Corny Country? Hillbilly and Hick Music? Ernest Tubb and Hank Williams

Nashville Record Shop (photo Jim Potts).

Some country songs may sound corny, but you've got to admire the lyrics (eg Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers). Three of the very best: Hank Williams, I Just Don't Like This Kind Of Livin' , Please Don't Let Me Love You, Are you walking and a-talking for the Lord 

Ernest Tubb, Thanks a Lot

Ernest Tubb, Driftwood on the River

I remember how annoyed I felt when an American musician friend referred to Dylan's "John Wesley Harding" album as "hick music".

The highly successful Nashville songwriter Harlan Howard told Nicholas Dawidoff ("In the Country of Country"), "my wife didn't like the fact that all I wanted to be was a country music songwriter...she called it hillbilly music. That pissed me off. She was talkin' about something I loved."

Dawidoff goes on:

"Howard says there is an implicit morality in country music...'Good is good, bad will suffer and your cheatin' heart will make you weep...I like that thread. Good is good, bad gets your ass kicked, I believe it.' "

Harlan Howard's songs include Heartaches by the Number, Pick me up on your way down, Busted, The Blizzard

Update, 18 February, Mindy McCready

History of Country, Bristol, 1927