A Book About Both Kinds of Music: Country AND Western

Bret Bertholf’s “The Long Gone Lonesome History of Country Music”

By Jenny Shank, 5-09-07

The Long Gone Lonesome History of Country Music
By Bret Bertholf
Little Brown for Young Readers
$18.99, unpaged

I’ve only been a mother for under a year, but already I think I know a thing or two about children’s books: Any that you buy, you’re going to be reading repeatedly, so the words and drawings have to be as amusing to the parent as they are to the kid.  Bret Bertholf, a Denver-based musician, artist, and children’s book author, seems to know this.  Hilarious, informative, and quirky, Bertholf’s The Long Gone Lonesome History of Country Music was so enjoyable I felt like reading it aloud even after my baby was asleep. 

Bertholf is an accomplished artist—his drawings are so detailed and imaginative that it’s possible to discover something new each time you look at them—and he knows a thing or two about country music.  For several years, his alter ego has served as the yodeling front man for Denver country outfit Halden Wofford and the Hi-Beams.  So when he gives youngsters a lesson in yodeling (“First, pretend you’re swallowing a monkey.  Now, sing a high note and get your best friend to pinch your posterior.  A healthy YELP will get you yodeling.”), you know it’s legit.

The book is filled with wonderful, penciled caricatures of country musicians drawn in the time-honored big head, tiny body tradition.  Adults will have fun trying to guess who the musicians are (there’s a key at the back of the book), and kids will doubtless want to know more about these funny-looking people, from the rock ‘em sock ‘em cowboy singer Gene Autry to the singular Minnie Pearl, who looks like she’s about to jump out of the page and tell a joke.

Although the history of country music is a tangled tale, Bertholf has structured it well, working in roughly chronological order from country’s southern agrarian roots, taking it through the Depression, World War II, and the rise of suburbia, with welcome stop-offs in such topics as “Country Hair,” “Country Vee-hickles,” and how to dress like a country singer.  (Under the caricature of a clothier, he writes, “My name is Nudie Cohn, and I made the wildest, most colorful, flashy rhinestone-studded, glow-in-the-dark cowboy suits you’ll ever see…Some of the clothes I made were so shiny you couldn’t even look at them.”) Even in the passages that cover dark topics—this is country music after all—Bertholf keeps it fun.  As he writes of the Depression, “Sometimes the only thing people got to eat was soup.  SOUP!  You had to wait in line to get soup.”

This book is full of delights, from the page on “Country Pets” which includes the “Mean-Eyed Cat,” to the guide to creating your own country nicknames.  (Mine, apparently, is Skeeter Pooter.) If you’ve ever wondered how country music changed between Jimmie Rodgers and Shania Twain, The Long Gone Lonesome History of Country Music offers an enjoyable way to find out.  The only drawback to this book is that it doesn’t come with a companion CD.  So it’s up to Ma and Pa to dig into the record collection and provide a multi-media experience.

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