From another thread: I think that distinction is a little too 1950s. Buck Owens's "Above and Beyond" established the "Bakersfield (California) Sound" fifty years ago, and Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee" brought it into the mainstream of rock and roll radio a decade later. Built upon a country shuffle rhythm with prominent drums and an exaggerated backbeat, it came across as a form of rock and roll with hot steel guitar solos and an inoffensive (to Yankee ears) Oklahoma drawl. It was readily embraced by the Baby Boomers, under whose auspices the boundaries of rock and roll were already stretching beyond its R&B and rockabilly roots (and are still stretching). Two of today's biggest country music stars are Shania Twain, a Canadian, and Keith Urban, an Australian born in New Zealand, one of whose albums was never even released in the USA. I think what you're trying to define is the division between "country music" and "western music." In the abstract, country music is mountain music, stereotyped by bluegrass with its acoustic string instruments and played in barn dances on Saturday night. Western music is cowboy music from the wide open spaces, stereotyped by Western Swing with a full orchestra including drums, an electric steel guitar, woodwinds and a vocal microphone, and played in venues with a hardwood dance floor and a full bar. Nashville, east of the Mississippi in the Appalachian Mountains, can be regarded as the center for country music, while Texas, west of the Mississippi and full of cowboys, is identified with western music. But the distinction has faded as the genres merged into "country and western music." Drums and electric guitars are ubiquitous and you seldom hear a Dobro acoustic slide guitar even in Bluegrass. There are steel guitars in Nashville and the Dixie Chicks, a Texas band, have a banjo. The legendary Hank Williams was born in Alabama and achieved stardom in Louisiana by straddling the line between country music and western music. Today the "western" has been dropped and the genre is simply called "country music."
Reminds of the line from the "Blues Brothers" Elwood: What kind of music do you usually have here? Claire: Oh, we got both kinds. We got country *and* western.
i tell people to just forget the fights about music.. cuz all in all, all music in fluenced by other music.. read or listen to a bands background into a song! they say that this song, this person, this band influenced that person to write said song
