University of Mississippi eGrove Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2016 Southern Sound And Space: An Exploration Of The Sonic Manifestation Of Place Christopher James Colbeck University of Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons Recommended Citation Colbeck, Christopher James, "Southern Sound And Space: An Exploration Of The Sonic Manifestation Of Place" (2016). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 880. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/880 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SOUTHERN SPACE AND SOUND: AN EXPLORATION OF THE SONIC MANIFESTATION OF PLACE A Thesis presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Southern Studies The University of Mississippi by CHRISTOPHER J. COLBECK August 2016 Copyright Christopher J. Colbeck 2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT This thesis examines the relationships between sound and space, sound and time, and the influence of “place,” particularly southern places, on the creative process of contemporary musicians. The work also investigates the possibility of a common southern sound or auditory essence which may be embedded within all of the musical genres popularly thought to owe their lineage to the American South. The project is documentary in nature with the written component explaining the scholarship and methodology guiding the accompanying film. At the heart of the work are interviews with eleven contemporary musicians and three scholars of southern culture and history. While the interviews did not articulate the existence of an essential sound transcending southern musical forms, the conversations did reveal expanded conceptions of “place” and multiple interpretations of its role in sonic creations. ii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS BF Bill Frisell CC Chris Colbeck WJ Wayne Jackson FK Fats Kaplin MRS Matt Ross-Spang DW Dale Watson RH Reverend Charles Hodges JEFF Jeff Powell LD Luther Dickinson SO Spooner Oldham JP Jerron Paxton iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is difficult to express how grateful I am to the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. The opportunity to go back to school during my middle years was truly a unique gift, one I do not take lightly, and one for which I will forever be indebted to the Center and the University of Mississippi. Thank you Dr. Ownby, both as a teacher and for the quiet leadership that has created an environment in Barnard where the faculty’s ability to intellectually challenge students is matched only by their collective kindness and generosity of spirit. Thank you Dr. McKee for your extraordinary gifts in the classroom and your tireless effort to keep me and my classmates headed in the right direction. Thank you Dr. Gussow for helping me understand there is more to music than just sound and the scholarly pursuit of all that is involved in its creation is a rewarding endeavor. Thank you Dr. Harper for your patience in seeing this project through, your friendship, and for teaching me the value of capturing people’s stories in pictures and sound. Thank you Dr. Wharton, Dr. Delerme, Dr. Grem, Jimmy Thomas, and Becca Walton for being great bosses the last two years. Thank you to all of the donors whose contributions fund the Center and its graduate students. Thank you to the musicians and scholars who lent their insights to this project especially Charles Reagan Wilson. Finally, thank you to the Center for the Study of Southern Culture for more than an education, but for giving me the tools to more deeply appreciate the things in life I already loved, great books, music and history and the perspective to understand how they all intersect to shape and inform our world. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………………………………. ii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ………………………………………………………………….. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ……………………………………………………………………. iv PREFACE: BOB DYLAN AND THE AMERICAN SOUTH……..…………………………….1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION: SOUTHERN SOUND AND SPACE ……………………… 3 CHAPTER 2: CONVERSATIONS ABOUT SOUND……..………………………………… 14 CHAPTER 3: CONCLUSION: SPOONER’S ABSTRACTION……………………………... 