Celebrating the dark origins of our most American music, Country reveals a wild shadowland of history that encompasses blackface minstrels and yodeling cowboys honky-tonk hell and rockabilly heaven medieval myth and musical miscegenation sex, drugs, murder and rays of fierce illumination on Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others, famous and forgotten, whose demonology is America's own. Profusely and superbly illustrated, Country stands as one of the most brilliant explorations of American musical culture ever written.
Celebrating the dark origins of our most American music, Country reveals a wild shadowland of history that encompasses blackface minstrels and yodeling cowboys; honky-tonk hell and rockabilly heaven; medieval myth and musical miscegenation; sex, drugs, murder; and rays of fierce illumination on Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others, famous and forgotten, whose demonology is America's own. Profusely and superbly illustrated, Country stands as one of the most brilliant explorations of American musical culture ever written.
In the preface to the revised edition of 1977’s Country: The Biggest Music in America, Nick Tosches provides some context for his musings and ramblings on early 20th-century country and blues. Shortly after he signed a deal with his publisher, country music began crossing over into the pop market. “My book was now seen as a timely one, and I was behooved to finish it as soon as possible,” he writes, adding that his editor “wasn’t aware that neither old Willie nor Waylon, neither Dolly’s left nor right breast was to weigh heavily in my scheme of things.”
Ignoring establishment superstars (except Tompall Glaser… he loves Tompall Glaser), Tosches digs much further back in time to the pre-war years. It was a wild scene: Black and white musicians, whether separately or together in an uneasily integrated industry, were recording lyrically and musically raw country and blues singles mostly for independent—or “mongrel”—labels. They addressed subjects that were taboo in the mainstream: drugs, race, sex. Even models of Nashville propriety, such as the legendary Roy Acuff, regularly “recorded smut"” like “Doin’ It the Old-Fashioned Way” and “When Lulu’s Gone,” which were explicit enough to make listeners then as now blush or grumble.
A prodigious researcher who indulges long lists of recordings like Biblical begats, Tosches proves an exacting and eccentric historian. He peppers his accounts of the development of the phonograph or the impact of Hawaiian guitar on popular music with surly insights and baiting opinions, such as his mislabeling of Buddy Holly as “the first soft rocker.” Country was and remains wonderfully contentious—a much-needed corrective to the wholesome image that the industry has perpetuated for several decades now. In this bloody bar brawl of a book, the genre is rowdy, raunchy, incorrigible, and much more intriguing and honest than its modern-day counterparts. –Stephen M. Deusner
-<p>Celebrating the dark origins of our most American music, Country reveals a wild shadowland of history that encompasses blackface minstrels and yodeling cowboys; honky-tonk hell and rockabilly heaven; medieval myth and musical miscegenation; sex, drugs, murder; and rays of fierce illumination on Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others, famous and forgotten, whose demonology is America's own. Profusely and superbly illustrated, Country stands as one of the most brilliant explorations of American musical culture ever written.</p><p></p><p></p><p>In the preface to the revised edition of 1977’s Country: The Biggest Music in America, Nick Tosches provides some context for his musings and ramblings on early 20th-century country and blues. Shortly after he signed a deal with his publisher, country music began crossing over into the pop market. “My book was now seen as a timely one, and I was behooved to finish it as soon as possible,” he writes, adding that his editor “wasn’t aware that neither old Willie nor Waylon, neither Dolly’s left nor right breast was to weigh heavily in my scheme of things.”</p><p>Ignoring establishment superstars (except Tompall Glaser… he loves Tompall Glaser), Tosches digs much further back in time to the pre-war years. It was a wild scene: Black and white musicians, whether separately or together in an uneasily integrated industry, were recording lyrically and musically raw country and blues singles mostly for independent—or “mongrel”—labels. They addressed subjects that were taboo in the mainstream: drugs, race, sex. Even models of Nashville propriety, such as the legendary Roy Acuff, regularly “recorded smut'” like “Doin’ It the Old-Fashioned Way” and “When Lulu’s Gone,” which were explicit enough to make listeners then as now blush or grumble.</p><p>A prodigious researcher who indulges long lists of recordings like Biblical begats, Tosches proves an exacting and eccentric historian. He peppers his accounts of the development of the phonograph or the impact of Hawaiian guitar on popular music with surly insights and baiting opinions, such as his mislabeling of Buddy Holly as “the first soft rocker.” Country was and remains wonderfully contentious—a much-needed corrective to the wholesome image that the industry has perpetuated for several decades now. In this bloody bar brawl of a book, the genre is rowdy, raunchy, incorrigible, and much more intriguing and honest than its modern-day counterparts. –Stephen M. Deusner</p><p></p>
