AMOS MORRIS is creating a stir on the Australian country music scene and comparisons to the style of a young Slim Dusty are inevitable for this Kempsey lad. Amos is "committed to preserving the Australian bush ballads for the older generation while introducing them to his younger generation" and at his website you can also see and hear his own progress as a songwriter.

SAMANTHA McCLYMONT is proclaimed as "the voice of new generation country" at her website. A grandiose assertion indeed, but one that young Samantha undoubtedly has the potential to fulfil. While you are waiting to see her and the Toyota Star Maker Tour in your town, you can watch this 2005 winner online with the video of her single Cooking in My Kitchen.

The HISTORY OF COUNTRY MUSIC IN AUSTRALIA is a self-explanatory title for a relatively new site that is dedicated to preserving and promoting our musical heritage. Max Ellis has set himself a Herculean task of "gathering historical information from every corner of our nation". The aim is to create an interactive site with many contributors building on what is already a fascinating read, with many articles on the origins of events and institutions plus tributes to our pioneers.

ROUGHSTOCK'S HISTORY OF COUNTRY MUSIC provides a concise overview of American Country Music from its beginnings through to Garth Brooks and the New Traditionalists, but for a wider more organic approach to history, check out WIKIPEDIA, the free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit! Wikipedia started in 2001, and had 780,000 articles when we last looked. Their ambitious goal is to create a "free, democratic, reliable encyclopaedia - the largest in history".

More 'old-timey' than bluegrass as we now know it, this black and white American TV Special first aired in 1965 and was shot in a fly-on-the-wall documentary style. The film follows Bascom Lamar Lunsford as he casts the talent for his Asheville Mountain Music Festival in North Carolina. Apart from founding that annual festival in 1928 (it still runs today), Lunsford is best known as the original composer of the forties country classic Mountain Dew. More verses were added to the tune by Lulu Belle and Scott Wiseman and later, in a quest to find his bus fare home from Chicago, Lunsford sold his interest in Mountain Dew to Wiseman for $25! The story has a happy ending later in their retirement years, when Wiseman gave back 50 percent of future royalties for the rest of Lundford's lifetime (he lived to be 91 years old).

During that lifetime, he hunted down the songs, dances and unknown performers of the Appalachian region and fought to bring dignity to hillbilly music, making himself a folk hero in the process. This film contains music, clog and square dancing, but not performed in clinical settings, rather in the places that they were created; on the front porch of shacks and in people's living rooms. A raw look at life and music in the backwoods.

MRA Entertainment D0566 - 60 Mins