Black Country Music(S) and The
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“THAT BLACK SPECK SOUND JUST LIKE A REDNECK”: BLACK COUNTRY MUSIC(S) AND THE (RE-)MAKING OF RACE AND GENRE MASTERARBEIT im Fach „English and American Literatures, Cultures, and Media” mit dem Abschlussziel Master of Arts der Philosophischen Fakultät der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel vorgelegt von Hendrik Burfeind Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Christian Huck Zweitgutachter: Dr. Dennis Büscher-Ulbrich Kiel im April 2020 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction 1 2. Theoretical Framework 2.1 Race, Racialization, and Ideology 8 2.2 Genre and Crossover 10 2.3 Articulation and Genre 15 2.4 On Hijacks, Covers, and Versions 16 3. “Just Out of Reach”: Locating the Soul/Country Binary 3.1 The South and the Geography of Genre(s) 19 3.2 Richard Nixon, “Okie from Muskogee,” and the Politics of Country Music 22 3.3 The ‘Segregation of Sound’ and the ‘Common Stock’ 25 3.4 Charting Success; Or, the Segregation of Sound, Continued 28 4. Analysis, Pt. 1: Rhythm and Country 4.1 “I’ve Always Been Country”: The Making of an Alternative Tradition 31 4.2 Country Music and the Birth of Soul 35 4.3 The Impossibility of Black Country 37 4.4 Modern Sounds and the Same Old Song 39 4.5 Interlude: Race and Genre in the Early 1960s 44 4.6 Country-Soul Flourishes 46 5. Analysis, Pt. 2: Country-Soul 5.1 “Country Music Now Interracial” 48 5.2 Crossover at the Outskirts of Town 50 5.3 Introducing Soul Country 53 5.4 “The Chokin’ Kind” Explores New Territory 57 5.5 “Blacks Sing Country Music” 60 5.6 “Wherever You Go, It’s Simon Country” 64 6. Analysis, Pt. 3: Black Country 6.1 “Country Music Gets Soul”: Linda Martell 67 6.2 “I Wanna Go Country”: Otis Williams 70 6.3 The Return of the Country Repressed: Stoney Edwards 73 6.4 “Black Speck”: O.B. McClinton 80 7. Conclusion and Outlook 87 Appendix Discography a Bibliography c Deutschsprachige Zusammenfassung der Arbeit o Erklärung s 1. INTRODUCTION You can take a black guy to Nashville from right out of the cotton fields with bib overalls and two watermelons in his back pockets, and they will call him R&B. You can take a white guy in a pinstripe suit who has never seen a cotton field, take him into Nashville right out of a subway in Manhattan, and they will call him country.1 In this infamous statement from 1986, country musician O.B. McClinton draws critical attention to the racial politics of American popular music. As one of the most long-stand- ing African American performers in country music, McClinton experienced first-hand the seemingly commonsensical classification of artists according to their ‘race.’ It is this ap- parent obviousness that his sarcastic comment aims at. While country music is famously invested in authenticity and its own countryness, it is often ambiguous about what that means, i.e. who gets to be regarded as country and in what way. As McClinton’s comment implies, and as country music history since at least the early 1960s has suggested, it is easier for the genre to transcend class and regional boundaries (pointedly symbolized by McClinton’s white-collar New Yorker) than it is to deconstruct its overwhelming white- ness. Although many of the genre’s proponents have long claimed country music to be open to change, its racial politics seem to be rather rigid. A look at two recent examples will illustrate that even today discussions surrounding the topic are characterized by such contradictions. In September 2019, famed documentarian Ken Burns debuted his latest film. While his earlier works were concerned with popular topics like the Civil War, the Vi- etnam War, baseball, and jazz, his most recent endeavor, Country Music, tackles a musi- cal genre that rarely receives such extended treatment.2 At 16 hours in length, the docu- mentary introduces its audience to the cornerstones of the genre’s almost 100-year re- cording history. Yet, some viewers were quick to point out that Burns tells the story of a genre that has frequently courted controversy in a way that leaves out critical voices. Thus, the documentary – whose interviewees are mostly country musicians, songwriters, and producers – can also be seen as an exposé of the narratives that the country music industry likes to tell about itself. Among these is its relation to the issue of ‘race.’ Country Music addresses, for example, the role of segregation in the genre’s commercial birth, the Afri- can American mentors of some of its most celebrated artists, and the difficult rise to fame of African American singer Charley Pride in the late 1960s. However, it hardly engages with the common perception of these topics as being mostly problematic or significant from a historical perspective. Consequently, Pride’s story appears to highlight country music’s openness to change while simultaneously affirming its alleged rootedness in 1 Quoted in Gerry Wood, “Nashville Scene,” Billboard (November 15, 1986): 34–35, 35. 