Country Update

Country Update BILLBOARD.COM/NEWSLETTERS SEPTEMBER 3, 2019 | PAGE 1 OF 20 INSIDE BILLBOARD COUNTRY UPDATE [email protected] Moore, Midland Reign On Charts Ken Burns, Blanco Brown And >page 4 Country’s Decreasing Racial Barriers Underdogs Impact CMA Noms When Ken Burns’ PBS series Country Music premieres on country has spent any time acknowledging, sort of collectively.” >page 10 Sept. 15, the eight-part documentary will explore multiple Eight years in the making, the 16.5-hour production of storylines in the genre’s rise from rural niche format to Country Music arrives during a chaotic cultural period. More mainstream plank. than half of Americans believe the current president is a racist, One of the plot threads most likely to surprise — even shock — according to multiple polls, and white supremacist actions led to Jake Owen To Visit casual viewers is the prevalence of black influence in an idiom a brutal death at a 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Va., plus mass Post-Dorian Florida that has long been referred to as “the white man’s blues.” shootings at a Charleston, S.C., church in 2015 and an El Paso, >page 11 Burns’ series Texas, shopping recounts how mall in 2019. black musicians But at the taught or assisted same time, the Roger Miller’s such pioneering countr y genre ‘Morning’ Brew figures as The has become more >page 11 Carter Family, open to black Hank Williams, assimilation. Jimmie Rodgers Such artists of Makin’ Tracks: and Bill Monroe. color as Darius Rodney Atkins I t r e m i n d s Rucker, Jimmie Gives Thanks viewers how Elvis Allen and Kane >page 15 Presley broke Brown all have out through earned recent BROWN BURNS PRIDE cou nt r y a f ter country hits. appropriating Blanco Brown’s Country Coda: elements of R&B and the blues. It shows how Ray Charles “The Git Up” has topped Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart Jason Aldean brought country to popular culture by repackaging songs for eight weeks. The Fisk Jubilee Singers provided prominent Goes ‘Green’ with soul and jazz arrangements in an era of segregation. And backing vocals on Rodney Atkins’ RIAA-certified gold single >page 20 it traces the subsequent rise of Charley Pride, who endured “Caught Up in the Country.” And Lil Nas X received a Country racial slurs and a skeptical industry to become country’s first Music Association Award nomination along with Billy Ray black hitmaker. Cyrus on Aug. 28 for “Old Town Road,” a title that reignited “This is super important,” says Burns. “It’s nothing that long-standing arguments about country’s boundaries. MELLISH CRAIG PRIDE: KAVIAR. J. BROWN: BILLBOARD COUNTRY UPDATE SEPTEMBER 3, 2019 | PAGE 2 OF 20 Even in that era, white musicians liberally borrowed ideas from their black counterparts — the musical roots of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” for example, originated in a spiritual hymn. “I grew up a musician, and we didn’t care [about race],” said Vince Gill while praising the PBS series to an industry crowd at a party for his recently released album Okie. “I loved Ray Charles as much as I love Ray Price. None of that stuff ever mattered to me, and to see it matter to other people is hurtful. It’s so pointless.” But separatism remains a cultural flashpoint, fueled in part by the divide between urban and rural living. While growing up in a split family, Blanco Brown was exposed to hip-hop in city neighborhoods and to country when he resided on a farm. Although others might have exacerbated the differences, he found a way to fuse them. “The gene pool cries out for diversity; tribal tradition cries out for sameness,” Vince Gill performed “Forever Changed” on NBC’s Today on Aug. 27 as jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis says in Country Music. “America, we’re caught he promotes his new album, Okie. From left are co-host Jill Martin, Gill in between those two things. So our music has ended up being segregated. and co-hosts Al Roker and Stephanie Gosk. And that’s not what the origins of the music would leave you to believe would be its trajectory.” Thus, as some of the loudest voices on the national stage encourage Indeed, though early country and the blues both spoke the language of demeaning racial behaviors, it can be argued that a quiet majority is rejecting disenfranchised poor people, the music was marketed under different terms those outdated ideals and adopting more inclusive attitudes, with their — “race” music and “hillbilly” — and those categories have been handed musical tastes leading the way. It’s evident not only in the increasing country down across generations, creating an artificial barrier that has been difficult penetration by minorities, but also in the format’s audio mélange, which finds to transcend. acts like Thomas