War Years & Beyond
Impact of World War II
The societal disruption brought on by World War II had a profound impact on country music. Rural southerners enlisted in droves or migrated to the cities to work in the defense industry. They played their music in the barracks and debated the relative merits of Roy Acuff and Frank Sinatra. Hillbilly bands employed by the U.S. military's Special Services Division gave many soldiers their first glimpses of professional country entertainment, while western swing captivated thousands of factory workers at weekly dances in Los Angeles.
By the 1950s, this heightened exposure had helped turn country into big business. Much of that business focused on Nashville, home of radio station WSM's increasingly powerful Grand Ole Opry. But "hillbilly fever" also spread to Hollywood and other commercial centers throughout the United States. The music continued to develop as well, with honky-tonk, bluegrass and other substyles filling country jukeboxes.
Nashville Takes the Lead
Originally called the WSM Barn Dance when it debuted in 1925, the Grand Ole Opry in its early years was merely one among several nationally famous barn dance programs. That began to change in 1939, when the NBC radio network picked up a half-hour Opry segment sponsored by R. J. Reynolds, makers of Prince Albert Smoking Tobacco, and hosted by the Opry's Roy Acuff. The NBC broadcasts raised the Opry's profile, and in 1946, Collier's magazine reported that the weekly show was "seating 4,000 or more people at every performance, some of them from distant states."
The Opry's success led to the first substantial wave of recording activity in Nashville. By then, Acuff and Fred Rose had also established the city's first country music publishing firm. Their star writer and singer was the great Hank Williams.
Country Moves West
Between the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and the lure of defense industry jobs, California's war-era population swelled with working-class southerners who had moved out west. Nightclubs and dance halls throughout the Golden State catered to displaced country fans. Their numbers made the West Coast fertile territory for hillbilly singers and musicians, such as Merle Travis and the group Maddox Brothers & Rose, many of whom found additional work in the film industry, on radio, and in recording studios in Los Angeles and elsewhere. The top country stars made top money, and the band led by western swing hero Bob Wills reportedly "outgrossed even Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman's outfits" during one set of Oakland engagements.
New Sounds on the Jukebox
Beginning in the 1930s, a generation of singers trained in tough roadside nightspots forged an amplified steel-and-fiddle style known as honky-tonk. Geared toward the young people who left their "home out on the rural route," as honky-tonk performer Hank Williams sang, honky-tonk dealt with loss and spiritual dislocation but also celebrated steppin' out on a Saturday night.
Bluegrass emerged during the same period, from the pioneering vision of Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, and other virtuoso stringband instrumentalists. Proudly conservative yet musically adventurous, bluegrass combined the keening austerity of Appalachia with the exuberance of hot jazz.
- Adapted from Sing Me Back Home: A Journey through Country Music, the permanent exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum.