Posted on 02/09/2008 6:47:13 AM PST by FUMETTI
The notion that country music is, and has always been, politically conservative seems so ingrained in our culture that it passes not just for cliché, but as a truism beyond reproach.
Take for instance the media commentary that followed Dixie Chicks frontwoman Natalie Maines's well-publicized criticisms of President George W. Bush back in 2003.
In the Associated Press's coverage of the controversy, one leading country radio programmer wondered whether Maines had considered the political demographics of her audience, saying that country is “more on the right than on the left and it’s always been that way.”
Even CMT.com editorial director Chet Flippo, a fine writer of country music histories and biographies, found himself buying into the country-is-conservative maxim, criticizing the Dixie Chicks for their comments because they should have understood that country fans “are largely conservative and patriotic—as is well known.”
Flippo may have the patriotism part correct, but his understanding of the historical connections between country music and politics is only partly intact.
True, some of the earliest promoters of country music were from the farthest reaches of the Right, the Ku Klux Klan and car maker Henry Ford who both sponsored old-time fiddling contests, which, for Ford, at least, became a way of counteracting what he believed to be the corrupting black and Jewish influences of jazz. And yes, there was Nashville patrician and perennial Republican gubernatorial candidate Roy Acuff who lampooned FDR's Social Security plan in his 1939 recording "Old Age Pension."
But much of the genre's history has been connected with politicians and political causes of a liberal or left-of-center nature or, perhaps even more often, with a woolly, anti-elitist, populist politics that eschewed categorization but certainly did not align itself with patricians of any stripe.
This is especially true of the musician activists and musicians-turned-politicians of the 1930s and 1940s.
Though he later threw his lot in with the economically-conservative wing of the Texas Democratic Party, country music's first governor, W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel, a former announcer for radio's country-jazz outfit the Light Crust Doughboys, initially ran as an outsider on a populist platform that included old age pensions and an end to the death penalty. O'Daniel punctuated campaign stops with performances of his own band, the Hillbilly Boys.
Similarly complicated was radio hillbilly pioneer Fiddlin’ John Carson, a figure linked philosophically by historians to the Populist Party, especially its economic collectivism but also the segregationist leanings that later cropped among former party members such as Tom Watson. In the 1930s, Carson, however, championed the liberal Franklin Delano Roosevelt, lauding his efforts for farmers in "Hurrah for Roosevelt."
Perhaps more squarely in the New Deal-liberal camp was Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies, a seminal Texas hillbilly-jazz band that recorded “Fall in Line with the N.R.A," a celebratory ode to FDR and his National Recovery Administration.
Often lost in this discussion too is Woody Guthrie, perhaps the most prominent of American protest singers. Guthrie--known for his pro-organized labor, anti-segregation, and pro-working man ballads, for his patriotic standard "This Land is Your Land," and for his influence on 1960s folk artists and folk rockers such as Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan--actually started out as a commercial country music artist on Los Angeles radio station KFVD.
While performing on KFVD, Guthrie not only emulated the music and mannerisms of national country radio stars Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family, but even performed advertisements for grocery stores and car lots. Though some might want to peg Guthrie as a "folk singer" by noting that he later turned against the commercialization of music, any distinction between "folk" and "country" would have been artificial in Guthrie's KFVD days when industry and the trade journals used the two terms interchangeably and when Guthrie had no problem broadcasting endorsements.
Guthrie began to take a public stance on political issues after noticing how O'Daniel's successes had prompted other hillbilly musicians to run for office in the hopes of getting elected "on one good greasy string." Guthrie's first forays involved promoting a state "Ham and Eggs" pension plan measure and supporting center-left New Dealer Culbert L. Olson's bid for governor of California in 1938. By the time he left Los Angeles in 1939, Guthrie advocated "Production for Use," a plan in which idle factories would be seized by the state and returned to production as a means of reducing unemployment.
A committed political activist, Guthrie ultimately bequeathed commercial country music such standards as “Oklahoma Hills,” popularized by his cousin Jack Guthrie in the 1940s and reaching number seven on the charts for honky-tonker Hank Thompson in 1961, and “Philadelphia Lawyer (Reno Blues),” fodder for a popular early Rose Maddox cover as well as a recent duet by Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson in line with the pair’s series of bandit odes.
But recognition of Guthrie as a country artist has been slow. Though Marty Stuart raised the issue of Guthrie's induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame at a 2003 tribute to the singer-songwriter in Nashville, he remains untapped.
Country music's gender politics have similarly resisted being a singular domain of conservatism, even amid the restrictive 1950s. The country music subculture of Los Angeles, a dynamic spawning ground in the postwar era, not only produced Jean Shepard who sang about how "women ought to rule the world" in a 1953 recording, but also Carolina Cotton who was noted in the trade press for being a honorary sheriff, a rodeo queen, an "expert at wrestling and judo," and "a crack shot with a .45 or rifle."
Forgotten too is the left-of-center Southern California country-rock scene of the 1960s that I survey in the final chapter of my book, Proud to Be an Okie, as well as the larger Southern California folk-rock milieu that Domenic Priore discusses in his recent book, Riot on Sunset Strip. Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman, members of the 1968 incarnation of the Byrds who would break away to form the straight-country band the Flying Burrito Brothers, borrowed motifs from country songwriting tradition such as a general suspicion of official authority and the genre's traditional "aunt" and "uncle" terminology to sing out against the Vietnam War. Drawing from bluegrass and the Bakersfield steel guitar sound, Parsons and Hillman also sought to reconcile the countercultural hippie heroes of their lyrics with the hillbillies, drifters, working poor, and other outsiders who have always had a place in country song.
