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This is the story of an American treasure that records and evokes the lives of people who often weren't written up in newspapers, but whose experiences of momentous events - the Depression, the Dustbowl, the Second World War - transformed their lives and would be the catalyst for an original American art form: country music.
In the Country of Country is an exhilarating transcontinental journey from Maces Springs, Virginia, home of The Carter Family, to Bakersfield, California, where Buck Owens held sway. En route we visit the backroads, rural hills, and railway crossings where Doc Watson, Sara Carter, Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley, and Jimmie Rodgers (The Father of Country Music) first learned to play their guitars, fiddles, and mandolins.
Nicholas Dawidoff has traveled to the places where country music first emerged and talked to the musicians, writers, and singers who created this deceptively simple-worded, string-driven, melodic music.
Here are indelible portraits of Johnny Cash, behind whose black apparel lies a Faustian dilemma between fame and creativity; Merle Haggard, a man as elusive as he is gifted; Patsy Cline, who would happily curl her girlfriends' hair as she curled their ears with her sailor's mouth; and Harlan Howard, the king of country songwriters.
Inherent in Dawidoff's chronicle is a critique of contemporary country music - the pop/rock hybrid known as Hot Country that often stands in sharp contrast to the spirit of old-time country music. In the Country of Country is a book full of wonderful stories that together reveal an underappreciated piece of American culture.
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Previews available in: English
Subjects
Country musicians, Country music, History and criticism, Countrymusic, History, Influence, Musiciens countryPlaces
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In the Country of Country: A Journey to the Roots of American Music
2011, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
in English
1299038808 9781299038806
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In the Country of Country
June 4, 2001, Faber and Faber
Paperback
- Reissue edition
0571191746 9780571191741
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In the Country of Country: A Journey to the Roots of American Music
April 28, 1998, Vintage
in English
037570082X 9780375700828
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In the country of country: people and places in American music
1997, Pantheon Books
in English
- 1st ed.
067941567X 9780679415671
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Book Details
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Maps on lining papers.
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