University of Kentucky UKnowledge Music Arts and Humanities 2001 Country Music Annual 2001 Charles K. Wolfe Middle Tennessee State University James E. Akenson Tennessee Technological University Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Wolfe, Charles K. and Akenson, James E., "Country Music Annual 2001" (2001). Music. 5. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_music/5 Country Music Annual 2001 Country Music Annual 2001 Edited by unanes K. wane and James LAkensen THE UNIVERSIIY PRESS OF KJSNTUCKY Publication of this volume was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Copyright © 2001 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 05 04 03 02 01 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN 0-8131-0990-6 (pbk: alk. paper) Contents Introduction 1 Charles K. Wolfe and James E. Akenson Having the Franchise: Country Music TV from the Third Coast 4 David Black The Country Music-NASCAR Connection 26 Lawrence E. Ziewacz Performance, Faith, and Bluegrass Gospel: An Anthropological Journey with Jerry and Tammy Sullivan 51 Jack Bernhardt "Oh, What a Life a Mess Can Be": Uncle Tupelo, Bahktin, and the Dialogue of Alternative Country Music 70 S. Renee Dechert Come Prepared to Stay. Bring Fiddle: The Story of Sally Ann Forrester, the Original Bluegrass Girl 92 Murphy H. Henry There's a Little Bit of Everything in Texas: The Texas Musical Roots of Ernest Tubb 121 Ronnie Pugh How a Salvation Army Hymn Became a Gospel Standard: The Story of "The Great Judgment Morning" 134 Wayne W. Daniel Radio and the Blue Ridge 147 Joe Wilson The Carter Family's Rhythmic Asymmetry 161 Thomas Carl Townsend Country Music's Confederate Grandfather: Henry C. Gilliland 189 Kevin S. Fontenot Contributors 209 Introduction Charles K. Wolfe and James E. Akenson This second volume of the Country Music Annual continues our efforts to provide a national venue for new writing about country music. The first volume has met with a gratifying response, both from readers and from researchers, and has confirmed our belief in the need for this series. In Country Music Annual 2000 we sought to provide for scholars as well as for serious fans a collection of thoughtful and provocative discussions about a music that has taken its place in the new millennium as one of the major genres of American popular culture, a genre with deep roots in both folk and vernacular traditions. Indeed, country music has developed a dozen intriguing subgenres: it can be studied as business, as mythology, as his- tory, as musical technique, as life-style, and as art that today crosses geo- graphic, ethnic, gender, and economic lines. As this annual series has already made clear, country music is drawing serious interest from scholars in a dozen different fields. This new volume adds further to that rich diversity of scholarship. The spectrum of subjects in Country Music Annual 2001 ranges from a study of one of the first musicians to make country records, Henry Gilliland, to the current avant-garde stylings of the alternative country band Uncle Tupelo. Two important surveys explore the relationship between country music and two other major cultural forces of our time, cable television and the burgeoning popularity of NASCAR. Two chapters focus on gospel mu- sic: a study of the leading contemporary group Jerry and Tammy Sullivan 2 Wolfe and Akenson and an engaging bit of detective work about one of Roy Acuff's classic gos- pel songs. Bluegrass and gender issues are joined in new and dramatic research on a forgotten figure in bluegrass history, Sally Ann Forrester, while a more traditional approach by the definitive biographer of Ernest Tubb examines his Texas musical influences. A native of the Blue Ridge Moun- tains who now heads up the nations largest traditional arts organization merges personal recollections with scholarship to explain radios impact on the music of that area. The subject spectrum also includes a rigorous and detailed analysis of the musical style of the most famous singing group from the Appalachians, the Carter Family. These ten articles chosen to constitute Country Music Annual 2001 re- flect our continued conception of "country music" in broad terms. We view this cultural phenomenon as musical styles sharing common historical, cultural, and demographic roots. We continue to encourage traditional his- torical and cultural studies, as well as musicological analyses, studies of lyric themes and techniques, of media involvement, of gender roles, song histories, biographies and studies of career development, and field research. We continue to invite letters of inquiry, and we continue to invite commen- tary and feedback from