What Is History? Part 25
And death is in the phial and the end of noble work,
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk
—G.K. Chesterton
The North is full of tangled things. . . . —Chesterton
Whiskey and blood run together. —Ferrol Sams
If you’ve got two worms in one apple, sooner or later they’ll meet. —Ferrol Sams
Taxpayers exist to support the bureaucrats in the style to which they have become accustomed. —Lew Rockwell
War is a racket. —Gen. Smedley Butler, two-time Congressional Medal of Honor Winner
It is always interesting to observe the effect of candor on the brainwashed ideologues mass-produced by American education. —Thomas Fleming
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. —Philip K. Dick
History repeats itself—but not exactly. —Clyde Wilson
Those who have the most virtues in their mouths have the least in their bosoms. —Oliver Goldsmith
Common sense. —Oliver Goldsmith answer on being asked what was the best Biblical commentary
The problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other people's money. —Margaret Thatcher
Many of these deep thinkers also believe that Darwin proved that God didn't create man. Instead, man arose by the process of evolution, one accidental step at a time. . . . As if God couldn't make it look like an accident, if He wanted. —Bill Bonner
Entries(RSS)
Was Ferrol Sams quoting Roy Acuff's "Wreck on the Highway?". "When whiskey and blood ran together, did you hear anyone pray?". Also rendered nicely by the Louvin Bros. Or was it the other way round?
I don't know for sure, but I rather think both Acuff and Sams were merely drawing from a common Southern well. However, Roy probably came first.
Although I can not provide an exact date of Roy Acuff's recording of "The Wreck on the Highway", that song is on an Essential Roy Acuff album of mine and all the songs on that album were recorded from 1936-1949. Acuff's fine career contrasts with the swill that goes by the name of country music today, a further sign of the cultural decline of America as a whole and, yes, the South.
Speaking of Acuff and cultural decline, here's an interesting article from the Tennessean on a revival of traditional country music.
"Young Guns Draw from Classic Country Roots":
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090303/TUNEIN02/903030306/1005/ENTERTAINMENT
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. —Philip K. Dick"
I really wish that more folks could understand this fact for those invisible realities that "never go away when one stops believing in their existence" -- Spirits, principles, causes, life, death, heaven, hell, love, will, understanding, tranquility, peace, hatred, inspirations,bitter disappointments, tragedy, comedy and much, much, more.
Robert,
Reminds me of this text: "And there appeared unto them Moses and Elijah . . . "
Derek,
Country music has become white people's rock music. It's for folks who aren't distinctively Southern or of the land, but who don't want to turn on their rock stations and hear Beyoncé. This is why "Cowboy Troy," the black country rapper, never took off.
True, Mr. Wolf. And, although I would admit some country music of the past was mediocre, what is called country music today is inferior to what Hank Williams Sr., Roy Acuff, Carl Smith, Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Connie Smith and Merle Haggard produced. Maybe country music started to die when Willie Nelson started singing love ballads with Julio Iglesias and Kenny Rogers exploded onto the scene in the 1980s.
Derek,
I also think country music has suffered from the loss of song writers. Too many performing artist write their own songs and then sing them. Anybody, for instance, know who wrote the song about Poncho and Lefty as opposed to the singer who made it famous? We should know these things afterall, for we should "Say a prayer for Lefty too!" Cheers
I may be clueless here, but don't they play a lot of country music in my native state of Iowa?
Country music has a fan base that extends from the South and into rural areas almost everywhere in America. Visiting a family's fishing camp at Lake Nicatous, Maine many years ago, I was pleasantly surprised that they were country music fans. I can even remember them playing a greatest hits album of Hank Williams Sr. on their cassette player.
Country music started dying (just like the rest of American culture)when the New York companies took it over (as they do everything that makes money), drained the Southern out of it, and made it sound like worthless American pop. Music videos, which require young and salacious performers, completed the job. Actually, the music still exists among real people. It's just that like all real American culture, it is banned from the mainstream.
The South has been "drained" from NASCAR.
The South has been "drained" from country music.
The South has been "drained" from the South, save for the fact that here and there, like daffodils marking an old home place long forgotten, there are vestiges of the South yet in the South. Those of us still nurtured and quickened by "things Southern" recognize the remnant shards when we encounter them and conspire to build again something worthy with our ancestors artifacts.
