Charles K. Wolfe

A biography of the renowned gospel singer who hoped, through her art, to break down some of the barriers between black and white people.

Mahalia Jackson

Kip Lornell

The first biography of the legendary folk and blues musician who wrote "Goodnight, Irene" and "Midnight Special"--a man whose extraordinary life moves from Angola Penitentiary to Carnegie Hall. Nashville based Charles Wolfe and Smithsonian consultant Kip Lornell draw on new archival material, obscure recordings, and interviews to provide an unvarnished look at a unique legend. Photographs. Advertising in Living Blues.

The Life and Legend of Leadbelly

James E. Akenson

In the third volume of this acclaimed country music series, readers can explore topics ranging from the career of country music icon Conway Twitty to the recent phenomenal success of the bluegrass flavored soundtrack to the film O Brother, Where Art Thou?. The tricky relationship between conservative politics and country music in the sixties, the promotion of early country music artists with picture postcards, the history of "the voice of the Blue Ridge Mountains" (North Carolina radio station WPAQ), and the formation of the Country Music Association as a "chamber of commerce" for country music to battle its negative hillbilly stereotype are just a few of the eclectic subjects that country music fans and scholars won't want to miss.

Country Music Annual 2002

The Early Years, 1925-35

The Grand Ole Opry

Huddie Ledbetter (1889–1949), known to millions of fans simply as Leadbelly, was arguably the most famous black singer in American history. His close musical associations included such towering figures as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and John and Alan Lomax. He helped lay the foundations for blues, modern folk music, and rock 'n' roll. This definitive biography draws on a wealth of new archival material, interviews, and previously unknown recordings to detail Leadbelly's proud, tumultuous, and often violent life.

Now for the first time, country music authority Charles K. Wolfe gathers together his profiles of 50 legends of country music, including Bill Monroe, Lefty Frizzell, and Kitty Wells.

Legends of Country Music

Classic Country

"Listening to the Beat of the Bomb" UPK author Charles Wolfe discusses his work and his new book Country Music Goes to War in the NEW YORK TIMES. While Toby Keith suggests that Americans should unite in support of the president, the Dixie Chicks assert their right to criticize the current administration and its military pursuits. Country songs about war are nearly as old as the genre itself, and the first gold record in country music went to the 1942 war song "There's a Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere" by Elton Britt. The essays in Country Music Goes to War demonstrate that country musicians' engagement with significant political and military issues is not strictly a twenty-first-century phenomenon. The contributors examine the output of country musicians responding to America's large-scale confrontation in recent history: World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, the cold war, September 11, and both conflicts in the Persian Gulf. They address the ways in which country songs and artists have energized public discourse, captured hearts, and inspired millions of minds. Charles K. Wolfe, professor of English and folklore at Middle Tennessee State University, is the author of numerous books and articles on music. James E. Akenson, professor of curriculum and instruction at Tennessee Technological University, is the founder of the International Country Music Conference. Together they have edited the collections The Women of Country Music, Country Music Annual 2000, Country Music Annual 2001, and Country Music Annual 2002.

Country Music Goes to War

Women have been pivotal in the country music scene since its inception, as Charles K. Wolfe and James E. Akenson make clear in The Women of Country Music. Their groundbreaking volume presents the best current scholarship and writing on female country musicians. Beginning with the 1920s career of teenage guitar picker Roba Stanley, the contributors go on to discuss Polly Jenkins and Her Musical Plowboys, 50s honky-tonker Rose Lee Maphis, superstar Faith Hill, the relationship between Emmylou Harris and poet Bronwen Wallace, the Louisiana Hayride's Margaret Lewis Warwick, and more.

A Reader

The Women of Country Music

David C. Morton

A Black Star in Early Country Music

DeFord Bailey

Winner of the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award Winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award On November 28, 1925, a white-bearded man sat before one of Nashville radio station WSM's newfangled carbon microphones to play a few old-time fiddle tunes. Uncle Jimmy Thompson played on the air for an hour that night, and throughout the region listeners at their old crystal sets suddenly perked up. Back in Nashville the response at the offices of National Life Insurance Company, which owned radio station WSM ("We Shield Millions"), was dramatic; phone calls and telegrams poured into the station, many of them making special requests. It was not long before station manager George D. Hay was besieged by pickers and fiddlers of every variety, as well as hoedown bands, singers, and comedians—all wanting their shot at the Saturday night airwaves. "We soon had a good-natured riot on our hands," Hay later recalled. And, thus, the Opry was born. Or so the story goes. In truth, the birth of the Opry was a far more complicated event than even Hay, "the solemn old Judge," remembered. The veteran performers of that era are all gone now, but since the 1970s pioneering country music historian Charles K. Wolfe has spent countless hours recording the oral history of the principals and their families and mining archival materials from the Country Music Foundation and elsewhere to understand just what those early days were like. The story that he has reconstructed is fascinating. Both a detailed history and a group biography of the Opry's early years, A Good-Natured Riot provides the first comprehensive and thoroughly researched account of the personalities, the music, and the social and cultural conditions that were such fertile ground for the growth of a radio show that was to become an essential part of American culture. Wolfe traces the unsure beginnings of the Opry through its many incarnations, through cast tours of the South, the Great Depression, commercial sponsorship by companies like Prince Albert Tobacco, and the first national radio linkups. He gives colorful and engaging portraits of the motley assembly of the first Opry casts—amateurs from the hills and valleys surrounding Nashville, like harmonica player Dr. Humphrey Bate ("Dean of the Opry") and fiddler Sid Harkreader, virtuoso string bands like the Dixieliners, colorful hoedown bands like the Gully Jumpers and the Fruit Jar Drinkers, the important African American performer DeFord Bailey, vaudeville acts and comedians like Lasses and Honey, through more professional groups such as the Vagabonds, the Delmore Brothers, Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, and perennial favorite Roy Acuff and his Smoky Mountain Boys. With dozens of wonderful photographs and a complete roster of every performer and performance of these early Opry years, A Good-Natured Riot gives a full and authoritative portrayal of the colorful beginnings of WSM's barn dance program up to 1940, by which time the Grand Ole Opry had found its national audience and was poised to become the legendary institution that it remains to this day.

