Music genre question

[Stumpy Pepys]

Just stick Sweetheart of the Rodeo on.

[Patrick Thistle]

And The Wurzels.

Sorry, but they aren't really part of the current scene.

[wittoner]

The Cactus Blossoms are a current act that would fit what you're looking for.

[MsD]

I saw Jimmy Webb perform Wichita Lineman last year. You probably all know the story about his sending it to Glen Campbell as an unfinished draft, and Campbell just recording it as was. All to the better, probably.

[danielmak]

Americana is used in the US to reference alternative country, twangy folk music, roots rock, some old timey country/blues, and some forms of softer rock that might link with the genres/sub-genres listed so far. It's a genre that would fit the question in the OP.

Folk could also work (if one works from a broader conception of folks--see an Marcus' interesting book about Dylan: Invisible Republic) or Country Folk.

But as others have noted, country music is more than line dancing and big hats. There's folk country, gospel country, big band, honky tonk, pop country. But, again, Americana seems to cover a broader blend of genres and sub-genres.

[G-Man]

Another misconception is that the "Western" in C&W describes music for cowboys in gallon hats on lonesome trails. It actually derives from the term Western Swing (a term that predates the label country, which became current only in the late 1940s), a form of country that tends to be more upbeat and more orchestrated than traditional country, and draws its name from the geograsohy of its origins It arose in the 1930s, and drew a lot from jazz.

Country was, of course, predicated in significant parts on black musical forms, including what we'd now call blues and gospel. There were early black country performers, and the first country superstar, Jimmie Rodgers, recorded with Louis Armstrong before his death in 1933.

But Western Swing was the first genre in that scene which deliberately and openly drew from a black musical genre, and combined them with influences from "white" genres. When Rock & Roll broke big in the mid-'50s, Western Swing pioneer Bob Wills said that the fusion of black & white music was nothing new; he had done it 20 years earlier. And, indeed, Chuck Berry based his first hit, "Maybelline", on a Bob Wills track...

So that joke in The Blues Brothers in the redneck bar, when the manager's wife says, "We play both kinds here, Country and Western", was actually quite stupid.

[Jah Womble]

You’ve clearly never listened to the epic, majestic Black Bean Soup.

I have now. And my expression was much as is the young boy's at around 0.37.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rh3jGrE9Fw

But for the entire duration.

[Sits]

Sorry Jah, didn’t mean for you to endure it really.

[Sits]

Actually that video has everything.

[Jah Womble]

Well, I'll not argue that it has plenty of ingredients.