Folk, Hillbilly, Country & Western: How Billboard Named the Category, 1948-1956

Folk, Hillbilly, Country & Western: How Billboard Named the Category, 1948-1956

Between 1948 and 1956 Billboard used `folk`, `hillbilly` and `country & western` in overlapping but distinct ways, rather than replacing one term neatly with the next. The words did different jobs on the page, and they did them at the same time.

1948: a chart with two names

Billboard of 1 May 1948, page 30, carries three juke box charts one under the other: the general one, then `MOST-PLAYED JUKE BOX FOLK RECORDS`, then `MOST-PLAYED JUKE BOX RACE RECORDS`. The middle one defines what it counts in the line beneath its own heading: `Records listed are hillbilly records most played in juke boxes according to The Billboard's weekly survey among juke box operators.`

One chart, two words. The heading says `folk`; the sentence underneath says `hillbilly`. The distinction recurs: one term titles the list while the other defines the records in it.

What was in it that week: Eddy Arnold and His Tennessee Plowboys at one with Anytime, in its seventh week, and at four with What a Fool I Was — both sides of `Victor 20-2700` — and at two with I'll Hold You in My Heart, `Victor 20-2332`; T. Texas Tyler, Deck of Cards, `4 Star 1228`; Pee Wee King and His Golden West Cowboys, Tennessee Waltz, `Victor 20-2680`; Hank Thompson and His Brazos Valley Boys, Humpty Dumpty Heart, `Capitol Americana 40065`; and Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, Bubbles in My Beer, `MGM 10116`.

The same pairing appears again more than a year later. In the issue of 18 June 1949 the heading is still `MOST-PLAYED JUKE BOX FOLK RECORDS` and the rubric still says `hillbilly records`, while the qualifying text around it asks for operators `…whose locations require folk records` and dealers `…of whose customers purchase folk records`.

25 June 1949: the parenthesis

The following week, page 29 of the same paper:

• Section heading: `Folk (Country & Western)`
• Chart: `BEST-SELLING RETAIL FOLK (COUNTRY & WESTERN) RECORDS`
• And alongside it: `ADVANCE FOLK (COUNTRY & WESTERN) RECORD` releases
• Rubric: `Records listed are country and Western records that sold best in stores according to The Billboard's special weekly survey among a selected group of retail stores, the majority of whose customers purchase country and Western records.`

The term that changed is the one in the rubric. `Hillbilly` is gone from the definition and `country and Western` has taken its place; `folk` stays exactly where it was, in the heading, with the new name in brackets beside it.

That same issue did the same job on the other chart in a different way, replacing `race records` with `rhythm & blues` outright — a change with its own history.

Top of the new-named chart that week, in its fifteenth: Hank Williams and His Drifting Cowboys, Love Sick Blues backed with Never Again, `MGM 10352`. And a few lines down the same page, in a listing of new releases, an act billed as `B. Strickland & his Hillbilly [Band]` — the word carrying on inside a name after leaving the rubric.

The parenthesis disappears; folk does not

The bracketed form was still present two years later. On 23 June 1951, page 32, the charts are still `Most Played Juke Box Folk (Country & Western) Records`, `Best Selling Retail Folk (Country & Western) Records` and `Most Played by Folk Disk Jockeys`, with rubrics reading `Country and Western records…`. A feature on the same page runs a poll under the title `COUNTRY & WESTERN DISC JOCKEYS PICK`, and a news note refers to acts `using h. b. and Western stage` material — `hillbilly` shortened to two letters and still in service.

On 21 June 1952, page 34, the brackets are unchanged.

By 20 June 1953 they are gone. The chart block on page 43 is headed `TOP c&w RECORDS`, with `National Best Sellers`, `Most Played by Jockeys` and `Most Played in Juke Boxes` beneath it, and the reviews on the next page run under `C & W Record Reviews`. Since these issues were read a year apart, what can be said is that the brackets went between June 1952 and June 1953, not in which week.

