Includes bibliographical references (p. [235]-240) , discography (p. [223]-233) and index.

The years from about 1950 to 1970 were the golden age of twang. Country music's giants all strode the earth in those years: Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, George Jones and Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette. And many of the standards that still define country were recorded then. Author Jennings pushes past the iconic voices and images to get at what classic country music truly means to us today. Yes, country tells the story of rural America in the twentieth century--but the obsessions of classic country were obsessions of America as a whole: drinking and cheating, class and the yearning for home, God and death. Jennings knows all of this firsthand: his people lived their lives by country music. This book is about a vanished world in which the Depression never ended and the sixties never arrived.--From publisher description.