Much, if not all of the music described here, started out as the music of the poor. Poor people's music, therefore seems an appropriate name. The names we call the various range of styles, hillbilly, old-time, etc. isn't adequate to cover all and neither is the list of the various occupations, coal miners, farmers, mill workers etc. or places of origin, mountain music, southern, rural, urban, of those who played. This unique mixture was born of many influences, but the common thread was poverty.

The gap between the haves and the have nots was never greater than the years following the first great depression. As a result, many sang about their hard times to try to comes to grips with what they faced. Always hoping for better times ahead many folks looked to the church for support and the gospel music of "hope in the here after" became their comfort. Others just sang the blues and found support from listners who themselves were going through the same hard times. Some folks could not face such times without turning to laughter and wrote songs to evoke such from their audiences, hoping to help them forget, if even for a moment, the tragedy of their situations. Some folks wrote songs about escaping to exotic locales, where they idealistically imagined that things continued in a utopian way, untouched by the troubles of the day. All were reactions brought on by the one overwhelming hardship of poverty.