The Steel Guitar Forum

I get a lot of the differences between the two but...

What you call "Old/Real/Classic (ORC) Country" -

Did that start with Hank, Sr. or before that or after that?

Then everything was going along fine until the New Country sound hit...

So when did the shift to New Country happen? Was it around when Shania Twain got super popular or before or after that?

When Garth Brooks came along, people who went to his concerts would go on and on about the stage production, special effects, etc., and never mention the music. I think that's when it changed.

Judson Bertoch wrote:I get a lot of the differences between the two but...

What you call "Old/Real/Classic (ORC) Country" -

Did that start with Hank, Sr. or before that or after that?

I think everything sort of started AND ended with Hank Sr.

All the rest of the greats to me are an extension of Hank. George Jones, Webb Pierce, Ray Price,Lefty Frizzell, Hank Locklin etc etc. You can hear Hank roaming around in them.

No Hank..No country.

It's what you grow up with.
Then as you grow up with the times with music you hear on the radio. You like it or not? It's subjective!

Prior to "New Country" I could pick out the various instruments in the band and what they were doing individually or playing parts together. Some of the New Country I cannot pick out what is being played and what it is being played by. The songs seem to be backed by various noises from beginning to end.
Yes: I am an old geeser !

My great-grand Father was an old time country fiddler in Texas & Oklahoma, if it wasn't a fiddle and banjo tune it wasn't country.

In the late '20s my Grandmother was a big Jimmie Rodgers fan, she learned to play and sing everything he did. My great-grand father told her "That's Not real Country, with all those Hawaiian and dixieland bands playing with him, he's just playin current pop music and callin it country."

Then in the early '40s my uncle was really into Bob Wills-Tommy Duncan & the Texas Playboys. My grandmother would tell him, "That's not real country, their playin big band swing music with fiddles, He's just playin current pop music and callin it country."

In the '50s my dad my dad was into Farin Young, Jim Reeves and that sort of stuff. My Uncle told him "That's not real country, with all those strings & backup singers and smooth vocals, their just playin the current pop music and callin it country."

Then in the '60s I bought my first album, Best of Buck Owens & his Buckaroos. My dad told me "That's not real country with all those loud electric guitars and drums, you might as well be listening to the Beatles. Their just playin current pop music and callin it country."

So it's like Theresa said "It's what you grow up with". Every generation has their version of pop music and country music. It's always been like that and will continue till the end of man kind.

I was going to say what Theresa and Alvin said. Alvin even used all the examples I was going to use. The fact is that Bob Wills was the most, "Country," of the western swing people. He put quite a bit of the old folk music into his stuff. There were western swing bands, Milton Brown comes to mind, that really did just play the popular music of the day with fiddles and steel. What Jimmie Rodgers Sr. did would have been called, "Blue Eyed Soul," if the term had been invented at that time. Blue eyed soul was a term invented in the mid fifties or so to describe white artists like the Righteous Brothers who sang in a kind of black style (we're talking about race here). Hank Williams has been described by music historians as having taken country music, "Uptown," because of the jazzy/bluesy chords Don Helms played on his steel guitar.

Still, I think that there was a big difference in spirit and flavor between Frank Sinatra, Fats Domino and Hank Williams. And I think that's what is missing from today's music. While there are some exceptions, in general what sets, "Country," music apart from, "R&B," today is the lyrics and the accented english of the various performers of the genres. Commercial music is becoming homogenized. I think it's due to the overwhelming dominance of electric instruments and modern production methods. And with that and $1.50 you can go for a busride.

I want to see a clear PSG or fiddle lead break, without being stepped on in the mix with a piano plunking in the background, for me to consider it C&W. It's at least a start. If there is PSG, and its stuck way back in the mix, or used like scrambled eggs with other instruments... I'll change the channel.

Edward Meisse wrote: Hank Williams ...because of the jazzy/bluesy chords Don Helms played on his steel guitar.

I have a hard time imagining an environment in which Don Helms's playing with Hank would be sound jazzy or bluesy.

What Alvin said makes sence ...i would also add that for me country music is music from home and something you can play in house party with a guitar' fiddle and almost any acoustic instruments, i remember in my teenage years when we used to have house party almost every weekend and singing and playing simple 3 chords songs like Haggard' Jones and Buck, now days it's pretty hard to play some Garth Brooks or Rascal flatts songs at a party...it just doesn't feel the same.

I want to see a clear PSG or fiddle lead break, without being stepped on in the mix with a piano plunking in the background, for me to consider it C&W. It's at least a start. If there is PSG, and its stuck way back in the mix, or used like scrambled eggs with other instruments... I'll change the channel.

Well enough said, Jeff. New(and not real)country's signature is indeed everyone playing at once, where the real stuff has one featured voice (human or instrument) at a time, supplemented by a number of seconds, each enjoying its share of the bars.

Then everything was going along fine until the New Country sound hit...

So when did the shift to New Country happen? Was it around when Shania Twain got super popular or before or after that?

