Re: saving country music [was: unix]

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2003 01:11:45 -0500
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
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In article <b6hmtj$187e$email-address-deleted>, Dr. Richard E. Hawkins wrote:
> We need a major name, a Merle Haggard or a Willie Nelson, to back an
I don't know. Willie Nelson, maybe. But Merle Haggard, Hank Williams
Jr., Conway Twitty, Dolly Parton... those people are not country, and
they don't play country music. Not what I call country music.
Growing up, I spent my summers in the mountains of western NC, and I
heard real country music from real country people, some of them family.
We didn't sing "Achy Breaky Heart", "Take this job and shove it", or "I
was raised a coal miner's daughter".
Country music was sitting on a mountain in the cold night air (sometimes
Cold Mountain in fact) around a fire, and banjos, fiddles, pipes, and
guitars came out, and the songs were sad and lonely, or they were
playful, and all of them told a story.
Nothing I heard growing up in the 70s up through today on "country music
radio" sounds anything like what I came to know as country music. Very
little of what I've heard from Nashville sounds very country to me
either.
Of course, now they call that "American Folk" I think. Oh well...