Harlan Howard, one of the greatest songwriters ever to work in Nashville, Tennessee, is credited with a line that has since passed into legend: country is "three chords and the truth." That says it all. Behind the apparent simplicity of a guitar, a fiddle, and a voice lies one of the richest (and most contested) stories in American music.

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It is the story of a founding misunderstanding. We picture country as white, rural, Southern, born in the mountains of Appalachia. It is all of that, and a great deal more. The banjo, its signature instrument, crossed the Atlantic in the holds of slave ships: it is an African legacy. The steel guitar that makes its ballads weep came from Hawaii. Its rhythms owe a debt to the blues, its harmonies to gospel, its storytelling to the ballads of the British Isles carried over by Irish, Scottish, and English immigrants. Country was not born pure. It was born of a blending that America long preferred to forget.

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Everything changed at the height of the summer of 1927. In a small town straddling two states, Bristol, half in Tennessee and half in Virginia, a man named Ralph Peer set up his recording equipment and put out a call to musicians from across the area. In ten days, he captured the voices of the Carter Family and of a former railroad man with tuberculosis, Jimmie Rodgers. That moment would later be called the "Big Bang of country music." An industry had just been born. It has never stopped since.

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From there, everything unfolds like a river gathering strength. The nasal voice of Hank Williams, dead at twenty-nine in the back seat of a Cadillac. The brash twang of Bakersfield, California. The black leather of the outlaws slamming the door on Nashville. The velvet of Dolly Parton, the quiet fury of Loretta Lynn, the worldwide triumph of Garth Brooks and Shania Twain. And, in our own time, the surge of a new generation (Zach Bryan, Lainey Wilson, Morgan Wallen) filling stadiums while a queen of pop, Beyoncé, reminds the whole world where this music really came from.

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Because country has never stopped telling the story of America: its pride and its fractures, its migrations and its homecomings, its heroes and, above all, the ones it forgot. The women relegated to the status of "girl singers," the Black artists erased from the lineups, the Tejano, Cajun, and Native American voices no one remembers anymore. This series gives them back their place alongside the legends, with nothing cut away and nothing romanticized.

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And because the West has no borders, this history does not stop at America's own. It spread to Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, all the way to the honky-tonks of Europe and the dance floors of Switzerland, where every weekend people still dance to songs born half a world away.

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From Bristol to the present day, here is a century of music: the true story of three chords that ended up going around the world.

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✦ This series can be read chapter by chapter or straight through. Each article stands on its own: follow the thread of your own curiosity.

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✦ This series is part of a larger undertaking: several themes are being explored at once, with research and writing always underway. New articles are added regularly, so come back and take a look. To keep up with everything new, head to The Gazette, which gathers the latest updates, or sign up for the newsletter to get them delivered straight to you.