The History of Country Music :: essays research papers

Country music was brought over by the first European settlers. In medieval times, storytelling was a tradition that allowed write up to be recorded when few were able to read and write. When the first British settlers came to America, they brought this tradition with them, along with songs that they had learned in Europe. The people who settled the Appalachian Mountains and the West did not have an easy life and their music gave them an passing to express their hardships.When country music bean in America, there were no professional musicians. The typical musician sang only to entertain himself, his family, or at local events. At first, most country music was call unaided or played on a lone spiel or banjo. At the turn of the century, Sears, Roebuck & Co. began advertising affordable guitars in its nationwide available catalogs, as well as sheet music and songbooks. The mandolin to a fault became available and soon string bands were being formed with different combinations of i nstruments. As vaudeville grew in the early 1900s, it was mainly composed of northern performers. However, their prototype showed southern performers that one could make music playing in public. This acknowledgement spawned the first generation of hillbilly performers. The term hillbilly was popularized in the 1920s after a musician by the name of Al Hopkins. He told his producer to name his band whatever he liked because they were provided a bunch of hillbillys from North Carolina and Virginia. As the popularity of the phonograph grew, people across the countrybegan to buy their through the mail. Originally, the music consisted mainly of unmixed singers and orchestral agreements of sentimental songs. One day in 1922 two Texan fiddlers named Alexander Campbell Eck Robertson and Henry Gilliland traveled from Atlanta to New York City to range their music recorded.