Appalachian Country
The mountain-rooted core of the old-time family, marked by modal fiddle tunes, clawhammer and two-finger banjo, Carter-scratch guitar, and the high, keening "high lonesome" vocal. Ballads are often sung slow and unaccompanied or over droning open strings, while dance tunes drive at a steady, hypnotic clip. Close kin harmonies and dulcimer or autoharp accents give it a distinctly Southern-highland texture.
History
Appalachian Country is the regional cradle of the whole family, growing out of the Scots-Irish ballad tradition, Anglo-Celtic fiddling, and the African-derived banjo as they merged in the hollows of Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia. The 1927 Bristol Sessions on the Virginia-Tennessee line first put this music on commercial records via The Carter Family of Maces Spring, Virginia, whose songs entered the national bloodstream. Figures like Dock Boggs, Roscoe Holcomb, and Clarence Ashley carried the rawest, most archaic strains forward.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Bill C. Malone, "Country Music, U.S.A."
- Smithsonian Folkways recordings
- Country Music Hall of Fame, Carter Family entry