Hank Williams - Hey Good Looking
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A Short History of
Country &Western Although there were C&W radio stations and performers and recording companies all over the nation, by the early 1950s, the South, The South West and the Mid West had become the real centers of development for this style. |
Nashville - The Music Capital |
The most influential C & W orientated
radio show was the Grand Ole Opry, broadcast from Nashville’s WSM . In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the OPRY attracted more and more C&W songwriters and performers to Nashville. |
The Ryman - The Historic Home of The Grand Ole Opry |
Hank Williams - Honky Tonk Blues
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Patsy Cline - I Fall To Pieces
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The Highwaymen - Highwayman
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This is not to say that the majors had no interest in C&W. Indeed the majors produced a number of prominent C&W acts, often on subsidiary labels. First Decca and then Capitol, Columbia, and RCA established Nashville offices. The popularity of the cowboy western movies in the 19309s and 1940s and cowboy television shows in the late 1940s and early 1950s had promoted a national market for the singing cowboy - . ie. Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and Tex Ritter. This created a receptivity within the national Pop market for the C&W style. As a result a number of major artists were able to escape the smaller C&W market and become national stars – Eddy Arnold and Hank Snow. Like the Pop market, the C&W market consisted of white adults. Not generally a very affluent market, what money did exist in the C&W subculture belonged to the adults. (Sources) |
Shania Twain & Alison Krauss
- Forever and For Always |
Traveling Wilburys -
End Of The Line |
Alison Krauss -
Jolene |
Perhaps the most recognizable characteristic of C&W music of the early 1950s was its timbre, much of which emanated from two specific sources: the vocalist and the steel guitar. C&W vocalists often sang with a rather nasal quality. Instead of carefully intoning each melodic pitch, they would slide from note to note. A number of male C&W singers developed the ability to yodel – a vocal device (used by earlier C&W and folk singers) in which the singe ‘cracks’ his voice, allowing it to move into a female range (called Falsetto). The steel guitar entered the C&W picture from the unlikely source of Hawaii following Hawaii’s absorption into the US in 1900. |
Kenny Rogers
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John Denver
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Willie Nelson
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Dwight Yoakam - Medley
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THE TOP TEN GREATEST COUNTRY SONGS
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