Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 140

136 Popular Culture Review a distinctive vocal and musical style that kept his records selling and his concerts sold-out even when the commercial trends in country music changed; by branching out into other venues so that he would be less dependent financially upon those commercial trends; and by helping develop the careers of younger artists (Malone, 1985, p. 90). He gave one young singer of the 1950s the chance to perform on his segment of the Grand Ole Opry (Touches, 45). From there he guided the singer on a nationwide tour allowing him to get out of Memphis, onto a record label, and eventually to “The Ed Sullivan Show,” movies, television, the leading Las Vegas showrooms, concert halls, and ultimately back to Memphis and Graceland. (Snow, 1994, pp. 380-391). Snow was influential in other ways as well. He was the most popular country music performer ever to come from Canada, enabling music to literally cross borders and he was the last living link to the creation of modem county music by Jimmie Rodgers, considered the “Father of Country Music” (Slotek, 1999; Van Wyk, 1999; Malone, 1985, p. 90). His ovm life was a more fascinating Horatio Alger story than Alger ever wrote. When Hank Snow died on December 20,1999, at the age of 85, the music world lost a major historical figure whose life and times merit discussion and analysis, and whose story is a parable and an allegory on twentieth century American music and American culture. Clarence Eugene “ !