Decline of Western Music and The Cowboy Ballad
By the late 1960s, Western music, in particular the cowboy ballad, was in decline. Relegated to the "country and Western" genre by marketing agencies, popular Western recording stars released albums to only moderate success. Rock-and-roll dominated music sales, and Hollywood recording studios dropped most of their Western artists. The shift in country music production to Nashville also played a role, where the Nashville sound, country rock, and rockabilly music styles predominated over both 'cowboy' artists and the more recent Bakersfield sound. The latter was largely limited to Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and a few other bands. In the process, country and western music as a genre lost most of its southwestern, ranchera, and Tejano musical influences. However the cowboy ballad and honky-tonk music would be resurrected and reinterpreted in the 1970s with the growth in popularity of "outlaw country" music from Texas and Oklahoma.
Read more about this topic: Country Music Songs
Famous quotes containing the words decline of, decline, western, music, cowboy and/or ballad:
“The decline of the aperitif may well be one of the most depressing phenomena of our time.”
—Luis Buñuel (1900–1983)
“Families suffered badly under industrialization, but they survived, and the lives of men, women, and children improved. Children, once marginal and exploited figures, have moved to a position of greater protection and respect,... The historic decline in the overall death rates for children is an astonishing social fact, notwithstanding the disgraceful infant mortality figures for the poor and minorities. Like the decline in death from childbirth for women, this is a stunning achievement.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)
“I wouldn’t say when you’ve seen one Western you’ve seen the lot; but when you’ve seen the lot you get the feeling you’ve seen one.”
—Katharine Whitehorn (b. 1926)
“All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)
“I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra. Lord of the lash,
the Loup Garou Kid. Half breed son of Pisces and
Aquarius. I hold the souls of men in my pot. I do
the dirty boogie with scorpions. I make the bulls
keep still and was the first swinger to grape the taste.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“During the cattle drives, Texas cowboy music came into national significance. Its practical purpose is well known—it was used primarily to keep the herds quiet at night, for often a ballad sung loudly and continuously enough might prevent a stampede. However, the cowboy also sang because he liked to sing.... In this music of the range and trail is “the grayness of the prairies, the mournful minor note of a Texas norther, and a rhythm that fits the gait of the cowboy’s pony.””
—Administration in the State of Texa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)