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With its steel guitars, Opry stars, and honky-tonk bars, country music is an American original. Bringing together a wide range of scholars and critics from literature, communications, history, sociology, art, and music, this anthology looks at everything from the inner workings of the country music industry to the iconography of certain stars to the development of distinctive styles within the country music genre. 72 photos.
List of contents
Introduction / Cecelia Tichi 1
Sing Me a Song about Ramblin' Man: Visions and Revisions of Hank Williams in Country Music / Christopher Metress 4
Blue Moon of Kentucky Rising Over the Mystery Train: The Complex Construction of Country Music / David Sanjek 22
Bloody Daggers and Lonesome Graveyards: The Gothic and Country Music / Theresa Goddu 45
A Musical Legacy, A Way of Life: A Photo Essay / Charmaine Lanham 65
Commercial (and/or) Folk: The Bluegrass Industry and Bluegrass Traditions / Mark Fenster 74
Mountains of Contradictions: Gender, Class, and Region in the Star Image of Dolly Parton / Pamela Wilson 98
Keeping Faith: Evangelical Performance in Country Music / Curtis W. Ellison 121
Girls with Guitars - and Fringe and Sequins and Rhinestones, Silk, Lace, and Leather / Mary A. Bufwack 153
Event Songs / Charles K. Wolfe 188
Country Green: The Money in Country Music / Don Cusic 200
Country Music and the Contemporary Composer: The Case of Paul Martin Zonn / Michael Kurel and Cecelia Tichi 209
"My name is Sue! How do you do?" Johnny Cash as Lesbian Icon / Teresa Ortega 222
The Dialectic of hard-Core and Soft-Shell Country Music / Richard A. Peterson 234
"The Sad Twang of Mountain Voices": Thomas Hart Benton's
Sources of Country Music / Vivien Green Fryd 256
Mecca for the Country Music Scholar / Ronnie Pugh 286
Country Music, Seriously: An Interview with Bill C. Malone / Cecelia Tichi 290
Reading the Row / Christine Kreyling 307
The Metric Makings of a Country Hit / Jocelyn Neal 322
"The Voice of Woe": Willie Nelson and Evangelical Spirituality / T. Walter Herbert 338
"I'll Reap My Harvest in Heaven": Fred Rose's Acquaintance with Country Music / John W. Rumble 350
Jim Crow and the Pale Maiden: Gender, Color, and Class in Stephen Foster's "Hard Times" / Amy Schrager Lang 378
Selected Discography 389
Notes on Contributors 395
Index 399
About the author
Cecelia Tichi is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English and Director of American and Southern Studies at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of High Lonesome: The American Culture of Country Music.
