Rock Legends

Rock Legends

Country Music’s roots are found in the mountains of Appalachia. The people who lived in the mountains had come from Western Europe; they had brought their Celtic music with them; they had brought their English ballads with them too. But when they migrated from the mountains, when they went down into Tennessee, then they took their music with them. In the Great Depression of the 1930s, there were huge communities of displaced people. A lot of people travelling to places like Nashville, to Georgia, to the cities, and of course, across to California. And they were facing grinding poverty, facing being uprooted from their homeland, and from family members. So the radio very often became the connection to the old world. Radio programmers realised that there was an audience for these genres of music, which reminded people of home. They started putting on these barn dance shows, where musicians would come and play live. People would tune in and listen to that music that reminded them of where they had come from.