"In Country Boy, Colin Woodward combines biography, social and political history, and music criticism to tell the story of Johnny Cash's time in his native Arkansas. Woodward explores how some of Cash's best songs are based on his experiences growing up in northeastern Arkansas, and he recounts that Cash often returned to his home state, where he played some of his most memorable and personal concerts"--

Best known for his unique musical style and blindingly fast hybrid picking technique, English guitarist Albert Lee is often referred to within the music industry as the "guitar player's guitar player," renowned for his work across several genres of music and for the respect that he has garnered from other industry giants. This comprehensive biography tells the entire story of Lee's long career and personal experiences, beginning with his upbringing in south London and his early experimentations with skiffle music (the British equivalent of American rockabilly). It covers Lee's career in Chris Farlowe's Thunderbirds and the British rock and country group Heads, Hands, and Feet, his move to the United States in the 1970s and his subsequent work with Eric Clapton, the Crickets, Emmylou Harris and the Hot Band, the Everly Brothers, and, more recently, with Bill Wyman and with Hogan's Heroes. Lee's career is set against the background of changes in popular music and shows how he, as a British artist with nomadic Romany roots, has influenced traditionally "American" musical genres. The work includes 66 photographs, many from Lee's personal collection, two appendices, and an extensive bibliography.

This book has a twofold purpose. It provides future family members with a historical time line of the Bishop family while supplying references to the rural way of life. Persons wishing to learn about how life once was lived by “country folks” will find many facts about a lifestyle that has faded with time. Everyday life was filled with multiple activities long before multitasking was ever invented.

This book will put a smile on your face if you grew up in a farm in the 1930s to 1960s. You will follow my ancestors as they lose the family farm during the Great Depression. You will watch them go from failure to success on many levels. I share my parents struggles as they moved away from my grandpas established 320-acre farm to start-up on a new 80-acre farm of their own. One section of the book shares five boys growing up in rural Southwest Iowa. Early on, I share some of my insecurities related to being around a controlling father and going to a small-town school in Fontanelle, Iowa. I share about being way out of my league in college. My parents knew nothing of higher education. In fact, I was being rebellious in just insisting on trying college. I skipped freshman orientation at UNI out of ignorance of what college life involved. I was drafted into the army one year after college. I knew very little of the politics at the time. I somehow ignored the countrys division over being in Vietnam. In the army, I learned how to obey orders quickly and that I wanted to be a civilian again as soon as possible. Following the war, I experienced many changes in my life. I found out about being committed to my wife, my family, and my newfound faith. I came a long way from my roots that started on that 80-acre family farm.

Country music boasts a long tradition of rich, contradictory gender dynamics, creating a world where Kitty Wells could play the demure housewife and the honky-tonk angel simultaneously, Dolly Parton could move from traditionalist "girl singer" to outspoken trans rights advocate, and current radio playlists can alternate between the reckless masculinity of bro-country and the adolescent girlishness of Taylor Swift. In this follow-up volume to A Boy Named Sue, some of the leading authors in the field of country music studies reexamine the place of gender in country music, considering the ways country artists and listeners have negotiated gender and sexuality through their music and how gender has shaped the way that music is made and heard. In addition to shedding new light on such legends as Wells, Parton, Loretta Lynn, and Charley Pride, it traces more recent shifts in gender politics through the performances of such contemporary luminaries as Swift, Gretchen Wilson, and Blake Shelton. The book also explores the intersections of gender, race, class, and nationality in a host of less expected contexts, including the prisons of WWII-era Texas, where the members of the Goree All-Girl String Band became the unlikeliest of radio stars; the studios and offices of Plantation Records, where Jeannie C. Riley and Linda Martell challenged the social hierarchies of a changing South in the 1960s; and the burgeoning cities of present-day Brazil, where "college country" has become one way of negotiating masculinity in an age of economic and social instability.