Country music used to be called "the white man's blues" due to where it came from and how it spoke to the trials of ordinary people.

The early pioneers of country music, as was stated above, did not rely on fancy light shows and pyrotechnics and all sorts of technology and certainly didn't have the huge sound systems that are common in today's country music and no, they didn't travel round in caravans of buses and semi trucks as some country stars I have seen.

Hank Sr packed everything in a station wagon, tied the instruments on the top, and the rest of the band and suitcases crammed inside. At the shows, a few theatrical lights, if they were in a theater, and maybe a speaker on each side of the stage designed for speaking rather than music.

It was certainly a totally different world they lived in from what we see now days. Musically speaking.

Back then many secondary roads were only dirt roads. Pickup trucks were used by farmers and ranchers for work and they had yet to become a status symbol for men who would know which end of a cow was which. Old ponds and lakes were the only swimming pools people had unless they were rich. If you went messing with the farmer's daughter you were likely to get a backside filled with rock salt from his shotgun. Today, all that and more is grist for country songwriters, and for most people...it's a fantasy, not reality.

What I mean by fantasy is...when was the last time you drove a shiny pickup down a dirt road to a bonfire at the pond with the farmer's daughter sitting beside you? Never?

Last edited by Guitarhacker; 05/16/14 04:41 AM.
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