McCarthy, the anti-Communist witch-hunting Senator from Wisconsin, had a lot to do with it. From the late 1940s country had been a musical genre in search of a label—something less degrading than "hillbilly." Everything from "old-time" to "oat tunes" was tried out, but "folk" gained currency with the unexpected success of the Weavers, whose hits included "Goodnight Irene" and "On Top of Old Smoky." Even Hank Williams called himself a folk singer. Then came the 1952 Senate hearings, where McCarthy demanded that the Weavers' lead singer, Pete Seeger, testify about his "Communist leanings." The industry dropped "folk" like a hot rock and "country and western" or simply "country" came into wide use."

6. "What is authentic country music? Authenticity in performance has a completely different meaning than authenticity with reference to objects. Authenticating a document or work of art involves finding whether it is the original object. However, if you are an authentic performer, let's say, and I copy your look, lyric, or style, I am to that degree imitating and not authentic. Thus what is taken to be authentic is continually changing. Will country music survive the millennium? Is authentic country music fading with the passing of the country artists born into Southern rural poverty during the Great Depression years: Loretta Lynn, George Jones, Johnny Cash, and Merle Haggard? Could be, but not necessarily."

That's the most intriguing but interesting things I came across. Happy Country Music to all!

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