Episode 2 of Dr. Simon Anderson’s Pop Music, U.S.A. covers the first of two looks at country music.  (See previous blog posts for the context for this recent series of posts celebrating the 50th anniversary of Dad’s two music appreciation TV shows.)  In Part I, we get the following:

• Dad’s look at the socio-cultural and psycho-emotional aspects of country music and how they differ from those of other genres–including prescient discussions of the suspicion with which Appalchia viewed the rest of the country, especially urban elites, that sound as if he’s commenting on today’s red- and blue-state divide
• a snippet of the bluegrass standard “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” at the beginning and a full-blown treatment of “Salty Dog Blues” (with some scintillating solo work from mandolin, flat-picked guitar, dobro, and banjo) at the end
• a full-length recording of Johnny Cash singing “Folsom Prison Blues” (with Carl Perkins, of “Blue Suede Shoes” fame, playing the guitar solo behind him)
• interesting examples of how juxtaposing genres sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t (Jimmie Rodgers skipping beats in a blues accompanied by Louis Armstrong and Earl “Fatha” Hines and then a delicious few seconds of what Dad’s bread-and-butter country example, “Born to Lose,” would sound like when ruined by the sophisticated jazz chords of a Duke Ellington ballad)
• haunting documentary pictures of Dust Bowl-era farmland and a testimony from an elderly couple who left Oklahoma for California during that time
• and a recording that is now part of Anderson family lore, Dad fulfilling his childhood dream of becoming a singing cowboy in the Gene Autry vein, complete with requisite attire (hat, chaps, guitar slung over his shoulder) and the ultimate example of cowboy love, planting a kiss on the nose of his horse.

Yes, this episode shows Dad at his Professor Harold Hill best.  Thanks for your interest.  I hope you enjoy “Country Music, Part I.”