Mr. Peters, I am not surprised that some Yankee establishment hasn't renamed Chancellorsville National Battlefield something like Citibank Park at Chancellorsville Battlefield. Naming priveleges of stadiums and commercialized country music are only two of the wonderful innovations brought to us by Alexander Hamilton's "republic."
I cain't vouch for the theology of this, but there's something to it:
Mr. Berg @9 - that was funny.
Mr. Leaberry @13 - that too was funny.
My suggestion is that our members of government become - as our current president is fond of advocating - more "transparent" in their sponsorship. What I mean is that they should wear their backers' logos on their uniforms like European soccer teams do. You know, Cheney's suit would have had a Halliburton logo on it, Paulson's would have been Goldman Sachs, Senator Shelby's would be Toyota, and so on.
No worry Aaron, Dr.Wilson worked out the theology of this years ago and has been preaching its merits ever since. Heck, given what some of these preachers are saying today about every warm christian body returning to the Holy Land for the Final rally, I would prefer to stay in Dixie and drink wicky with folkes like you and Clyde. If it is all the same to God, of course. Cheers
Mr. Peters @ 12 "The South has been “drained” from the South, save for the fact that here and there, like daffodils marking an old home place long forgotten..."
I really think you are a southern writer. You have a sense for it, where to see things, where to look, and what "South" means. Heck, "you are one." God Bless you.
Heather Myles says it:
I was raised on country: a steady dose of Haggard an' Jones.
Conway and Loretta, were always on the radio.
But everythin' has changed since then, they say it's for the good.
But I think it's a cryin' shame Nashville's gone Hollywood.
You won't need a steel guitar in your watered down rock 'n roll.
An' you might even find yourself on the cover of The Rolling Stone.
You'll be lookin' mighty fine in your designer clothes.
An' you won't need the Opry; you'll be singin' on Jay Leno.
They'll put you in the movies,
You'll have your video.
An' if you're young an' sexy,
You'll be rollin' in the dough.
You'll sell a million records,
Oh, that must mean you're good.
Move on over, Ernest Tubb,
Nashville's gone Hollywood.
I'm still giggin' on Broadway, makin' rounds on Music Row.
Hopin', maybe someday, I'll hear my song on the radio.
But they say I'm too country: I wouldn't change it if I could.
'Cause I think it's a cryin' shame Nashville's gone Hollywood.
They'll put you in the movies,
You'll have your video.
An' if you're young an' sexy,
You'll be rollin' in the dough.
You'll sell a million records,
Oh, that must mean you're good.
Move on over, Ernest Tubb,
Nashville's gone Hollywood.
Yeah, move on over, Ernest Tubb,
Nashville's gone Hollywood.
Two comments.
The first relates to the discussion of the "perversity" or "cluelessness" of various states. It is: if all states in the Union were "morphed" into women, California would be a very beautiful - really, stunningly beautiful - whore, who had been used too much and too roughly for too many years. Illinois (for sure), Iowa, and even South Carolina - maybe more virtuous - would be women who would "war to the knife" to get some - just some - of California's beauty. I've lived in Illinois, and visited South Carolina, and both are pretty, in their way - especially South Carolina, but neither can touch California's beauty.
Now, if that doesn't raise some hackles, let's try this next one.
Second: WHAT IN THE HELL IS SO IMPORTANT CULTURALLY ABOUT COUNTRY MUSIC? IT SOUNDS LIKE A LOT OF DRECK TO ME; "SAD SONGS", "COUNTRY WAYS" SONGS, AND SO ON. YES IT HAS GOTTEN WORSE SINCE NYC MONEY (AND STARS) ELBOWED THEIR WAY IN. BUT WHAT'S TO SAVE?