Rhett, Sam Hunt and Florida Georgia Line successfully In the era of mixed-genre streaming playlists and push buttons that allow infusing their brands of country with soul and hip-hop influences. radio listeners to jump formats in a snap, the divisions seem to be dissolving, “I think this [represents] most of rural America,” says new Sony Music white supremacists be damned. Nashville artist Niko Moon, who blends urban drums and bass with country “Commerce and convenience wants to in-silo and categorize,” says Burns. lyrics and instruments. “Everybody is doing their thing, and they’re switching “It’s very understandable. We’ve got a tsunami of information breaking over us back and forth between Post Malone and Luke Bryan, you know. The lines at every moment. Of course, categorization is important, and we understand it. are getting so torn down at this point.” “But we waste so much time reminding [ourselves] that we’ve got these Burns and his associates could not have known when they started work on differences, right? ‘Oh, you’re from a different part of the country.’ ‘Oh, you’ve Country Music in 2010 how significant race would be in the 2019 cultural got an accent.’ ‘Oh, you’re tall.’ ‘Oh, you’re short.’ ‘Oh, you’re rich.’ ‘Oh, you’re landscape. Barack Obama was in his second year as the nation’s first black poor.’ You’re gay, you’re straight, you’re black, you’re white, you’re male, you’re president, and some citizens believed that racism was a thing of the past. female, you’re whatever it is. We’re 99.99% the same, and that means the But the issue has played a role in many of Burns’ previous Florentine Films music — which is, by [songwriter] Harlan Howard, called three chords and the documentaries — including The Civil War, Baseball, Jazz and Vietnam —and truth — reaches every single one of us if we open our hearts and our ears.” it was only natural that his team would explore its connection to country. “We’ve been making documentaries about American history for 30, 40 years, and anybody that looks at American history knows that race is part of that unfolding story of America,” says Country Music script writer Dayton Duncan. “We didn’t go looking for it. It’s there.” It’s woven into the series from its very start. The banjo, one of the hallmarks of country, originated in Africa. Spiritual songs, which provided a form of escape for slaves in Southern fields, influenced the tone of hillbilly ballads sung by white sharecroppers. And producer Ralph Peer guided the first regional country hit, Fiddlin’ John Carson’s “The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane,” while looking for blues artists to record during a trip to Atlanta in 1923. Lesley Riddle, a black guitar player, joined A.P. Carter on numerous trips into the hills of Tennessee and Virginia to find mountain songs. He learned Interscope artist Dylan Schneider (center) celebrated his label’s them and catalogued them, and he taught Maybelle Carter a guitar technique partnership with Florida Georgia Line’s Round Here label as he opens that became revolutionary among early country musicians. for the duo on tour. He’s joined by FGL’s Brian Kelley (left) and Tyler “I will preach from the top of the mountain that Lesley Riddle should be in Hubbard. the Country Music Hall of Fame,” John Carter Cash, Maybelle’s grandson, told Billboard Country Update. Other early country artists had their own African-American mentors who inspired their playing or even their pursuit of live performance. “I would say at least half of these artists in the early days of country music had that same encounter in which they met a black songster and thought, ‘I know what I want to do,’ ” says Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor in the documentary. “And the torch was passed.” Black-and-white photos in the Country Music documentary show both races playing the same instruments in poor, back-porch settings, though society’s cruel divide would be reflected in country for decades. Carson was known to perform for KKK gatherings and Communists in addition to farm families and politicians. Blackface comedy was common, even at the Grand Ole Opry, where black harmonica player DeFord Bailey was popular Trisha Walker International founder Trisha Walker-Cunningham (left) during the show’s first decade. Bailey could not stay at the same hotels as was one of seven honorees at the Aug. 27 SOURCE Nashville Awards, The Delmore Brothers when he toured with them, thanks to segregation. recognizing women in the music business. She is joined by (from left) And Opry GM George D. Hay eventually fired him in a dispute over his event co-host Brenda Lee, SiriusXM personality Charlie Monk and co- repertoire, deriding Bailey as “lazy.” host Jeannie Seely.

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