Henry Horenstein with Curly Ray Cline Rock House, Kentucky, 1974 © Lewis Rosenburg
	Henry Horenstein with Mother Maybelle Carter Lonestar Ranch, Reeds Ferry, New Hampshire, 1973 © Lewis Rosenburg

Three Chords and the Truth
by Henry Horenstein

A lot of people assume that country music is a Southern thing. It isn't: it's everywhere. It always has been—even in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where I grew up, one hour south of Boston. By the time I was eight years old, I was hanging out at New Bedford's only music store, the Melody Shop. The owner was kid-friendly, and an older guy, a folksinger named Paul Clayton, spent a lot of time there as well. Turns out there wasn't much interest in his specialty—whaling songs—except in New Bedford, which in the nineteenth century was one of the world's great whaling ports. Clayton did help rearrange an old folksong called "Gotta Travel On," which became a big hit for country singer Billy Grammer in 1959. Bob Dylan covered it years later in his Self Portrait album. But before Clayton had to travel on—and out—of our hometown, he recommended my very first LP purchase: Johnny Cash Sings Hank Williams on Sun Records. I still play that record. Although it was a style of music with which I was already familiar, no one ever told me it was country music.

Mainstream radio stations in the mid-to-late 1950s commonly programmed country music. Only they didn't call it that. Country was equated with hillbilly and few stations wanted that association. The audience for country music was thought to be too limited and too poor. Better to play Pat Boone, Johnny Mathis, and the new rock-and-roll, which was essentially a hybrid of country music and rhythm-and-blues. The demographics were better—the audience was younger and had more disposable income—and this allowed higher advertising rates to be charged.

Take Elvis Presley, for example. Elvis grew up poor in Tupelo, Mississippi. He played gospel and country music and eventually became fond of the blues. He melded all these styles and made music history—and a ton of money. After that, record companies went looking for white country singers with a little rhythm. Maybe, they thought, we could find another Elvis. Another Elvis was too much to hope for. But there were quite a few good old boys, and even a couple of good old girls, who rode the airwaves in the late 1950s. And they were my favorites: Johnny Cash (of course), Marty Robbins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Horton, Wanda Jackson, Stonewall Jackson, Skeeter Davis, and Jimmie Rodgers (the other one, not the legendary "Singing Brakeman" of the 1920s and '30s).

The late songwriter Harlan Howard was once asked what made a great county song. "Three chords and the truth," he answered. He would know. Howard wrote Patsy Cline's great hit "I Fall to Pieces," as well as "Busted" (Ray Charles), "Heartaches by the Number" (Ray Price), "Tiger by the Tail" (Buck Owens, who was also cowriter), and so many other country classics. What he meant by "three chords" was simplicity, and I understood that from listening to folk music, much of which can be faked on guitar if you know D, G, and A7. When I was in high school, my parents moved us from New Bedford to Boston, and I spent many more nights at Cambridge's legendary Club 47 than at my new home. In a single week at the "47," you might see bluesmen like Muddy Waters and bluegrass bands like the Kentucky Colonels. Though folk songs and country music aren't exactly the same thing, there are deep connections. Many times at the "47" I saw Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band with Bill Keith, who later revolutionized bluegrass banjo while working with the legendary Bill Monroe. I first heard Johnny Cash's plaintive "I Still Miss Someone" and Lefty Frizzell's classic "Long Black Veil" from the singing of Joan Baez. I suspect by "truth" Howard meant directness and honesty. But to me, it meant something else.

I was a determined student of history in high school and college, and much of the folk and country tradition is narrative, describing stories and events often historical or legendary in nature. Certainly Woody Guthrie's music, as in a song like "Pretty Boy Floyd," falls into this category, as does so much of country music: Marty Robbins's "Big Iron," Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues," and Johnny Horton's "The Battle of New Orleans" come to mind. And even today, I don't know of a more eloquent reminiscence of the events of September 11, 2001, than Alan Jackson's "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning?)."

