Country Music: A History Audiobook (Free)

The wealthy and colorful story of America’s most popular music and the singers and songwriters who captivated, entertained, and consoled listeners through the entire twentieth century–based on the upcoming eight-part film series to air on PBS in Sept 2019

This deeply researched and hugely entertaining history begins where country music itself emerged: the American South, where people sang to themselves and to their families at home and in church, and where they danced to fiddle tunes on about Country Music: A BRIEF HISTORY Saturday nights. Using the birth of radio in the 1920s, the music moved from little towns, mountain hollers, as well as the wide-open Western world to be the music of an entire nation–a diverse selection of noises and designs from honky tonk to gospel to bluegrass to rockabilly, leading up through the years to the music’s massive industrial success today.

But above all, Country Music is the story from the musicians. Here’s Hank Williams’s tragic honky tonk existence, Dolly Parton rising to fame from a dirt-poor youth, and Loretta Lynn turning her experiences into music that spoke to women everywhere. Here too are interviews with the genre’s biggest celebrities, including the prefers of Merle Haggard to Garth Brooks to Rosanne Cash. Rife with endlessly interesting anecdotes, the tales within this sweeping however intimate history will captivate longtime country fans and introduce new listeners to a fantastic body of music that lies at the very center from the American experience.