Country Music Originals: The Legends and the Lost
Starred Review.Long before Hank Williams, Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson, a passel of performers, mostly white men born in the South in the late 19th or early 20th centuries, loaded up old-time country music from its dirt road origins and hauled their songs into town in the new era of sound recording. They were an odd lot of farmers, mill workers, policemen, preachers, politicians, hell-raisers, cowboys and blind men, all dyed-in-the-wool characters who were the first to put what was initially called hillbilly music on vinyl. Take, for instance, A.C. Eck Robertson, born in 1887, who allegedly used a gourd with horse hair for strings as his first fiddle and went on to make what is believed to be the very first country music record in June 1922. Russell (Country Music Records: A Discography, 1921–1942) writes profiles of 110 such performers that sparkle with detail, often hilarious but just as often heartbreaking. A few of the performers covered—Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family, Gene Autry, Roy Acuff, Bob Wills and Ernest Tubb—were extremely popular and prosperous, but many more fell on hard times after the music stopped. Some succumbed to tragedy, such as Walter Coon, who effectively ended his music career when he cut off the tip of his index finger while working with a biscuit-cutting machine at his bakery job. Russell has accomplished a spectacular feat in that he has written an thorough reference book that is as pleasing to read as the best of narrative nonfiction.(Nov.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.