Fiddles and string bands, old ballads and bantering comic numbers—country music has its beginnings in 78 RPM records issued in the early 1920s featuring solo and ensemble acts centered in the southeastern US. Growing out of ethnographic efforts to record "traditional" ballads, the genre was stereotyped as "hillbilly" music by the infant recording industry. In truth, the primitive early recording equipment favored the full sound of multi-instrument groups that were anything but traditional. The music produced by these early string combos was constantly evolving, often borrowing techniques from black "plantation" bands. Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family were early stars. Both featured guitarists who had been taught to play by African-Americans in a style that emphasized picking strings rather than strumming them.
In the 1930s, "western" got added and for a time country music was actually centered in Hollywood with "honky-tonk" appearing in the 1940s. After WW II, country went national, still nostalgic for the farm, still heavy on stringed instruments, still inclined to big hats and tooled boots. Today it's everywhere from big festivals in England to bluegrass bands in Japan. It's big down home too—from Patsy Montana and Johnny Cash to Tracy Lawrence, Collin Raye, and Joe Nichols, Arkansas is Country country.
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