If you want to save some music, work to save genuine classical music, the music of western culture. Even the Orientals and others recognize that. You can choose between baroque music, much/most written with more religious connections than any "country" piece with a touch of "what God wanted", etc., or classical period music, or romantic (Brahms, Schumann, etc.) music, which lifted the human heart to heights unforeseen, modern classical, which with its emphasis on analysis and form has ranged from Arvo Paert to Vaughn Williams to Stravinsky and Prokofieff. And such music can be "understood" on a variety of levels quite satisfactorily, from the level of composer or concert performer or informed or even partially informed listener. I wrote to Dr. Fleming in another connection that "music speaks a language words cannot hear", my favorite formulation, and I don't think one which can be successfully assailed. In other words, you can enjoy - and know - music without a degree from music school.
Sit down, and with your favorite "sad" country song, one which refers to God and maybe conveys a sense of loss, and listen to it. Next, play the aria "Erbarme Dich", preferably sung by mezzo Janet Baker, from J. S. Bach's masterpiece "St. Matthew Passion". You might need a libretto, but that's OK. "Erbarme Dich, Mein Gott" ("Forgive me, God")is a song of lament, asking God's forgiveness . . . To say that a "country" song - any song - is comparable is to confuse sandlot baseball with the major leagues. And remember, this comes from someone whose father was a Kentuckian, and whose mother was a Missourian, and whose great-grandfather fought under Jo Shelby and General Sterling Price, went to Mexico rather than surrender - and I have the artifacts to prove it. And - who was brought up on "Froggie a' courtin' he did ride" and "Comin' round the mountain" and such other legitimate old-time country songs.
Country went mainstream, that is all that happened, and picked up the pieces of the all but dead genre of rock/hard rock, by going for the electric guitars to bring in the refugees of the dead rock scene. Face it, in America today you either have country or hip hop(some R&B mixed in). Country had no other way to go or face extinction with the younger generations.
My father sang to me quite often, every day, perhaps from my time in the crib. There was always a twinkle in his eye that seemed to keep time with the rhythm of his voice. One of his favorites began as follows:
"Way down yonder in the forks of the branch, jaybirds whistle and the buzzards dance. Babe, oh baby, my!" As infancy moved into childhood, I encountered among the characters who inhabited the polity of Pollock - Peanut, Fireball, Taterbug, Hawg, Grasshopper, Boo, Booger - two who were called Jaybird and Buzzard. My infant's mind had had a "real" jaybird and buzzard dancing. The mind of my childhood replaced them with Jaybird and Buzzard. In the early autumn of life, they all dance together on a little point of sand where two branches come together deep in the forest where some upland creek forms.
Country is the new rock for sure Aaron. The rock scene was effectively killed off in the 90's by the "grunge" scene out of Seattle. That crap sounded like it was all the same band(STP, Pearl Jam, etc) Then you had no talented shouters like 9 Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson(both creepy to boot). As hip hop eventually took over after rock committed suicide, non southern white folks needed a new genre to turn to, and voila the new country genre was born. The sad thing is it turned more into just southern rock/pop, just another form of lowbrow redneck music.
#19 Howard,
"To say that a “country” song - any song - is comparable is to confuse sandlot baseball with the major leagues. And remember, this comes from someone whose father was a Kentuckian, and whose mother was a Missourian, and whose great-grandfather fought under Jo Shelby and General Sterling Price, went to Mexico rather than surrender - and I have the artifacts to prove it. And - who was brought up on “Froggie a’ courtin’ he did ride” and “Comin’ round the mountain” and such other legitimate old-time country songs."
Every good baseball player originated in the sandlot. You owe your good parents a debt of gratitude for introducing you to music in the sandlot so you could appreciate and understand the difference between an "ama" teur and pro-"fessional." Your post contains a healthy mix of both. Thank you.
Robert @ 23
The demise of the sandlot is the advent of the "hyper-active," the ADHD, etc. I am currently the headmaster of a small private school in rural Louisiana. Our kids come from small town settings and country homes; yet, the skills and experiences which I associate with rural life, having grown up in it myself, are not evident among most of the kids. They, by their own accounts, do little to no homework from school, have few chores at home for which they are held responsible, sleep much of the time, watch T.V. or spend hours on Face Book, and spend time away from home at the local malls. Recreation, when they participate, is always supervised, usually by some "trained" adult.
My first duty as a child was to do all of my chores to the satisfaction of my father, the security, aesthetic appeal and production of our little farm taking up most of the time - mowing, plowing, cultivating, planting, weeding, harvesting the crops and tending the animals - taking up most of the time. Daily, I had to "do my lessons," with the expectation on the part of my father that he would get no report from a teacher that I had done them the wrong way or failed to learn from them.
