After reading a biography on a Country Music singing legend- Ernest Tubb I came to realize how far Country Music in relation to media exposure has actually come. Tubb was a country singer, starting his career in the 1930’s. He describes how when he first started out there wasn’t any country music awards and there wasn’t even any county music charts in the trade magazines. In 1942 a magazine called Cash Box started to put some charts in the magazine but these charts were built around songs and not recordings. A magazine called Billboard started a separate chart for country music and was a little more successful than Cash Box. Tubb suggests that the first all country music festival in New York at Carnegie Hall in 1945 was perhaps Country Music’s coming of age.
Ernest Tubb’s recollection of the beginning of country music exposure in magazines exemplifies how much country music exposure to the media has actually grown in the last 60 years. Even though it is still not recognized as much as it should be in todays media there is hope that it will continue to grow and become a larger section in the music media.
Rachelle Fenning
Plugh, R. (1998). ‘Ernest Tubb, The Texas Troubadour’, Duke University Press.
