Going Up the Country

"Going Up the Country" (also Goin' Up the Country) is a song by the American blues-rock group Canned Heat. Called a "rural hippie anthem", it became one of the group's biggest hits and best-known songs. As with their previous single, "On the Road Again", the song was adapted from a 1920s blues song and sung in a countertenor-style by Alan Wilson.

Background and composition

Canned Heat, who were early blues enthusiasts, based "Going Up the Country" on "Bull Doze Blues", recorded in 1928 by Texas bluesman Henry Thomas. Thomas was from the songster tradition and had a unique sound, sometimes accompanying himself on quills, an early Afro-American wind instrument similar to panpipes. He recorded "Bull Doze Blues" in Chicago on June 13, 1928, for Vocalion Records (no. 1230).

For "Going Up the Country", Canned Heat's Wilson used Thomas' melody on the quills and his basic rhythm, but arranged it for a rock setting and rewrote the lyrics. In addition to the bass and drum rhythm section, Henry Vestine supplied a "light electric rhythm guitar" and multi-instrumentalist Jim Horn reproduced Thomas' quill parts on the flute.

Rural area

In general, a rural area or countryside is a geographic area that is located outside towns and cities. The Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services defines the word "rural" as encompassing "...all population, housing, and territory not included within an urban area. Whatever is not urban is considered rural."

Typical rural areas have a low population density and small settlements. Agricultural areas are commonly rural, though so are others such as forests. Different countries have varying definitions of "rural" for statistical and administrative purposes.

North America

Canada

Up the Country

Up The Country is a popular poem by iconic Australian writer and poet Henry Lawson. It was first published in The Bulletin magazine on 9 July 1892, under the title Borderland, and started the Bulletin Debate, a series of poems by both Lawson and Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson about the true nature of life in the Australian bush.

In Up The Country, Lawson recounts his trip to the barren and gloomy Australian bush, and criticises "City Bushmen" such as Banjo Paterson who tended to romanticize bush life.

Paterson later responded with a poem of his own, entitled In Defense of the Bush, in which he accused Lawson of representing bush life as nothing but doom and gloom, famously ending with the line "For the bush will never suit you, and you'll never suit the bush."

Publication details

See also