2 Country Music, dir. Ken Burns (PBS, 2019). 1 white, working-class experience. A few months before the release of Burns’s documentary, country music had found itself at the center of a discussion that had thrown such assumptions into relief when a song by a previously unknown rapper from Georgia, Lil Nas X, rocketed to the Top 20 of Billboard’s country charts. Featuring straightforward lyrics full of traditional country imagery set to a loping trap beat, “Old Town Road” was promptly ejected from the charts based on its supposedly non-country music.3 The following months produced a number of articles pointing out the allegedly racist nature of the decision, emphasizing the number of white artists who had successfully charted with similar musical hybrids. Although some of these articles drew attention to the arbitrariness on which our percep- tion of the world of music – through the lens of genre – is often based, the decision was mostly seen as a result of the bigotry of the country music industry. Yet, as Joshua Clover points out in a discussion of “Old Town Road,” genres are already at once musicological, ideological, and market categories. The idea that sounds make genres and the idea that genres have worldviews are not mutually exclusive, and much of the non-conscious work of genre goes to aligning these two ideas until they seem like one, allowing the resulting products to seek their proper markets in a way that seems natural.4 Clover indicates how the juxtaposition offered by Lil Nas X, as well as the discussion it prompted, can help to understand the complicated terrain of genre and ‘race.’ While the last decade has seen more African American artists top the country charts than any time before, it is not certain that this has actually changed the genre, or in what way. After all, the current wave of African American country singers that appeared in the wake of Darius Rucker’s first hit in 2008 is not without historical parallel.5 Charley Pride’s rise to fame in the late 1960s was (and, as Burns’s Country Music shows, continues to be) seen as opening the gates for non-white people to perform country music. Indeed, as I will argue, this historical conjuncture appears especially instructive to explore the complex linkages between ‘race’ and genre. More so than the current opposition between country and rap, that era’s popular dichotomy of country versus soul music illustrates, for example, the significant overlap between parts of these genres as well as the processes by which they were obscured. In this respect, it is noteworthy that around the same time that African American artists started to be a continuous (although still unusual) presence on the coun- try music charts, the genre’s popular perception – and its assumed politics – tilted toward 3 Hubert Adjei-Kontoh, “Lil Nas’ song was removed from Billboard for not being ‘country’ enough. But who gets to decide categories?” The Guardian (April 2, 2019). Online: <https://theguardian.com/mu- sic/2019/apr/02/lil-nas-song-removed-from-billboard-not-country-enough> (March 4, 2020). 4 Joshua Clover, “The High Rise and the Hollow,” Commune (April 24, 2019). Online: <https://com- munemag.com/the-high-rise-and-the-hollow/> (accessed October 18, 2019). 5 David Cantwell, “What Country Music Owes to Charley Pride,” The New Yorker (February 22, 2019). Online: <https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/what-country-music-owes-to-charley-pride> (accessed October 20, 2019). 2 the sort of white ‘backlash’ voters associated with Richard Nixon’s constituency, the so- called silent majority.6 In this thesis I will analyze the way such tensions and the narratives they are at- tached to can highlight prominent ideas about ‘race’ and genre – as well as, by extension, class, region, and values – in popular culture. Although the American South is commonly depicted as the breeding ground for country music, the genre’s audience (and historical nucleus) is usually defined in more narrow terms. Such portrayals regularly exclude the role of non-white southerners, most notably African Americans – who made up a consid- erable part of the southern population. While there is no empirical data to contradict that definition, there is strong anecdotal evidence suggesting the appeal of country music to African American audiences. In addition to artists who made a career performing country music, there are numerous musicians in R&B and soul for whom country served as an important source of inspiration.7 These performers, many of whom were later grouped under the umbrella term ‘country-soul,’ further amplify the aforementioned tensions by, for example, making successful showings on the R&B or soul charts with songs previ- ously identified as country.8 The fact that quite a few of these also crossed over into the pop charts – but never into the country charts – reinforces questions about the dichotomy of country and soul.