Covering every phase of the music, from western swing and bluegrass to the "alternative country" sound of the 1990s, it's both a record buyer's guide and an encyclopedia, weaving the careers of individual artists into the bigger story of the genre's development as a whole.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A useful launching-pad,
By
This review is from: The Rough Guide to Country Music (Rough Guide Music Guides) (Paperback)
There are few more essential things in music than getting a decent record-guide for the genres of music you're curious about. My jazz record-collection would look very different if it weren't for Cook & Morton's _Penguin Guide_, for instance (& I'm also fond of Morton's Blackwell guide to contemporary composition, though it's sadly out-of-print). Kurt Wolff's book is an excellent place to go for exploring country music, & like most such volumes has much to reward both the neophyte & the experienced listener. Its organization is roughly by period, from the earliest recordings, to the days of singing cowboys & Western Swing, to honky-tonk, the Bakersfield sound, & on up to the present. (Styles like bluegrass, alt-country, rockabilly & country-rock get sections to themselves.) In each section an opening overview introduces an alphabetical series of entries for each artist in the field, followed by an annotated list of recommended records. Every so often there's a short essay interpolated in the text, marked off by a shaded box: topics include the history of the banjo & banjo-playing, interviews with Jack Clement, Tom Russell, Big Sandy (of Big Sandy & his Fly-Rite Boys), truck-driving songs, black country musicians..., a list of country renditions of Bob Dylan tunes, &c.Entries are well-written, fairly lengthy, & always informative & opinionated. Wolff's loves are hardcore traditional country both new & old, & the various artists who have in recent years been associated with labels like "alt.country", "No Depression" (the title of a noteworthy magazine associated with the movement, taken from a Carter Family tune covered by founding alt.country band Uncle Tupelo), &c. Wolff is fairly tolerant of the overproduced Nashville Sound style of the 1950s onwards, masterminded by Chet Atkins, Billy Sherrill & Owen Bradley; but he makes no bones about hating much of the radio-friendly country-pop of the last several decades. He's a sensitive & enthusiastic advocate of alt.country, on the other hand: though I could have wished that he sometimes made it clearer when an artist's output is partially or even entirely outside the bounds of "country" however loosely interpreted--I'm pleased to have made the acquaintance of Joe Henry's _Fuse_, Lambchop's _Thriller_ & Alejandro Escovedo's _With These Hands_, for instance, but by no stretch of the imagination are these country music. On the other hand, the alt.country section includes many artists like Iris DeMent & Buddy Miller whose main sin (in terms of radio airplay) is that they produce music both fresh & yet absolutely faithful to country-music tradition. As Wolff notes, "Alternative" is "a pretty vague term". -- Wolff is often useful on the intersections between country music & other musics--the section on country-rock starts with a detailed discussion of Bob Dylan & the Byrds' forays into country; it's a small pity that he doesn't do something similar for the 1980s & 1990s, where figures like Elvis Costello & Bill Frisell have been producing interesting hybrid musics drawing on country. A fine book--you'll discover a lot of artists you want to know more about. One small complaint: the index is terrible. Try looking up "Scruggs, Earl"--absolutely nothing: you have to find him under "Flatt". Ditto "Clarence White"--try "Kentucky Colonels". There's also the odd puzzling omission (e.g. David Grisman & Shelby Lynne). But otherwise this is a well-thought-out, well-informed book which will have you raiding the record store.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You need this if you listen to country.,
By Hannah Angelo (San Francisco, originally Nashville) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Rough Guide to Country Music (Rough Guide Music Guides) (Paperback)
Love this book, just stumbled on it a few weeks ago, and can't put it down. I've been listening to country and loving it since I was a little girl, and this thing keeps turning me on to more music I want to go out and buy. Cool bio's on the artists and a great section on the seventies outlaw artists.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
From hillbilly to alternative, it's all here . . .,
By
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This review is from: The Rough Guide to Country Music (Rough Guide Music Guides) (Paperback)
This is a truly fine one-volume encyclopedia of country music. Organized both historically and generically, the book is divided into 14 chapters, each discussing a type of music (hillbilly, cowboy, western swing, honky tonk, etc.) and tracing it from the time of its introduction to the present, with an overview followed by entries spotlighting the artists in alphabetical order. The chapter on rockabilly, for instance, includes both Elvis and the Stray Cats. Each entry concludes with brief reviews of recommended recordings. In addition, there are over 250 photographs of performers and album covers and numerous sidebars with short essays on a variety of topics.The book comes in at almost 600 pages, covering the length and breadth of the subject and making a pretty fair attempt at measuring the depth, as well. To give an idea of the book's scope, the "classic" stars Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline don't appear until the middle. For anyone who may think country music starts and ends with Nashville, it will come as a surprise that so much of this music originated elsewhere. You can read this book any old way you like, flipping through the pages, letting the pictures catch your eye as you discover favorite performers. If you grew up with country, there's many a trip down memory lane. If you're just discovering country, it is an excellent reference book just filled with information charting the careers of artists and their place in country music history. Well written, handsomely designed, easy to read and enjoy, it's a terrific book that will enhance any fan's love of this great musical tradition.
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