Amoeba Music

This is a used item.

Light shelf scuffs on dust jacket., inside of back dust jacket has a crease. Spine has no creases and pages are clean.

021200668845 - Vanderbilt Universary Press/Country Music Foundation Press

Hardcover with dust jacket. Copyright 1999.

When Nashville's National Life and Accident Insurance Company created radio station WSM as an advertising vehicle--the call letters representing their corporate slogan, "We Shield Millions"--no one suspected its "old-time music" program would one day be country music's shining star. In A Good-Natured Riot, author Charles Wolfe offers a thorough, valuable examination of the Grand Ole Opry's formative years, answering the questions that the genre's recorded history cannot (simply because most of the Opry's earliest stalwarts were part-time musicians who were rarely recorded). Interestingly, WSM wasn't the first station to broadcast old-time music, and the citizens of Nashville, who considered theirs to be an erudite and cultured city, despised hillbilly music and any association with it. Nevertheless, the nearby Tennessee hills offered a wealth of authentic old-time music, and rural folks from all across the U.S. (the airwaves were quite clear at the time) adored the sounds of Uncle Jimmy Thompson and Dr. Humphrey Bate. Soon enough, the music's popularity led WSM station manager George Hay to create a weekly Barn Dance program in the fall of 1925.