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.
Two types of music, Country and Western and I like em both.
I have my Zune and for 15 a month I get every artist imaginable, I have every Godsmack Album, Metallic, Megadeth, Slayer etc. I love the live versions of songs, except for Metallica’s older stuff. For some reason Hetfields’s valley voice cracks me up and kind of ruins the experience for me.
Of course. You can even be a conservative and love artists who are outspoken liberals like Springsteen, or even the Dixie Chicks. As Stevie Wonder wrote, "Music is a world within itself."
Do you ask your mechanic, or the cook at your favorite restaurant, or your barber, about their political leanings? Of course not. Good work is good work. Not everything is politics.
That said, I wouldn't be so quick to hate country music. I apply Sturgeon's Law to music: "90% of everything is crap." I've always liked some country and a lot of rock, because I was raised on both. I discovered jazz and old-school soul and R&B in my teens.
For the longest time, i completely dismissed techno, electronica, whatever you want to call it, because it's boring and repetitive and as a brass player, the synthesized instruments sounded fake and cheezy to me. It's driven by producers and editors, not, to my mind then, real musicians. I disliked salsa and Tejano because it's repetitive and thumping and I had Mexican neighbors who played it way too loud when I was trying to sleep. But I gradually became more open-minded.
I have a knee-jerk reaction against anyone who becomes the flavor of the month too quickly, so I really never had much use for Madonna. But one day I realized "Take a Bow" is simply a really good ballad. I had no use for Eminem, but "Lose Yourself" has really clever and intricate rhythm and internal rhyme. Most modern R&B left me cold, but there ain't nothin' wrong with Alicia Keyes, Macy Gray or Lauryn Hill. Most electronica is thumping repetitive crap designed for ravers tweaking their brains out, but Moby weaves some really great mixes, and I've come to appreciate that as a form of musicianship in its own right. Most salsa doesn't appeal to me, but there's nothing worng with Celia Cruz or Tito Puente.
Bottom line, I like music in just about any genre, but I'm selective about which artists and songs. That's why I used to make cassettes for driving around, then I burned CDs, and I now have an MP3 player. I very rarely listen to music of any kind on the radio, because their taste sucks and my playlists are much better than theirs.
Eventually, I came around to this: My favorite musical genre is "good." And it can be found in every section of the record store (I guess I just dated myself there).
Poor misguided mind rinded R&Rers .
How can you not like Emmy Lou or Leigh Ann or Patsy?
I was surprised to see that some people think that Woodie Guthrie was “country” as opposed to “folk,” which has ALWAYS been heavily left wing, if not outright communist. The best examples that come to mind being Joan Baez and Pete Seeger.
On the other hand, many of those who LISTEN to country happen to be conservative, so it seems to make sense that it would draw a lot of conservative artists. But of course, there are exceptions. Willie Nelson comes to mind immediately. But I think that his political bent has only come out in the last decade or so. For years, most country artists kept silent on their personal views. Even if their personal views were liberal, they knew that many in their audience were more conservative, so their songs would reflect that.
Whereas with rock, many, if not most, of the listeners tend to be younger, so it would be natural for those who LISTEN to rock to have more leftward leanings, attracting left leaning musicians.
Of course, there will be exceptions to these rules. I happen to like some country (I like some bluegrass, and a lot of “southern rock” or “rocking country”). For instance, I’ve been on a “Big & Rich” kick, and I think Allison Krause is an angel sent from heaven. I don’t know their political leanings, and I’d prefer to keep it that way, thank you very much.
Mark
Jason Bonham (Bonzo's son) played on their recent reunion concert, and if they go on tour, I'm sure that he'll play with them.
Mark
While I can't speak for CC, Gene Simmons is a hard core, pro-defense CAPTIALIST. But I don't really know if you could call him "conservative." However, from his reality TV show, it seems that he and his long time, live in girlfriend (Playboy Playmate of the Year Shannon Tweed) have done a good job in their 20+ years together raising their 2 kids. Not the train-wrecks that we've seen in other celebrity families in their "reality TV shows." They seems like good kids, though Simmons and Tweed never married (remember what I said about "conservative?"
Mark
Absolutely. There has never been a sharp line between one genre and another. Artists like Charlie Daniels and Jimmy Buffett blur the line between rock and country. Outkast blurs the line between hip-hop and R&B. Kenny G blurs the line between pop, jazz, and insipid, unlistenable crap.
Sorry. I couldn't let that slip past.
American music is always a fusion -- Jazz is a blend of Sousa-style band music and Delta blues. Rock is a fusion of blues and country, with a generous infusion of gospel and bluegrass. The Beatles used sitars, and the Beach Boys used Theremins. Led Zeppelin's title "D'Yer Maker" is a cokney pun for "Jamaica," and that song is heavily influenced by reggae. And so on.
Music has to cross-pollinate, or it gets stale. Great musicians are the ones who seek out something new, and think "Wow, that's interesting," and then incorporate some of those ideas into their work. Even in that stodgy old long-hair classical music, composers incorporated new melodies, rhythms and instruments as they came to know about them.
As one small example -- and I could go on all day with this -- U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" was a very good song. When they added a gospel choir for "Rattle and Hum," that bumped it up to a great song.
The common thread of modern folk and country is populism -- a philosophy that straddles right and left without really neatly into either. Both are about the travails of the put-upon workin' man. That's a broad umbrella. From "This Land is Your Land" to "I've Got Friends in Low Places," the songs are for simple folk and a shot across the bow of the elites.
The common thread of modern folk and country is populism -- a philosophy that straddles right and left without really neatly into either. Both are about the travails of the put-upon workin' man. That's a broad umbrella. From "This Land is Your Land" to "I've Got Friends in Low Places," the songs are for simple folk and a shot across the bow of the elites.
I love rock. I cannot stand country.
They don't come much more conservative than me and I ***love*** the rock of the 50's and 60's.Not only that,but I ***love*** the folk music of the late 50's to mid 60's.And while there are some country songs that I love (mostly the earlier stuff) I can't say that I have much use for Country.I don't hate but it's just not my cup of tea.
Yes, you are correct. I was thinking west don't know why I typed east
Here is an unusual one:
Skunk Baxter, Doobie Brother, Counterterror Advisor
" Jeff Baxter played psychedelic music with Ultimate Spinach, jazz-rock with Steely Dan and funky pop with the Doobie Brothers. But in the last few years he has made an even bigger transition: Mr. Baxter, who goes by the nickname “Skunk,” has become one of the national-security world’s well-known counterterrorism experts."
I used to listen to The Doobie Brothers jam before they were The Doobie Brothers at a place called The Chateau in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
I’m with you ... rock over country any day.
Excellent. I was just telling my son this week that I may have seen video of that concert on YouTube. He was one year old when his mother (bless her soul) and I went to the concert.
So is Pat Dinizio of The Smithereens.
“What the world needs now, is another folk singer, like I need a hole in my head” - Cracker (Teen Angst)
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