Module 3 Country and Western Music The Folk Origins of Country Music Social, racial and religious elements that comprise country music • The labor conditions in the South and the ethnic diversity. Isolation • City vs. rural life. Contrast • Differences in the urban development of North and South • Infrastructure of nineteen-century southern society. “Blue bloods” Poor whites supremacy myths: • The white’s natural supremacy to blacks. • Machismo o macho (Latino term), a condition of male strength and virility Fundamentalist Christianity: • Shaped and control all other attitudes in the South • Second Awakening, or Great Revival • Contradictory behavior or dual moralism • “Gift of gab” How Country Music Reflects Rural Characteristics • Topics in country music. • Inner conflicts= Success • Plain language vs. elegant poetics • “White blues” • South’s increasing urbanization of the 1920s. The Tradition of British and American Balladry Ballads: Child ballads. • Structure of the British ballads. • Topics • Key Broadside. • Songsters • Topic A distinctive trait of American Ballads Ethnic Influences of the Anglo-American Music Tradition • Cultural interchange that distinguishes southern music. • Blacks and Anglo-American ballads. Differences. Instruments in the Early Country Music Anglo-Celtic and Anglo-American Fiddles The Guitar The Banjo The Mandolin Urban Influence on Pre-commercial Country Music • The process of change due to contact with the commercial products of urban culture. • Repertoire borrowed from sacred songs. • City musical styles mixed with country • Indicatives of the Anglo-American cultural dominance. • Sense of conservatism. Isolationism. • Christianity Early Commercialization of Country Music Radio gave popular local entertainers a new medium for reaching their audience. Atlanta: WSB the first radio station in the south. First country recording stars: Fiddlin’ John Carson, Reverend Andy Jenkins, and Gid Tanner Ralph Peer Early recording expeditions to the South conducted by Ralph Peer The country and “race” music records: the record industry’s efforts to appeal to various regional and ethnic groups. “Fiddlin’” John Carson: The first commercial country recording artist. “Little Old Log Cabin in the Line” sold over 500,000 copies Hillbilly: A term used for people who dwell in rural Hillbilly music: A label for what is now known as country music. Rube costumes: Dress in straw hats and ragged clothes Producer, engineer, and talent scout Listening of “Little Old Log Cabin in the Line” Lyric: A typical minstrel fare: Sung by a blackface character, it is nostalgic and sentimental, in a formal, church-delivered manner and does not act out the lyric or display emotion in his rendering He plays the melody in his fiddle as he sings. He use the melody of the verse as an instrumental introduction, as an interlude between verses and as ending http://en.wik ...

1. Module 3
Country and Western Music
The Folk Origins of Country Music
Social, racial and religious elements that comprise country
music
• The labor conditions in the South and the ethnic diversity.
Isolation
• City vs. rural life. Contrast
• Differences in the urban development of North and South
• Infrastructure of nineteen-century southern society. “Blue
bloods”
Poor whites supremacy myths:
• The white’s natural supremacy to blacks.
• Machismo o macho (Latino term), a condition of male
strength and virility
Fundamentalist Christianity:
• Shaped and control all other attitudes in the South
• Second Awakening, or Great Revival
• Contradictory behavior or dual moralism
• “Gift of gab”
How Country Music
Reflects Rural Characteristics

2. • Topics in country music.
• Inner conflicts= Success
• Plain language vs. elegant poetics
• “White blues”
• South’s increasing urbanization of the 1920s.
The Tradition of British and American Balladry
Ballads:
Child ballads.
• Structure of the British ballads.
• Topics
• Key
Broadside.
• Songsters
• Topic
A distinctive trait of American Ballads
Ethnic Influences of the
Anglo-American Music Tradition
• Cultural interchange that distinguishes southern music.
• Blacks and Anglo-American ballads. Differences.
Instruments in the Early Country Music
Anglo-Celtic and Anglo-American

3. Fiddles
The Guitar
The Banjo
The Mandolin
Urban Influence on
Pre-commercial Country Music
• The process of change due to contact with the commercial
products of urban culture.
• Repertoire borrowed from sacred songs.
• City musical styles mixed with country
• Indicatives of the Anglo-American cultural dominance.
• Sense of conservatism. Isolationism.
• Christianity
Early Commercialization of
Country Music
Radio gave popular local entertainers a new medium for
reaching their
audience.
Atlanta:
WSB the first radio station in the south.
First country recording stars:
Fiddlin’ John Carson, Reverend Andy Jenkins, and Gid Tanner

