Rare Country Music

Jazz and Rock and Roll music are acknowledged as America's cultural gift to the world, but America's Music is Country.

Country Music has many origins and roots. The musicality finds its origins in Scots, English, and Irish folk tunes which settlers brought West of the mountains which defined the Atlantic Coastal Plain. The relative isolation of these mountain communities meant that the music had to be "portable", relying on guitars, mandolins, banjos, fiddles, harmonicas, and sometimes accordions. The relatively low volume of the stringed instruments meant that they could support vocals, and complex, sometimes boisterous harmonies came to define mountain music.

Racial tensions were rife in these regions, but the underlying religiosity of the mountain people more than artistic interest brought Gospel and negro spiritual music into the mix. The cultural impact of bootleg whiskey is thought to be a product of Prohibition. In fact, the importance of "Moonshining" goes back to the "Whisky Rebellion" during George Washington's Presidency.

Country built its "Western" influence as many former Confederate soldiers joined the cattle industry. Moving live beef from Texas and the Plains Stated required the cowboys to find ways to keep their cattle calm, leading to the tradition of cowboys singing from their saddles while on late-night patrol. Once the railhead was reached and the cowhands had their pay in hand, they demanded more driving rhythms and bawdy lyrics that form the basis of the Honky-Tonk sound.

• The Burl Ives Show, 1947-48, Syndicated for Philco Radio. After years as a wandering singer, "The Wayfaring Stranger", Burl Ives, helped to bring folk music into nation-wide popularity. Soon after this show went off the air, Ives was named in Red Channels and agreed to testify before the HUAC, causing a rift between himself and other folk singers who felt he had betrayed their cause.
• Cecil Brower and His Kilocycle Cowboys, June 25, 1948, KECK Odessa, Texas. Guitars, fiddles, buttery vocals, even honky-tonk piano are part of the live morning broadcast.
• Country and Western Caravan, 1954(?). Possibly a recording of a live stage show put together by promoter Eddy Hill.
• Dreamtime, (??), apparently a late-night broadcast featuring Nashville diva Delores Watson singing in front of Chet Atkins' immortal guitar playing.
• Dude Martin's Radio Rancho and Dude Martin's Sunrise Round-Up, 1947-48, ABC net, KGO San Francisco. Pull up a seat and make yourself comfortable in the ranch house. Dude Martin rose to fame as a country-swing bandleader on the West Coast, but he had genuine cowboy roots, born on his father's California cattle ranch.
• Harmony Rangers, 1951, AFRS. Mac McGuire leads the Harmony Rangers on this G.I. morning show to get our boys in uniform off to a good day with steel guitars, accordion, and fiddles.
• "Hello World (Doggone!)" February 1933, KWKH, Shreveport, Louisiana. Station spokesman William Kennon Henderson Jr made this phonographic recording to complain about large Northern broadcasters "sideswiping" his station which used the 850 kHz frequency. The interference of WENR and WLS Chicago was enough to keep local listeners from hearing KWKH's content. A second recording (perhaps the flip-side of the phonograph recording) features "Old Man" Henderson making his point musically.
• Hospitality Time, December 27, 1942, NBC Net, from the studios of WSM Nashville. A bigger outfit than most hillbilly bands, but a well put together attempt to convey "the hospitality of the Old South".
• The Jim Reeves Show, 1958, American Cancer Society Syndication. Jim is joined by the Jordanaires, Elvis Presley's usual back up group, in this pitch for Cancer Research.
• The Junior Grand Ol' Opry, 1953, WSM Nashville. An amateur contest for kids who want to make it in Country. Listeners can send in their votes written on a Goo Goo Cluster wrapper.
• Louisiana Hayride, Date not listed, KWKH Shreveport, Louisiana. An attempt to recreate the success of the Grand Ol' Opry in Louisiana, over the years that greatest names in Country appeared on the Hayride.
• The Lilly Brothers and Don Stover, 1953, WCOP, Boston. "Beantown" Bluegrass music.
• Maxwell House Coffee Time, June 13, 1946, NBC. Guest host Meredith Wilson has a special arrangement of his hit "Iowa" formulated to satisfy a Professor of English.
• McMahan's Midnight Roundup, March 25, 1942, Audition Program. Late night news and cowboy music pitching War-time furniture sales in Southern California.
• The Navy Hoedown, Navy Recruiting Syndication, mid-Sixties. The Vietnam-era Navy was experiencing an interesting transition towards a more technical and professional force. With the War in Southeast Asia, getting drafted into the Army was not very appealing, but if you could get into the Navy you could expect to serve on a clean, safe warship. Not only would you be safe from jungle-rot, but you might also qualify for some serious technical training. Jet aircraft, electronic navigation and communication systems, and nuclear power plants cost the taxpayers millions of dollars, but an upstanding young man could get the training and be given the responsibility for operating these complex systems just weeks after graduating from high school, sometimes even without their diploma. It seems incongruous that such a technically oriented service would lean so hard on "hill-billy music" for their recruiting material. However, it should be noted that most of the bars around Navy bases had a lot of "twang" on their jukeboxes. It is unclear whether sailors were fans of country music out of homesickness or if their work just made cowboy songs an appealing escape, but there was a direct link between Nashville and the nation's waterfronts.
