I recently became involved in an aguement between friends, about Country & Western music today, and the influenece of Johnny Cash on it, as i know completly nothing about this gendre of music, i ask you lot for your views. One of my friends seems to think that Mr Cash is very influential, that he bought C & W into more of the mainstream of the American musical idiom, before he done so it was claimed that C & W was the property of the 'Grand Olde Oprey' and the likes, and it was very distincly different from all other forms of popular American music, and Mr Cash was instrumental in changing it into a more realistic form, with lines like 'I shot a man in Reno/Just to watch him die', from his song 'Folsom Prison Blues', and example of how the music has changed is the pre-Cash, Don Gibson version of 'Tulsa Tume', a great song that is claimed almost puts you to sleep.The other person argued that is that no one is resposable, it is just an evolment thing, and it is argued that things change, and there is no one in particular to label the 'harbinger of change', all things change don't they? It simply was the same in Country & Western Music, true it now more infuenenced by Gospel, Blues, Rock n Roll, but this is a simple evolmemt thing nothing more. It is driven by no one in particular person, it just happened. Both interesting points, and yes, i did take notes!...........................But what do you think?
No ONE person is responsible, I reckon. But Cash did have an influence, sure. He started off in the Grand Ole Opreys, but then again so did Elvis and Carli Perkins and Jerry Lee etc.
That ain't no Hank Williams song!!
I love Johnny Cash - but C&W has been around long before he was born. He did have a big contribution to its popularity and making it more commercial. Those old travelling shows like in Australia were the core of country music - the roots developed way back in the dance hall days and jamborees.
strauss, I think you mean Don Williams with "Tulsa Time" which came long after Johnny Cash hit the mainstream.
There were a lot of country songs in the mainstream in the 60s - radio wasn't so segregated then. You had international top ten pop hits from country artists like Glen Campbell, Bobbie Gentry, Roger Miller etc. Cash was just a part of all that - in fact he was arguably rock'n'roll before he was country.
If anyone brought country into the pop mainstream in the 60s it was Jim Reeves.
But it had also been in the mainstream before with Jimmy Rodgers then Bob Wills, then Hank Wlliams and Hank Snow.
"Genres" weren't ironclad back then
Don Rich. Now that was a country western music icon. He was Buck Owens' counterpart, and great guitarist and vocalist. When Don died in a motorcycle crash back in the seventies the Buckeroos were never the same.
Nor Buck.
Edited by: Act Naturally
We had a bloke called Don Beck working at our engineering place in Southern California for a while. He played mandolin and pedal steel and had toured and recorded with Dillard & Clark and a late incarnation of the Flying Burrito Brothers. I wish we'd kept him on.
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