Country folk

Country folk is a hybrid subgenre of country and folk music closely associated with the singer-songwriter and folk rock subgenres. It is generally characterized as a component of the progressive country style and has its roots in the recordings of folk artist Bob Dylan.

Style

Country folk has been described as a mellower and gentler form of country music with more emphasis on song writing than vocals. Many of the artists described as country folk are respected more in mainstream country circles for their song writing abilities. The lyrics of the songs tend to be more thoughtful and emotionally complex than mainstream country.

History

The term country folk is sometimes used to describe early country music, particularly before the development of the Country and Western industry based in Nashville from the 1950s. The term took on a new meaning when it was used more specifically from the 1960s to describe the hybridization of American folk music with country music. Particularly in the early 1960s, folk musicians had been reinterpreting country songs and several country versions of folk songs, including those of Bob Dylan, had become part of the country music repertoire. In 1966 Dylan went to Nashville to record Blonde on Blonde, using notable local musicians like Charlie McCoy. The result has been judged to sound more folk than country, but Dylan's subsequent albums, John Wesley Harding (1967) and Nashville Skyline (1969), the last of which contained "Girl from the North Country", a duet with Johnny Cash, were a sustained mix of folk sensibilities and structures with country instrumentation and sounds.

Country-Folk

Country-Folk is a 1969 album by Waylon Jennings featuring the Kimberlys on vocals released on RCA Victor.

Background

On Country-Folk, Jennings worked with producer Danny Davis, a New York veteran who had produced Connie Francis and Nina Simone. RCA executive Chet Atkins, who also produced Jennings' albums, had called Waylon's 1966 debut Country-Folk in an attempt to market the singer to this new, younger audience, and this idea continued on Folk-Country. Jennings, who was unhappy with the sound of his records at RCA despite decent sales, butted heads with his new producer. In Michael Striessguth's book Outlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris, and the Renegades of Nashville, Jennings guitarist Billy Ray Reynolds recalls, "Waylon liked Danny but the chemistry wasn't there. He [Davis] was a good guy but he had a little bit more of a New York attitude than Waylon was used to. They do things a little differently up there. They don't pull their punches."

The Kimberlys were a quartet consisting of two brothers from Oklahoma and their wives, who are also sisters. The liner notes state that they were familiar to other musicians in the Las Vegas area. Jennings intended to gain for them a wider audience with this album. Three of the songs on the album are written or co-written by Harold Gay, one of the members. The album is best remembered for its title track, which rose to #23 on the Billboard country charts and won a Grammy for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group. In his autobiography, Jennings insisted he had a vision for the song from the start: "Danny and I got into it a couple of times over the arrangement. I knew exactly what I wanted the strings to do; I had to hum the parts. He probably had his own ideas. But the single got into the Top Twenty Five that fall...By then, everybody was more than happy to claim it was their idea."