It was never "going along just fine". Alvin hit it out of the park - his illustrations of the issue are spot on, IMHO. For more examples -

How about some REAL down-home country singers from the 1970s like Olivia Newton-John, Juice Newton, Marie Osmond, Anne Murray, John Denver, Kenny Rogers, Ronnie Milsap, the Bee Gees, and the whole Urban Cowboy crowd. Now there's some REAL country music, much of it at the top of the country charts back then.

Or, as Alvin said, how about a bunch of the late 50s to 60s countrypolitan stylings of singers like Eddy Arnold, Jim Reeves, or the string-section laden productions by even Ray Price and other former hardcore honkytonkers later during the 60s. Nary a steel guitar to be found, and the "fiddles" are a classical-style string section. Or how about Floyd Cramer's instrumentals and his parts on tons of the big country hits from that era. That's as big a part of the signature 60s country sound as a steel guitar.

There is nothing wrong with any of this music - it's all professionally written, produced, and executed middle-of-the-road pop music of its day, as are Shania, Carrie, Faith, Kenny, and so on today. Each of us likes it or not as we see fit. I have a hard time imagining sitting on my back porch pickin' most of it with friends on acoustic instruments over a bottle of bourbon, but it's "country music" because the people who make those decisions decided it was. Labels are applied if and only if you can get people - sellers and buyers of the music - to agree on them, and they did.

"Country music" is just a marketing tag for a brand of pop music marketed to a specific demographic group of people. It is as varied as any other slice of the pop music world. If you want to get classic honkytonkin' hardwood floor country music, you have to ask for it by name.

My opinions, naturally.

I think everybody has a small piece of the nail with
the hammer, but IMHO the bottom line falls
back to one word. EVOLUTION !
Every few years all genres of music goes through
a period where the younger crowd
adds their own touches to their type of music.
Be it good or bad, it's still in the ear of the beholder.
Either you like it or don't.
Personally I like some of it all.
There are some classic tunes I dislike and some of the newer stuff I like.
Just listen to what you personally like
and let others do the same.

Theresa...wish I could agree with you but I grew up in the fifties but don't care much for much of any type of music from that era...as far as country goes....Buck, Merle, Waylon, Ray's later stuff, George, Paycheck...Hank Jr., Charlie Daniels, Burritos, up to the beginnings of Dwight. are what I would consider "Classic Country".

It's all "Personal" opinion and changes with everyone...but that's what does it for me. I'm just not sure that it's, "What a person grew up", with that lights his fire.

Jack....Thanks!
I grew up with listening to Wynn Steward, Warner Mack, ET, Carl Smith, Connie Smith and so on.
As I grew I listened to who I heard on the radio and the few album we had.
I guess my point is, I'd actually like to hear todays artist doing more traditional material. I know they are capable!

The folks you mentioned are good (Also Robbins, Young, Wills..etc.) But I lean to a little later stuff. I can't put a finger on it where things have gone wrong however...some of today's artists aren't bad, (Jackson, Paisley, Brooks n' Dunn....etc.) but there's something else goin' on. It may be the writing...Honky Tonk a Donk, or something...She Loves my Tractor"????)

The material mostly, seems to lack a melody. I can't figger out, nor explain but even George Straight's songs are sorely lacking. (My wife has "ALWAYS!!! loved George,) but she doesn't care for most of what he's doing now. She'll only play his older stuff.

I wish that I could understand how to define what changed but I guess I'll have to leave that to folks a lot more intelligent and insightful than I am.

I generally consider the "rock sounding" country, with the pounding drums, distorted guitars (as well as the absence of steel and fiddle) as the demarkation between classic country and new country. Opinions as to when this really took place are mixed, but it was pretty clear (to me) that Travis Tritt really popularized the new country sound (that was around 1990). To be sure, there were some artists that played that type of music occasionally (Waylon, Hank Jr., Jerry Jeff Walker, and others), but Travis' song "Put Some Drive In Your Country" kinda opened the flood gates. At that point pedal steel kinda faded out. And even though Randy Travis held the top spot for a few years, when his popularity waned...the "old sound" was pretty much gone for good. Every once in awhile after that, a classic-sounding song would emerge, but the "trend" was dead, and there would be no more strings of hits with the older sound and style.

Here's an eye opener...

In the decade when pedal steel was king (IMHO, ~1958-1968), you had many chart songs (hundreds, literally) with pedal steel intros. But in the past 20 years, I can't think of even a dozen chart songs that had pedal steel intros! Now that's a mind-boggling change. Pedal steel, once the main lead instrument, was relegated to a "background/supportive position" in the '70s. Of course, this isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened in music. In the '50s, sax and piano were the main lead instruments in R&R. But the sax was largely replaced by the electric guitar in the early '60s, and the piano was moved into the background.

I can remember back in the '60s, often the first question that country bands were asked when they were canvassing for work was..."Do you have a steel guitar?" Nowadays, that sentiment doesn't exist...outside of Texas.

I could talk about this all day, but the truth is - you had to be there to understand what it was like.