81 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………………………… 84 VITA …………………………………………………………………………………………… 90 v PREFACE BOB DYLAN AND THE AMERICAN SOUTH In 1996, music producer Daniel Lanois received some vague, but not exactly ambiguous marching orders from Bob Dylan. The two had been discussing plans for Dylan’s next album which was slated to begin recording the following year. Lanois recalled in his 2010 memoir, he left the meeting with “inspiration and a list of records.” The inspiration came from recent lyrics penned by Dylan and shared with the eager producer. The list, including recordings by Charlie Patton, Little Walter and Arthur Alexander, was to be used as reference points. But what exactly was Dylan referencing? Surely it was not song structure for Dylan had traded in the blues idiom countless times before nor could it be a desire to recreate the technology used to capture these artists decades earlier. Instead, Dylan was trying to communicate an intangible and indefinable quality, a certain sonic texture and feel that defied easy articulation. Lanois, who had spent his life chasing sounds for music’s biggest artists, “listened to these records and understood” (Lanois 145). What Lanois took away was a sense of a certain sound rooted in the American South, a sound the producer had already tried to conjure years before when he moved his recording operation to New Orleans “where the neighborhood is the teacher of music and tradition” (Lanois 97). Lanois purposefully slotted the subsequent Dylan sessions with musicians owning strong southern musical roots. Memphian Jim Dickinson and Texas native Augie Meyers played 1 keyboards. The Shreveport son of a baptist preacher, Brian Blade, contributed on drums and Dylan’s longtime bass player and bandleader, Tony Garnier, possessed a musical lineage that led straight to the doors of Preservation Hall. Nearly every genre of music with origins conventionally attributed to the South was represented in the carefully constructed group. The resulting record, Time Out Of Mind, went on to win the 1998 Grammy Award for album of the year and reasserted Dylan’s relevance in contemporary popular music. What is most interesting about the process was Lanios and Dylan’s kind of shorthand for understanding a desired sonic “feel” and their belief this feel came from the American South. Equally fascinating was the producer’s attempt to access or channel this vibe by hiring diverse musicians with an assumed shared cultural background. To further add to the intrigue, this marked the beginning of Dylan’s appropriation of Hank Williams’s aesthetic, donning western suits, string ties and cowboy hats while touring in support of the record. Was the aging songwriter trying to further tap into a source of authenticity by replicating the look of the mysterious and tragic figure of rural southern legend? Trying to make sense of Bob Dylan may prove futile, but as is often the case with his life and music, they can inspire some worthwhile inquiries. As a lifelong appreciator of music, a true believer in the uniqueness of southern music, and a fledgling scholar of the ever- complicated idea of the American South, I wanted the challenge of trying to articulate the intangible quality that even one of the greatest wordsmiths could only describe through sound. I wanted to put words to Dylan and Lanois’s shorthand. 2 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: SOUTHERN SPACE AND SOUND While the nuts and bolts of this project began during my time at the University, the earliest origins of the work go back to Baltimore nearly thirty-five years. As I spent the last year interviewing musicians about ideas of “place,” I recognized my own good fortune in being raised in a place with a local independent record shop just a short bicycle ride away from my parents’ home. The people who worked there not only lived for music, but were happy to spark a similar passion in a young kid by steering him to “the good stuff” in the used album bin. The second record I ever purchased was an off label “best of” collection by Otis Redding. I remember dropping the needle of my Sears stereo and hearing the opening staccato notes of Steve Cropper’s guitar, Otis’s voice vibrating and quietly calling, “these arms of miiiinnne,” followed by the rhythm section, and finally answered by the horns. To my young ears, something was just different about this music. It was unlike any of the (now considered classic) rock and new wave songs that blasted from the older kids’ oversized speakers on our street. This music simply made me feel differently. It is a record I still own and it still makes me feel the same way today. Little did I know decades later, I would be sitting in the living room of Wayne Jackson, one of the architects of that very sound, asking if he could help me understand why I felt that way and what did Memphis have to do with it all. 3 The project began to take shape in earnest as part of my 602 seminar paper with hopes it could become a chapter in my final thesis. I began to think of the relationship between sound and place, sound and time, and how it all might relate to my own imagined essence or “feeling” of certain music across genres originating in South. I had spent a previous semester studying southern musical biographies and recalled the abundance of allusions to natural sounds that seemed to hold some power in many of their early life stories. With my first semester in graduate school dismantling most notions of what the South may even be, I also ventured to explore how and if southern spaces still had meaning in contemporary artists’ creative process.