4. Ralph Peer
Early recording expeditions to the South conducted by Ralph
Peer
The country and “race” music records: the record industry’s
efforts to appeal to various regional and ethnic groups.
“Fiddlin’” John Carson: The first commercial country recording
artist. “Little Old Log Cabin in the Line” sold over 500,000
copies
Hillbilly: A term used for people who dwell in rural
Hillbilly music: A label for what is now known as country
music.
Rube costumes: Dress in straw hats and ragged clothes
Producer, engineer, and talent scout
Listening of “Little Old Log Cabin in the Line”
Lyric: A typical minstrel fare:
Sung by a blackface character, it is nostalgic and sentimental,
in a formal, church-delivered manner and does not act out the
lyric or display emotion in his rendering
He plays the melody in his fiddle as he sings.
He use the melody of the verse as an instrumental introduction,

5. as an interlude between verses and as ending
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiddlin'_John_Carson
Listening:
“Soldier’s Joy”
The two-part form alternates with a vocal based only on the
melody
of the verse
Lyric is rural South: Were often nonsense or based on the must
mundane
of subject manners
Tin Pan Alley
and the Country Music
Vernon Dalhart (1883-1948)
Event Songs: Broadsidelike ballads for new events (usually
monumental tragedies)
Prison Songs: Most often a lament by someone wrongly sent to
prison
“Wreck of the old 97”
“ The Prisioner’s Song”
Carson Robison ( 1890- 1957):

6. Successful writer of event songs.
Had a professional relationship with Vernon Dalhart, mainly as
a song writer but also as a musician. Between the 1930s and
1940s he madesome of the earliest tours of a country musician
in a British Isles.
Bob Miller ( 1890- 1957):
Wrote over seven thousands songs for his publishing
company in New York
Ralph Peer and The Bristol Sessions
Bristol, Tennesse.
The Carter Family from Virginia: a conservative southeastern
strain
Jimmie Rodgers from Mississippi: an eclectic southwestern
strain.
The Solemn Old Judge and the
Barn Dance
The two most successful radio shows:
National Barn Dance (NBD) in Chicago
WSM’s Grand Ole Opry in Nashville
Conducted by Gorge D. Hay, an announcer from Indiana
The Carter Family
• “God, Mom, and Home” theme exemplified the
conservative old-time approach of the southeast.

7. • Decca Label and XERF radio station
• Maybelle Carter’s guitar style
• Influence and importance in country music history of The
Carter Family
Analysis of “Wildwood Flower”
Lyric: Archaic style, came from a nineteenth-century
parlor song called “ The Pale Amaranthus.”
Maybelle Carter’s guitar playing is the most celebrated feature
of this recording:
The melody is played in the lower strings and strums
the accompanying chords and rhythm on the upper strings
with a downstroke
Jimmie Rodgers
•“The father of country music”
• Styles that influenced Jimmie Rodgers
• Blues yodels songs
• Vocal style was characterized by a throaty, reedy quality
• Rodgers’ variety of musical settings
Analysis of “Waitin’ for a Train”
Features: Bowed string bass, Hawaiian slide guitar, guitar,
muted trumpet, and clarinet, playing in a relaxing, jazzy,
Dixieland style
Lyrics: is about being a hobo, wandering along the railroad line.
Vocal style: relaxed and wistful, lazily sliding from one pitch to
the next and frequently employing blue notes.

8. Activity:
From the BBC documentary Story of Country Music 01 Carter
Family
Make a resume addressing the following points:
1. Characteristics of the lyrics and musical elements that
compounded the songs such as tempo, topic in the lyric, and
religious statements.
2. Describe the Maybelle Carter’s guitar style as was
explained in the documentary.
3. How the invention of the Western Electric Company
changed the promotion and development of the commercial
music?
4. What happened when the first record from the Carter
Family was released?
5. What were the primary resources from where A. P obtained
the melodies for his compositions?
6. What personal event in the Carter Family describes the
religious contradictory behavior and dual moralism?
7. Who became the first solo star in Country Music?
Country Meets Western
Singing Cowboys: Gene Autry brought a sophisticated crooning
sound
to country vocal style.
Cowboy harmony: Sons of the Pioneers
Decca Records and Radio X

