What makes Country, country?-Lyrics?Commercialization/branding? Is it all the cornbread,

beer, whisky, gals in tight blue jeans, lifted trucks, hard work and church on Sunday morning, fishing, huntin’ and losing women,

fried chicken, good home cookin, ma, pa and the ol’ deer?-Or is it the Twang, whine, or accent?

- Or the Instruments, the banjos, fiddles, little brown jugs, spoons, cow bells, harmonicas, pianos, mandolins, steel and

standard geetars and washboards?-Is it a specific lifestyle or just an acknowledgment or what

makes life worth living?-Or it where they came from?

Quick History• Country originates from many genres, but most distinctly from Folk. “Jingle

Bells” is the most famous song in the world and falls into the folk genre that gave it’s roots to country.

• Country was originally developed by both African and Caucasian plantation workers in the south and called hillbilly music (black hillbilly music). 1920’s record companies used term country to segregate the artists. Lazy, Lazy River was one of the first black hillbilly music:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz7Z5Xqmqis• (^ "PBS.org". PBS.org. Retrieved 2011-02-01.)

• April 1924, "Aunt" Samantha Bumgarner and Eva Davis –first females to record, release country music ( Thesylvaherald.com)

• Grand ole Opry: Founded on November 28, 1925 ( "Radio – Long Players". Guinness World Records. Retrieved 2010-04-04.)

• Western: developed parallel to hillbilly music and was eventually combined to create country and western and then country. Directly related to isles folk and celebrates the life of a cowboy.(Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads,)

Country Timeline by Artist

• Folk(Appalachian Folk)-> Arnold Shultz(travis thumb picking)-> Carters (recorded traditional)->Bob Wills (2nd generation, electric guitar)->Hank Williams-> George Jones->Cash-> Gordon Lightfoot(cross over, 3rd generation)-> Patsy Cline -> Loretta Lynn -> Merle Haggard-> Dylan-> Willie(4th generation)-> Dolly-> Alan Jackson-> George Strait-> Skynyrd (5th

generation) Shania-> Garth Brooks -> Toby Keith- > Dixie Chicks->Reba-> EXPLOSION of sub genres and 6th generation (Sheryl Crow->Taylor Swift, etc.). Compliments of Wikipedia and other sources.