<DIV>In this slim, lively book our foremost historian of country music recalls the lost worlds of pioneering fiddlers and pickers, balladeers and yodelers. As he looks at "hillbilly" music's pre-commercial era and its early popular growth through radio and recordings, Bill C. Malone shows us that it was a product not only of the British Isles but of diverse African, German, Spanish, French, and Mexican influences.</DIV>