9. Music demonstrate a diversity and eclecticism.
Western swing: Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys “New San
Antonio Rose”
Honky tonk: named for the establishments in which the music
was heard.
Nashville Sound
1. What was the key to the Nashville Sound?
2. What does Eddy Arnold represent for the Country music?
3. Explain the importance of the crossover for the survival of
the Country Music.
4. According with his own words what was the motivation
that moved Eddy Arnold to become in one of the most
representative artist of the Nashville Sound.
Hank Williams
The Bakersfield Sound
From California, characterized by rockabilly-influenced electric
sounds.
Buck Owens
Austin and Outlaw Country
Eclectic mix music, characterized by blend of 1960s rock,
urban, folk, and country, ranging from the Carter Family and
blues to Bob Dylan and psychedelic rock
Willie Nelson
Activity:
From the BBC documentary:
The Story of the Country Music 09
Buck Owens and Willie Nelson

10. Make a resume addressing the following points:
1. How Nashville’s rules became a creatively stalled place
for songwriters?
2. Why Willie Nelson chose Austin, Texas to develop his
career?
3. Statement why Nashville between the 1960s and 1970s was
considered in the movie “a real feudal system”
4. What the Willie Nelson music did to the diversity of the
audience at the time he was contracted to play at the Armadillo
World Headquarter?
5. What is the importance of Red Head Stranger in Willie
Nelson’s career and its transcendence for the country music?
6. Besides Austin what was the other city to challenge
Nashville?
7. According with Buck Owens interview, what are the reason
that he preferred to play the Bakersfield style than Nashville?
Bluegrass
More eclectic, both in its repertoire and its manner of
performance.
It is this emphasis on virtuoso instrumental display.
Different use of rhythm: Constant patter of sixteen notes -
“chugga-lugga”
Because its complexity, it is compared with jazz
Instrumentation: Banjo, Mandolin, Guitar, Fiddle, and Bass
Bill Monroe and
the Blue Grass Boys
Flatt and Scruggs

11. Popularized the Dobro
Activity:
From the BBC documentary The Story of Country Music 03
Bill Monroe
Make a resume addressing the following points:
1. Describe the characteristics in the personality of Bill
Monroe which allowed him to develop a solid conceptual
structure in his music.
3. The Blue Grass Boys are named after ______________
4. What happened in 1945 that the bluegrass sound began to
be defined?
5. What was the contribution of Earl Scruggs to the banjo
technique?
6. What cause that many musicians didn’t stay for long in the
Monroe’s band ?
7. What was bluegrass’s relationship with the urban folk
revival in the late 1950s and early 1960s?
Johnny Cash
Activity:
From the BBC documentary The Story of Country Music 04
Make a resume addressing the following points:
What do the live albums recorded at Folsom prison in 1968
and in San Quentin State prison in 1969 symbolize for Johnny
Cash?
What was the transcendence of the Vietnam War and the

12. 1960s hippie movement in the music of Merle Haggar?
Abdullah Alkhudari
Class: noon-12:50
Tap
Tap is a type of dance which consists of sound from one's shoes
when they tap on the floor. The tap dancers use special kind of
shoes which have metal on its heels which are mostly associated
with the sound produced. Although one can tap with ordinary
shoes the sound produced will not be of the same quality as the
sound produced by the special tap dance shoes. Tap dancing
mostly involves dancing in groups and while dancing in a
group, steps are kept easy to control. The group of dancers have
to work together to create sound while they keep their tapping
speed to match with one another. It also can be done even
without preparation or even planning for it to be successful.
One of the best keys tap dancers must use in order to perform
perfectly is to relax their bodies, and to always follow the music
and listen to the rhythms. Another important factor is to watch
other dancers carefully and look for interesting moves, because
in the tap dance world all dancers steal moves from one another
to come up with a combination of moves that gives every dancer
their own style. Many other dancers are originals who prefer to
create new moves inspired by the surrounding sounds of the city
like the random sounds from the streets, car horns, construction
sites and buskers.
Tap dancing is one of the dances which help the body to be
active and this helps in keeping fit and at the same time
building strength in the legs and feet that even old people who
used to dance for a long period of their life don’t lose their
strength. It also increases flexibility in the hips, knees and
ankle and at the same time developing a sense of rhythm and
timing. Tap dancing can be used as a form of entertainment and
is enjoyable when watching and also dancing. One of the

13. lessons that can be learnt in tap dancing is that many people can
come together and make new steps and since everyone dancing
has to follow one rhythm unity is required.