This is the definitive history of country music, the quintessential soundtrack of American life and the most popular music in the world today. Colin Escott, a Grammy award-winning music historian, writes vividly about the birth of country on the back porches in the hills and hollows of turn-of-the-century Appalachia; follows its westward swing into Texas; explores the Hollywood era of singing cowboys; charts the growth of the country music business in Nashville; and profiles the lives—often tragic and extreme—of many of its most famous downhome guitar pickers, fiddle players, lovestruck songsters, slick performers, and roughneck rebels. The book is laced with intimate interviews and stocked with rare photographs of country music idols and legends of both the studio and stage, including the Carter family, Jimmie Rodgers, Bill Monroe, Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Glen Campbell, Emmylou Harris, Charlie Pride, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Clint Black, and many others. Lost Highway is both a celebration of the strange, raw spirit of authentic country music and a critique of the bland, soulless product that often passes for country today. 50 color, 50 b/w photographs.