Country Music

Music of Bill Monroe From 1936-1994

Bill Monroe, born in 1911, is generally considered the father of bluegrass music since that unique style of music originated with his Bluegrass Boys band. Monroe, who grew up in Kentucky, the bluegrass state, came from a musical family, with older brothers who played the fiddle and guitar. Monroe began playing the mandolin while still a child.

At the age of 18, Monroe moved to Indiana and started a group, the Monroe Brothers, with two of his brothers and a friend. After a short time, one brother and the friend left the group and Bill Monroe began performing with the remaining brother. The duo spent their first two years, from 1934 to 1936, playing for radio stations in the US Midwest and South, including playing in Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, and the Carolinas. They got a recording contract with RCA in 1936 and had their first hit record with the song, "What Would You Give in Exchange for Your Soul?" The pair continued recording for RCA until 1938 and in those two years, they recorded 60 songs.

[learn more about Bill Monroe and his music]

The Essential Flatt & Scruggs: 'Tis Sweet To Be Remembered

Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs played bluegrass music with Bill Monroe, but they are probably best known for the group they formed in 1948, the Foggy Mountain Boys. Together, Flatt and Scruggs probably did more to bring bluegrass into mainstream music than any other individual or group.

Lester Flatt, a school dropout at the age of 12, didn't begin performing professionally until he was in his mid-twenties and his big break with Bill Monroe didn't come until 1945 when Flatt was 31 years old. Earl Scruggs, on the other hand, had a much earlier start and he joined Monroe's Bluegrass Boys at the age of 21. Scruggs' distinctive three-finger style of banjo playing quickly stirred audiences and helped to revolutionize bluegrass music.

[learn more about Flatt & Scruggs and their music]

Honoring the Fathers of Bluegrass: Tribute to 1946 & 1947

Ricky Skaggs started playing bluegrass music at the age of 6, joining Bill Monroe on stage with his mandolin. A year later, at the ripe old age of 7, he moved on to play with Flatt and Scruggs on television. By the time he was 14 or 15, Skaggs was playing on radio shows with his own group. He continued working in groups and bands, including Emmylou Harris' Hot Band, until his mid-twenties when he signed a contract with Epic Records and recorded his first solo album. This album led to success for Skaggs, with two number one hit singles ("Cryin' My Heart Out Over You" and "I Don't Care").

The height of Skaggs' career was in the 1980s when he had 12 number one hits. In 1982, he joined the Grand Ole Opry. He was the winner of many country music awards, including Male Vocalist of the Year (1982) and Entertainer of the Year (1985).

The 1990s took Skaggs back to his bluegrass roots and he has continued to shine in this area of music. From 1990 to 2008, Skaggs won 10 Grammy awards and 11 awards from the International Bluegrass Music Association.

[Sources for information: Wikipedia and Ricky Skaggs' website]

Hank Williams - 40 Greatest Hits

Hank Williams is undoubtedly one of the greatest country legends, having influenced the genre and numerous singers who succeeded him. Williams, best associated with the Honky Tonk style of country music, began singing professionally at the age of only 14. He started as a young street singer with a guitar, performing outside a radio station in Montgomery, Alabama. He was soon hired by the radio station for his own 15 minute show, twice a week.

Once Williams had enough money saved from his radio job, he formed his own band, the Drifting Cowboys. The were soon playing in clubs and for parties in Alabama. At age 16, Williams left school to perform with his band full time. Soon afterwards, his mother became the group's manager and she arranged gigs for them in Georgia and Florida.

[learn more about Hank Williams and his music]

George Jones: The Life and Times of a Honky Tonk Legend

by: Bob Allen

Although Honky Tonk music originated with ragtime and jazz music, it is closely associated with Hank Williams and other country artists of the 1940s and 1950s. It came out of the earlier Western swing music, with musicians using guitars, a fiddle and a string bass for its unique sound.

The early Honky Tonk singers, like Hank Williams, had a nasal, "twangy" sound to their singing, but later artists, such as George Jones, created a clearer kind of music. Common themes of Honky Tonk songs included love gone wrong, loneliness and alcohol addiction. A typical song of this genre is the Hank Williams' classic, "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry."

The first country Honky Tonk music reflected the lives and sounds of the southwestern part of the United States, but it was brought to Nashville by Ernest Tubb in the 1940s. The sound reached its height of popularity in the 1950s with singers such as Webb Pierce, George Jones and Lefty Frizzell.

