All Music Guide to Country: The Definitive Guide to Country Music

Rating:
Summary: Reviews and ratings to 10,281 recordings by 1,219 artists
Review: The collaborative effort of country music experts Vladimir Bogdanov, Chris Woodstra, and Stephen Thomas Erlewine, and now in an expanded and updated second edition, All Music Guide To Country: The Definitive Guide To Country Music is a gigantic, 963-page reference book which is crammed from cover to cover with reviews and ratings to 10,281 recordings by 1,219 artists and represent all facets and subgenres of the western music genre and is a compendium of facts and factoids about country music and the people who sing it. A thorough, "must-have" resource for dedicated country fans or anyone else who needs to look up country-music related information quickly, the text published in a rather tiny font -- so readers with impaired eyesight had best invest in a good magnifying glass.

Rating:
Summary: very detailed Book
Review: there have been quite a few Recordings&Artists who have made Country Music.this Book fully details Albums,Songs,artists,backgrounds&overall stylings within the music itself. there are so many forms&Off shoots of country Music.it's a Styling all unto itself&this Book explores that&so much more.

Rating:
Summary: Well-indexed
Review: With country music and its manifestations reaching ever deeper into the world's cultural psyche, All Music offers this in-depth encyclopedic guide to the massive genre. The book covers the extended bluegrass scene given greater popularity by O Brother Where Art Thou? with entries from the close harmony traditionalists Osborne Brothers to such progressives as Darrell Scott. Doc Watson gets four pages and the FM country scene from Dwight Yoakam to popular Western swing revivalists Asleep at the Wheel is here. The alt-country scene is present, too, covered from Bloodshot recording artist Robbie Fulks to the popular Old 97's. The entries are in the expected form for these successful All Music cyclopedias. That is, biographies and then key reviews with recommended starting points. This makes for over 10,000 rated reviews. The well-indexed tome includes style descriptions, a section for compilations, soundtracks, essential albums by genre and two dozen rich essays on aspects of country music, like "Country on Film" and "Country Soundtracks". This is an invaluable resource for the serious fan of any part of the varied country music spectrum. Where else would you find that The Residents, Savoy Brown and Elvis Costello all drew on the early `70s countrified British pub rock group Chilli Willi & the Red Hot Peppers for members?