What is Country?

P.S I know that it is a male singer

I'm interested; where does good "Country" exist in the current zeitgeist? The popular acts have zero cred, so where's the true cache?

Gillian Welch is and easy choice, so are the Black Twig Pickers. Cast King, Whitey Morgan

Resurrect this son-of-a-bitch with some genuine earthiness!

What?

The popular acts have zero cred,

I've seen trolls uglier than this.

1925 - The Rice-Kellogg research paper was published, establishing the basic principle of the direct-radiator loudspeaker with a small coil-driven mass-controlled diaphragm in a baffle with a broad midfrequency range of uniform response. On Nov. 28, WSM in Nashville ("We Shield Millions" slogan of owner Edwin Craig's National Life and Accident Insurance Co.) began its Barn Dance radio show (hosted by George D. Hay who had previously hosted the WLS Barn Dance show) that in 1927 became the Grand Ole Opry broadcast from WSM's Studio B on the new NBC network. The Grand Ole Opry moved to the the Ryman Auditorium in 1943 and with the Acuff-Rose 1942 studio and WSM's 1947 Castle Studio would attract recording companies to Nashville's Music Row.

this is from an incredibly excellent page with all sorts of links on it --> http://history.acusd.edu/gen/recording/notes.html

(looking forward to reading longer posts, especially by mark s, later today)

The popular acts have zero cred

I suppose you think current R&B acts have zero cred because they don't sound exactly like Sam Cooke.

I suppose you think current R&B acts have zero cred because...

...Advance directly to Frank Ocean

Recording Technology History page mentioned upthread is now hosted here: http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/recording.technology.history/notes.html

(It seems to move around a lot. The author is one Steven Schoenherr in case we need to look for it again, and to give credit where credit is due)

Related links here, although a few are broken: http://ncrtv.org/?page_id=52

Great link to the Recording History site -- thx Redd; what new technologies will we again need to transfer to? I'm sticking to vinyl.

The popular acts have zero cred

I don't have any problems with Nashville pop acts these days, more or less. Some of it catches my ear, a lot of it doesn't. I seriously balk at the notion it should still be called country music, though. Like, whoever...The Band Perry or Blake Shelton or Dierks...are the John Waites and Pat Benatars and Bon Jovis of the 21st century. Corporate rock is still corporate rock, except the center of gravity is now on Music Row instead of Vine.