[Source for information: Wikipedia]

Ultimate Eddy Arnold

Eddy Arnold, often associated with the Nashville sound, had a 65-year career as a country singer. He was known as a clean-cut performer who never fell into the trap of drug and alcohol addiction that affected so many of his contemporaries. He was nicknamed the "Tennessee Plowboy" because of his early roots, growing up on a farm in Tennessee. Arnold's natural and gifted talents resulted in the sale of more than 85 million records and 28 number one hits on Billboard's "Country Singles" chart over the span of his long career.

Arnold started singing professionally at the age of 17 but it took several years for him to achieve any success. However, by 1943, he was a solo performer on the Grand Ole Opry and in 1944, he signed a recording contract with RCA Victor. His first major hit for the record company came two years later with "That's How Much I Love You."

Arnold's manager early in his career was Colonel Tom Parker, best known for also managing Elvis Presley. Arnold stayed with Parker until 1964 and Parker was instrumental in Eddy Arnold becoming a top country singer.

[learn more about Eddy Arnold and his music]

The Nashville Sound

by: Paul Hemphill

The Nashville sound began in the late 1950s and it created a movement away from the earlier Honky-Tonk style of country music. Bands with fiddlers and guitarists and singers with "twangy" sounds were replaced by studio musicians who incorporated elements of pop music, including the use of string sections and background singers, into country music. The two main recording studios involved in the change in country music were RCA Records and Columbia Records and one of the key producers of the new sound was Chet Atkins.

Some of the earliest Nashville sound recordings were "Gone" by Ferlin Huskey (1956), "Four Walls" by Jim Reeves (1957) and Don Gibson's "Oh, Lonesome Me," produced in late 1957. By the 1960s, the sound was being merged into a more mainstream pop market with singers like Glen Campbell, Charlie Rich and Charley Pride.

[Source for information: Wikipedia]

Patsy Cline - The Definitive Collection

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Patsy Cline

Patsy Cline was one of the first great female country artists. Cline, who began singing as a child, came from a musical family, with a father who was an amateur singer. She started her career as a nightclub singer but switched to country music at the age of 20.

Cline signed her first recording contract in 1954 with Four Star Records, but her first four singles didn't succeed. In 1957, she appeared on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts television show and achieved national recognition. She sang "Walkin' After Midnight" and her recording of it made it to the number two spot on the country charts. It also became a popular hit, reaching number twelve on the popular charts. Cline had no other hits right after "Walkin' After Midnight," but she remained popular on television. In 1957, Cline entered semi-retirement.

Cline's career was revived in 1960 when she signed a contract with Decca Records and released "I Fall to Pieces." This song became Cline's first number one hit on the country charts. In the next two years, she had several hits, including "Crazy" and "She's Got You."

Cline tragically died in a plane crash in 1963 at the age of only 30. She was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame posthumously in 1973.

[Source for information: Country Music Hall of Fame - Patsy Cline]



Loretta Lynn

Loretta Lynn, one of the leading female country artists of the 1960s and 1970s, has had an almost 50 year career. She had 16 number one hits, several of them with Conway Twitty, and 17 number one albums. During her long career, Lynn wrote over 160 songs and recorded 70 albums.

Lynn's life was hard from an early age. The daughter of a Kentucky coal miner, she married as a child at the age of only 13. By the time she was 17, she already had four children.

Lynn first started singing as a child in church and at local concerts. However, after she married, she quit singing to raise her children. At the age of 18, her husband bought her a guitar, and Lynn taught herself to play it. She went back to performing several years later.

[learn more about Loretta Lynn]

Essential Charley Pride

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Charley Pride, an outstanding country singer, is one of the only African-American artists to have achieved success in an almost completely white music arena. And he did this at a time when African-Americans were still struggling to achieve basic civil rights in the United States.

Pride was born to a large family of sharecroppers in Mississippi. He began his eventual path to a musical career in his teens when he first started playing the guitar. However, a possible musical career was put on hold while Pride followed his dream to be a professional baseball player. He played in the Negro American League and in the minor leagues as a pitcher until an injury basically ended his baseball career.

