Stars of Country Music: Uncle Dave Macon to Johnny Rodriguez

by Bill C. Malone

Stars of Country Music is a lively collection of original essays on many of country music's most important performers, past and present. From early greats such as Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family t the popular stars of today, including Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, and Merle Haggard, leading authorities offer full and colorful portraits of the personal lives and careers of nineteen artists--with special emphasis on their styles, repertoires, and significance. Introducing this cavalcade of singers and musicians is a chapter on early pioneers like Fiddlin' John Carson and Carl T. Sprague, while the concluding chapter, 'A Shower of Stars, ' takes a look at popular entertainers of the past fifty years.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography

488 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1975

Reviews

[Simeon Readingape]

In his Foreword, D. K. Wilgus has this to say.

page xi - ". . .(L)et me say that this is a book about people who took a grass-roots, homespun, shit-kickin' music and made it into a commercially acceptable popular art. It is not heavy on folkloristics, musicology, anthropology, sociology and the like. But it deals informatively with many of the performers involved in what is finally recognized as a significant cultural phenomenon of North America which should rank with (as it is intertwined with) jazz, blues, and white-black spirituals as contributions to the popular culture of the Western World".

I found this book particularly strong on biographical details of fascinating early figures of the music like Riley Puckett and Uncle Dave Macon. It is also my first book by Bill C. Malone, who seems to be the big name amongst country academic writers.