Roots & Branches of Country Music
Country music is not—and never was—one style of music. It has always been a mixture of many styles, springing from many roots and sprouting many new branches to create a complicated chorus of American voices, joining together to tell a complicated American story, one song at a time.
Well, you know, the way I define country music is, first of all, I call it “Country Western” music. It’s the music of America, for sure. And it’s an amalgam. It’s everything. Some people wanted to say that it was “America’s only original pure music.” Well, no, it’s blues. It’s jazz. It’s hillbilly. It’s everything about the immigrant experience brought to America and Americanized. – Ray Benson
Asleep at the Wheel, Briarcliff, Texas, 1979.
Credit: Photograph by Scott Newton, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Country music wasn’t called that yet, but it was music of the country. It was a combination of the Irish; the recently freed slaves, bringing the banjo into the world; the Spanish effects of the vaqueros down in Texas; the Germans bringing over the “oom-pah” of polka music, all converging. – John McEuen
John McEuen, and Earl Scruggs, Will the Circle Be Unbroken recording session, August 1971.
Credit: John McEuen, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Jazz emphasizes this and blues emphasizes this and country emphasizes this. You know? But where they all start is in this beautiful boiling American Music pot. – Rhiannon Giddens
Traveling musicians in the American West, c. 1900.
Credit: The Jim Bollman Collection, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Explore the Roots of Country Music
Country music rose from deep and intertwined roots – from fiddle tunes and hymns and from work songs and ballads; from smoky saloons and secluded Appalachian hollows; from barrios along the southern border and the wide-open spaces of the American West.
The Roots of Country Music
Ballads
Fiddle and Banjo Tunes and Dance Music
Church Music
Parlor Songs
Minstrel Songs and Medicine Shows
The Blues
Explore the Branches of Country Music
As country music evolved, its greatest artists never created their music in a vacuum. They were influenced by their own experiences, but also by the other types of American music they listened to. That cross-pollination of experiences and styles resulted in innovations in sound, tempo, and instrumentation, creating dynamic new branches of country music.
The Branches of Country Music
Singing Cowboys
Western Swing
Bluegrass
Honky-tonk
Rockabilly
Story Songs
Texas Shuffle
Nashville Sound
Bakersfield Sound
Outlaws
Countrypolitan
Other Styles, Other Voices