Pride recorded his first songs in 1958, at the age of 20 and while still playing baseball. The records went nowhere and Pride's musical career did not get a real start until Chet Atkins signed him to a contract with RCA Records in 1966. His first song with RCA was "The Snakes Crawl At Night." This was followed by a second song that didn't catch on, but his third song for RCA, "Just Between You And Me," brought Pride his first top ten hit. It reached number nine on the country charts and in 1967 won a Grammy award for Pride. [read more...]

Willie Nelson and Friends - Outlaws & Angels

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Willie Nelson is a unique country performer who, along with Waylon Jennings, is known as one of the original "outlaw" country artists. Nelson has had a long and prolific music career that began in 1956.

Nelson's interest in music started at the young age of six when his grandparents paid for music lessons for him. A year later, he composed his first song and by the time he was nine, Nelson was playing guitar in a band. During high school, Nelson furthered his musical ambitions by singing in bars. At the age of 23, he cut his first record, while continuing to write songs and sing in nightclubs. But success did not come quickly for Nelson.

In 1960, Nelson joined Ray Price's band. Although Nelson didn't get much notice, songs he wrote did and several became major hits for other country artists. Some of these hits were "Funny How Time Slips Away," "Hello Walls" and Patsy Cline's classic hit, "Crazy."

Nelson had some minor successes in 1965 when he started recording with RCA Victor Records. He also performed at the Grand Ole Opry. After a few minor hit songs, Nelson decided to retire, but his retirement did not last long. He had moved to Austin, Texas and while there, he decided to try his own style of music, a style that caught on in Austin.

In 1973, Nelson recorded a couple of albums that received good reviews but didn't translate into sales. It wasn't until he recorded his "Red Headed Stranger" album in 1975 for Columbia Records that Nelson finally had a hit. One track from the album, "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain," became Nelson's first number one hit. Success continued for Nelson throughout the rest of the 1970s with hits such as "Good Hearted Woman" and "If You've Got the Money, I've Got the Time."

In the 1980s, Nelson began a film career while continuing to record hit songs. Two of his hits from this era were "On the Road Again" and "To All the Girls I've Loved Before." The mid-1980s found Nelson involved in two new projects. He joined musical forces with Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, and Johnny Cash as "The Highwaymen" and they toured successfully as a group. He also began working extensively for charities, producing concerts to raise money, especially for his Farm Aid project. Since then, Nelson has continued and expanded his charity work and he has several active websites dedicated to this work.


Willie Nelson's Websites
Official Website of Willie Nelson
Peace Research Institute
Willie Nelson Music Downloads
Farm Aid Website

[Source for Information: Wikipedia - Willie Nelson]

Essential

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Alabama was an enormously popular and successful country band composed of four talented musicians. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the band had many number one hit songs and they sold over 73 million records. Unfortunately for their fans, the Alabama group stopped touring in 2005 and they no longer record new songs.

In 1969, three young cousins and friends, Randy Owen, Jeff Cook and Teddy Gentry, decided to start a band called "Young Country." They played for a short time but then only played part time while Owen and Cook attended university. In 1972, they began performing again with Owen as the lead singer of the group. This time they called themselves "Wild Country." They traveled around the Southeastern part of the US for four years, playing in country music clubs. The group became Alabama in 1977, the same year they recorded their first single, "I Wanna Be with You Tonight." However, it took three more years for Alabama to get a hit record.

In 1979, drummer Mark Herndon joined Owen, Cook and Gentry to complete the Alabama band. A year later, they recorded their first hit song and one with which they would remain identified - "My Home's in Alabama." Their first number one hit was "Tennessee River."

From 1980 until 1993, Alabama stayed on the top of the country music charts, with 32 number one hits on Billboard's Country chart. From 1991 to 1998, they had 10 more number one hits on different country charts. Some of Alabama's hits include "Lady Down on Love," "Feels So Right, "High Cotton," and "Down Home."

Alabama won numerous awards in the 1980s, including Grammy awards and country music association awards. Some of their awards include:

• Grammy award - Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal (1982, "Mountain Music" and 1983, "The Closer You Get")


• Country Music Association - Entertainer of the Year (1982, 1983, 1984)


• Association of Country Music - Entertainer of the Year (1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985)


• Association of Country Music - Artists of the Decade (1989)


• Recording Industry Association of America - Country Group of the Century (1999)

Alabama has been inducted into both the Vocal Group Hall of Fame (2004) and the Country Music Hall of Fame (2005)

[Sources for Information: Alabama Official Website and Wikipedia - Alabama]