Country Music Originals
The Legends and the Lost
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- $30.99
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- $30.99
Publisher Description
Graced by more than 200 illustrations, many of them seldom seen and some never before published, this sparkling volume offers vivid portraits of the men and women who created country music, the artists whose lives and songs formed the rich tradition from which so many others have drawn inspiration. Included here are not only such major figures as Jimmie Rodgers, The Carter Family, Fiddlin' John Carson, Charlie Poole, and Gene Autry, who put country music on America's cultural map, but many fascinating lesser-known figures as well, such as Carson Robison, Otto Gray, Chris Bouchillon, Emry Arthur and dozens more, many of whose stories are told here for the first time. To map some of the winding, untraveled roads that connect today's music to its ancestors, Tony Russell draws upon new research and rare source material, such as contemporary newspaper reports and magazine articles, internet genealogy sites, and his own interviews with the musicians or their families. The result is a lively mix of colorful tales and anecdotes, priceless contemporary accounts of performances, illuminating social and historical context, and well-grounded critical judgment. The illustrations include artist photographs, record labels, song sheets, newspaper clippings, cartoons, and magazine covers, recreating the look and feel of the entire culture of country music. Each essay includes as well a playlist of recommended and currently available recordings for each artist. Finally, the paperback edition now features an extensive index.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Long before Hank Williams, Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson, a passel of performers, mostly white men born in the South in the late 19th or early 20th centuries, loaded up old-time country music from its dirt road origins and hauled their songs into town in the new era of sound recording. They were an odd lot of farmers, mill workers, policemen, preachers, politicians, hell-raisers, cowboys and blind men, all dyed-in-the-wool characters who were the first to put what was initially called hillbilly music on vinyl. Take, for instance, A.C. "Eck" Robertson, born in 1887, who allegedly used a gourd with horse hair for strings as his first fiddle and went on to make what is believed to be the very first country music record in June 1922. Russell (Country Music Records: A Discography, 1921 1942) writes profiles of 110 such performers that sparkle with detail, often hilarious but just as often heartbreaking. A few of the performers covered Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family, Gene Autry, Roy Acuff, Bob Wills and Ernest Tubb were extremely popular and prosperous, but many more fell on hard times after the music stopped. Some succumbed to tragedy, such as Walter Coon, who effectively ended his music career when he cut off the tip of his index finger while working with a biscuit-cutting machine at his bakery job. Russell has accomplished a spectacular feat in that he has written an thorough reference book that is as pleasing to read as the best of narrative nonfiction.
