Product Description

The real history of the musicians, songwriters, and producers who made country music the "Voice of America."

This is the definitive history of country music, the quintessential soundtrack of American life and the most popular music in the world today. Colin Escott, a Grammy award-winning music historian, writes vividly about the birth of country on the back porches in the hills and hollows of turn-of-the-century Appalachia; follows its westward swing into Texas; explores the Hollywood era of singing cowboys; charts the growth of the country music business in Nashville; and profiles the lives—often tragic and extreme—of many of its most famous downhome guitar pickers, fiddle players, lovestruck songsters, slick performers, and roughneck rebels. The book is laced with intimate interviews and stocked with rare photographs of country music idols and legends of both the studio and stage, including the Carter family, Jimmie Rodgers, Bill Monroe, Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Glen Campbell, Emmylou Harris, Charlie Pride, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Clint Black, and many others. Lost Highway is both a celebration of the strange, raw spirit of authentic country music and a critique of the bland, soulless product that often passes for country today. 50 color, 50 b/w photographs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #146210 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

About the Author
Colin Escott is a Grammy award-winning author of many books, including Good Rockin' Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock 'N' Roll, and Hank Williams: Snapshots from the Lost Highway. He lives near Nashville, Tennessee.

Customer Reviews

Lost & Found Highway
This book was produced in conjunction with a 4-part BBC series on Country Music, and the name of the author, Colin Escott, sounds British, so I googled him to find out where exactly was he comin' from. Though there was a race car driver who rode in Le Mans in 1959 with that name, the nearest I could gather was that he is Toronto-based, and he came to Nashville over 30 years ago on a Greyhound Bus and started writing this book--doing the research on the music that had intrigued him from afar. He has written a lot of other books on Country Music, and lots of articles and sleeve notes. I mention this because this book conveys such a deep understanding of Country Music, but at times it seems to be written from an outsider perspective. Just as a prophet is never honored in his hometown, sometimes an outsider can more fully appreciate something that is taken for granted by those who grew up with it.

Colin Escott has an ear for poetry, and he finds it in the rural setting of Country Music lyrics, and elsewhere. His prose makes references to Proust, Lord Tennyson, and Monty Python, but they are never gratuitous, like Dennis Miller making an analogy to Agememnon during Monday Night Football, but always supremely apt. The first chapter is entitled `Seize the Palpitating Air' and he takes it from a quote from Thomas Edison. As a demonstration of his newly created phonograph in 1887 he recorded a salutation that went: "I seize the palpitating air, I hoard music and speech. All lips that breathe are mine." This is tied in to Country Music because records, recording technology, and Country Music are deeply intertwined.

The book begins with very early examples, like banjo player Dock Boggs and fiddling champion J.T. Stallings, picks up steam with early Country stars like Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family, and comes full circle towards the end with the soundtrack to O, Brother Where Art Thou? winning the 2002 Grammy for album of the year. Between it covers all or most of the essential musicians who contributed to Country Music: Willie Nelson, Lefty Frizzell, Ernest Tubb, Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, Marty Robbins, Waylon Jennings, Webb Pierce, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, George Jones, Dolly Parton, Elvis Presley, and of course Hank Williams, both Junior and Senior.

Jimmie Rodgers: The Singing Brakeman

Hank Williams: The Complete Hank Williams

Lefty Frizzell: Life's Like Poetry

Merle Haggard: Hag: The Studio Recordings 1969-1976

It also covers the less mainstream--but nevertheless integral contributions--of people such as David Allan Coe, Steve Earle, Townes Van Zandt, Johnny Paycheck, Gram Parsons, Kris Kristofferson, and Dwight Yoakam. Of course, Country Music megastars like Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, Glen Campbell, and Olivia Newton John are covered--and treated fairly, in spite of their questionable Country credentials.

