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.
My only objection to most country music is that it's so incredibly simplistic - like most blues, the same three chords all the damn time. The best rock bands do what the Beatles did in the 60's, take the rhythm and emotion from American blues and put classical melody and harmony over the top.
I disagree about 2112 but you got the beatles down pat!
The question is as ridiculous as “Can I be a conservative even though Im not white or a Christian?”
Yep, that’s a heavy one. For cerebral, I’ll take Hemispheres, my favorite record by them. Great instrumentallly (la Villa Strangiato) and lyrically:
The Trees
There is unrest in the forest,
There is trouble with the trees,
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas.
The trouble with the maples,
(And they’re quite convinced they’re right)
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light.
But the oaks can’t help their feelings
If they like the way they’re made.
And they wonder why the maples
Can’t be happy in their shade.
There is trouble in the forest,
And the creatures all have fled,
As the maples scream “Oppression!”
And the oaks just shake their heads
So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights.
“The oaks are just too greedy;
We will make them give us light.”
Now there’s no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.
Power Windows was probably their worst to me- excepting Show Don’t Tell.
Soundgarden is the only band I liked during the grunge era (the worst most depressing decade of music, IMO.) Chris Cornell is brilliant; however, after Soundgarden broke up and he formed Audioslave I couldn't get myself to listen to them because I couldn't get past what vile socialist and anti-American creep Tom Morello is. Anyway, I heard Audioslave broke up recently.
I think the lead singer of Blind Melon died of a heroin overdose. I only remember one song that they had.
Sometimes I like music just for escape/entertainment.
Who could forget Bytor and the Snowdog?
Yep, the Blind Melon guy OD’d on heroin. Great video though.
I’ve always like Chris Cornell’s voice. That guy can wail.
Your pulling tidbits from my overloaded brain, but didn’t the Quarrymen evolve into the Beatles?
Yes, I am living proof.
“Country music” is an oxymoron.
That was back when they were a rock band!! My parents had that album with the picture printed on the vinyl, and Dreamboat Annie. Good memories.
Rock and roll has it roots in country music. You can hear it clearly in early elvis. And I agree that most country is pop music with a fiddle. But most rock music today sucks. It’s not going to last two or three years from now, whereas Zep and early Van Halen will last forever.
This conservative loves (most) rock, hates (most) country, but has a soft spot for Bluegrass (must be my West Virginia roots shining through).
Show don’t Tell was on “Roll the Bones” I think.
I saw them in concert at The Summit in Houston in 1976, good concert.
I saw Zeppelin in 1969 at the Filmore East In SF. (Best concert ever.)
Check that.
I meant to say “Presto”. (got them confused)
My sister runs all the food and beverages. She's been on staff since the 70's.
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