Bill C. Malone | |
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| Born | August 25, 1934  Tyler |
| Occupation | Musician, author, historian |
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Bill C. Malone (born August 25, 1934) is an American musician, author and historian specializing in country music and other forms of traditional American music. He is the author of the 1968 book Country Music, U.S.A., the first definitive academic history of country music. [1] Malone is Professor Emeritus of History at Tulane University and now resides in Madison, Wisconsin. [2]
Malone was born on a cotton-growing tenant farm 20 miles west of Tyler, Texas in 1934 and grew up with music as "a constant companion". [3] After studying at community college, he enrolled in the University of Texas in 1956 and became a well-known singer in the Austin area, due in part to his encyclopedic repertoire of "hillbilly" songs he learned growing up. [3] He performed at Threadgill's beer joint in Austin and completed his Master's degree. [3] He was pleased when his faculty advisor suggested he write his doctoral dissertation on something he loved: "hillbilly", i.e., country, music. [3] His 1965 dissertation was published in 1968 as Country Music, U.S.A. [3]
Malone hosts a weekly radio show, Back to the Country, on WORT–FM community radio in Madison, and performs country music with his wife, Bobbie Malone, playing mandolin and guitar.
Malone was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1984 to assist his research in U.S. history. [4] In 2008, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for American Music. [5]
Country–western dance encompasses any of the dance forms or styles which are typically danced to country-western music, and which are stylistically associated with American country and/or western traditions. Many are descended from dances brought to the United States by immigrants from the United Kingdom and Europe as early as the 1700s, which became integrated into American popular culture. Country dancing is also known as "kicker dancing" in Texas.
Outlaw country is a subgenre of American country music created by a small group of iconoclastic artists active in the 1970s and early 1980s, known collectively as the outlaw movement, who fought for and won their creative freedom outside of the Nashville establishment that dictated the sound of most country music of the era. Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, and David Allan Coe were among the movement's most commercially successful members.
The Light Crust Doughboys is an American Western swing band from Texas, United States, organized in 1931 by the Burrus Mill and Elevator Company in Saginaw, Texas. The band achieved its peak popularity in the few years leading up to World War II. In addition to launching Western swing pioneers Bob Wills and Milton Brown, it provided a platform for many of the best musicians of the genre, including Tommy Duncan, Cecil Brower, John Parker and Kenneth Pitts.
Wilbert Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel was an American Democratic Party politician from Texas, who came to prominence by hosting a popular radio program. Known for his populist appeal and support of Texas's business community, O'Daniel served as the 34th governor of Texas (1939–1941) and later its junior United States senator (1941–1949). O'Daniel chose not to run for reelection to the Senate in 1948 and was succeeded by future U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson.
Western swing music is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the West and South among the region's Western string bands. It is dance music, often with an up-tempo beat, which attracted huge crowds to dance halls and clubs in Texas, Oklahoma and California during the 1930s and 1940s until a federal war-time nightclub tax in 1944 contributed to the genre's decline.
James Charles Rodgers was an American singer-songwriter and musician who rose to popularity in the late 1920s. Widely regarded as the "Father of Country Music", he is best known for his distinctive yodeling. Rodgers was known as "The Singing Brakeman" and "America's Blue Yodeler". He has been cited as an inspiration by many artists, and he has been inducted into multiple halls of fame.
Hazel Jane Dickens was an American bluegrass singer, songwriter, double bassist and guitarist. Her music was characterized not only by her high, lonesome singing style, but also by her provocative pro-union, feminist songs. Cultural blogger John Pietaro noted that "Dickens didn’t just sing the anthems of labor, she lived them and her place on many a picket line, staring down gunfire and goon squads, embedded her into the cause." The New York Times extolled her as "a clarion-voiced advocate for coal miners and working people and a pioneer among women in bluegrass music." With Alice Gerrard, Dickens was one of the first women to record a bluegrass album.
"You Are My Sunshine" is a standard of American old-time country music and one of the official state songs of Louisiana. Though its original writer is disputed, according to the performance rights organisation BMI in 2000, the song had been recorded by over 350 artists and translated into 30 languages.
Floyd Tillman was an American country musician who, in the 1930s and 1940s, helped create the Western swing and honky tonk genres. Tillman was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1984.
Archie Green was an American folklorist specializing in laborlore and American folk music. Devoted to understanding vernacular culture, he gathered and commented upon the speech, stories, songs, emblems, rituals, art, artifacts, memorials, and landmarks which constitute laborlore. He is credited with winning Congressional support for passage of the American Folklife Preservation Act of 1976, which established the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress.
"The Prisoner's Song" is a song copyrighted by Vernon Dalhart in 1924 in the name of Dalhart's cousin Guy Massey, who had sung it while staying at Dalhart's home and had in turn heard it from his brother Robert Massey, who may have heard it while serving time in prison.
Joyce Wayne "Red" Murrell was a Western swing performer from Missouri. He led one of the more notable Western swing bands in California, Red Murrell and his Ozark Playboys. He was a popular session guitar player for many other artists as well. Early in his career, he played with Billy Hughes's band, The Pals of the Pecos. In 1954 he went to work as a disc jockey for KEEN radio in San Jose.
Bluegrass Unlimited is a monthly music magazine "dedicated to the furtherance of bluegrass and old-time musicians, devotees and associates." First published in 1966, as of 2008 the magazine had a circulation of more than 25,000 copies and is widely considered the premier magazine for bluegrass music. Bluegrass Unlimited is a founding member of the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA).
Pat O'Daniel and his Hillbilly Boys was a Texan Western swing band with its own radio program during the mid-1930s. Pat O'Daniel, the son of "Pappy" O'Daniel, was the band's leader. The Hillbilly Boys, associated with Pappy O'Daniel's flour company which produced Hillbilly Flour, helped catapult Pappy O'Daniel to the governorship of Texas.
Arnold Shultz (1886–1931) was an American fiddler and guitarist who is noted as a major influence in the development of the "thumb-style," or "Travis picking" method of playing guitar.
Goebel Leon Reeves was an American folk singer.
Cecil Lee Brower was a classically trained American jazz violinist who became an architect of Western swing in the 1930s. Perhaps the greatest swing fiddler, he could improvise as well as double shuffle and created his own style which became the benchmark for his contemporaries.
"Guitar Boogie" is a guitar instrumental recorded by Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith in 1945. It was one of the first recordings in the style later dubbed "hillbilly boogie" to reach a widespread audience, and eventually sold nearly three million copies. It was the first guitar instrumental to climb the country music charts, and then crossover and also gain high rankings on the popular music charts. "Guitar Boogie" has been interpreted and recorded by a variety of musicians. It is among the songs discussed as the first rock and roll record.
Odell McLeod 1916–2003 was an American country-gospel singer, radio entertainer, and songwriter.
Donald Knight Wilgus was an American folk song scholar and academic, most recognized for chronicling 'Hillbilly', blues music and Irish-American song and his contribution to ballad scholarship.
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