2 - 5 - Origins of Country Western (Pre WWII) (902)

8/12/2019 2 - 5 - Origins of Country Western (Pre WWII) (902)

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Well up to this point, we've talked aboutthe development of mainstream pop musicin the period up to 1955.And at the beginning of this this seriesof lectures, I said we're going to thinkabout two other styles of music, countryand western and rhythm and blues.So now we take up the story of countryand western.I don't know how many of you have seenthe Blues Brothers movie, but there's afantastic interesting scene where JohnBelushi Is talking to, they go to thisclub.They're looking for a gig.It's a, it's a club out in the sticks.It's a country club, and it says that theGood Old Boys are going to be performingthat night, and the Blues Brothers showup.The band, the Good Old Boys band hasn'tactually shown up, so the Blue Brothersconvince themselves they're the Good Old

Blues Brothers Boys.[LAUGH] But after the gig is finished,and they're all packed up and they'releaving, the actual Good Old Boys do showup.And John Belushi starts to talk to theguy to kind of maybe try to worm out ofit, so he doesn't have to give him themoney or anything.So what kind of music do you play?And the, the, the country music, musiciansays oh, we play both kinds, country andwestern.

And that's supposed to be a joke, becausepeople think this guy's so limited, thathe thinks the whole world exists incountry and western music.That they're actually two kinds of music.The actual truth is, that in the periodbefore 1945, there were two kinds ofmusic, country and western.And, that's what we're going to talkabout, those early days before 1945.And what was, what, what was thought ofas country music.And what was thought of as western music.

Now, country and western music overall,was often referred to as hillbilly music.It was music that was, that was thoughtto be of interest and, and would beconsumed by people who were relativelylow income, low educated, rurallisteners, mostly in the south.we will find out that through the courseof the Second World War and throughmigration patterns, it turns out that a



lot of these folks ended up in northerncities.But we'll get to that story soon enough.Let's now talk about the differencebetween country and western for the restof this video.Country music is associated with theSoutheast, with the Appalachian region,and it's very much influenced by whitegospel.There was a guy by the name of RalphPeer, who went into the south, and in the20s, started recording up as many peopleas he could on a, on a portable, arecording machine that he had, a disc,disc cutting machine and sometimes wirerecorders.and some of the people that he would getwould be as close as probably we're evergoing to come to hearing what thatoriginal regional music sounded like,before anybody was, before it got sort ofon the radio, and became a little bitmore affected by other cultures.

And so, some of the first people that herecorded, Ralph Peer recorded, were"Fiddlin" John Carson, and I love thisgroup, Gid Tanner and His SkilletLickers, right?This is very much, sort of, indigenous,southeastern, culture.But probably the two most important actstwo most important groups from this earlycountry, scene, would be the CarterFamily, with their Can the Circle BeUnbroken from 1935.You get a real sense, not only of the

gospel influence, of the harmony singing,but also of Maybelle Carter's distinctiveguitar solo.Where she plays the melody on the lowstrings, while also sort of playing thecords above it.among the country guitar players, that'ssort of a famous solo, that a lot of thempoint to as being important in thedevelopment of country music.Also, Roy Acuff was an enormously popularperson among country music people.A good example of his music is the Great

Speckled Bird from 1936.Without giving too much away, he says inthe lyrics the great speckled bird is theBible.And so again, you get this connection tothe white gospel tradition in this music.He also uses a slide guitar, there's alsoa slide guitar on that recording.And we're reminded that the slide guitarin this case, comes from a craze from



about the same time of Hawaiian guitar inAmerica.And so they were actually using, not somuch a bottle neck thing, like we'regoing to hear in rhythm and blues musicbut more like a Hawaiian guitar.There were no pedals or anything on it,the, the guitar was just tuned open.But, it was that sort of Hawaiian guitarthing that eventually morphed into thesteel guitar playing that became socharacteristic of country music in theperiod after 1945.We hear that already in Roy Acuff's musicfrom 1936 incoming from the, from the,craze for Hawaiian, slide guitar.In juxtaposition to country music whichwas from the Southeast, we can talk aboutwestern music, which was from theSouthwest.Mostly Texas and Oklahoma, and also thewest coast California.Western music sort of broke down into twopossible things.

