In the Country of Country

by Nicholas Dawidoff

This is the story of an American treasure that records and evokes the lives of people who often weren't written up in newspapers, but whose experiences of momentous events - the Depression, the Dustbowl, the Second World War - transformed their lives and would be the catalyst for an original American art form: country music. In the Country of Country is an exhilarating transcontinental journey from Maces Springs, Virginia, home of The Carter Family, to Bakersfield, California, where Buck Owens held sway. En route we visit the backroads, rural hills, and railway crossings where Doc Watson, Sara Carter, Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley, and Jimmie Rodgers (The Father of Country Music) first learned to play their guitars, fiddles, and mandolins. Nicholas Dawidoff has traveled to the places where country music first emerged and talked to the musicians, writers, and singers who created this deceptively simple-worded, string-driven, melodic music. Here are indelible portraits of Johnny Cash, behin