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 “ !