"When my co-writer and I were growing up, our parents listened to country radio, but we listened to pop.
That's because country, soul and rock are part of the same thread, Cantwell says, all manifestations of American music. Some of the songs are shoo-ins: Hank Williams tunes pop up nine times, including "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" and "Your Cheatin' Heart," and there's plenty of Hank Snow, Loretta Lynn and Buck Owens, too.īut Cantwell, who has written about music for Salon, the Oxford American and alt-country bible No Depression, and Friskics-Warren, who has contributed to The New York Times and the Washington Post, veer off the traditional lost highway with a number of inspired choices, including the Monkees' "Last Train to Clarksville," Otis Redding's "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay," and Los Lobos' "Will the Wolf Survive?" The book, modeled on rock critic Dave Marsh's classic "The Heart of Rock and Soul," features essays on 500 key songs in the development of country and pop music. The stereotypical country song is about the tough life of the common person: drinkin' and lovin' and fightin' and ridin', tributes to dogs and trains and America and Mama.īut, notes author David Cantwell, that cliché ignores the tremendous influence country has had on pop music in general - and vice versa.Ĭantwell and co-author Bill Friskics-Warren have tried to remedy that oversight with "Heartaches by the Number: Country Music's 500 Greatest Singles" (Vanderbilt University Press/Country Music Foundation Press). (CNN) - It's easy to make fun of country music. Source: "Heartaches by the Number," Cantwell and Friskics-Warren "Rank Stranger," The Stanley Brothers & the Clinch Mountain Boys
"Can the Circle Be Unbroken," The Carter Familyĩ. "Help Me Make It Through the Night," Sammi SmithĤ.
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