After these things, he would usually say, "Son, why don't you go play with your friends." Off I would go, walking about one quarter of a mile to my nearest friends house. Depending on what we plotted, we'd walk to roust out more friends. We organized things spontaneously, generated the acceptable rules for the activity, held one another accountable for the rules and had fun: digging a new swimming hole in Sandy Creek; building a bunker under the newly poured sidewalk in Pollock which lay a boys' walk and run away; building a raft; playing marbles; playing war, etc. This was, of course, all quite anti-Hobbesian. The state in the form of trained adults was no where to be found. We quite naturally created for the day a social order, held one another accountable and had fun.
One longs for the return of the sandlot.
Many of these deep thinkers also believe that Darwin proved that God didn’t create man. Instead, man arose by the process of evolution, one accidental step at a time. . . . As if God couldn’t make it look like an accident, if He wanted. —Bill Bonner
The contingent, fragile nature of being as we know it reveals that things as they are are hardly the consequence of some inexorable mechanical process being worked out with undeviating mathematical certainty. Rather, they are apparently the result of a number of anomalies or interruptions of what would be otherwise merely mechanical and automatic. These interruptions are wondrous, because they evince an effect that has no apparent cause.
When man experiences these "interruptions' as rationally inexplicable beneficent events he refers to them as acts of grace and calls the effects miracles.
To the mechanically minded determinist such acts are irritations, since they present inconvenient datum that undermine his neat, mathematically and mechanically perfect little mechanism of doom and gloom.
"Country Music" started to suck when drums were added, after that it was simply country rock. A few songs have interesting lyrics but most don't. So-called country stations will not touch a country song until it charts, which means producers are required to buy ad space in Billboard magazine.
In the 1980s Vernon Oxford was considered too country (whatever that might mean) for radio stations. That's why people uese peer-to-peer file sharing programs to get the songs (files) they want and then rip, mix, and burn. I've talked to bands I've seen live about this, and they're delighted because they make money selling t-shirts at their shows, they receive virtually nothing from CD sales. The music business is corrupt and I'll do a tap dance on its grave to a tin pan alley tune.
The South still produces some genuine Country and Bluegrass music. There are some good artists that fall under the label of "Americana" or "Texas Country." Christ Knight is one good example. Below are the lyrics to Knight's agrarian tract "House and 90 Acres." Chris Knight is a singer/songwriter who, I believe, lives and farms in Kentucky.
I've got a house and 90 acres some cattle in the barn
Two kids with no mama, she left in a saleman's arms
A sign by the mailbox says there's an auction in the yard
Born and raised has been damn easy but lately living's hard
The children miss their mama but there ain't nothing I can do
If she was all I had to worry about well I'd guess I'd miss her too
But I've watched my tools and tractor leave in someone else's hands
I grit my teeth, I'm let 'em go but I won't give up my land
This house and 90 acres, the only place I've left to stand
My roots are anchored solid, I ain't machinery I'm a man
I'll be here in the morning come pouring rain or sun
This house and 90 acres
What's said is good as done
There's jobs up in the city I could probably drive a truck
Or I could move 300 miles from home but that would be giving up
Well you know that I ain't leaving if it's just my pride I save
I might be on the front porch or I might be in a hillside grave
This house and 90 acres, the only place I've left to stand
My roots are anchored solid, I ain't machinery I'm a man
I'll be here in the morning come pouring rain or sun
This house and 90 acres
What's said is good as done
This house and 90 acres
What's said is good as done
I agree with Etienne. Country music has declined since the early 80's, and I saw the writing on the wall around 1989. Then, it seemed that the overall quality of country music took a real nosedive around 1993 or 94. It has never recovered.
The so-called "Young Country" signified the end of real country music. The garbage that came to fill the title "Country" was so bad I completely quit listening to the radio. I now listen to cd's I order off the net (Roy Acuff, Bill Carlisle, Skillet Lickers, etc.) I watched a movie awhile back and in one scene, in a bar in NYC, the people were up on the tables wearing cowboy boots and hats, dancing to the garbage now known as "Country". The absurdity of the whole thing was rather disconcerting. Dr. Wilson is right. When country became an item for mass market and profit, it was destroyed.
