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Modulations in Country music go back to the days of Eddie Arnold. Complexity in Country is a pendulum swing. For example, "Lovesick Blues" written by Cliff Friend and Irving Mills, and recorded by Hank Williams, has six chords in it. "Crazy" by Willie Nelson, recorded by Patsy Cline, also has six chords in it, more when folks throw in diminisheds. In the eighties, Country started doing rather complex modulations and chord structures. "I'll Still Be Loving You" by Mary Ann Kennedy and Pam Rose, recorded by Restless Heart, is as modern in it's chord structures as any pop song today...more modern than most. In the nineties, Wynonna's "No One Else on Earth" by Jill Colluci, Stewart Harris and Sam Lorber, is funky with it's changes with flat sevens, flat threes, flat sixes. Her "Only Love" by Marcus Hummon and Roger Murrah...well...you tell me what key it's in...I don't know. It's the only song outside of Coltrane that I decided should be charted with letters instead of numbers, and it was a country hit in the early nineties.

Yes, Harlan Howard wrote with three chords. Some of the pop and hip hop folks write with one. It's not a matter of living in the past, it's a matter of what sub-genre we write for. A lot of country today, like in the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties, use complex chord changes. A lot also does not. It's the same in rock, blues, pop, jazz, you name it. There are veins of complexity, rootsiness, sophistication, simplicity, lushness, and bare bones.