COUNTRY MUSIC. Country music is rooted in the folk music of the British Isles. English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh poetry, folklore, ballads, and sea chanteys form the basis for many of the earliest songs that came to be called country music in the United States. However, modern country music has been profoundly influenced by a variety of other regional and ethnic genres of music during the past few centuries. African Americans, Mexican Americans,^qqv German Americans, Polish Americans, French Americans, and several other groups have had a major impact on the development of country music over the years.

"Country" music began to emerge in the American South as large numbers of English-speaking settlers moved into the region during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By the early nineteenth century, some of these Anglo pioneers had moved as far west as Texas. As a primarily rural, agrarian society, the South remained somewhat culturally isolated from the increasingly urbanized and industrialized North. Consequently, southerners tended to preserve the traditional folk music^qv of their ancestral homelands. However, even though southern folk songs typically were based on traditional music from the British Isles, they underwent significant transformation according to the particular ethnic and social influences present in different parts of the South. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, "country" music included a wide variety of styles that differed dramatically from region to region across the southern United States.

In Texas, country music developed its own unique characteristics. Beginning with Moses and Stephen Austin's^qqv arrangement with the Mexican government to bring English-speaking settlers into the province of Tejas in the 1820s, tens of thousands of white southerners poured into Texas over the next two decades, bringing their southern folk culture with them. These southerners also brought many black slaves along, who also had an important impact on the unique development of country music in Texas.

Texas won its independence from Mexico in 1836, and, by the time it joined the United States in 1845, the original Native American and Hispanic inhabitants had been joined by an astounding array of other immigrant and ethnic groups, including Anglo, Irish,^qv Scottish,^qv Welsh, African, German,^qv French,^qv Czech,^qv Polish, Jewish,^qv and Italian.^qv Partly because Texas was less strictly segregated than the Deep South, and partly because the rugged environment of the western frontier necessitated cooperation among traditionally disparate groups, people of different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds interacted somewhat more freely in Texas than in other parts of the South, exchanging musical ideas and influences in the process. This blending of a variety of rich musical traditions made Texas a fertile ground for the emergence of several new sub-genres of American country music.

The great cattle drives from Texas to the Midwest during the late 1800s made the cowboy a key player in the developing Texas economy and secured his status as an almost mythical character within the folk culture of the Southwest. The music of the cowboys included traditional folksongs that were modified to fit the unique living and working conditions cowboys faced. "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie," for example, was based on the old English sailor's song "Ocean Burial." Other songs included humorous anecdotes or spoke of the lonely, difficult nature of life on the open range. Since nearly half of all Texas cowboys were either Hispanic or black, the cowboy's repertoire also reflected lyrical, instrumental, and stylistic influences from these ethnic communities. In some cases, songs widely considered to be traditional cowboy ballads were written years after the great cattle drives by songwriters hoping to recapture what they considered the romance and adventure of a bygone era. Such is the case with the classic tune "Home on the Range," written by Texan David Guion^qv in the early twentieth century.

By the 1920s the increasing availability of radios, phonographs, and moving pictures helped spread country music, which previously had been limited mainly to the South and Southwest, across the nation and even into international markets. The first known commercial recording of country music came in 1922, when Amarillo fiddler Eck Robertson^qv recorded "Arkansas Traveler" and "Sallie Goodin" for Victor Records. In 1924, Vernon Dalhart^qv from Jefferson, Texas, released the first country record to sell over a million copies. Dalhart's phenomenal success with "Wreck of the Old Southern 97" convinced major record companies that there was a lucrative national market for country music. Soon, record companies and Hollywood film producers launched nationwide searches for marketable country singing stars. Among the most influential of these stars who were from or had lived in Texas were Jimmie Rodgers, Gene Autry, Dale Evans, and Tex Ritter.^qqv Rodgers, originally from Meridian, Mississippi, helped blend the Deep South country style of his native state with the western style of the Texas prairies to create the music that would come to be called "country and western." The tremendous popularity of such radio and movie singing personalities helped make country and western music an international phenomenon and made the cowboy and his music a permanent and powerful symbol of the culture of Texas and the Southwest.

During the Great Depression^qv of the 1930s, Texas continued to contribute to the ongoing evolution of country music. Folksinger Woody Guthrie,^qv who was born in Oklahoma but spent much of his early life in Texas, became an important spokesman for millions of Texans, Oklahomans, and Arkansans displaced by the great Dust Bowl.^qv Bob Wills,^qv born in Limestone County, Texas, and Milton Brown,^qv born in Stephenville, Texas, joined with a variety of jazz and country musicians to create western swing, one of the most eclectic, exciting, and enduring forms of American music ever to appear. Western swing blended traditional ballads and country fiddle tunes with blues,^qv jazz,^qv ragtime, polkas, schottisches, waltzes, reels, and instrumental arrangements that reflected the influences of every style from mariachi to big band swing. The great versatility of these western swing groups was due in part to the love that Wills, Brown, and the others had for all types of music, regardless of their ethnic or geographical origins. However, economic considerations also played a part in shaping the diverse repertoire of these bands. In order to keep their jobs on radio^qv during the depression, entertainers had to be able to perform an extensive variety of musical styles that would appeal to a broad spectrum of listeners. The end result was a new type of music that introduced an astounding array of musical influences into mainstream country music.

The World War II^qv era brought other important changes to country music. The rapid mobilization of the civilian population for the war effort resulted in a dramatic increase in urbanization and industrialization, as millions of Americans from rural backgrounds moved to the cities to work in factories and office buildings. This rapid transformation from an agrarian to an urban lifestyle was reflected in the emergence of a new type of country music called "honky-tonk." Although still based on the traditional country and western musical structures and instrumentation, honky-tonk music dealt more candidly with the problems of an increasingly urbanized, industrialized, and morally permissive society. Issues such as alcoholism, infidelity, divorce, and other social problems, which formerly were not discussed openly in public, became common themes in honky-tonk songs.