articles included in these annual issues. A cordial forum for reading versions of new papers, as well as for discussing ideas and plans, is provided at the International Country Music Conference, held annually at Belmont University in Nashville. Many of the papers in this issue of the Annual were first read in a preliminary form at that conference. We also hope to establish a regular schedule that will see publication of Country Music Annual in the late spring of each year. The editors take pride in announcing an advisory board for the Coun- try Music Annual. These distinguished scholars have agreed to share their expertise with the editors and on occasion to serve as readers or referees for papers submitted. The board includes Bill C. Malone, recently retired from Tulane University and recognized as the dean of country music scholars; Nolan Porterfield, the widely respected writer of the definitive biographies of Jimmie Rodgers and John Lomax; William K. McNeil, of the Ozark Folk Center in Mountain View, Arkansas, whose many books and articles have made him one of the nation's premier authorities on traditional song; Joli Jensen, whose book The Nashville Sound has established her as one of the country's leading young scholars; Jimmie Rogers, of the University of Ar- kansas, whose Country Music Message broke new ground in the study of song lyrics; Curtis Ellison, author of the influential volume Country Music Introduction 3 Culture; and Wayne W Daniel, whose Pickin' on Peachtree and many other writings have made him a leading authority on early country and gospel music. Together this group represents a broad range of experience and exper- tise, and we are honored to have them involved in the Country Music Annual. Having the franchise Country Music TV from the Third Coast David Black "The Nashville Network is dead." The September 2000 Tennessean article reporting The Nashville Networks (TNN) demise clearly read like an obitu- ary in describing the network's final transition to New York-based control and severing of its symbolic connection to the city of Nashville (Shiffman and Lawson 2000). That final development ended a process beginning four years earlier, a process that continually moved the network away from coun- try music programming and Nashville-based management. In February 1997 Gaylord Entertainment sold TNN and Country Music Television video net- work (CMT) to Westinghouse-owned CBS in a strategy to redirect Gaylord away from cable television programming and distribution and toward Internet-based digital media services (Lawson, 1; Katz, 10). The sale repre- sented a break in continuity of ownership reaching back to TNN's begin- nings in 1982. It also represented the loss for Nashville of two national media outlets. The acquisition of CBS by Viacom in May 2000 further ac- celerated TNN's transformation. The development of TNN and CMT in the early 1980s placed Nashville with other media centers in the newly emerg- ing practice of national cable television networking. With the rebranding of TNN to The National Network, this study looks back on those begin- nings as examples of the major shift taking place from broadcasting to cable and how Nashville-based companies used their country music resources to become major players in that new activity. Having the Franchise 5 WSM, Country Music, and Television Readily identified as "Music City U.S.A.," Nashville's growth as a major media and entertainment center reaches back over seventy years to both broadcasting and country music's formative period. In the mid 1920s, the National Life and Accident Insurance Company began broadcasting its own radio barn dance program, later named the Grand Ole Opry, through its radio station, WSM. The Opry eventually became radio's most popular coun- try music show and directly influenced the development of Nashville as an international center for country music recording and as a tourist destina- tion (Wolfe 1977, 93-109). WSM began television broadcasting service in 1950 and soon became active in country music television production. Through the 1970s, WSM either produced or was involved in the produc- tion of many syndicated television programs, often in collaboration with Nashville-based syndicator Show Biz Inc. Some of those programs included The Porter Wagoner Show, That Good Ole Nashville Music, Pop! Goes The Coun- try, and Dolly. WSM made a major commitment to country music television program production in the early 1970s when it constructed the multimil- lion dollar Opryland complex which included a theme park, hotel, a new Opry House auditorium, television studios, and the development of a pro- duction unit, Opryland Productions.