I dare anyone to listen to Trick Pony’s Pour Me and tell me it’s true country.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great song. Great band too.
But it’s not country.
My guess is around the Lynyrd Skynyrd era.
What did rock used to be that country now is?
Just on the visuals…long hair for one.
But most bands in country now have the sound of rock from the 70’s to the early 80’s IMHO of course. Granted some do have the steel guitar. Does that make it country?
There was an old axiom that, for a song to be considered “country”, it had to have a steel guitar.
As for the look of today’s country artists, a lot of them grew up with 70’s rock so they could be influenced by it.
The hair can’t be it. Willie and Waylon, et.al. were hippy-looking musicians back in the '70s.
Personally, my taste for country began to wane towards the mid '80s. The music of the Statler Brothers, Kendalls, Tom T. Hall, Don Williams, and of course Willie & Waylon was my kind of country, along with those who went before. Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs performing ‘Roll in my Sweet Baby’s Arms’ or ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’ is just musical magic. I do like the Dixie Chicks, though.
Oh yes!
Wanted!The Outlaws is one of the best country albums ever done.
It does seem to be only in the bands. Most of the singles are still country. George Strait et al.
I felt country music became the new rock about the time Garth Brooks came onto the scene. I remember his first TV special, which I tried to watch to see what the hoopla was about him. The MTv-like quick cuts made it impossible for me to watch the show. I think the proliferation of rap and Tiffany/Debbie Gibson/Madonna/Britney Spears/Christina Agulera as pop had a lot to do with it too. Though there were hints of what to come with John Travolta’s “Urban Cowboy.”
Even though Alice Cooper and Frank Zappa vied for #1 with me, I still listened to some country in the 1970s. I was a fan of Dr. Hook up to the time they stopped using Shel Silverstein’s songs, they were much better than the pop country now a days. I don’t even consider people like Garth Brooks “rockabilly.” I prefer the traditionals like Johnny Cash or the Statler Brothers or rockabilly like Roy Orbison or the Blasters to the mainstream country put out now.
I was a big fan of Dr Hook, Gertrude the groupie especially, but in no way were they considered country.
Country rock, that’s why I mentioned them, to compare them against Garth Brooks’ pop country. In my circle of hippie friends, Dr. Hook was too country for them to listen to. And many of their songs were covered by traditional country artists. Buck Owens did a version of “On the Cover of the Rolling Stone,” except the magazine was “Music City News.”
BTW, I meant to mention above that Garth Brooks has said that Kiss was an influence on him when he was younger.
Reeder said:
Absolutely!
[QUOTE=International Playboy]
Even though Alice Cooper and Frank Zappa vied for #1 with me, I still listened to some country in the 1970s.
Hey, wouldn’t you say “Ubangi Stomp” was pretty darn close to Rockabilly, the stuff they played about the time Rock and Country split in the Fifties?
[QUOTE=zoogirl]
In fact, I have a rockabilly compilation album that has that song as performed by a singer named Warren Smth. That’s an abnomality for Alice though, from when he was trying to get away from the “horrorshow” typecast.
Another country-ish band I can remember liking that no one else I knew did was New Riders of the Purple Sage. They were influenced by the Grateful Dead, who started out as a folk group. So one could probably say country becoming the new rock had its start in the 1960s. I still feel it’s big breakthrough though, came with the popularity of rap and the general state of pop music in the late 1980s or early 1990s.
For me, it was the transition from “California Rock” - e.g., the Eagles, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt singing “Blue Bayou” etc. - to Garth and Shania.
There is a Big Middle™ of musical taste, where people seem to want songs that are traditionally structured (verse chorus verse chorus bridge verse chorus out or a variation of that), tell a story about love and life and are catchy and melodic and not sonically abrasive.
In the '70’s, that Big Middle was filled with the musicians listed above along with Fleetwood Mac and a ton of other bands. It was considered cool and acceptable within rock to play that kind of music, so it embraced the Big Middle.
In the 80’s things moved to New Wave - IMHO a commercial form a punk - and hair metal. These evolved into grunge, nu-metal and mall punk - but more importantly they didn’t embrace the values of the Big Middle. Also, hip hop emerged as a huge, vital force that had influence on rock music, further distancing it from the Big Middle. So Rock no longer occupied the Big Middle because it no longer saw it as cool or desirable.
County saw the opportunity to move in to the Big Middle, and did. I agree with previous posters that point out Garth. Shania Twain to me is the most obvious, if only for her connection to her husband, producer Mutt Lange, who produced some of the biggest rock bands back in the day. He brought rock bands - especially Def Leppard - as close to the Big Middle as he could without completely losing their credibility as hair metal bands - lush harmonies and orchestration, melodic hooks, etc…his move from rock to Shania is a key landmark…
My $.02
Garth Brooks destroyed country music.
First of all - I am inclined to agree, I am not a big Garth fan myself (although “Friends in Low Places” is catchy…)
However, I would phrase things differently. I read what you wrote and think to myself: “here’s a person who isn’t a fan of the Big Middle™ - they like their rock to be rockin’ and their country to be countrified.”
I think it is possible to make music that sits squarely in the Big Middle that is also good - Fleetwood Mac did it back in the '70’s, Bonnie Raitt is an example from the '80’s and I think Norah Jones did a good job with her first album. But the Big Middle is mostly filled with mediocre crap. So whether it was labelled Rock before and Country now isn’t the point - it is still mostly mediocre crap…
another $.02
Got that puppy-on vinyl, no less! 
Let’s not forget American Folk Music.
Folk blended whatever line there may have been between Rock and Country as far back as the 50s.
Rockabilly, too. Was Elvis Rock? Country? Gospel? Yes, he was.
In the 70s, bands like Black Oak Arkansas and Alabama could’ve easily changed places in the genre lists. As could Molly Hatchet, 38 Special, Lynard Skynard, and other Southern Rock groups. Shucks, even Led Zeppilen sounded Country-ish on certain albums. (Listen to 1979s In Through the Out Door to hear what I mean.)
So basically, Rock and Country genrs have been mixed for a long, long time. It’s just that we didn’t seem to notice until the Pop Country craze of the 90s.
He only finished what Alabama started in the early 80’s.
I feel that a turning point was Billy “Crash” Craddock’s “Rub It In” (1974). That song was the beginning of the end of “real” country music. It opened the floodgates to country-rock crossovers like Kenny Rogers (who DID sing pop in the late 60’s) and Dolly Parton.