The book chronicles the rise of Nashville as a Country Music Mecca, but it also takes into consideration Bakersfield, California; Branson, Missouri; Memphis, Tennessee; and countless Honky Tonks, Barn Dances, and Hoe Downs throughout our great country where Country Music has thrived. Bluegrass, and artists such as Bill Monroe, are also given their due.

The excellent prose is accompanied by excellent photographs, many unpublished. Some, such as the photo of Webb Pierce on page 83, saying more than the author could say in a thousand words. Colin Escott has managed to encapsulate what is truly important about Country Music, and he tells the story in a vastly entertaining way, just like the stories in Country Music itself. Jazz genius Charlie Parker used to play Country Music on jukeboxes, and the other Jazz Musicians would chide him for it. One time one of them asked him why did he like it, and he said: "The stories, man, I dig the stories . . ."

Other Books by Colin Escott:

Hank Williams: The Biography

Good Rockin' Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock 'N' Roll

The Grand Ole Opry: The Making of an American Icon

Hank Williams: Snapshots from the Lost Highway

Roadkill on the Three-Chord Highway: Art and Trash in American Popular Music

Tattooed on Their Tongues: A Journey Through the Backrooms of American Music

With Country Music ,the past is the future.

Colin Escott gives us the what,when, where, who, why and wence of Country Music in this excellent book that tells it all;by someone who knows about as much about the subject as anyone.Escott has also written other books,"Hank Williams-the Biography" (see my review dated October 23,2003) and "Hank Williams-Snapshots From the Lost Highway" (see my review dated October 4,2003 )which are also excellent. Another book, "Lovesick Blues" by Paul Hemphill,(see my review dated July 12,2007) is also excellent.
In this book ,Escott traces the history of the music we have come to love, under the large umberella of Country Music.He goes right back to the beginning,covers the different artists and all the different forms and of course;the music and songs themselves.More than that,he shows how and why changes took place. Some of these changes were made by the artists,but many were made by the "industry". In many cases ,the people who had control,made changes that were in their interests as opposed to the interests of the artists and partitularly those of the fans. They said ,this is the way it's going to be whether the fans like it or not---often the fans didn't,and many walked away.
Country Music fans have alwys been open to change and have embraced many forms;When "the business" pushes aside what the fans want,and gives them something they don't want,usually for what they think will be monetaty gain with new audiences;they have failed.
Escott sums it up pretty well with this;
"Honky-Tonk music has gone in and out of vogue ,(with the industry) but in times of crisis country music has retreated to its honky-tonk roots.Drinking songs,cheatin' songs,and beer hall shuffles were the white man's blues.And,like the blues,honky-tonk music is profoundly adult music.Whenever country music chases the youth dollar,its honky-tonk roots are the first to go,but whenever it tries to rediscover its greatness and uniqueness,honkey-tonk reappears."
This book is both a clebration of the strange,raw spirt of authentic country music and a critique of the bland,soulless product that often passes for country today.
Country Music fans know what they like ,it's Hank Williams,Hank Snow,Merle Haggard,Webb Pierce,Jim Reeves,Red Foley,Bobby Bare,June and Johnny Cash,Loretta Lynn,Tammy Wnnette,George JonesHank Cochran,The Carter Family,Bill Monroe,Patsy Cline,Willie Nelson,Ray Price,Marty Robbins,Conway Twitty and a host of other great songwriters ,singers and musicians.
Authentic Country Music is still what the fans want;and the soundtrack to "O Though"Brother Where ArtThou" sold millions and left the industry scratching their heads.
The fact that Shania and Garth Brooks and many of the stars today,may make a lot of money;they just don't capture the countriness in country music.
This book does an excellent job of capturing how I feel about Country Music and is why I return to my old favorites and by and large pass by most of the stuff coming out of Nashville today.
Thanks Colin;and if "they" won't give us what we want;we know where to find it.Is it any wonder,as much as I love Country Music:I seldom tune in to the Grand Ole Opry these days?