It was still called that when I was a boy, but by the time I got to college I think everyone just said "country." Maybe that was because I was always near the East Coast, where there weren't many cowboys or Western Swing. We had the Circle 9 Ranch outside Concord that would bring in acts from all over, including folks like Loretta Lynn and Marty Robbins, but that was rare, and NH was clearly filler dates for them. What we called country included fiddlers from Quebec or contra and square dance music. Most of the people trying to make a living at it in this area crossed over into other genres a lot - not only gospel, folk, and various old-timey music, but show tunes or minstrel, and of course anything that had been in a cowboy movie. Not much blues, and bluegrass really didn't come in outside of a narrow part of Appalachia until the early 60s anyway, though there was something like it called hillbilly music.
It only dawned on people gradually that the above was country music, because it predated any clear categorisation.
There was a fun book from couple of decades ago that was a cross between academic and popular, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity. IIRC, it felt both like he was being condescending but also enjoying the ride. Looking him up, he was a not a C&W fan, but came to Vanderbilt (okay, heh) as a sociology prof and studied people in the industry in Nashville. I passed the book on to my brother, I recall, who started his career touring with rock bands and still loves rock, but had few illusions about the industry...
I lived through the unexpected but probably inevitable union of country and rock music, and so am probably too close to it to see it without stepping back and doing some boring research. Bob Dylan, John Sebastian, Credence Clearwater, Allman Brothers, Flying Burrito Brothers leaning in to country; all the electronic equipment-heavy instrumentalists and performers - Les Paul, Chet Atkins, Glen Campbell, Roy Clark - leaning back. It looked like a great marriage, but then you look and see that all the bridesmaids and groomsmen - gospel, blues, folk, rockabilly - are drunk and sitting at tables alone with no one asking them to dance anymore.
And then the children of country rock look awesome at first and are outselling their parents at every stop. But then the grandchildren...kind of weak tea, most of them. Chasing $.
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So here's a fun thing about the Music of the People. In Europe, the classical composers took up the folk music of the countryside and made it national: Dvorak, Bartok, Sibelius, Grieg, Wagner. Composers tried to do this in America, but were swimming against the current.
There's a plaque for Jimmie Rodgers in Asheville. He gets mentioned occasionally in songs even yet -- Coulter Wall, featured in one of those clips from yesterday, references his "Blue Yodel #9" in one of his pieces. Waylon Jennings mentioned him at the beginning of "Waymore's Blues" almost fifty years ago, and even then he said, "Jimmie he's dead, he's been a long time gone." But he's still remembered.
ReplyDeleteAs the barmaid at Bob's Country Bunker in The Blues Brothers got right, "Country" and "Western" are two genres of music -- they just often were enjoyed by the same people. Marty Robbins got in trouble with his label because he wanted to record a Western album -- "Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs" -- and they thought it wouldn't sell because he was an established Country performer. They finally gave him one day of studio time to do it after he protested enough. He and his band recorded the whole album in the single day allotted. One of the songs, "El Paso," went to #1 on the country charts. Then it went to #1 on the pop charts. Then it stayed there for about a year.
He made enough off the royalties of that one day's work to cover his whole life, his children's and his grandchildren's.
There was a good 2017 PBS series on 1920s projects to record music on-site...including many performers who had previously been only locally known..using newly-developed portable recording machines, which were vacuum tube amplifiers, with a weight-driven device to power the recording turntable. "The pulley allowed approximately three and a half minutes to record before the weight hit the floor. The calibration of the lathe has determined the length of the pop single to this day." The production team for the series re-created and used such a machine.
ReplyDeleteWorthwhile watching and listening.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_American_Epic_Sessions
Here's the website for the series:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.americanepic.com/
On the subject of authenticity, there's a parallel debate on the subject of Scottish culture -- a related subject, given how many of the people involved in Appalachian culture are descended primarily from Scots (sometimes called 'Scots-Irish,' but meaning Scots who passed through Northern Ireland's plantationing by the Stewarts kings before coming to America). A lot of the markers of 'authentic' Scottish culture turn out to be late inventions: 'clan tartans,' for example, were imposed from on high in the industrial era; the short kilt is a British military innovation for its Scottish regiments, not an authentic product of Scottish culture; pipe and drum bands likewise; etc. Other things like the Highland Games or haggis are legitimately old, but have forms that have been influenced by popularization or commercialization.
ReplyDeleteThere's a useful philosophical debate over what (if anything) counts as 'authentic,' and whether or not authenticity is in fact a good thing that ought to be desired or sought.
Chuckling. I have thought that a lot of the young people complaining about cultural appropriation are just posturing to show that they know more about a culture than you do. And debates about authenticity rapidly deteriorate into "Have you ever been to Spain?"
ReplyDelete"Well, I've been to Madrid."
"Oh my dear, you haven't been to Spain!"
To paraphrase CS Lewis, everything is an authentic something, even if it's an authentic forgery.
"Authentic" ranks high among misused and overused words, at least when food is being discussed. It has almost no meaning now other than "what my Mama cooked when I was growing up". That can't be replicated because we can't (or don't choose to) replicate many of the ingredients available to Mama nor the "authentic" appetites we took to the supper table with us.
ReplyDeleteI suspect my paternal grandmother's technique for chicken and dumplings is authentic to 1930s rural Arkansas. It's easy to remember too - kill a chicken, remove the feathers, toss it into a pot with some onion and whatever other seasoning available and boil it until the meat is falling off the bones. Toss in some biscuit dough, boil it some more, and serve. BTW, her biscuits were tough little hockey pucks except in this (and other stews), but they were no doubt "authentic".
WRT authentic: Some years ago the Field Museum had an interesting exhibit in the hall of gems: old coins, with a section devoted to forgeries.
ReplyDeleteOne of the forgeries came from South America. It was a gilded coin--but the gilding was over platinum. I don't know if there was a large disparity in value back then, or if they were smuggling.
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ReplyDeleteGood music post. The similarities and differences between Rodgers and blues of the same era are interesting. They are more similar than country and blues today, certainly.
ReplyDeleteAs for authentic, I'm not a fan of the category. I had this discussion about Native American dance with a friend. We were in the audience and in the modern category many of the dancers had neon colored feathers and whatnot. He laughed at them for not being authentic. This kind of dance is living culture, though, so of course the current generation would add their bit to it. What's authentic there? Being true to the way it was done 100 years ago, or people expressing their culture today?
Plus, financially, authentic often just means "stuff too expensive for the working class to buy". Any working class stiff can buy a mass-produced piece of "Navajo" pottery, but only the wealthier can afford the "authentic" work.