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"C" is for Country Music

South Carolina From A to Z
SC Public Radio

"C" is for Country Music. "Country" is the contemporary term for the music of common white folks of the rural South. Country song lyrics with their varying degrees of sadness and sentimentality, touches of rowdiness, and occasional self-deprecating humor have a way of expressing thoughts and feelings of ordinary folk. Early practitioners of country music in South Carolina included the duo of Charlie Parker and Mark Woolbright recorded "The Man That Wrote Home Sweet Home Was Never a Married Man" for Columbia Records. Programs on radio stations (WIS in Columbia; WFBC in Greenville; and WSPA in Spartanburg) played a significant role in the dissemination of country music sounds. The WIS Hillbillies—later the Hired Hands—featuring banjo-picking DeWitt Snuffy" Jenkins and fiddler Homer "Pappy" Sherill were among the best known country music figures in the state.

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.