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ballads as: "T for Texas, T for Tennessee," and "Blue Yodel."
Hank has written hundreds of songs; in fact, he has an alter ego named "Luke the Drifter" for the "take-home" rather than the jukebox trade. Three of his songs have invaded hot spots in the popular field—"Cold, Cold Heart," "Hey, Good Looking" and "I Can't Help It."
Gifted with high intelligence, an amazing memory and a poetic talent that fills his pockets with songs he will never have time to publish, Williams is "a plain old country boy" who feels the songs he writes and sings.
"If you aren't a country boy, you can't write or sing country music," says Roy Acuff, still listed as "King of the Hillbillies." Roy sings like nobody else on earth, and has made a cool million doing it.
"It is the simplicity of our songs, I guess," he says. "More than that, it is something in here—something in the heart."
Entertainers like Eddy Arnold have been running neck and neck with the Crosbys and the Sinatras in record and sheet music sales. Like Foley and others, Arnold has neither hoedown nor pop for sale.
What is it, then? Nobody has given it a name. "Country music" comes near, but doesn't quite fit. There are many who believe history will write it down as the true American music.
Paul Cohen, a music manager for Decca records, helped to start the new trend. Shortly after World War II, Cohen approached Owen Bradley, one of Nashville's top musicians.
"How about adding you and your electric organ to Red Foley, the guitars and the fiddles?" he asked Bradley.
"I thought he was crazy—but he was right," Bradley says.
Since then, Bradley's melodies have backgrounded many a country singer, filling the ever-growing demand for music which lies between folk and popular.
Tied in with Nashville's gold mine of country talent is one of the biggest of the "country" music firms, Acufif-Rose, where business was 75 per cent better in 1951 than in 1950; three locally-owned recording firms—Tennessee, Bullett, and |
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