The best way to describe 'country' music today is 'appearance without reality'. We have the appearance (all sanitised and gussied up to look elegant and in vogue) without any real substance. It's country without the country.
@19 on country music: Country music was (and still is to a few) America's folk music. The folk music of a people is to their culture what terroir is to the wine and cuisine of a region. Of course country music pales in comparison to great classic music, but not because it is bad. The folk music of a people arises from the culture just as wine and cuisine arise from the terroir. The land, the climate, the history, the ancestry, the heroes, the tragedies and triumphs, they all are the source of the music.
Most great classical composers know this and gladly salute their folk music. Haydn frequently alluded to the music of the people. Mozart elegantly set Austrian landler. Chopin set mazurkas. In the music of Aaron Copland you cannot miss the feeling of the American frontier. The list could go on for pages.
I listen almost exclusively to classical music, but I cannot listen to classic country music without feeling something of the American terroir come through in a profoundly moving way. I actually am assembling a small collection of the old country music because it speaks volumes on the America of a bygone era. The fact that American's now are virtually cultureless is evident in the dire state of their music.
#31. Agreed. Except that country music is not America's folk music. It is Southern folk music. America has no folk music, only a cheap mass-produced lowest-common-denominator commercial "culture."
What is the major difference between the country music of the 1950s and that of today? How many of the Chosen Race served as country music executives then and how many today?
Yes, the South has been drained of everything. Southern literature and the professors teaching it in mid-20th century were major threats to the cultural Marxists. Attacking the South and Southern culture always flies well with Yankee WASP 'conservatives, so the new alliance was formed.
That alliance feared any expression of Southern culture, and so we suddenly saw a massive influx of the Chosen Race who demanded to be accounted experts in Southern literature and history.
@32. You are correct: "It is Southern folk music." I hastily dashed the comment off and therefore slipped up with a quick generalization. I do know, and have known, a number of Northerners who love this gift of the South; perhaps because the North has no folk music of its own.
@32. You are correct: "It is Southern folk music." I hastily dashed the comment off and therefore erred with a quick generalization. I do know, and have known, a number of Northerners who love this gift of the South; perhaps because the North has no folk music of its own.
Since music has been my field and lifetime profession it only makes sense I might have some opinion about this whole "country" music matter.
I was born in southeastern Kentucky. My father knew Bill Monroe and most of the other Bluegrass musicians in the middle of the last century. Everyday I listened to Flatt and Scruggs performing a half hour program coming out of WATE TV in Knoxville-––the only channel we could get for years in the mountains.
It might seem odd, being a coal miner's son from eastern Kentucky, but I ended up playing classical music and getting my degrees in performance––in clarinet, of all things.
Only after master's study did I return to listening to the music of my childhood, though I kept a strong fondness for folk musics of all types, especially eastern European: bulgarian, moravian, Czech, and Hungarian. It's terrific stuff. And all those musics have a quality common to all folk music: its real; deep, soulful, sincere and comes from the heart of the people; their lives, their suffering, their losses, their faith and their joys and struggles.
My sense in surveying the field is that the modern developments in Country music have eviscerated it of spiritual substance. The themes are those of modern times and modern behavior, common now in city and country, the poetry is mannered, shallow and concentrates on cleaver catch phrases that will hook the listener into buying. Money, not art, seems to be its driving force. How is that different from the Tin Pan Alley song writers who labored daily to have that hit that would make them rich? How much awful music came from those times! And the shallow, banal content of most musicals would gag a maggot, as my mother used to say.
The love of money corrupts and cheaps the content, even if the art of song writing gets more refined,sophisticated and...well, slick.
In contrast to the big money country stars there are still a number of bluegrass bands and bluegrass musicians all over Kentucky, Va., North Carolina and eastern Tenn. that remain true to their roots. There you can still hear the heart of the people and the depth of their soul in the music. Fortunately, though many of these groups have followings, they are small and cultish; enough to give them a decent living and help them keep paying the bills, but not enough to have scores of folks flood the field, corrupt and cheapen it for the sake of money only.