I studied history at the University of Chicago and had several great teachers there. One of them, Jesse Lemisch, introduced me to the work of the noted English historian E.P. Thompson, whom I later studied with at the University of Warwick. I learned many things from these teachers that I tried to apply to my photography. One was that there is no pure "truth"; what you read depends very much on the point of view of the teller—or the historian. And I learned that the points of view of "successful" people and cultures were the ones most remembered. These successful types were the ones who were in the best position to write down and record what they accomplished, what they felt, and what they believed in.

I translated this understanding to what I knew about music. I concluded that if I were interested in studying about truckers, for example, wouldn't I rather listen to Dave Dudley's "Six Days on the Road" than a speech by the Secretary of Transportation?

In my junior year in college I became interested in photography. For one thing, it got me out of the library stacks and involved me with people rather than with books. And honestly, photography was "cooler" than history, and it got me a lot more dates. But I always kept what I learnt as a historian in mind as I tried to figure out how to make the uncertain transition from academic to artist. Photographer Danny Lyons, at that time a recent history graduate of the University of Chicago, had just made that transition, publishing his landmark photoessay The Bikeriders, about the Outlaw motorcycle club in Chicago. I saw him as a historian with a camera. And that's what I wanted to be.

I also became familiar with the work of Robert Frank, Lyons's predecessor, who produced one of the greatest photography books ever, The Americans. (I was gratified when I heard Frank lecture years later to hear him say that his favorite musician was Hank Williams.) And of course before Frank there were other terrific examples of fine (artistic) documentary photographers whose pictures worked well with text and in books: Walker Evans, who produced Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (with text by James Agee), and Dorothea Lange's An American Exodus (with Paul Taylor). So I knew that I wanted to take pictures, make books, and record history. But where to start?

A few years later, my photography teacher at the Rhode Island School of Design, Harry Callahan, answered the question simply by telling me to photograph people and places to which I was naturally drawn. In his way, Callahan was saying the same thing as Harlan Howard: Be true to yourself. How could I have missed that? And so I started photographing even more around music shows and concerts. I figured that even if I got lousy pictures, I would probably have a good time. I finished my art training in 1973 and set out to apply what I had learned. In those days there was very little hope of making a living as a documentary photographer. So I took a variety of jobs, not all in photography, and took pictures on the side. Rounder Records was starting out about this time and I did some work for them—usually publicity and album covers. I also photographed a little for magazines such as Country Music, Bluegrass Unlimited, and Muleskinner News. But mostly I photographed for myself.

I drove to Nashville a few times with friends and stopped on the way to photograph Ralph Stanley and Curly Ray Cline. In Nashville, I took photographs at the Ryman Auditorium during the Grand Ole Opry shows and at the legendary Tootsies Orchid Lounge. And when possible, I went to the homes of performers who were gracious enough to invite me in—Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper, Mack Magaha, and Del Reeves.

Almost every summer Sunday for years I went to the Lone Star Ranch, a country music park in southern New Hampshire. There I saw and photographed legendary acts like Ernest Tubb and Mother Maybelle Carter. And I went to bluegrass festivals. In Pennsylvania I photographed a young Del McCoury and the elderly Blue Sky Boys, and in Maryland I shot legends Charlie Monroe and John Duffey. Then there were the honky tonks—slightly disreputable bars with live music. In Boston, we had the Hillbilly Ranch and I photographed Tex Ritter there, as well as regular patrons, such as Hillbilly Tex, who was neither a hillbilly nor from Texas. I also photographed in bars that played country music wherever I could—quite a few in Louisiana, in particular, since I was dating a girl from New Orleans.

All along, in my historian's mind, I saw all this as a disappearing world that I wanted to preserve on film. As I look back, many years later, it's sad to see that I wasn't far off. Many of the people and the places pictured here are long gone, though some have adjusted and survived. There are still bluegrass festivals, but the Grand Ole Opry is no longer based at the Ryman Auditorium. Tootsies Orchid Lounge lives on in a smaller room, but the Hillbilly Ranch and so many lesser honky tonks do not. There are hardly any country music parks left. And we've lost so many great musicians, naturally, and along with them went a way of life. Everyone will remember Elvis Presley and the Beatles, but I wonder: Will they remember Kitty Wells, Ernest Tubb, or, for that matter, Hillbilly Tex? These pictures were made in hopes that they will.