ABSTRACT
The two most important kinds were country and western music and rhythm and blues. Country music, the music of poor white southern country folk, grew out of the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish folk music that settlers had brought with them to America between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Rhythm and blues, on the other hand, developed from the rural blues. Although more sophisticated than the rural blues, rhythm and blues were still very gutsy, and still contained a strong sexual element.