You either had Western swing.And the guy, the guy who was big inwestern swing was Bob Wills and his TexasPlayboys.For all intents and purposes, the westernswing bands were, were a, a regular bigband except that they they used fiddles,and sometimes he would use a sort ofsouth of the border kind of a hornsection.but it was a, it was sort of countrycountry music meets big band.and those Bob Wills recordings, you might

want to check out New San Antonia Rosefrom 1940.Interestingly, that was a hit for him,him on the country charts.It was then covered by Bing Crosby, andwas a hit for Bing Crosby on themainstream pop charts.You never would have heard the Bob Willsrecord on the mainstream pop charts.But the Bing Crosby version, no problemthere.In addition to western swing.The other style from that, from the

western, part of this, is Gene Autry,Gene Autry and the cowboy song.The idea of the, sort of, Hollywoodcowboy sitting on a horse out there.sort of, you know?on a, on a ranch somewhere, you know,with his guitar on.And singin' a song.In the case of Gene Autry, you can hear atune like Back In the Saddle Again, from



1939, and really get an idea of what thecowboy song was about.That's what was western about that music.Of course, a lot of these guys appearingin movies at the time, cowboy musicalskind of things.And important ones were not only GeneAutry.But also, Roy Rogers.We can take just a minute to talk aboutsomebody who might be thought of as thefirst real star of country music, countryand western music, before it really cametogether as a kind of major industry inNashville.We'll talk about Nashville in the nextvideo.That person who was the first big star ofcountry music was a fellow by the name ofJimmie Rodgers, who was active from about1927 through 1923.He died at the age of 36 fromtuberculosis.But his records had a tremendous appeal.

his, his now, now we have a sense wherehis particular performances, not just thesongs themselves, but his particularperformances made a very big difference.And he was he was.His singing style was very influential onpeople like not only Gene Autry, who wetalked about just a minute ago, but alsoErnest Tubb and Eddie Arnold.the thing about Jimmie Rodgers that'sinteresting is not only his music itself,but the fact that already we start to seean image being constructed for Jimmie

Rodgers to portray him in a particularkind of way.So when you bought the sheet music for aJimmie Rodgers song, you saw him in oneof two images.He was either the Blue Yodler, or he wasthe Singing Brakeman.The Singing Brakeman is interestingbecause it would always have him lookinglike he worked on a railroad, sort ofwearing overalls as if he was somekind of of a guy who, you know, worked ona rail road when he got some time he

would go into one of the cars and singhim a song.And then he would get back to firing the,the furnace on the, on the train orwhatever.but of course Jimmy Rodgers, the actualguy, would never really worked on arailroad, or did any of those kinds ofthings.This was all a kind of way of marketing



Jimmie Rodgers.Constructing an image of authenticityaround who he was.That's going to be really important as wecontinue to tell our story.The idea that these images ofauthenticity are almost alwayscontructed, but that doesn't make theminvalid.But it does mean that we're starting tosee how the machinery is beginning towork.it isn't enough that he's a countrysinger.We have to construct an image of him as akind of country singer when we see that.to get an example, to get arepresentative example of what his musicsounded like, I would recommend the songBlue Yodel, from 1927, a song that waslater covered by Lynyrd Skynyrd in the70s.This song features the the the sort oftrademark Jimmie Rodgers' yodel.

You might wonder what's yodeling, whichseems to be more associated with like,the Swiss Alps, or something, doing incountry music in the 19, late 1920s, andlate 1930s, but there it is.And it catches hold, and a lot of peopleimitate that.So Jimmie Rodgers can be thought of asthe first star of country music.In the next video, we'll talk about howcountry music really comes together in1945 in Nashville, Tennessee.

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2 - 5 - Origins of Country Western (Pre WWII) (902)