I'm basically on the fence with the New Grass Bands––I see some authentic development of the Bluegrass style with these bands that use extended technical language, both harmonic and rhythmic. That, in and of itself, is not necessarily bad. Yet I wonder if the sincerity of content and soulful depth so identified with great Bluegrass music is somehow diluted and New Grass isn't tending towards being a pretty package with nothing inside.
They there are groups like the youthful NIckel Creek. They are stylistically and technically amazing, but what to make of where it has taken the content?!?
I'm less familiar with western Country music, another anomaly for me, since I live in Dallas, TX. So I don't have much opinion on it.
There are some terrifically talented people in all forms of Southern popular music, but the further you get from the acoustical music of the mountains of Ky, Va and N. Carolina and the closer you get to an electrical outlet in Nashville and Austin the more money driven and shallow the music content seems to get––and the more removed from the heart of the folk who truly originated the genres.
My two cents–––objections?
One little story I recall demonstrates the unselfconscious quality of the genius of many great southern musicians.
As a faculty member at a university in New England I became friends with the choral director, who was from Alabama. He was deeply into all kinds of ethnic and folk musics, and his own compositions were very eclectic.
I mentioned to him I watched Flatt and Scruggs as a child every day on TV. I said, "I had no idea they were great artists."
Guffawing, my friend responded, "They didn't either."
Such is the unselfconscious nature of the folk music we call Bluegrass music.
On the other hand I've heard it said that Bill Monroe was not a man handicapped by the burden of humility.
Mr. Ridenour, are there any bluegrass singers or groups with widely available cds you would recommend?
Sorry--the "widely" is misleading. I meant to include artists whose cds are available not on stores or even Amazon, but through a specific website--oe of the few advantages of the Internet, it enables one to buy cds from lesser-known artists. Also, what do you think of Rounder Records?
re there any bluegrass singers or groups with widely available cds you would recommend?
There are the traditional bands, like Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass boys; Monroe practically originated the style single-handedly. He is to Bluegrass what Debussy was the Impressionism.
You should have no trouble finding his CDs. Flatt and Scruggs recordings are pretty easy to find. New Grass Revival is an interesting group and shows the modern development of Bluegrass. You sort of have to decide for yourself if you believe New Grass to be an authentic development or a departure from the original spirit of the music. I myself am on the fence about it.
Of the traditional groups performing now I'd recommend the Kruger Brothers. Their group is acoustic only and fantastic. In my opinion these guys preserve the true spirit of the best in Bluegrass style.
I've heard them live in very intimate performance at the California NAMM convention. They did songs from Harlan County, Ky I was shocked they knew––it brought tear to my eyes as many memories of my beautiful Kentucky hills and the good people who lived and died there flooded my memory. Their technique is amazing, but their content remains very much in the original spirit of the music.
Some of the modern performers include Faith Hill and Alison Kraus. Kraus sings and plays fiddle and was something of a Bluegrass prodigy.
Of the more modern groups devoted to acoustic music you'll find Nickel Creek. Technically dazzling and very finished, pouring a more modern, what I'd call existential content into the acoustic/bluegrass style. The mandoline player, Chris Thielle was a prodigy and with amazing facility. Many don't know it but the mandolin is a very revered classical instrument. Many fine classical works were written for it and Paganni performed on it almost as much as he performed on the violin. Thielle is in that virtuosic tradition. This group hits many modern themes, but its acoustic roots are deep and you get the feeling they are deeply committed to the music they play and write.
Finally, youtube has a lot of bluegrass you can hear, new and old. I think you can get a good idea of what you might want to buy by going to youtube and doing a search on "bluegrass music". As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Just a little slice of southern heaven for anyone interested:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyeeZXiTPqc&feature=related
Yankees ain't never known what it is to have such a good time.
Right, they have no folk music. As Nietzsche said, "Evil men have no songs."
Who was it who said that it is the novelist rather than the historian who understands the South best? Perhaps the folk music of our region can be added to that estimation. Maybe this is why country music has been attacked right along with everything else that is Southern, summed up in the welcome sign into Clarksville, TN, ". . . Gateway to the New South."
