Country-Western Music and the Urban Hillbilly Author(s): D. K. Wilgus Source: The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 83, No. 328, The Urban Experience and Folk Tradition (Apr. - Jun., 1970), pp. 157-179 Published by: American Folklore SocietyAmerican Folklore Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/539105 Accessed: 02/09/2010 18:40 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. 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WILGUS Country-WesternMusic and the UrbanHillbilly' COUNTRY-WESTERN MUSICis currentlyone of the most importantfacets of the entertainmentindustry. It owes its statusand respectlargely to financialsuccess, like most of the populararts of America.Indeed, to call country-westernmusic simplyone form of Americanpopular music is to makebut one of the myriadand apparentlycontradictory statements that have been made aboutits origins, devel- opment, function, and significance.The history of this music and our attitudes towardit reflectthe contradictionsin the Americancharacter; that is, in the char- acterof the country-westernaudience, the urbanhillbilly. The dichotomyin the term "urbanhillbilly" expressesboth the polarization of city and countryand the accommodationof values representedin the hybridi- zation of country-westernmusic. I use the word "hillbilly"in all of its connota- tions-including Appalachian,southern, and backwoodsor country-for theyrep- resent but degreesof the same conceptand culture,and the differentshades of meaning accountfor much that seems contradictoryabout the music and its his- tory. Thus my topic cannotbe narrowlyconcerned with migrantsfrom the south- ern mountainsto the northernmetropolis; and, while it deals largely with the industrializationand urbanizationof the southernregions, it is concernedulti- matelywith the urbanizationof the United States.The Southin generaland the Appalachiansand Ozarksin particularentered the game late, after their frontier folkwayshad developedand solidifiedfor a longer period than elsewherein the country.The shockof urbanization,therefore, was greaterand the reactionmore extreme. The musicgrowing out of the urbanizationof the Southwas basedon a num- ber of traditions,many of them folk and regional,which were able to interact under a minimum of the standardizinginfluences exerted by the commercial music business.Yet for more than three decadescountry-western music has been intimately connectedwith the media of commercialentertainment. For these reasonsit is, indeed, a laboratoryfor the study of some aspectsof the American 1 This paper was accompanied by the playing of a sound tape containing musical illustrations. The opening "theme" was "Detroit City," Bobby Bare, RCA Victor 8183 (I957). Subsequent footnotes will cite recordings, portions of which were played to illustrate points made in the paper. 158 D. K. WILGUS character,particularly those relatedto the urbanizationof the ruralfolkways. Be- causeof the late collectionand studyof Americanfolklore and becauseof limita- tions in scholarlyoutlook, conclusionsconcerning the earlyhistory and develop- ment of folk music in the United Statesare in many respectsconjectural. Too often we must reconstructthe developmentby analysisof the very materialswe need to understandin orderto explainthe development.We mayconclude, how- ever, that the earlymigration of Britishfolk musicto the United Stateswas rela- tively uniform, but that by the end of the eighteenthcentury the North was re- ceiving newer materialand newer styles than the South and was under pressure to conformto emergingurban "popular" styles and to acceptthe productsof the growing urbancommercial entertainment industry. The South,on the otherhand, tended to preserveand develop the older styles and to createits own materials because of its isolation from urban music. Consequentlynorthern folk music eroded away;either it was lost completely,or it remainedin vertical,family tra- ditions, while performancestyles more and more approximatedurban norms- with the exceptionof certainpockets of geographicalor occupationalisolation. In spite of oversimplification,this summaryis broadlyaccurate. But oversimpli- ficationin this case can lead to misunderstanding.It neglects almost totally the interrelationof folk and popularmusic in the North, a developmentgenerally neglectedin Americanfolk and culturalstudies. More important, it misrepresents the kind of isolationthat operatedin the South and the SouthernAppalachians. To use the Appalachiansas the extremeexample, our summaryperpetuates the notion that settlers flockedinto the valleys and coves and then got stuck there. It would be more accurateto note that the settlersnot only went where they did becausethey wanted to go but stayed there becausethey wanted to stay. They could have left. Many of them did, and many of them returned.By and large, the inhabitantsof Appalachiawere subjectedneither to total geographicalisola- tion nor to totally involuntarycultural isolation. That is to say, their geographical and industrialposition permittedthem to develop a degree of culturalisolation but did not preventcontact with elementsof the dominantand developingAmer- ican culture;their position made it possible for them to accept,reject, or modify manyof its elements. Thus, by the middle of the nineteenthcentury the South-approximatelythe area below Route 4o-had preservedand developeda frontieragrarian culture. This culturewas not uniformin all regions,no morethan it was uniformwithin any smallerarea or community.The regionaldifferences in the cultureare related to variousmusical styles and materialsin early hillbilly music. But there was a uniformityin culturethat was in turn reflectedin musicof the folk. The culture valued independence,self-suffciency, honor, and loyalty (particularlyto kin). The family was the economicand social unit, and childrenwere economically profitable.The economydepended primarily on subsistenceagriculture. Though the culture was work-oriented, life was attuned to natural rhythms, and leisure existed for traditional noneconomic pursuits. The frontier penchant for drink, violence, and rebellion was complemented by an evangelical religion dominated by the Old Testament. A rigid, patriarchal morality was accompanied by a deep drive for individualistic expression. Indeed, the society was one of extremes: so- COUNTRY-WESTERN MUSIC AND THE URBAN HILLBILLY 159 brietyand drunkenness,piety and hellraising,daily stoicism and orgiasticreligious revivals. One makes statementsabout the folk music of this culture with extreme caution. The secular musical tradition was almost completely domestic, per- formed by nonprofessionals.The repertoryincluded both Old World and native Americanmaterials, though it is not possible to demonstratewhen some of the latter entered the tradition. Few old ballads native to the area have survived. Performance,excepting shaped-notesinging, was monophonic;melodies were largelymodal, sung with considerableornamentation and rhythmicfreedom. The only instrumentin wide use was the fiddle, and probablyonly for frolic music. The attitudetoward secular music in general and the fiddle in particularvaried from completetoleration to total rejectionon religious grounds. But there was a strong,conservative tradition with ancientroots.2 A seriesof culturalshocks and alterationsbegan with the Civil War. Of course the music and the culturaltradition of which it was a part had not been com- pletely static,even in deepestback country, but changenow becameincreasingly rapid. We can date economicchanges, we can date song texts, but we cannot date changesin musical styles or even the introductionof musical instruments during this time. For example,the banjo and the Ethiopianminstrel songs were a staple of the urbantradition by I850; yet we do not know when the southern white folk musicianadopted them. What we do know is that by the end of the centurythey had becomea vital partof the tradition.What we can do is recognize influencesthat were gradual,and influencesthat were resisted.We can summarize them as urbanization. The war, as was the case with other Americanwars to follow, broughtrural men into urbanenvironments and men of differentcultural regions into contact. After the war a patternof immigrationand emigrationbegan. Northern entre- preneursand