Does anyone like country

The best country songwriters are great - most have been listed already but I'd add the short lived Delevantes to that list. Harder core country old time writers like the Louvin Brothers have some great moments, even though I'd have a hard time listening at length. Alt Country rockers like Uncle Tupelo and the "nephew" bands - Wilco, Sun Volt, Bottle Rockets - have their charms (I love a lot of this stuff), but they don't really feel particularly "country" to me. They feel more like rockers who add a fidddle or banjo to add some country flavor. 16 Horsepower adds an interesting "hillbilly" vibe to this genre.

I also like some of the country rock women like Kim Richey (great live show), even though they're usually a bit lightweight compared to the Emmy Lou Harris, Patsy Cline, etc class and also edge closer to pop/rock. The Faith Hill, Crystal Gayle, Matraca Berg school includes some really good voices singing music of really variable quality - usually more "pop" than "country".

Country music has also produced some great guitarists, Flatt and Scruggs and Chet Atkins come to my mind first. Danny Gatton is mostly country and the 3 main players in Bob Wills' Playboys band were all wonderful. Pete Anderson, Greg Leisz (lap steel) and so many others, too.

Marty

Map,

Roseanne's "A List" is a great record. She takes on a dozen (+ or -) classics and just nails 'em. She and Johnny definitely set the father daughter musical standard in my book.

Not sure if that was a brain cramp or typo. The List is the name of the album.

I know several folks that agree with Drubin, but I think it's a GREAT collection of songs and I love the way Roseannne sings 'em. Can't comment on SQ off the top of my head as its been mostly in rotation in my car over the last several years, but I don't get the "soulless" criticism at all.

I love pretty much every interpretation on the album and several, including "500 Miles" and "Bury Me", strike me as very possibly definitive versions of (often covered) classics. She's certainly understated in her delivery, but I think that's a very good thing. I guess that one man's meat.....

Tostado correctly points out that the pentatonic MAJOR scale is often associated with country music while pentatonic minor (sometimes the hexatonic minor with the added flattened fifth) is a blues scale. I also agree that a lot of the well known Southern rock leads visit the pentatonic major scale at some point.

To be fair, rock n roll music was originally characterized by many as "the bastard child of country and blues" because the highest profile players (see Chuck Berry) moved fluidly from the pentatonic minor scale to the pentatonic major and back. So, what some may hear as country influences, others may hear as '50s rock n roll.

TO MY EAR (tho I'm not about to argue with anyone who disagrees) one of the characteristics that makes Southern rock a distinctive genre is that it seemed to re-introduce the pentatonic major BACK into hard rock, which - over the course of the '60's had seemed to generally migrate further and further towards blues style leads at the expense of country influences.

So, I personally hear a lot of country in the Southern rock genre as a whole. YMMV.

No question that there was a community of Blues players in the 1950s who popularized the idea, BB King probably being the most influential. Interestingly, you can hear even earlier examples here and there.

One of the really great, relatively obscure players who pioneered that style was Carl Hogan of the Louis Jordan Big Band. Check out the intro lick to "Ain't That Just Like a Woman" from IIRC the late 1940's. If it sounds familiar, it's probably because Chuck Berry "borrowed" it for (arguably) the most famous bit of rock n roll guitar ever, the intro to "Johnny B Good"