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Title details for Country and Midwestern by Mark Guarino - Available

Country and Midwestern

Chicago in the History of Country Music and the Folk Revival

by Mark Guarino
Robbie Fulks
ebook
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The untold story of Chicago's pivotal role as a country and folk music capital.

Chicago is revered as a musical breeding ground, having launched major figures like blues legend Muddy Waters, gospel soul icon Mavis Staples, hip-hop firebrand Kanye West, and the jazz-rock band that shares its name with the city. Far less known, however, is the vital role Chicago played in the rise of prewar country music, the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s, and the contemporary offspring of those scenes.

In Country and Midwestern, veteran journalist Mark Guarino tells the epic century-long story of Chicago's influence on sounds typically associated with regions further south. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and deep archival research, Guarino tells a forgotten story of music, migration, and the ways that rural culture infiltrated urban communities through the radio, the automobile, and the railroad. The Midwest's biggest city was the place where rural transplants could reinvent themselves and shape their music for the new commercial possibilities the city offered. Years before Nashville emerged as the commercial and spiritual center of country music, major record labels made Chicago their home and recorded legendary figures like Bill Monroe, The Carter Family, and Gene Autry. The National Barn Dance—broadcast from the city's South Loop starting in 1924—flourished for two decades as the premier country radio show before the Grand Ole Opry. Guarino chronicles the makeshift niche scenes like "Hillbilly Heaven" in Uptown, where thousands of relocated Southerners created their own hardscrabble honky-tonk subculture, as well as the 1960s rise of the Old Town School of Folk Music, which eventually brought national attention to local luminaries like John Prine and Steve Goodman. The story continues through the end of the twentieth century and into the present day, where artists like Jon Langford, The Handsome Family, and Wilco meld contemporary experimentation with country traditions.

Featuring a foreword from Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Robbie Fulks and casting a cross-genre net that stretches from Bob Dylan to punk rock, Country and Midwestern rediscovers a history as sprawling as the Windy City—celebrating the creative spirit that modernized American folk idioms, the colorful characters who took them into new terrain, and the music itself, which is still kicking down doors even today.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 8, 2023

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780226824376

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780226824376
      • File size: 4525 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Booklist

      Starred review from March 1, 2023
      Journalist Guarino took a decade to write this comprehensive history that draws on hundreds of interviews and mountains of archival material. Guarino's passion for Chicago country and folk music, which is overlooked in favor of Nashville's glitter and New York's glamour, ensures that this is packed with riveting stories and surprising details. Readers will learn that the iconic Chicago radio program, Barn Dance, not only preceded the Grand Ole Opry but provided the blueprint for it and served as the prewar incubator for the county music industry. Guarino tracks the history of Chicago's Appalachian community, the driving force behind an explosion in honky-tonk bars showcasing traditional music, and pays close attention to the Gate of Horn, where the careers of Odetta, Roger McGuinn, and Joan Baez were launched, and the Old Town School of Folk Music, the breeding ground for legends like Steve Goodman and John Prine. Chicago's distance from the Nashville industry has allowed for creative freedom that continues with the insurgent country of Bloodshot Records artists Ryan Adams and Robbie Fulks and the "old weird" charms of Americana darlings Neko Case, Andrew Bird, and Kelly Hogan. With an epic scope, gorgeous photographs, and useful discographies, this is a vital contribution to the history of American music and required reading for country and folk music fans.

      COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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