Some of the most influential honky-tonk musicians of this period came from Texas. Ernest Tubb,^qv the first country singer to perform at Carnegie Hall, helped pioneer the post–World War II honky-tonk era, along with Floyd Tillman, Lefty Frizzell,^qv Hank Thompson, Ray Price, and George Jones. By the late 1950s,Texas artists were bridging the gap between country and pop music, bringing country music increasingly into mainstream popular culture. For example, Johnny Horton's^qv "Battle of New Orleans," Jim Reeves's^qv "He'll Have to Go," Jimmy Dean's "Big Bad John," Roger Miller's^qv "King of the Road," and Jeannie C. Riley's "Harper Valley P.T.A." all became major hits on both the country and pop charts. Texas-born Buck Owens even saw one of his songs, "Act Naturally," recorded by the Beatles.

In the 1970s, Texas gave birth to yet another sub-genre of country music that forever altered the course of American music. Centered in Austin, the phenomenon known as "progressive country" or "redneck rock" sprang from an unlikely combination of traditional honky-tonk music and the hippie counterculture of the late 1960s. Such Austin venues as Armadillo World Headquarters^qv and Soap Creek Saloon provided an environment in which cowboys, hippies, bikers, and college students could mingle freely and hear a great variety of music, including blues, country, rock-and-roll,^qv and conjunto.^qv Texas singer–songwriters such as Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings,^qv and Willie Nelson, who had grown tired of the Nashville music scene, returned to their home state to lead the progressive country movement.

Kristofferson, born in Brownsville on June 22, 1936, includes on his resumé such diverse occupations as janitor, Rhodes Scholar, and helicopter pilot. He became a successful songwriter and movie star, recording and performing with Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Barbara Streisand. Jennings, born in Littlefield near Lubbock on June 15, 1937, played bass guitar for Buddy Holly^qv before moving to Nashville to record for RCA Records. Nelson, born on April 30, 1933, in Abbott, Texas, was raised by his grandparents. As a child, he began composing his own songs, and, by the 1950s, had established a successful songwriting career in Nashville. Some of the biggest stars of country music turned Nelson's songs into top hits, including Ray Price with "Night Life," Patsy Cline with "Crazy," and Faron Young with "Hello Walls." However, Nelson and the others found more freedom for their musical creativity back in the Lone Star state.

The phenomenal commercial success of such progressive country hits as "Me and Bobby McGee," "Luckenbach, Texas," and "Mommas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys," forced the Nashville establishment to acknowledge Nelson, Jennings, Kristofferson, and other "outlaw" artists and incorporate their unconventional musical style into the country mainstream. Soon, a flood of younger Texas performers, including Asleep at the Wheel, Guy Clark, Michael Murphey, Rodney Crowell, Johnny Rodriguez, Tanya Tucker, B.J. Thomas, Freddy Fender, Billie Jo Spears, Townes Van Zandt,^qv Don Williams, and transplanted Texan Jerry Jeff Walker, was riding the wave of a new country music market that embraced country, folk, blues, pop, rock, and western swing.

The 1980s brought further important developments in country music. While native Texans such as Kenny Rogers, born in Houston in 1938, Barbara Mandrell, born in Houston in 1948, and Larry Gatlin, born in Seminole in 1948, topped the charts with crossover pop–country hits, a group of college friends living in San Marcos was about to turn the country world on its head. The Ace in the Hole Band, featuring a young, unknown singer named George Strait, exploded on the scene, inspiring a return to the roots of traditional country music. Strait, born in Poteet, Texas, in 1952 and raised in Pearsall, honed his singing skills during a stint in the army and then went on to pursue a degree in agriculture at Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University–San Marcos). Between classes and local gigs, Strait and the band developed a loyal following. In 1981 Strait signed on with MCA Records and quickly became a country superstar. With an emphasis on western swing and back-to-basics honky-tonk, his long string of number-one hits, which includes "Fool Hearted Memory," "Right or Wrong," "Amarillo By Morning," and "Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind?," spawned legions of imitators and reawakened an interest in more traditional-sounding country music.

Other Texans, such as Clint Black, Lyle Lovett, LeAnn Rimes, Robert Earl Keen, Jr., and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, have followed in the footsteps of these earlier pioneers to build very successful careers of their own. With exciting new acts, such as Rick Treviño, Pat Green, and the Dixie Chicks, it seems clear that Texas will continue to have a profound and lasting impact on shaping country music to reflect the tremendous cultural variety of Texas and the Southwest.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Richard Bauman and Roger D. Abrahams, eds., "And Other Neighborly Names": Social Process and Cultural Image in Texas Folklore, ed. Richard Bauman and Roger D. Abrahams (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981). Joe Carr and Alan Munde, Prairie Nights to Neon Lights: The Story of Country Music in West Texas (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1995). Fred Dellar, Alan Cackett, Roy Thompson, eds., The Harmony Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music (London: Salamander Books, 1986). Alan B. Govenar and Jay F. Brakefield, Deep Ellum and Central Track: Where the Black and White Worlds of Dallas Converged (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1998). Duncan McLean, Lone Star Swing: On the Trail of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys (New York: Norton, 1997). Bill C. Malone, Country Music U.S.A. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975). Steven Opdyke, Willie Nelson Sings America (Austin: Eakin Press, 1998). William A. Owens, Tell Me a Story, Sing Me A Song: A Texas Chronicle (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983). Texas Music Museum, Waltz Across Texas: An Introduction to the Country and Western Music of Texas (Austin, 1991). Charles R. Townsend, San Antonio Rose: The Life and Music of Bob Wills (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976).

Gary Hartman