Or how about this from John Anderson:
"Dixie's had a facelift;
I guess she's lookin' better;
but I kinda liked the old one;
I never will forget her;
Look away, gone away, far away, Dixieland!"
As I drive through the "new and improved" Clarksville - courtesy of the Carpetbagger and Scalagwag - I make every effort to keep my mouth firmly shut to keep from yielding to the temptation to rant and bitterly lament the destruction of my homeland and culture. As I draw nearer to the small communities, the family cemeteries, the rolling hills, creeks and rivers of my people, the tension and bitterness slip away, and I'm more at peace.
As I've read Dr. Wilson's piece and many of the comments here, I realize yet again that the hope of preserving what is left of our culture is not to be found in the vanilla-amorphous-blob-multicult mass pop culture that predominates today; it will be the intentional effort of ordinary folk around their hearths and homes instilling the love of their traditions, music, and values into their children.
I pray it is so.
Interestingly, before her grass was more New Grass than Bluegrass, Alison Krauss (she's from Illinois) played in festivals around the Midwest on the same bill with the Pitneys, a bluegrass gospel band from here in Rockford. The Pitney family, all of whom I've known for years, and some of whom I've played and sang with myself, traveled and played to raise money for the Rockford Rescue Mission, which their patriarch, the Rev. G.O. Pitney, helped to found. (Full disclosure: My parents work there.) The Pitneys could really light it up. Those were tapes you could only buy at their concerts.
Nickel Creek is extremely talented, but not very traditional. What's good about traditional (this is true of the best of country music over the years) is that the memorable idiom allows you to follow Mr. Lytle's advice—take down the fiddle from the wall and play it yourself. Nickel Creek's "The Fox" allows for this. You should see my kids dance a jig around the house to that one.
New York and Nashville have an interest in seeing to the production of music that cannot be reproduced in Mr. Lytle's way. They'd rather see you chained to your speakers instead of playing and singing along—or just playing and singing. (Incidentally, this principle applies to the "professional" "worship" music produced and copyrighted these days.)
Bill Monroe, even after all of his success, was still a farmer. Stories are told of him throwing a hog around his shoulders as an old man, and carrying it up to the truck. Big Mon could be mean, but it seems he was meanest when it came to Bluegrass Boys who couldn't get his sound right. (If you've seen the scene in "Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll" with Chuck Berry trying to teach "Carol" to Keith Richards, you know what I'm talking about.)
Monroe's legacy lives on specifically in former Bluegrass Boys who are still goin' great guns. Ricky Skaggs and Del McCoury play traditional bluegrass, and they tour widely today.
@ # 42/43
"Who was it who said that it is the novelist rather than the historian who understands the South best? Perhaps the folk music of our region can be added to that estimation."
I think this is undeniably true.
I personally think the impression that things have radically changed in the South is an illusion perpetuated by the Yankee media. The encroachment of the empty culture outside of the region is cheap and superficial and cannot last. In contrast, the local culture comes from the soul and the blood of the folk; it can be suppressed for a time but not extinguished, and sooner or later it will rise up again. The only exception to that is when, over time, you actually change the folk: it is not the corrupt Yankee influence that will endure in the South, but the invasion of different races that bring truly different cultures with them––that is another story; they bring a different spirit and a different blood; and different folk myths. How that will work out remains to be seen. I can only observe that all of the folk musics I have heard and studied all share a similar sincerity and depth, rooted very much in the real lives of the folk. All in all, that is always preferable to the cheap, glitzy money-music the Yankees try to pass off as culture. All they can do is feed off and pervert something that is real. Some things they try to feed off of they just can't handle. Take Jerry Lee Lewis for one example; he couldn't fit into that slick, Madison Ave. package, be tamed down and sold to twittering teens like Elvis. You see what happened to Elvis once he was removed from his roots and manipulated by Hollywood.
#43
You're right, Nickel Creek is very untraditional (they've broken up since 2007), but they can play the traditional style with the best of them. Thiele is Horowitzian in his mastery of the instrument, not just technically but stylistically as well.
They are all tremendously gifted.
