The Encyclopedia of Country Music: The Ultimate Guide to the Music - Softcover

4.29

24 ratings by Goodreads

9780195176087: The Encyclopedia of Country Music: The Ultimate Guide to the Music

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195176081 ISBN 13: 9780195176087

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2004

To its millions of fans, country music is America's music, offering a window into the sweet dreams and cruel disappointments of ordinary American lives. Now the renowned Country Music Foundation, custodian of Nashville's legendary Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, has compiled a fascinating and infinitely useful guide to this beloved musical genre--The Encyclopedia of Country Music.

Nearly 1,300 alphabetical entries put eight decades of country music at readers' fingertips, from the earliest '20s recordings of the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers to the '90s chart-topping albums of LeAnn Rimes and Garth Brooks. A distinguished field of 137 contributors provides an eminently readable and reliable guide to the singers, songwriters, record companies, and industry movers and shakers who have made country music the increasingly popular--and profitable--juggernaut it is today. Hundreds of photographs, some never before published, accompany the text, including 75 color photographs from the CMF Library's record collection, surveying the history of the country music album cover. Twelve appendices provide lists of country's all-time best-selling albums, country music stations nationwide, all the country music awards won over the years, and much more.

Authoritative, accessible, and unerringly accurate, The Encyclopedia of Country Music will delight fans. It is an essential reference for libraries, radio stations, and the entertainment industry.

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About the Author:

Paul Kingsbury is a freelance writer and the author of The Grand Ole Opry History of Country Music and Vinyl Hayride:Country Music Album Covers. A Deputy Director for the Country Music Foundation and an editor of Journal of Country Music, he lives in Nashville.

From Library Journal:

A surprisingly frank product of the Nashville country music establishment (it was compiled by the Country Music Foundation), this title promises to be the definitive historical and biographical work of the past eight decades of country music. Some 150 authorities (e.g., Colin Escott and Ronnie Pugh) discuss the music in all its permutations, and the results are beyond impressive. Interspersed with the biographical entries are historical and sociological essays on the literature of country music, country songwriting, gospel, folk and popular music connections, and even touring and costuming. Thirteen appendixes cover the Country Music Hall of Fame, radio stations, and best-selling country albums. While all the major artists (e.g., Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb) are given their due, this work also gets at the second- and third-tier country singers as well as songwriters, musicians, DJs, record company executives, and others who have played roles in the genre. By covering contemporary artists as well as those who have been lost in the mists of time, the book is superior to any country music reference this reviewer has seen. Well written and heavily illustrated, this is the only country music reference work most libraries will need. An unparalleled work, worth its price and highly recommended.?David M. Turkalo, Suffolk Univ. Law School Lib., Boston
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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