This volume constitutes a populist history of country music. Its interwoven essays showcase the music's myriad roots and influences: stringband stomps and western swing, hillbilly boogie and honky-tonk, the Nashville sound and the neo-traditionalist movement, plus everything from blues and bluegrass to rockabilly and country-rock, even soul. It focuses on the records that defined the music to generations of fans, as well as the singers, songwriters, producers and pickers who made them. It takes the reader all the way from Patsy Montana's ""I Want to be a Cowboy's Sweetheart"" to Merle Haggard's ""Mama Tried"".