The Birth of the Grand Ole Opry

A Good-Natured Riot

The swelling interest in popular music studies has far outpaced the outlets for publication. Country music, with its all-too-familiar stereotypes, has been particularly slow to gain scholarly acceptance. With the Country Music Annual, scholars, students, and even fans now have a outlet for the dissemination of research and ideas. Each volume of this new yearbook is devoted to all aspects of country music and is the only forum for series studies of the subject. Specific topics include old-time music, western swing, bluegrass, honky-tonk music, Cajun, instrumental music, Nashville sound era, new traditionalism, country rock, alternative country, Americana, modern folk, and contemporary Nashville, as well as biographical studies and interdisciplinary approaches to music, geography, gender, class, race, media, and culture. This inaugural edition defines country music in a broad sense and reflects the marvelous complexities of what has often been called a simple cultural form. The articles look at old-time music, Western swing, honky-tonk, Bluegrass, Cajun, country rock, and the many other incarnations country music has taken. Contributors explore country music in Hollywood and Nashville, humor, country's complex relationship with religion, music careers, sound mixing, and teaching country music in the classroom. Analysis of music, lyrics, and aesthetics stand alongside discussions of Minnie Pearl, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Emmylou Harris, Shania Twain, and many more artists. Advisory Board: Bill C. Malone, Nolan Porterfield, Jimmie Rogers, Curtis Ellison, William K. McNeil, Wayne W. Daniel, Joli Jensen.

Country Music Annual 2000

James Edward Akenson

Neil V. Rosenberg

The definitive study of Bill Monroe's contributions to American and world music Spanning over 1,000 separate performances, The Music of Bill Monroe presents a complete chronological list of all of Bill Monroe's commercially released sound and visual recordings. Each chapter begins with a narrative describing Monroe's life and career at that point, bringing in producers, sidemen, and others as they become part of the story. The narratives read like a "who's who" of bluegrass, connecting Monroe to the music's larger history and containing many fascinating stories. The second part of each chapter presents the discography. Information here includes the session's place, date, time, and producer; master/matrix numbers, song/tune titles, composer credits, personnel, instruments, and vocals; catalog/release numbers and reissue data. The only complete bio-discography of this American musical icon, The Music of Bill Monroe is the starting point for any study of Monroe's contributions as a composer, interpreter, and performer.

The Music of Bill Monroe

"Folk Songs of Middle Tennessee ... is superior to most collections because Boswell cast a wide net in his collecting, recording many items from people not usually thought of as folksingers, and because, unlike most collectors of his day, he was equally skilled at music and lyric transcription". -- W. K. McNeil, The Ozark Folk Center This volume brings together, for the first time, more than one hundred traditional songs from Middle Tennessee -- a region that is synonymous in the popular mind with music but one that has been curiously neglected in folksong scholarship. The songs presented here were originally collected in the late 1940s and early 1950s by George Boswell, a distinguished scholar and field researcher who died in 1995. While living in Nashville, Boswell scoured the city and surrounding counties for old ballads and folk songs. Sometimes using a wire or tape recorder, at other times employing a stenographer, he visited numerous singers and transcribed the words and tunes to hundreds of songs. Even after moving from Tennessee to assume a teaching position at the University of Mississippi, Boswell continued to work on his collection, annotating and comparing texts, and publishing occasional samples. In 1950, he noted that Tennessee, virtually alone among southern states, had no published collection of its folk songs. That has remained the case until now. The songs chosen for this book are presented with musical notation and extensive backgound notes, including biographical data on the original informants (many of whom were business and professional people) and fascinating histories of each song. A number of the songs are rare and previously uncollected; others arelocal variants of long-popular ballads. The publication of this volume -- the first major collection of southern folk songs in many years -- is not only a testament to Boswell's scholarship but a marvelous contribution to our understanding of southern folk culture and the ways in which it has interacted with popular culture.

Charles K. Wolfe

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