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.
It is a slight, a very deliberate slight. Wenner hates Rush and therefore they aren’t getting in while he has any say at all. Real proof of what a weasel he is, my wife hates Rush but even she says they should be in the Hall.
I can listen to Country (and Western, a la Blues Brothers), but I don’t own any of their CDs. Just not my default. I will listen, though, if it’s between Country (and Western) and Rap/HipHop.
Used to love Neil Young music, but he's gone off the deep end with his politics.
Ive seen them like 6 times. first time was in 77
I can’t stand country — right up there with rap in general crapitude. Give me Nirvana, Hendrix, the Beatles, Cream, the Pixies, Buddy Holly, the Clash, Soundgarden, Jack White.
I liked Cash because he respected rock artists. I have his DVD of his old tv show and he used to feature Clapton, CCR, James Taylor and Neil Diamond on his show.
Depends on where, and when [to paraphrase Dion and the Belmonts] you grew up.
I grew up in Yonkers, New York, 50s and 60s. Doo Wop Rules! Favorite band: The Searchers. Favorite Groups: Dion and the Belmonts, The Drifters, the Everly Brothers. Favorite Artist: Buddy Holly. Female Group: The Shirelles. Female Singers: Ann Wilson [Heart], Darlene Love.
I see you mentioned Soundgarden. I was a big fan of the grunge era music...except Blind Melon. That group I never got.
I’m feeling that way already L0L
I love old time rock n roll. The Four Seasons I saw live in the 1980s, and Dion is also a favorite of mine. As for Heart, I totally agree, but their 70s era “Dog & Butterfly” era is my favorite.
I am definitely with you on this one. I can’t stand country music, I listened to it in my 20’s, (loved George Strait back then), but I can’t listen to it now. I share their basic moral values, just can’t stand the twang!
I prefer Nirvana, Maroon 5, Black Eyed Peas, Gnarls Barkley, Dave Matthews, basically anything new, but please NO COUNTRY!
Of course the punchline with Cash is that he was really a punker, he’s got the total FU punk rock attitude, but since he started a couple decades before anybody invented punk he went into country instead. Most of the punk fans I know have at least a few Cash albums, they’re drawn to the attitude. Cash was definitely very open minded about music, how many country artists have done covers of Nine Inch Nails? Heck how many anybody has dared climb that crazy summit.
I like Maroon 5. I notice the trend in rock groups having numbers in their name, which have nothing to do with the number of band members. Matchbox 7, Sum 182, neither refer to the number of band members. I think the Dave Clark Five should be miffed. ;-)
Honestly, this is as stupid as asking if a conservative can like the color red and not the color blue. Of course, a conservative can like rock music and hate country music. The article is correct in talking about the history of Southern politics. It was only in the 1990s that Republicans even held statewide office in the South, really. Al Smith pretty much only won the South in 1928, over Hoover. FDR won the South all 4 times he ran for President. Adlai Stevenson only won the South in 1952 over Ike, and in 1956. Nixon lost in 1960 because JFK cleaned up in the South.
Although 2112 and “a farewell to kings” were great cerebral albums. Nothing beats the raw power of “working man”
Yes. I like some country music like Johnny Cash. Other than a few others I'm not a big country music fan.
As for Metallica I love everything from the Black album and prior. I've seen them 3 times in concert and each one was better than the last.
Junior Brown Highway Patrol
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