Proclamation 4326

October 12, 1974

From the farms and mines and ranches of America has come a uniquely American art form-the sound which has become known as country music. Once heard only in certain regions of this Nation, the country sound now can be heard from Manhattan's skyscrapers to the beaches of Malibu. The growth of affection for country music in recent years is a heartening sign of the new interest that Americans take in things uniquely American.

A measure of that growth is that there are now more than one thousand radio stations in the United States that play country music exclusively and half of all the radio stations in America play country part of the time. Each day of the year, about twenty-five thousand hours of country music is beamed out into America. Truly, country music has come into its own.

It is a music which can be happy or sad, fast or slow, but it is always about life. The words of country music songs talk about life the way it is really lived. Country music is life with a melody.

Now, Therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States of America, ask the people of this Nation to mark the month of October 1974, with suitable observances as Country Music Month.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twelfth day of October, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-ninth.



GERALD R. FORD