re: Johnny Cash’s thoughts on country music from his 1997 autobiography.

Both of them are not good vocalists and don't have a bass baritone voice like Cash.

I think about time the 60s/70s came around most of the United States population lived in urban areas.

This was the beginning of the purge of any shows with rural settings in favor of shows that were in the big cities.

Your hook is too shiny.

Well, that’s kind of the story of country music. The story of country music could be called the southern white diaspora. The country music artist/fan originated in the rural south, then moved to the city, then from the city to the suburbs. Even the original country artists were performing a nostalgic version of a time from decades earlier. Authenticity has been an ongoing debate in country music since the era of live performances on local radio stations.

To his point, even in his era, most country singers weren’t growing up picking cotton. And to answer his question, yes. Part of country music going back to Jimmie Rodgers was developing a certain presentation to the audience.

I read it few years ago. Said he enjoyed a few current singers, and it was Colin Raye, George strait, Alan Jackson, and Steve Warner

There still are a few of us out here farmin hay and trying to keep fences together, maybe more than people realize.
Some of my best stories come from working at the gin in picking season.
Last week we built a bridge by hand across a spring branch so we can drive the tractor across and open up a new hay field down at a creek bottom. It was pine woods 3 years ago and we clear cut it and got rid of all the stumps and crap so it can be worked. A year from now it'll have good grass.
We aint using mules anymore and we can read books, so we can spend our spare time trying to build/play guitars and boats and stuff.

Strait actually worked on a ranch, so he did have that 'land' connection

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Well, that’s kind of the story of country music. The story of country music could be called the southern white diaspora.

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Johnny Cash is probably my favorite artist of any kind of all time. Having said that, this thread is a veritable bonanza of TD and boomer nostalgic nonsense.

For starters, a lot of wailing about lost history and traditions - and yet no mention at all of the black roots of much of country music (particularly the banjo).

As authentic as JR Cash certainly was, he would have sold his soul for any kind of success - and possibly did. It would have been awesome to see the baws on this board react to the WOKESTER that Cash was in the 60s and 70s - knighting for prisoners and the poor and hating on the Vietnam War.

Hitting the fast 80s, Cash threw his lot in with the HIGHLY COMMERCIAL The Highwaymen. This was an incredible project and you're a bad person if you don't like it - but "reality"? By this point, Cash was an over-the-hill recovering addict with more money than he knew what to do with, swimming in cowboy boots at his guitar-shaped pool in suburban Nashville.

Into the 90s - and in deep obscurity - Cash threw his lot in with a rap and metal producer who pulled a lot of out of him. I love that period, but I'm not sure I'd choose to be confined to the dirge-like nature of his average piece of the time.

All of this is to say - I know he wrote this convenient, self-aggrandizing, wishful passage from the OP...but it's ALL an illusion. People can like today's Nashville pop or not. Who gives a shite what it's called?

WAY TOO MUCH time worrying like eggheads about genre and way less time out living and enjoying shite. You can sing along with a Wallen tune and also love Cocaine Blues (presumably, yet another "born-of-hardscrabble-life-on-the-farm" classic?).

Strait was a bulldogger in rodeo. He understands rodeo. Also unlike many country guys, the man knows how to ride a horse.