The Americana and roots music authority

Hee Haw (the Birth of Americana?)

I've been watching Hee Haw on RFD Network this morning with the sound off and Americana flowing on the ipod. Roy Clark and Buck Owens and Donna Fargo, back in a time when only a few of us looked like Junior Samples.
     Watching String Bean and Grampa Jones while listening to Julie Miller and Los Lonely Boys. Thinking about all the conversations on No Depression about old vs new, good vs bad.
     The only thought I'm left with is that everything has a time, all art has an arc that looks like a flat line while we're on it.
     We play our asses off and hope it'll never end, but of course it will. String Bean, in his time, was hip.
      Hank Williams was my entry drug to this music, a long time ago.
     Who was yours?

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Permalink Reply by Terry Roland on January 10, 2013 at 4:37pm

Yeah.....I agree about the 'new and commercially social time.' It is a bit confusing for me too; but I figure Americana may be for the chronically confused(like me!). Maybe we just can't make up our minds...Today it's blues, yesterday it was folk. Next week it'll most likely be R&B or jazz...

I was thinking about poets, storytellers...and writers in these terms today, so interesting that you brought it up. Of course Ginsberg & Ferlinghetti certainly helped bring about Dylan. Peter Case and I had a brief conversation about Gary Snyder. Bruce Springsteen owes a lot to Steinbeck and Flannery O'Conner. Early, Carl Sandburg and Mark Twain...the roots of creation just go on and on......I keep thinking of that saying that has rapidly become a cliché in the last decade..."it's not the destination, it's the journey." Usually, I say, bullshit to that! I'm not being cynical, I'm impatient. But, in this case, it is true! It really interesting trying to create lists like this.......fun too. Thanks, Mike!

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Permalink Reply by ron victor on January 10, 2013 at 7:14pm

somemore that got me towards country / roots music:

ccr, doobie brothers, eagles, csn (y), loggins and messina, pure prairie league

the n a bit later dave Edmunds, stray cats, rockats, Robert Gordon and some brit rockabilly bands like matchbox, shakin pyramids, got me further into rockabilly and roots music

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Permalink Reply by johnny Besant on January 15, 2013 at 3:53am

The Rolling Stones country stuff > GP

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Permalink Reply by Bob Binkley on January 21, 2013 at 2:18pm

I think "Americana" really began when the Scots-Irish brought their music to Appalachia where it has been Americanized over the years. The term was just coined & popularized over the last couple of decades.