Bob Allen – författare

RECORDED COUNTRY MUSIC The Blackwell Guide to Recorded Country MusicThis is the definitive guide to selecting the finest recordings in country music. Artists such as Garth Brooks and Billy Ray Cyrus outsell established pop and rock giants in the United States, and they are becoming increasingly popular in Europe. Yet this very popularity means that it is now more difficult to define just what ‘country music’ is.The Guide looks at the key recordings in ten major areas of the music, selecting a main library of 100 discs — the majority of them currently available CDs, but with a few harder-to-find specialist items — that should form the core of any country collection. In addition, over 300 supplementary albums are listed and described, enriching the coverage of each style. Crossover artists are discussed (who adapted their styles to the vast pop audience), as are many of the other musicians who can make this vast and relatively uncharted area of music confusing for the first-time buyer and aficionado alike. The Guide alleviates confusion, and charts a clear course through the mass of releases that form the country catalog, past and present.The Blackwell Guides are short reference books intended to bring specialist help and guidance to those building a library of recordings. Written and edited by the world’s leading authorities, they can be relied upon for balanced and comprehensive information.Contributors: Bob Allen, Tom Gilmore, Frank and Marty Godbey, Geoffrey Nimes, Pete Loesch, Nick Tosches, Charles Wolfe, Laurence J. Zwisohn.Other titles in the Blackwell Guides seriesThe Blackwell Guide to Recorded Blues edited by Paul OliverThe Blackwell Guide to Recorded Jazz edited by Barry Kernfeld The Blackwell Guide to the Musical Theatre on Record Kurt GänzlThe Blackwell Guide to Soul Recordings edited by Robert PruterForthcoming titleThe Blackwell Guide to Contemporary Composition on Record Brian Morton

George Jones's nearly 60-year recording and performing career has had a profound influence on modern country music and influenced a younger generation of singers, including Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Randy Travis, Tim McGraw, and Trace Adkins. As Merle Haggard said of Jones in Rolling Stone magazine, “His voice was like a Stradivarius violin: one of the greatest instruments ever made.”Jones's saga is a larger-than-life tale of rags to riches and back to rags again. He was born into near poverty in a backwater patch of East Texas. His formal education ended early; by his early teens, he was singing on the streets of Beaumont, Texas, for tips. After beginning to record in the mid-1950s Jones became, by sheer dint of his vocal prowess, one of Nashville's most celebrated honky-tonk singers. But from the start, Jones's life, as often reflected in his music, was shaped by misdirection, chaos, turmoil, and emotional strife aggravated by a ferocious appetite for alcohol. Fame and adulation seemed to merely intensify his personal travails.Jones's story has a relatively happy ending. With the help of fourth wife Nancy during the final decade and a half of his life, he got clean and sober, was feted as a much-revered elder statesman for the music, and, by most accounts, found peace of mind at long last.