An Introduction to America’s Music

CHAPTER 11 | HILLBILLY: THE INVENTION OF COUNTRY MUSIC 265

urban phenomena, however; only in cities, large or small, could theaters and

the populace to fi ll them be found. For country folk, infrequent visits to the city

offered a rare chance to catch up on current musical trends.

By the latter part of the nineteenth century, however, enterprising enter-

tainers had found means of bringing their acts directly to rural audiences. One

means was the circus, with its brass band and other musical acts. Another was

the medicine show, in which a traveling peddler of patent cure-alls would draw

an audience for his sales pitch by offering free entertainment. A third was the

tent-repertory show, or tent-rep, a collection of vaudeville acts that traveled

circus-style by horse and wagon, and later by truck, pitching a tent near a small

town and performing for a few days before moving on. Musical acts in tent-rep

refl ected the passing fads of vaudeville, everything from Alpine yodelers to

Hawaiian guitarists. By all of these means, but especially the tent-rep show, rural

southerners supplemented their traditional musical fare with newer popular

selections: sentimental parlor songs and waltzes, raucous minstrel tunes, and by

the turn of the century, the ragtime-infl uenced popular songs of Tin Pan Alley.

W hereas these forms of entertainment brought new musical repertories

from the urban North to the rural South, another musical institution, the fi d-

dle contest, remained a regional southern event. Dating back to the 1730s and

still attracting large audiences today, fi ddle contests and their music became an

emblem of southern regional identity.

In addition to these rural entertainments, two technological innovations

profoundly altered home music making for virtually all Americans: phonograph

and radio. Although the phonograph was the earlier of the two inventions, for

poor whites the more affordable radio exerted a stronger infl uence from the

start. Throughout the United States, radio stations provided a way for local

musicians to build their audiences, and radio listeners enjoyed hearing music

performed by people like themselves. At the same time, some radio stations in

those unregulated years before World War II broadcast immensely powerful sig-

nals that could be received hundreds or even thousands of miles away, and local

musicians sometimes discovered that they had fans far from home.

In 1923 radio station WBAP in Fort Worth, Texas, created an infl uential new

radio format when it broadcast an hour and a half of square dance music led by

a former Confederate army offi cer and old-time fi ddler, M. J. Bonner. An enthu-

siastic audience demanded more, and the radio barn dance was born. The fol-

lowing year saw the inauguration of the long-lived National Barn Dance on W LS

in Chicago. In 1925 a station in Nashville began its own version, the WSM Barn

Dance, which two years later would undergo a fateful name change. Following

NBC’s nationally syndicated Musical Appreciation Hour, WSM announcer George D.

Hay made the following transition to the barn dance: “For the past hour we

have been listening to music taken largely from grand opera, but from now on

we will present ‘The Grand Ole Opry.’” Rechristened The Grand Ole Opry, the pro-

gram today is the longest-running radio show of all time.

THE HILLBILLY REPERTORY

Hillbilly records featured the same types of songs and performers as heard on the

radio barn dances. At fi rst, most of the performers were amateurs who earned

little or nothing from their music and made their living as farmers, laborers,

tent-repertory shows

fi ddle contests

radio barn dances

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