Country music

Country music—sometimes called country and western, or just country—is a genre that started in the United States. It’s built around ballads and dance tunes, with lyrics and harmonies that follow traditional patterns, and it’s played on instruments like banjos, mandolins, fiddles, harmonicas, and various guitars (acoustic, electric, steel, or resonator). Originally referred to as hillbilly music, the name “country music” became common in the 1940s. The genre first took shape in the American South, then spread across the Piedmont region, stretching from Louisiana up through the Appalachian Mountains and into New York.

Its roots trace back to British folk music brought over by early immigrants, and it grew out of American folk traditions like old-time and Southern Appalachian music. Many other styles blended in along the way, including cowboy and vaquero Western music, African-American folk songs and spirituals, as well as Mexican, Irish, Gospel, Polynesian Hawaiian music, Southwestern sounds from New Mexico and Tejano, and blues modes. Country music has stayed a key part of the American music landscape, and interest in it has seen a revival since the early 2020s. By 2023, 45% of Americans said they listened to country music, marking a rise in its popularity.

The core elements of modern country music go back to musical traditions across the Southern and Southwestern United States, and it became a fixture in American popular music during the 1930s, when recording first took off. Country historian Bill C. Malone described it as “introduced to the world as a Southern phenomenon.” Over nearly 300 years, migration into the southern Appalachian Mountains brought European and Mediterranean folk music and instruments, which evolved into Appalachian music. As the country expanded westward, the Mississippi River and Louisiana became a crossroads for country music, giving rise to Cajun music. In the Southwest, the Rocky Mountains, the American frontier, and the Rio Grande provided a backdrop for Native American, Mexican, and cowboy ballads, leading to New Mexico music and the development of western music—closely tied to Red Dirt, Texas country, and Tejano styles.

Role of East Tennessee

In Oceania, the steel guitar sound in country music traces back to Hawaiian music. The U.S. Congress has officially recognized Bristol, Tennessee, as the “Birthplace of Country Music,” thanks to the historic Bristol recording sessions of 1927. Nashville, Tennessee, has also become a major hub for country artists. Historians have pointed to the less-known Johnson City sessions of 1928 and 1929, and the Knoxville sessions of 1929 and 1930, as influential.

The Mountain City Fiddlers Convention, held in 1925, also helped inspire modern country music. Before all this, pioneer settlers in the Great Smoky Mountains region had already built a rich musical heritage. Country music, still called hillbilly music at the time, found a bigger audience with the invention of radio in the 1920s.

First generation (1920s)

The biggest country radio show was the Grand Ole Opry, which started in 1925 on WSM in Nashville and is still on the air today. Okeh Records, based in New York City, began releasing hillbilly records in 1923, followed by Columbia Records in 1924 and RCA Victor Records in 1927. Outside New York, Atlanta’s country music scene was also important, launching many early recording artists. The steel guitar entered country music as early as 1922, when Jimmie Tarlton met Hawaiian guitarist Frank Ferera on the West Coast.

Many hillbilly musicians recorded blues songs throughout the 1920s. The first commercial recordings of instrumental music in the traditional country style were “Arkansas Traveler” and “Turkey in the Straw,” recorded by fiddlers Henry Gilliland and A.C. (Eck) Robertson on June 30, 1922, for Victor Records and released in April 1923. The first commercial recording widely considered to be the first country song with vocals and lyrics was Fiddlin’ John Carson’s “Little Log Cabin in the Lane,” recorded for Okeh Records on June 14, 1923. Vernon Dalhart became the first country singer to have a nationwide hit in May 1924 with “Wreck of the Old 97”; its flip side, “Lonesome Road Blues,” also gained popularity.

In April 1924, “Aunt” Samantha Bumgarner and Eva Davis became the first female musicians to record and release country songs. Many early country musicians, like yodeler Cliff Carlisle, recorded blues songs into the 1930s. James Gideon “Gid” Tanner, an old-time fiddler, was one of country music’s earliest stars; with his string band, the Skillet Lickers, he wrote and performed many early country songs in the 1920s and 1930s. Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family are widely seen as key early country musicians.

The Carters, from Scott County, Virginia, learned to sight-read hymnals and sheet music using solfege. Their songs were first captured at a historic recording session in Bristol, Tennessee, on August 1, 1927, with Ralph Peer as talent scout and sound recordist. (A scene in the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? depicts a similar event from the same era.) Rodgers blended hillbilly country, gospel, jazz, blues, pop, cowboy, and folk, and many of his best songs were his own compositions, including “Blue Yodel,” which sold over a million records and made him the leading singer of early country music. Starting in 1927 and continuing for 17 years, the Carters recorded around 300 old-time ballads and traditional songs.