When lockdown hit, I returned to my childhood bedroom, with its high ceilings and austere white walls, and dreamed of being somewhere different, anywhere other than where I presently was. I became repulsed by the technological constraints of online university courses. During spring classes, I became feverish, and ran outside to gulp fresh air after being cooped up in my room for an extended period of time. More than anything, I started daydreaming. I fashioned tall tales of escape and adventure. In my dreams, I was running through a wide prairie in a cream peasant dress and cowboy boots, or riding a horse through the Badlands of Montana on the run from the law—even feeding grain to a flock of birds in the mountains. Similarly to the message in the song “Cowboy Take Me Away,” by The Chicks, I was searching high and low for a divine intervention to whisk me away from the nightmare of a reality that had fallen upon the world.  

Photo Credit: Dixie Chicks

I found what I was yearning for in the stories woven by the words of American folk singers. Country music originated as the music that united working-class people. Americans from the South, particularly in the Appalachian mountains, selected European folk songs and English ballads, and decorated them with additions of fiddle, mandolin, and banjo instrumentations. Harmonies were simple, and ornamental musical arrangements were used sparingly. After a hard day of manual, blue-collar work, Appalachian people would return home, sit on their porch, and play country music. The songs they played were ones known by heart, for they had grown up with them, and felt the words and melodies in their very souls. These were songs that had been passed down from generation to generation. Country music was something that brought Appalachian families together amidst the hardships of the difficult climate they endured, and the unforgiving occupations they had.

The story of country music catalyzed in the mid-1920s, with the ever-influential Carter Family. The Carter Family consisted of Sara and Maybelle Carter, and Jimmie Rodgers. Sara Carter married A.P., and he became the head of the Carter household. A.P. would travel around Virginia and Tennessee and collect hundreds of British/Appalachian folk songs that had been passed on for generations. The Carter Family became nationally famous when they appeared on a radio show along the Texas-Mexican border that reached hundreds of American cities and thousands of homes. One of those homes would be that of Johnny Cash.

Photo Credit: The Tennessean

In the 1940s and 50s came the reign of Hank Williams and Gene Autry. Williams had a prolific career towards the end of 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s. He was a superstar at age 24, and dead by age 29 as a result of mixing alcohol and painkillers. Hollywood made over a hundred cowboy westerns, and they used Autry’s likeness to sell. Autry was successful at that, having played a cowboy in 93 movies and owning 300 songs under his belt. 

Photo Credit: BMG

Johnny Cash grew up listening to the Carter Family’s music—his father would hook up a radio to the car battery so his household could listen to them. Cash grew up poor in Arkansas, one of 8 children. He ended up marrying June Carter Cash (Maybelle Carter’s daughter), and even had his own television show, where he hosted Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, among many others. He was a rulebreaker in country music, even singing in prisons, such as Folsom Prison and San Quentin Prison in California. 

Photo Credit: Orphaned Images

Photo Credit: Folsom Prison 

One former outlaw who heard Cash sing at San Quentin was Merle Haggard. He and Willie Nelson, a Texan, covered Townes Van Zandt’s “Pancho & Lefty” and gave it a more upbeat feel. Nelson didn’t have the best of luck in Nashville, so he moved back to Texas and found his crowd there. Around that time emerged Kris Kristofferson, a singer-songwriter who wrote “Me and Bobby McGee” (later covered by Janis Joplin) and the devastating “Sunday Morning Coming Down.”

Photo Credit: Morrison Hotel Gallery

I continued to gravitate towards ostracized country singers, particularly women—Judee Sill in particular, whose heroin addiction led to her demise, but who had an otherworldly voice. Karen Dalton, often compared to Billie Holiday for her voice, was a folk singer who constantly appeared on the Greenwich Village circuit and was a friend of Bob Dylan’s, but did not see commercial success because of her lack of studio albums and inability to secure a record contract. Most of all, though, I adored Patsy Cline. Her cover of Willie Nelson’s “Crazy” captured hearts worldwide, and also devastated them when she died in a plane crash at the age of 30.

Photo: GAB Archive/Redferns

In the 1970s, a subgenre called “Outlaw Country” emerged, with rebel Waylon Jennings. Jennings’ “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way” reflects Jennings’ disdain with what the Nashville country music industry had become: 

Lord, it’s the same old tune, fiddle and guitar

Where do we take it from here?

Rhinestone suits and new shiny cars

It’s been the same way for years

We need a change

Today, the country music industry has stepped away from the gaudy excesses of the 80s and returned to what matters: the music. Female artists like Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch, and Aoife O’Donovan breathe new life into old covers and offer their own takes. In the modern decade, country music has been combined with other genres as artists try out a different sound. One such artist is, Orville Peck is a queer country singer who combines shoegaze elements with steel guitar motifs. 

Another take on tradition that shows how far country music has come is The Highwomen, comprised of Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, Amanda Shires, and Natalie Hemby. The group is a spoof of the group The Highwaymen, which consisted of Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson. The Highwaymen were formed in 1985, as all its members noticed their individual music started to slip down the charts. Conversely, The Highwomen formed at the highest point of their collective careers thus far. The Highwomen write about music that focuses on real world issues like the gender wage gap, not just songs about unrequited love amidst heterosexual relationships.

Photo Credit: Alysse Gafkjen

Country music makes me feel like I’m exploring the Wild West, and connects me to a time of simplicity before smartphones, the internet, or raging viruses existed. Most of all, it reminds me of community, and of the simple beauty of playing music as a collective group. Many country singers grew up without money, and often went hungry, but they always had family and a couple of guitars—and sometimes, that was enough.

Article by Erika Badalyan.

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