Rural rhythm : the story of old-time country music in 78 records
(Book)

Many words have been dedicated to biographies and histories of early country music and its creators, but surprisingly little attention has been given to the actual songs at the heart of these narratives. In this groundbreaking book, music historian Tony Russell turns the spotlight on a vast archive of recordings from the 1920s and 1930s and uncovers the hidden stories of how they were recorded, the interventions of record companies that shaped them, the musicians who played them, and the listeners who absorbed them. In seventy-eight essays on selected 78rpm discs that draw on new research, contemporary newspapers, and previously unpublished interviews, readers will meet songs about home and family, love and courtship, crime and punishment, farms and floods, chain gangs and chain stores, journeys and memories-in other words, almost every facet of the human experience. In this way, Rural Rhythm not only charts the tempos and styles of rural and small-town music-making and the development of the country genre but also retraces the larger rhythms of rural life in the American South, Southwest, and Midwest. What emerges is a narrative that ingeniously blends the musical and social history of the era.