The songs of country music pioneer Jimmie Rodgers have been appropriated by dozens of musicians and radically transformed since he first recorded them nearly 90 years ago. His songs have often resurfaced at critical moments when country music has been forced to confront issues of style, gender, race, and tradition. In this cultural and historical study, Jocelyn R. Neal discusses three of Rodgers' most influential songs—"Muleskinner Blues," "In the Jailhouse Now," and "T for Texas." She offers a radically new perspective on the role of Rodgers and his music in the making of country music, and on the ways in which individual songs take on special significance in American cultural life.

In Meeting Jimmie Rodgers, the first book to explore the deep legacy of "The Singing Brakeman" from a twenty-first century perspective, Barry Mazor offers a lively look at Rodgers' career, tracing his rise from working-class obscurity to the pinnacle of renown that came with such hits as "Blue Yodel" and "In the Jailhouse Now." As Mazor shows, Rodgers brought emotional clarity and a unique sense of narrative drama to every song he performed, whether tough or sentimental, comic or sad. His wistful singing, falsetto yodels, bold flat-picking guitar style, and sometimes censorable themes--sex, crime, and other edgy topics--set him apart from most of his contemporaries. But more than anything else, Mazor suggests, it was Rodgers' shape-shifting ability to assume many public personas--working stiff, decked-out cowboy, suave ladies' man--that connected him to such a broad public and set the stage for the stars who followed him. In reconstructing this far-flung legacy, Mazor enables readers to meet Rodgers and his music anew-not as an historical figure, but as a vibrant, immediate force.

"This biography takes the reader from Gene Autry's childhood in Oklahoma through his career as a singer and actor, and covers his later triumphs in business and sports. Of particular interest is the book's detailed day-to-day treatment of Autry's performing career, with information on each recording session and film shoot, including key personnel and interesting anecdotes"--Provided by publisher.

For over fifty years, Bill C. Malone has researched and written about the history of country music. Today he is celebrated as the foremost authority on this distinctly American genre. This new collection brings together his significant article-length work from a variety of sources, including essays, book chapters, and record liner notes. Sing Me Back Home distills a lifetime of thinking about country and southern roots music. Malone offers the heartfelt story of his own working-class upbringing in rural East Texas, recounting how in 1939 his family’s first radio, a battery-powered Philco, introduced him to hillbilly music and how, years later, he went on to become a scholar in the field before the field formally existed. Drawing on a hundred years of southern roots music history, Malone assesses the contributions of artists such as William S. Hays, Albert Brumley, Joe Thompson, Jimmie Rodgers, Johnny Gimble, and Elvis Presley. He also explores the intricate relationships between black and white music styles, gospel and secular traditions, and pop, folk, and country music. Author of many books, Malone is best known for his pioneering volume County Music, U.S.A., published in 1968. It ranks as the first comprehensive history of American country music and remains a standard reference. This compilation of Malone’s shorter—and more personal—essays is the perfect complement to his earlier writing and a compelling introduction to the life’s work of America’s most respected country music historian.

What in the World is Music? Second Edition is an undergraduate, interactive e-textbook that explores the shared ways people engage with music and how humans organize and experience sound. It adopts a global approach, featuring more than 300 streaming videos and 50 streaming audio tracks of music from around the world. Drawing from both musicological and ethnomusicological modes of inquiry, the authors explain the nature and meaning of music as a universal human practice, making no distinction between Western and non-Western repertoires while providing students with strong points of connection to the ways it affects their own lives. The What in the World is Music? curriculum is divided into five parts, with a fully integrated multimedia program linked directly to the chapters: The Foundations of Music I proposes a working definition of "music" and considers inquiry-guided approaches to its study: Why do humans have innate musical perception? How does this ability manifest itself in the human voice? A catalog of musical instruments showcases global diversity and human ingenuity. The Foundations of Music II continues the inquiry-guided approach, recognizing the principles by which musical sound is organized while discussing elements such as rhythm, melody, harmony, texture, form, genre, and style. Where did music come from? What is it for? Music and Identity examines how music operates in shaping, negotiating, and expressing human identity and is organized around three broad conceptual frames: the group, hybridity, and conflict. Music and the Sacred addresses how music is used in religious practices throughout the world: chanting sacred texts and singing devotional verses, inspiring religious experience such as ecstasy and trance, and marking and shaping ritual space and time. Music and Social Life analyzes the uses of music in storytelling, theater, and film. It delves into the contributions of sound technologies, while looking at the many ways music enhances nightlife, public ceremonies, and festivals.