Perhaps the national amnesia about country's liberal, populist, and leftwing roots will fade as artists as varied in politics and style as Merle Haggard, Iris DeMent, Willie Nelson, the Old Crow Medicine Show, Butch Hancock, I See Hawks in L.A., Bobby Braddock, Tom Snider, Nanci Griffith, Steve Earle, and Allison Moorer sing out against the Iraq War, or other more mainstream artists such as Tim McGraw and Tracy Lawrence bemoan its consequences.
But when will the genre's dominant institution, the Country Music Hall of Fame, begin to acknowledge the genre's historical political diversity?
Fan Will Harnack has launched a website to get the Burritos' Parsons, a central influence on the multi-platinum Eagles, inducted into the Hall of Fame.
But perhaps the larger tragedy is that someone as central to American music history, politics, and the genre as Woody Guthrie still has not been inducted.
Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame found room in its house to induct Guthrie, who remains an inspiration to outspoken country and rock performers across the political spectrum, back in 1988.
Perhaps it is time for the Country Music Hall of Fame to reconsider.
I do love classic rock too.
Thank you for the reply! I wasn’t sure if my memory was accurate or not. :)
I meant that only because Sean Hannity always pushes country music on Hannity and Colmes and his own radio show, FOX always features country, not rock, performers, and conservative rallies never feature rock or soul performers. It is becoming stereotypical for people to assume that. Now, Ted Nugent is conservative through and through, as perhaps CC Deville of Poison and Gene Simmons of Kiss, but they are a rarity. ROLLING STONE, which has become the most annoying magazine on earth, basically GOADS rock performers to badmouth Republicans and conservatives, so I can understand the assumption by many that conservatives prefer country music over other genres.
There is some country I like, but most of it falls into the classics like Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, and Porter Waggoner (who had a big following among rock artists). Classic rock is great, that type of music is made for HD radio.
I used to be a rock/alterative type of guy, but I now also like old “real” country. Pretty much anything made from the 1970’s on sucks tho. Rock and roll with a rockabilly twist is my sort of favorite now. Some of the newer Alt country is pretty good. My favorite bands now are Social Distortion, and a psycobilly band called Tiger Army. Tiger Army is pretty revved up, but they do some old style country tunes that would have been classics back in the day. My favorite is called “In the Orchard”....
It wasn’t always like that, I used to despise any type of country. But I’ve had my eyes opened over the last 5 years or so.
That machine didn’t bother to try to kill fascism until Joe Stalin was betrayed by Hitler. Until then he was just another Red Commie protesting AGAINST the US going to war against the Nazis.
I got into Tiger Army after seeing them open for Social D last year at Red Rocks in Denver. Awesome show. Also had the Supersuckers on the bill, they were great too.
Also, to me, a couple of the best “Alt country” albums made in the past 10 years were Mike Ness’ solo CDs. Of course, you would never hear any of his stuff on “country” radio....
"You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant...'ceptin Alice"
Sturgeon's Law:
The first reference to what was then called Sturgeon's Revelation appears in the March 1958 issue of Venture Science Fiction Magazine, where Sturgeon wrote: "I repeat Sturgeon's Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of SF is crud."
Yep...sure can. I was raised on George Jones & the Rolling Stones. Born at the beginning of the ‘50’s and consider most ‘country’ performers as mere posers to the name.
Whats not to love about Black Oak Arkansas and Molly Hatchet?
I loved Gram Parson’s music, hated his politics. It was through Parsons that I came to be a huge fan of Emmy Lou Harris. Mr. X and I have often bemoaned the fact that our wedding was on the same night as one of her PPAC concerts. We should have skipped out and gone to the show!
Also, Woody Guthrie may have been a Leftie, but when WWII broke out he tried to enlist but because of his Huntington’s Disease, he was rejected. He joined the U.S. Merchant Marines (highly dangerous duty) and served with honour. The Country Hall of Fame should do the right thing by Woody. I learned to sing his songs in grade school, taught to me by nuns.
They were trying to say that Reagan was facist or something. They had a very confused political stance, but some of the songs are good. They have some that arnt really that good, but are funny just the same. Like the one about its a beautiful day for a BBQ, but they look up in the sky and its russian nukes incoming! This time the hot dog is you!
They were a NY hardcore punk band back then. On the some old BS album the beastie boys put out (of when they were punk) the announcer talks about them and also Bad Brains. Its all good stuff. Politically retarded, but fun to listen to.
I LOVE Rock and Roll and HATE country music. So, the answer is, YES! :-)
I’m conservative, Texan and don’t like country. First album was the Beatles and it went on from there. When I was young, country music wasn’t even an option - it seemed like it was for hicks.
I’m conservative, Texan and don’t like country. First album was the Beatles and it went on from there. When I was young, country music wasn’t even an option - it seemed like it was for hicks.
And I’m not fond of Earthlink either that caused that double post!
Prog rock/metal is about the only music I listen to now. Country music is just too simplistic for my tastes.
And I might add that Rolling Stone hates prog as much as they hate Republicans, so up theirs!
OK, old country stuff is kinda cute and nostalgic. I love old country like Hank Williams, Charlie Daniels and Chet Atkins. But the new stuff just doesn’t do it for me.
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