Kristine M. McCusker. Lonesome Cowgirls and Honky Tonk Angels: The Women of Barn Dance Radio. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. Plates. xi + 194 pp. $19.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-252-07524-7.
Reviewed by Stacy Spaulding
Published on Jhistory (November, 2008)
Commissioned by Donna Harrington-Lueker (Salve Regina University)
If you grew up in the South like I did, sitting After initially examining barn dance radio's cross-legged on the living room foor while the early roots in vaudeville and Appalachian "local- grandparents watched Hee-Haw or the Grand Ole color writers," McCusker focuses each chapter of Opry, you won't be able to resist the winsome title Lonesome Cowgirls on a diferent performer and of this book, Lonesome Cowgirls and Honky-Tonk the unique way she helped build the genre of Angels. Author Kristine M. McCusker presents country music and barn dance radio. McCusker here a collective biography of eight radio per‐ writes that LuLu Belle Wiseman's deployment of formers that also outlines a cultural history of the sentimental mother stereotype was key to early industry practices in country music and ra‐ building a relationship with a larger audience as dio. National Barn Dance Radio experimented with commercial practices and transcended regional McCusker, an assistant professor of history at programming. The yodeling sales pitches of the Middle Tennessee State University, frst wrote Golden Girls of the West, Milly and Dolly Good, about this subject in A Boy Named Sue: Gender blended entertainment and sponsorship into a and Country Music (2004), a book she coedited modern "soft sell" that masqueraded as homage to with Diane Pecknold. In one of the book's essays, simpler times. "Banjo Pickin' Girl" Lily Mae Led‐ McCusker wrote about radio performer Linda ford's performance at the White House for British Parker's on-stage image as a wholesome moun‐ royalty in 1939, alongside black performers, such tain girl and a singer of Southern ballads, an im‐ as Marian Anderson, illustrates the challenges in‐ age that reinforced a middle-class gender ideology herent in the Roosevelts' attempts to create a new of purity and tradition. McCusker returns to the national identity that transcended such social subject in her new work and expands it to include conficts as racism. the lives of other early female radio performers. H-Net Reviews
Furthermore, the career of Sarah Colley Can‐ member using them, do we know they commonly non (whose on-stage persona was Minnie Pearl, happened? At another point in the book, Mc‐ the old-maid mountain girl comedienne) provides Cusker quotes at length from the letter of an audi‐ a fascinating look at how one performer blended ence member asking Wiseman not to sing any her on- and of-stage personas, despite their dif‐ jazz. McCusker concludes, "Here, jazz represented ferences in class and circumstances. The career of the interracial mingling of whites and blacks, Rose Lee Maphis demonstrates the genre's transi‐ which LuLu Belle hinted at when she sang jazz" tion from national appeal back to regional radio (p. 64). This statement may have validity, but it is and diminished audiences. Finally, McCusker ex‐ drawn from assumptions that are not made ex‐ amines the similarities between these women and plicit by the quoted portion of the letter. one of the most famous female country stars to There are few published works on the women come later, Loretta Lynn, and suggests that her ca‐ of country music history (a search of the Universi‐ reer and on-stage persona were molded by the ty of Maryland statewide library found only fve women who came before her. books that specifcally addressed the topic). Lone‐ McCusker's sources include Grand Ole Opry some Cowgirls flls this empty space nicely with archival material, oral interviews that she con‐ an approach that is not just biographical, but also ducted, other unpublished recordings, and even grounded in a contemporary emphasis on the his‐ one woman's handwritten autobiography. A domi‐ tory of public images, popular culture, race, class, nant theme of the book is its examination of the and gender. Teachers of broadcast history will relationship between stereotypical rural imagery fnd that the themes in this book resonate with (such as the independent cowgirl or the ballad- cultural histories of women and radio, such as Ra‐ crooning sentimental mother) and the commer‐ dio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922-1952 by cial demands of appeasing show sponsors, audi‐ Michele Hilmes (1997). Indeed, Lonesome Cow‐ ences, and managers. "Performers walked a mine‐ girls provides a complementary (though more feld between portraying rural images on stage narrowly focused) perspective to Hilmes's profles and the modern business routines that supported of radio pioneers and her examination of the them," she writes (p. 3). Yet these women were ways stereotypical images both concealed and ex‐ successful, McCusker argues, because their stage posed existing power hierarchies. personas concealed commercial pitches, provided At the very least, this book may give readers a a diversion from the fnancial straits of the Great new appreciation for the country variety shows Depression, and helped create a new national that are still successful today, such as Prairie identity, all while providing what fans perceived Home Companion, in which storyteller Garrison as a "wholesome" alternative to the "demoraliz‐ Keillor masterfully deploys the stereotype of the ing" encroachment of jazz. Norwegian bachelor farmer for laughs while If a fault is to be found with this book, it is revering his old-time values. Listen closely and perhaps that McCusker occasionally makes an as‐ you might hear Minnie Pearl, the Grand Ole sumption that is not grounded in the evidence Opry's old maid gossip, giggling too. presented. Drawing on an oral interview she con‐ ducted with Maphis, for example, McCusker dis‐ “ cusses management practices and asserts that "women found subtle ways to mute that exploita‐ ” tion, devices so subtle that Maphis did not remem‐ ber using them" (p. 134). If Maphis did not re‐
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Citation: Stacy Spaulding. Review of McCusker, Kristine M. Lonesome Cowgirls and Honky Tonk Angels: The Women of Barn Dance Radio. Jhistory, H-Net Reviews. November, 2008.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=22812
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