Chapter 9: Country Western Music
The roots of country music can be traced to Anglo-American folk traditions that developed in the southern United States, particularly in the Appalachian Mountains and the rural flatlands of the Southeast. These musical practices were carried to America by British, Scottish, and Irish immigrants and passed down orally through generations. Featuring fiddle tunes, ballads, religious hymns, and dance music, this early repertoire laid the foundation for what would become country music. For much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, this music remained largely regional and uncommercialized, performed in homes, churches, and at local social gatherings.
Yet the story of country music cannot be fully told without acknowledging the profound influence of African American musical traditions. Enslaved Africans and their descendants brought with them rhythmic sensibilities, melodic phrasing, and musical instruments—such as the banjo, which has African origins—that deeply shaped southern musical culture. The blues, spirituals, field hollers, and work songs of Black communities infused southern music with distinctive rhythms, vocal styles, and lyrical themes. These Black traditions directly influenced the development of country music, particularly in the shaping of its vocal delivery, its emphasis on storytelling, and its use of call-and-response phrasing and bluesy inflections.
In rural communities across the South, musical exchange between Black and white musicians was more common than the commercial record industry often acknowledged. Black artists frequently performed in string bands, played guitar and banjo alongside white counterparts, and contributed to the popularization of many songs that would later be recorded and marketed under white names. However, the early country music industry, shaped by the racial divisions of the Jim Crow South, frequently segregated artists and audience markets by race. This division was reinforced by record companies, who marketed Black music as “race records” and white music as “hillbilly records,” despite the often shared musical sources and similar performance styles.
Much of this early “hillbilly music” was instrumental, focused on fiddle, banjo, and guitar playing, and featured danceable rhythms, simple harmonies, and familiar folk melodies. It resonated with rural Southern audiences, many of whom were hearing their own regional traditions reflected back to them through recordings for the first time.
One of the key figures in bringing rural southern music to the national stage was Ralph Peer, a recording director for Okeh Records. Unlike folklorists who documented traditional music for academic preservation, Peer was driven by profit and audience potential. In the early 1920s, he launched efforts to locate and record “hillbilly” music with the goal of marketing it to Southern audiences via the rapidly expanding mediums of phonograph records and radio. However, Peer also recorded Black artists like Mamie Smith and Blind Lemon Jefferson, who helped popularize blues records and indirectly influenced the evolving sound of country as well. This moment marked the beginning of the commercial country music industry, as traditional sounds were repackaged for national audiences.