To me the biggest change is rhythmic. There seem to be alot of grooves borrowed from other genres in the newer country.
The ascendancy of the electric guitar pretty much corresponds with other genere's development I guess.
The "borrowed groove" thing is, I think, what really ticks alot of traditional country fans off, and leads them to say "new country is not New, nor is it Country". And they have a case.
-John

Absolutely Garth Brooks.

I hear a lot of stereotyping in the complaints I hear about modern country music. Certainly there has been an evolution in the rhythmic groove of all popular music - that didn't start in 1990 but has been going on since at least Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family. There have always been multiple threads to what is now called country music - Appalachian string band music, minstrels or more like what would be called folk music now, western music, western swing, two-step or polka, fast and slow shuffles, waltzes, ballads, and hard backbeat rockabilly style rhythms. In the last 20 years, the influence of blues, southern rock, and even 80s hard rock and hip-hop have infiltrated (I know some of you think "subverted" would be a better word). Country music has always borrowed heavily, nothing new here. But I have to ask, why do older country stylists get a pass on borrowing ideas from their eras' pop music, but not current ones? Just because you (and I) like it better? I admit I also prefer the older stuff. So what?

Most of what I hear owes more to the hard backbeat rockabilly and bluegrass rhythms than southern rock and blues, but all these and more are around in different performers. Hardly anybody in any mainstream youth-oriented popular style of music plays lilting waltzes or sensitive ballads anymore. We're 50+ years PE (Post Elvis) and rock and roll and funk won the popular music war a long time ago. Most of the popular music world splits along lines of straight R&R rhythms vs. syncopated funk rhythms. Modern country is the standard bearer for what's left of the former.

There is much more of a tilt in practically all popular music to much younger people. When the subject comes up, most everybody defends the commercial broadcast license oligopolies and laser-like demographic targeting that this has brought on - well, this shift is the result. If anybody wants to see something different, it will require a return to the fairness doctrine or something like it. Y'all want l'aissez fair oligopoly control with zero regulations? You got it.

I think Garth's significance was largely marketing and cultural, not musical. He came in doing a wide variety of music - some of it quite traditional country, some of it pushing the more southern rock approach of Hank Jr. and Charlie Daniels, plus stuff that came more from a singer-songwriter mentality, to me. The people in control saw a chance to cash in big time across a huge mix of demographic groups that wouldn't have considered any type of country music earlier, and cash in they did. You wanna know where music's going? Like "Deep Throat" said, "Follow the money." They keep on looking for another Garth, but I think music markets are too fragmented for anything like that.

I think the worst thing that's happened in modern popular music is the complete trivialization of lyrics. But what do we expect out of lyrics directed at the hearts and minds of the average 12-23 year old? The only distinction between styles is which cultural group of 12-23 year olds they're aiming at.

Ultimately - if the powers that be really thought that a chorus of jackasses going "Hee Haw" would rake it in like Garth, they'd do it. They'll do anything to score. That's why I'd just as soon see the entire popular music production and distribution system collapse and start over from scratch with nothing but independent producers on the net. And, if the economy continues like it has been lately, we may yet see that.

My opinions, of course.

Well, here's the answer to all of those questions.

"If you really have to ask, then you'd never understand anyway."

Station managers, DJ's and Big Money was the ruination of Country, due to them refusing to play anything that remotely was associated with "REAL COUNTRY" in the later years.

Ask the one's such as Jones, and the older crowd that are still around. See what they'll all tell you. Regardless of what they wrote or how good it was, it was killed from lack of National Air Play. That's Fact! Not Fiction.... Don

I think that rock just splintered off in soooooo many different directions in the '70's that big labels had a hard time anticipating the trends and selecting talent. Country then was drifting from pop (like Campbell, Price, and Goldsboro) to country rock, and I feel the labels just saw a much larger and more cohesive fan base in the rock-affected country. It was a much more simple and straight-forward approach (urban cowboy stuff) brought on by groups like Alabama, and that lowest-common-denominator sound just caught on.

Sure, you can argue about styles and what everybody likes, and what's good and bad - but the period I mentioned '58-'68, was really the first and most fruitful period (the "golden decade", as it were) of the pedal steel guitar...and I don't believe that fact can be argued.

Donny, I agree and no, you can't argue that. I don't know how it is down your way, but here, we can't even find a good country station any longer.

Another thing that can't be argued is, that the groups going on the Opry now, wouldn't have been able to pay enough to get a one night stand back in the day.

I enjoyed getting with other groups for a change of pace every now and then. But my main love was always Pure Country.

But I can still smile, (in memories) since I was a part of it when it was great. I feel bad for some of the newer players now coming along who may never get that chance. I feel that's sad. It was a heritage of a special kind to many.

Memories are always good, especially, when they're of good things long since past.

Don

Well... with all said, when does anyone think there will be another window of time where PSG gets another shot as it did in the ~58-68 time frame Donny mentions? My window was after disco... the Waylon, Willy, Vern Gosden, Haggard, etc. Either way... whens our next shot? Whats it going to take? ... especially for our next generation.

Willie's Place. Stallite radio. Real country music heaven.