Patrick Huber
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807832257
- eISBN:
- 9781469606217
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807886786_huber.5
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This chapter focuses on “Fiddlin' John” Carson's debut record, which marked the advent of what OKeh would soon designate as a new field of recorded commercial music called “hillbilly music,” or, less ...
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This chapter focuses on “Fiddlin' John” Carson's debut record, which marked the advent of what OKeh would soon designate as a new field of recorded commercial music called “hillbilly music,” or, less pejoratively, “old-time music.” The modest but surprising sales of this record indicated to Peer and his superiors at the General Phonograph Corporation, the manufacturer of OKeh records, that a promising, previously unrecognized market existed for old-timey grassroots music sung and played by ordinary white southerners. “One of the most popular artists in the OKeh catalog is Fiddlin' John Carson, mountaineer violinist, whose records have met with phenomenal success throughout the country,” the Talking Machine World, a phonograph dealers' trade journal, reported in April 1925.Less
This chapter focuses on “Fiddlin' John” Carson's debut record, which marked the advent of what OKeh would soon designate as a new field of recorded commercial music called “hillbilly music,” or, less pejoratively, “old-time music.” The modest but surprising sales of this record indicated to Peer and his superiors at the General Phonograph Corporation, the manufacturer of OKeh records, that a promising, previously unrecognized market existed for old-timey grassroots music sung and played by ordinary white southerners. “One of the most popular artists in the OKeh catalog is Fiddlin' John Carson, mountaineer violinist, whose records have met with phenomenal success throughout the country,” the Talking Machine World, a phonograph dealers' trade journal, reported in April 1925.
Edward P. Comentale
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037399
- eISBN:
- 9780252094576
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037399.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This chapter shows how country music provided emotional bearing for an entire region gripped by processes of change. It presents country song as a dynamic phenomenon of space and time, one that ...
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This chapter shows how country music provided emotional bearing for an entire region gripped by processes of change. It presents country song as a dynamic phenomenon of space and time, one that provides an affective link between home and away as well as past and present. In the commercial ballads of the late 1920s and early 1930s, the chapter shows how the ground slips away and time moves forward, and the listener is propelled backward and forward on a current of uneasy but thrilling affect that comes to stand in for regional experience itself. The chapter develops this argument through four different moments in the early history of country music: the popularity of Fiddlin' John Carson; the underexplored influence of the Vagabonds and the Delmores; the Carter Family, the “First Family of Country Music;” and country radio.Less
This chapter shows how country music provided emotional bearing for an entire region gripped by processes of change. It presents country song as a dynamic phenomenon of space and time, one that provides an affective link between home and away as well as past and present. In the commercial ballads of the late 1920s and early 1930s, the chapter shows how the ground slips away and time moves forward, and the listener is propelled backward and forward on a current of uneasy but thrilling affect that comes to stand in for regional experience itself. The chapter develops this argument through four different moments in the early history of country music: the popularity of Fiddlin' John Carson; the underexplored influence of the Vagabonds and the Delmores; the Carter Family, the “First Family of Country Music;” and country radio.
Patrick Huber
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807832257
- eISBN:
- 9781469606217
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807886786_huber
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
Contrary to popular belief, the roots of American country music do not lie solely on southern farms or in mountain hollows. Rather, much of this music recorded before World War II emerged from the ...
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Contrary to popular belief, the roots of American country music do not lie solely on southern farms or in mountain hollows. Rather, much of this music recorded before World War II emerged from the bustling cities and towns of the Piedmont South. No group contributed more to the commercialization of early country music than southern factory workers. This book explores the origins and development of this music in the Piedmont's mill villages. It offers vivid portraits of a colorful cast of Piedmont millhand musicians, including Fiddlin' John Carson, Charlie Poole, Dave McCarn, and the Dixon Brothers, and considers the impact that urban living, industrial work, and mass culture had on their lives and music. Drawing on a broad range of sources, including rare 78-rpm recordings and unpublished interviews, the author reveals how the country music recorded between 1922 and 1942 was just as modern as the jazz music of the same era. The book celebrates the Piedmont millhand fiddlers, guitarists, and banjo pickers who combined the collective memories of the rural countryside with the upheavals of urban-industrial life to create a distinctive American music that spoke to the changing realities of the twentieth-century South.Less
Contrary to popular belief, the roots of American country music do not lie solely on southern farms or in mountain hollows. Rather, much of this music recorded before World War II emerged from the bustling cities and towns of the Piedmont South. No group contributed more to the commercialization of early country music than southern factory workers. This book explores the origins and development of this music in the Piedmont's mill villages. It offers vivid portraits of a colorful cast of Piedmont millhand musicians, including Fiddlin' John Carson, Charlie Poole, Dave McCarn, and the Dixon Brothers, and considers the impact that urban living, industrial work, and mass culture had on their lives and music. Drawing on a broad range of sources, including rare 78-rpm recordings and unpublished interviews, the author reveals how the country music recorded between 1922 and 1942 was just as modern as the jazz music of the same era. The book celebrates the Piedmont millhand fiddlers, guitarists, and banjo pickers who combined the collective memories of the rural countryside with the upheavals of urban-industrial life to create a distinctive American music that spoke to the changing realities of the twentieth-century South.
