TEX MORTON BIOGRAPHY

Tex c 1940 Photo by photographer Lyle Fowler (1891-1969) Sourced via Wikipedia from State Library Victoria (CC)

Andrew K Smith has just published the first full-length biography of Tex Morton (University of Tennessee Press), Tex Morton: From Australian Yodeler to International Showman by Andrew K Smith.

 

An important contribution to music history scholarship, this volume not only establishes Morton’s significance in the history of Australian country music, but it also draws deep connections between Morton’s Australasian influence and country music in the United States, exploring Morton’s legacy in the wider context of the genre worldwide. Complete with a comprehensive discography of Tex Morton’s works, Smith’s in-depth biography claims for Morton his rightful place as a major founding figure in the history of Australian country music.

 

https://utpress.org/title/tex-morton/  Also available on Amazon.

VERANDAH MUSIC – NORTH AMERICAN STYLE

Monumental set of field recordings released by The Field Recorders’ Collective – A Survey of Traditional Music from the North American Traditions Collection. Complete with track lisitngs, full notes – and more:

 

Over a span of nearly four decades, a small group of friends, the North American Traditions Group, traveled over large swaths of the Appalachians, the Canadian Maritimes, the Ozarks, and the American West, recording many hundreds of hours of traditional music. Styles heard in the NAT collection range from unaccompanied ballads to vocal quartets; virtuoso fiddle solos to string bands; blues to gospel to topical songs. This is the first box set of three and includes the first five CDs of this monumental collection: From British Tradition, A Musical Melting Pot, Songs of Melancholy and Sorrow, The Anglo-African Exchange, and Grown on American Soil. 

 

https://fieldrecorder.org/product/natset1/