What did not go was `folk`. The news column on that 1953 page is headed `FOLK TALENT AND TUNES`. It is still called that in the issues of 7 August 1954, 9 October 1954, 3 December 1955 and 23 June 1956, by then signed by Bill Sachs, on pages whose charts are headed `COUNTRY & WESTERN RECORDS`. Seven years after the rubric changed, one word titled the charts and another titled the news column on the same pages.

Folk outside the newsroom

The double vocabulary was not only Billboard's habit. In the issue of 20 June 1953, page 36, Columbia Records runs an advertisement — `Columbia Best Buys` — with its own listings, one of them headed `BEST SELLING FOLK RECORDS`.

Three years later Columbia used the heading again. On page 42 of the issue of 23 June 1956, under the same `BEST SELLING FOLK RECORDS` heading: Carl Smith's You Are the One (`Columbia 21522`), Johnny Horton's Honky Tonk Man (`21504`), and the Collins Kids with Make Him Behave backed by The Rockaway Rock (`21514`).

What the reviews actually said

The review columns of this section are brief and follow a pattern. From the `Country & Western Records` reviews of 7 August 1954, page 39:

• Skeeter Bonn, I've Been Down That Road Before / Honey Baby, `RCA Victor 20-5814`: `Here's a fine new chanter making his first appearance on the RCA Victor label. The disk was previously out on the Amijo [label]. Bonn has an individual style and a warm sound.`
• Billy Walker, Going Going Gone!: `a poignant weeper`, with a note that the performances are `first-rate`.

A voice, an impression, and a piece of business — which label, which chart, whether it will work in the juke boxes. These reviews do not describe instrumentation, rhythmic technique or playing technique. Their vocabulary is mostly voice, mood, style and trade information.

One composition, two records

On 7 August 1954, in that same `Country & Western Records` review section, Billboard reviewed `Sun 209`. Its two sides were credited as `That's All Right (Wabash, BMI)` and `Blue Moon of Kentucky (Peer, BMI)` — `Sun 209`. How the paper described the record, and what happened to the vocabulary around it afterwards, is a story of its own.

Ten weeks later, on 16 October 1954, page 40, the same section reviewed another record of the same song:

BILL MONROE — Decca 29289. `Bill Monroe sings the ballad with an appealing catch to his voice. He starts it slow and then does a reprise with a stepped-up [tempo]. Side could do well on rural coin boxes.` `(Peer, BMI)`

The same title, and the same publishing credit, printed by the same paper on two records. That is Billboard identifying one composition on both.

A week before that review, on 9 October 1954, both versions were in the magazine at once. On page 13, a full-page Columbia advertisement lists `BILL MONROE and his Blue Grass Boys — BLUE MOON OF KENTUCKY` and `BLUE GRASS SPECIAL`. On page 60, the `C & W Territorial Best Sellers` carry `6. Blue Moon of Kentucky, E. Presley, Sun`, directly above `7. That's All Right, E. Presley, Sun`.

Neither notice mentions the other record, and neither review mentions the other performer. What the pages establish is that one composition from this category was on two discs in circulation in the autumn of 1954, identified as the same piece by the paper's own credits. They do not establish that either recording answered the other.

A note on sources

• Facsimiles from the World Radio History archive, `https://worldradiohistory.com/`. Page numbers are pages of the facsimile, not printed folios. Issues of Billboard read for this article: 1 May 1948; 18 and 25 June 1949; 23 June 1951; 21 June 1952; 20 June 1953; 7 August, 9 October and 16 October 1954; 3 December 1955; 23 June 1956.
• The archive's search locates candidate issues; multi-word queries there behave as AND searches rather than exact-phrase searches, so every quotation above was read in the facsimile itself. Transcriptions are corrected for obvious scanning errors.
• Three kinds of evidence are kept apart. A chart shows classification and position and nothing else. An advertisement shows distribution or promotion, not sound. A review supplies only the words it prints.
• Sampling between 1951 and 1953 is one issue per year, which is why the disappearance of the bracketed form is given as a window rather than a date.
• `Folk`, `hillbilly` and `country & western` are quoted as the industry's own terminology of the period, dated and attributed in each case.