In the Country of Country: A Journey to the Roots of American Music

by NicholasDawidoff (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2005

  $3.25

  One of the most gifted cultural commentators of his generation, Nicholas Dawidoff traces the story of country music in its golden period, from Jimmie Rodgers to Emmylou Harris, via the Carter Family, Ralph Stanley, the Louvin Brothers and, of course, the indelible Johnny Cash. Journeying himself from Mace Springs, Virginia, to Bakersfield, California, Dawidoff evokes the spirit, passion and pain that informs only true country music.

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $4.33

  Tracing some of the early influences of what is now considered country music, this book is a description of a cultural journey to the backroads, rural knolls and railway-crossing towns of Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia. The author sets out to show how the first practitioners' music, from the 1930s the 1960s, came to express the rural nostalgia and experience of dislocation that millions of Southern working-class Americans felt as they were forced by the Depression, the dust bowl, urban industrialization and the war, to find new jobs, new homes and new lives. The book includes portraits of leading country performers such as Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Merle Haggard and Chet Atkins.