While blues is the widely acknowledged father of rock'n'roll, country music is the unacknowledged mother of pop. Country's forebear, bluegrass, provided many of the tunes and subjects for the country songs that filled '40s and '50s honky tonks and local-radio playlists.... [more]

While blues is the widely acknowledged father of rock'n'roll, country music is the unacknowledged mother of pop. Country's forebear, bluegrass, provided many of the tunes and subjects for the country songs that filled '40s and '50s honky tonks and local-radio playlists. The sound of country was modernized once Hank Williams came along to add the hook. Not surprisingly, he was the first to have the hits. He changed country music from foot-dragging ballads suitable for dancing only by those who had downed about six beers, to two-minute ditties with quick tempos and short slide guitar solos. Williams, the twangy heavyweight of '50s radio, supposedly wrote his hits in minutes, perhaps one of the reasons the music sounds so similar. He wrote about the events and frustrations of everyday people: eavesdroppers on party lines, his pretty gal who no man could take his eyes off of, his pretty gal who locked him out of the house, his pretty gal for whom he would "throw his datebook over the fence." Patsy Cline soon emerged as the queen of country, covering several bluegrass tunes, including her famous version of the Bill Monroe standard, "Blue Moon of Kentucky." Cline picked her successor when she helped a struggling young singer named Loretta Lynn, who would later take the tropes of "Blue Moon of Kentucky" and refashion them into her own signature song, "Blue Kentucky Girl." As the power of radio and record producers grew, country became more commercial. During the 1960s, as the rock world filled with protest songs and the sexy howling of liberated women, country musicians churned out patriotic songs and laments about the breakup of the home (not to mention the whole genre of fightin'-for-your-man songs -- check out Lynn's brilliant "Fist City"). While country music has always dealt in cliche, early country lifted it to an artform. Some of the magic lasted into the late '60s and the '70s, when megastars Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings brought ballads and celebrations of fighting drunkards to the fore. The '80s and '90s saw country descend that slippery, glittery slope into pure pop. A little twang remains in the guitar, but no cowgirl worth her weight in jerky would ever wear skin-tight plastic pants. [show less]