“Fifty years after its first publication, Country Music USA still stands as the most authoritative history of this uniquely American art form. Here are the stories of the people who made country music into such an integral part of our nation’s culture. We feel lucky to have had Bill Malone as an indispensable guide in making our PBS documentary; you should, too.” —Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan, Country Music: An American Family Story From reviews of previous editions: “Considered the definitive history of American country music.” —Los Angeles Times “If anyone knows more about the subject than [Malone] does, God help them.” —Larry McMurtry, from In a Narrow Grave “With Country Music USA, Bill Malone wrote the Bible for country music history and scholarship. This groundbreaking work, now updated, is the definitive chronicle of the sweeping drama of the country music experience.” —Chet Flippo, former editorial director, CMT: Country Music Television and CMT.com “Country Music USA is the definitive history of country music and of the artists who shaped its fascinating worlds.” —William Ferris, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and coeditor of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture Since its first publication in 1968, Bill C. Malone’s Country Music USA has won universal acclaim as the definitive history of American country music. Starting with the music’s folk roots in the rural South, it traces country music from the early days of radio into the twenty-first century. In this fiftieth-anniversary edition, Malone, the featured historian in Ken Burns’s 2019 documentary on country music, has revised every chapter to offer new information and fresh insights. Coauthor Tracey Laird tracks developments in country music in the new millennium, exploring the relationship between the current music scene and the traditions from which it emerged.

From John Philip Sousa to Green Day, from Scott Joplin to Kanye West, from Stephen Foster to Coldplay, The Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, Volumes 1 and 2 covers the vast scope of its subject with virtually unprecedented breadth and depth. Approximately 1,000 key song recordings from 1889 to the present are explored in full, unveiling the stories behind the songs, the recordings, the performers, and the songwriters. Beginning the journey in the era of Victorian parlor balladry, brass bands, and ragtime with the advent of the record industry, readers witness the birth of the blues and the dawn of jazz in the 1910s and the emergence of country music on record and the shift from acoustic to electrical recording in the 1920s. The odyssey continues through the Swing Era of the 1930s; rhythm & blues, bluegrass, and bebop in the 1940s; the rock & roll revolution of the 1950s; modern soul, the British invasion, and the folk-rock movement of the 1960s; and finally into the modern era through the musical streams of disco, punk, grunge, hip-hop, and contemporary dance-pop. Sullivan, however, also takes critical detours by extending the coverage to genres neglected in pop music histories, from ethnic and world music, the gospel recording of both black and white artists, and lesser-known traditional folk tunes that reach back hundreds of years. This book is ideal for anyone who truly loves popular music in all of its glorious variety, and anyone wishing to learn more about the roots of virtually all the music we hear today. Popular music fans, as well as scholars of recording history and technology and students of the intersections between music and cultural history will all find this book to be informative and interesting.

This first-of-its-kind catalog of Elton John’s decades-long career tells the story of one of rock's all-time greatest artists, album-by-album and track-by-track. Organized chronologically and covering every album and song that EGOT-winner Sir Elton Hercules John has ever released, Elton John All the Songs draws upon years of research to tell the behind-the-scenes stories of how each song was written, composed, and recorded, down to the instruments used and the people who played them. Spanning more than fifty-years of work from Elton and his longtime collaborator, Bernie Taupin, this book details the creative processes that resulted in seminal albums like Goodbye Yellowbrick Road, Madman Across the Water, and Tumbleweed Connection, as well as Academy Award wins for 1995's Lion King and 2020's Rocketman. Newer work like The Lockdown Sessions, which released in 2021, is also featured alongside Billboard stats, tour dates, producing and mixing credits, and other insider details that will keep fans turning pages. Starting with the artist's early days working as a studio musician in London, and featuring interviews with actors, musicians, collaborators, and confidantes, Elton John All the Songs offers readers the most detailed portrait of the artist and his creative process that has ever been produced. Featuring hundreds of vivid photographs that celebrate one of music's most visually arresting performers, Elton John All the Songs is the authoritative guide to one of rock'n'roll's greatest stars.

In Creating Country Music, Richard Peterson traces the development of country music and its institutionalization from Fiddlin' John Carson's pioneering recordings in Atlanta in 1923 to the posthumous success of Hank Williams. Peterson captures the free-wheeling entrepreneurial spirit of the era, detailing the activities of the key promoters who sculpted the emerging country music scene. More than just a history of the music and its performers, this book is the first to explore what it means to be authentic within popular culture. "[Peterson] restores to the music a sense of fun and diversity and possibility that more naive fans (and performers) miss. Like Buck Owens, Peterson knows there is no greater adventure or challenge than to 'act naturally.'"—Ken Emerson, Los Angeles Times Book Review "A triumphal history and theory of the country music industry between 1920 and 1953."—Robert Crowley, International Journal of Comparative Sociology "One of the most important books ever written about a popular music form."—Timothy White, Billboard Magazine