Country Music Culture: From Hard Times to Heaven (Studies in Popular Culture) - Softcover

Ellison, Curtis W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0878057226 ISBN 13: 9780878057221

Publisher: University Press of Mississippi, 1995

Synopsis

A search for the heart of America's most prevalent form of music to learn what caused its astonishing popularity

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Here is a perspective on contemporary country music's stars, promoters, and fans. It shows how this vibrant culture evolved from rustic radio programs based in the American South to become an international phenomenon charged by aggressive promotion of recording artists and an extended network of performers and fans unparalleled in other forms of popular music. Here the Grand Ole Opry is likened to the mother church, with the Carter family and Jimmie Rodgers as its tragic troubadours who passed the torch for plaintive anthems to Hank Williams and Patsy Cline. Elvis Presley provided an icon for spiritual devotion. Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, and Reba McEntire have carved popular images of strong, successful women, while Garth Brooks, country music's most vibrant financial success, plays out an image of sensitive masculinity. Drawing upon a diverse range of sources - literary and scholarly works, fan magazines and music business publications, biographies of country music stars, recordings, radio and television programs, and motion pictures - Country Music Culture is based on the author's firsthand observations of more than seventy-five live concerts and public events.

Synopsis:

Since its beginnings in the 1920s, country music has soared beyond an almost exclusively regional audience to become America's most popular form in the 1990s. Seventy years of regional modernization have framed it for broad appeal in today's popular culture. Here is a fascinating book that offers perspective on contemporary country music's stars, promoters, and fans. It probes deeply to learn how a vibrant country music culture evolved from rustic radio programs to become aggressive promotion of recording artists and an extended network of performers and fans unparalleled in other forms of popular music. Drawing upon a remarkably diverse range of sources--literary and scholarly works, fan magazines and music business publications, biographies of country music stars, recordings, radio and television programs, and motion pictures--Country Music Culture is based on firsthand observations of more than seventy-five live concerts and public events. It provides impressive evidence of

About this edition

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0878057226
• ISBN 13: 9780878057221
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 356