The Rough Guide to Country Music Pioneers (2013)
25 tracks, 77 minutes
Spotify playlist
As Rough Guides go, this is a pretty obscure one. It’s never actually been properly released as a stand-alone, as far as I can tell. Thing is, it seems like there was a point where someone at the World Music Network realised there were thousands of out-of-copyright recordings from the US that could be hoovered up for use in compilations and they just released a whole slew of them – mostly focussing on different types of early blues, but some, like this one, featured country music. There was also the added benefit that these recordings – mostly the 1920s and 30s – were also restricted by how long they could be. Most of them hang just under the three-minute mark, which means you can cram a whole bunch of them onto a CD. That behind the scenes stuff is all conjecture on my part, but it would make sense why such an expansive and well-curated compilation as this one just ended up being released as…a bonus disc to another compilation. The Rough Guide to Jimmie Rodgers, to be precise. Now that one is also a great album and a well-rounded introduction to the Singing Brakeman, but the bonus disc fascinates me even more, for its diversity if nothing else.
Just as I like listening to all the musical geographies present in yesterday’s album, the range of tracks presented on today’s really lets you hear the stylistic scope of that era of country music. It is all undoubtedly country music, and you can trace a clear line from these beginnings of the style to the Nashville sound and the more pop-like hybrids that came later, but if you listen with just slightly different ears you can hear so much musical history. On this album, there are tracks that can be clearly heard as part of the traditions of the blues, gospel, and English, Scottish, Irish and even French and Scandinavian folk. There’s elements here that got drawn into bluegrass and even hot jazz on both sides of the pond – this really was from a time when all these musical labels were much more fluid and less defined. And on top of all that stylistic stuff, it’s all sung with a range of the most amazing accents from the Deep South of America, which makes the whole thing such a delight to listen to from so many angles.
With 25 tracks on this album, there are so many great ones to choose from. There’s ‘Chevrolet Car’ by Sam McGee, ‘Pretty Polly’ by B.F. Shelton, ‘Sugar Baby’ by Dock Boggs, ‘Tell Mother I Will Meet Her’ by E. Stoneman, E.K. Brewer & M. Mooney…and the list goes on. As I’ve probably mentioned before, I am really interested in country music but I’m forever looking for ‘ins’ that allow me to explore this fascination – The Rough Guide to Country Music Pioneers is absolutely perfect for that – so many musical lineages and leylines to be followed up on…and even if you don’t feel like doing that, there’s enough here to keep you occupied all by itself. And then you still have a whole CD of Jimmie Rodgers to catch up on too!
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