• Nora Carpenter Traditional Music Collection, 1950(?). Ms. Crawford was a popular musician in the South during the early decades of the Twentieth Century, but she is better remembered for collecting sheet music, lyrics, and sound recordings of traditional musicians in and around Magoffin County, Kentucky. This cut of "Waxford Girl" may have been recorded in the studio of WSIP Paintsville, Kentucky, and features a driving "clawhammer" banjo accompaniment.
• The Old Kentucky Barndance, December 23, 1956, WHAS Louisville, CBS Sustained, AFRS. Never a serious competition for The Grand Ol' Opry or even The Louisiana Hayride, Barndance had a similar format to those bigger shows. Apparently, CBS dropped the program after this broadcast although it continued as a local hit for WHAS.
• The Pickard Family, 1939, XERA. "Dad" Pickard from Tennessee was one of the very first stars on WSM's Grand Ol' Opry, reportedly as early as 1926. He had served in the Spanish American War before marrying his childhood sweetheart, Leila May Wilson, and having five musically talented children. The Singing Pickford Family" returned to the Opry in 1931-33 and was very popular. They saw a chance for independence with "border blaster" station XERA and were based in San Antonio for a time but moved to Los Angeles in 1940 to try their luck in movies and television.
• Smoky Mountain Serenade, October 23, 1947, WSM Nashville. Coming from the same studios as The Grand Ol' Opry, Serenade was more focused on showcasing the "mountain music" of the Smoky Mountain communities surrounding Nashville.
• Sun Up Serenade, January 1947, WSM Nashville. Live morning music show from the home of the Grand Ol' Opry featuring Bill Cantrell and the Blue Seal Pals, sponsored by Blue Seal Flour.
• The Teenage Gospelettes/Sinclair Serenade Program, 1959, WRVK, Renfro Valley, Kentucky. The Gospelettes perform tight Blue Grass harmonies on their version of "He Set Me Free" from the studios of WRVK, flagship station of The Renfro Valley Gathering.
• The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show, 1953(?) RadiOzark Syndication. Although Hollywood was an important draw, the population explosion in Southern California was more driven by the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, and the Aviation and Defense Industry. Although these newcomers from the South and Midwest quickly adapted to the sand and surf of their adopted home, adapting to area's Latin American culture found less acceptance. They were homesick for the Hillbilly and Southern Gospel influenced music they had grown up with, and the burgeoning entertainment industry was happy to accommodate them. Bristol, Tennessee native Ernest J. Ford studied classical music before serving as a bombardier aboard B-29s. After the War, he settled in Southern California, worked as a disk jockey, adopted the nickname "Tennessee Ernie", and made dozens of syndicated programs with RadiOzark before releasing his hit "Sixteen Tons" (1955).
• The Terrea Lee Show, June 30, 1950, NBC(?) Sustaining. Hailing from Liberty Landing, Missouri (the scene of Jesse James' first daylight bank robbery), Ms. Lee began her formal music training in school and was pushed towards a career as a classical singer. Jobs were hard to find, and she wound up in Hollywood, dubbing film songs for Lorraine Day, Donna Reed, Lois Smith and Joan Hackett. Terrea is credited as popularizing Folk Music with West Coast audiences.
• Thesaurus, NBC. Thesaurus was NBC's electronic subscription service. Although the network actively discouraged recorded material over the networks, they maintained a staggering variety of discs for use by their affiliates.
• Union Leader Tobacco Program, April 1, 1940. Just Harry Stevens, his banjo, and a tin of Union Leader to fill your pipe or rolling papers. Harry claims that folks down home like his music a lot better than that new-fangled Swing music.
• Westward Ho: We do not have any documented evidence of a wagon master calling "Westward Ho!" and the covered wagon began their journey, but it is a great image. This syndicated cowboy music program likely takes its name from the 1956 live-action film Westward Ho the Wagons starring George Reeves (TV's Superman) and Fess Parker. The "Westward Ho!" Parade is a favored part of the Pendleton Round-Up, taking place on Friday morning of Round-Up week. The unique parade usually involves most of the native Americans camped at the Round-Up grounds and none of the vehicles in the Parade are motorized.
• World of Folk Music, AFRTS (possibly originally a Social Security System Syndication). Originally hosted by Burl Ives, singer and educator Oscar Brand creates a program packed with music and cultural education and entertainment.
• WSB Barn Dance, September 1, 1945, WSB Atlanta. One of the first radio stations below the Mason Dixon Line, WSB ("Welcome South, Brother"), began broadcasting over amateur equipment to beat their competitor, WGN (defunct since July 1923). One of the most important stations in promoting the popularity of Gospel Music, Barn Dance was an attempt to reach a nationwide status in the Country Music market.