I bring them up because of their commitment to acoustic music and the unmistakable connection they have to the bluegrass style. It's interesting to hear music that has such a different content and addresses more existential, contemporary concerns, yet seems tenaciously committed to acoustic/bluegrass style. This is something positive, I think, and draws a younger listening audience into a musical genre they might never know exists otherwise. Once that interest is piqued who knows; they might find themselves listening to Ricky Skaggs...and even Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs. Then they might begin to think,"Maybe these Southerners aren't so bad as we've been lead to believe."
#43
"a bluegrass gospel band from here in Rockford."
Did you stop to think how odd that sounds?
Bluegrass? Rockford, Illinois?
Naaaaaaw. No way.
At least a few non-Southerners have added to country and bluegrass music. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, who were from southern California, put out "Will the Circle Be Unbroken", an outstanding blue grass album which featured cameos by Roy Acuff, Doc Watson, Mother Maybelle Carter, Earl Scruggs and Jimmy Martin.
Bluegrass in Rockford? Ah, yes. The Pitneys, like my family, moved up here from the South. In my family's case, it was for work. In the Rev. G.O. Pitney's, it was a call to the mission field. (They are Southern Baptists.)
One can't just draw a Mason-Dixon line and declare everyone north of it a Yankee. Rockford is loaded down with Arkansas immigrants such as my kin. Bill Monroe himself moved up here for a time—again, for work. He honed his sound playing live on Chicago's WLS. Chicago had a barn dance before Nashville had an opry and long before Louisiana had a hayride.
Reminds me: Five years ago, I saw Ralph Stanley and His Clinch Mountain Boys at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music. Dr. Stanley shook my hand and signed a copy of a recording of a bluegrass festival he and Carter had put on in Chicago in the 1960's. The festival theme song was "Old Joe Clark."
The closest thing I've seen to a folk music outside the South is the music of the late Chris Ledoux, the Wyoming cowboy. Ledoux worked his own ranch and was the world champion bareback bronc rider in 1976. Unfortunately, in his later years he drifted into commercial pop-country, but his early work is still worth listening to. These songs tell the tales of rodeo life and express the beauty of the Mountain West.
Well, I wanted to see "what hackles might be raised", in my #19 post, which careful reading will show was written seriously but with a bit of "send-up" or spoof in it. And I decided not to mention that in addition to being brought up on "Comin' around the mountain" and "Froggie a' courtin he did ride", I was also brought up on considerable attendance at the St. Louis Symphony and the (Georg Solti) Cleveland Orchestra concerts, as many as my mother could arrange. Our record collection in those days had a number of the Austrian violinist Fritz Kreisler's recordings in it.
Citing artists who made CDs does not really define "real country." And with all the defenses of "country", I did not really see (did I miss it?) a definition. And, yes, of course, #36, serious (classical) composers did use folk melodies, and a number of them were men I mentioned (on purpose): Ralph Vaughan Williams and Johannes Brahms, for example. Vaughan Williams is famous for his collecting of early English songs and melodies, and his lovely transcriptions of them. However, I do not believe these transcriptions are his "best" work; I reserve that place for his beautiful Christmas Cantata "Hodie". As for Brahms, his "42 German Folk Song Settings" (1894) have no peer. And if you buy the best recording of that work, you get Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing, who are slightly better than anyone Roy Hiccup and his Smoky Mountain Boys 'n Girls could put together. After all, in addition to the "culture", you are listening to actual voices . . . I'm saying here that we need to recognize the best we have/can produce and support it. Recognize that the nasal voice/guitars/fiddles are of some interest, but nothing compared to what has evolved. And lest we forget, the father of Western music, Johann Sebastian Bach - who antedates "country", used (and re-used) many folk sources of melodies for some of his most serious work.
Classical music is dying, for lack of support. I talked to a music store owner some time back about that fact, and he showed me an industry newsletter from England bemoaning the fact that the choral "tradition" in England - which had a fine choral tradition - is dying out, because fewer plumbers and housewives want to come spend their leisure hours leaving their homes to gather with others of their type and practice choral works; they's rather watch "telly". Some of the better directors are finding jobs in Germany; other choral performances are being done by professional, paid choruses. The store owner told me that some of the new recordings coming out consisted of pressings of as little as 200 or 300 copies.
I surely am not against "sandlots" - at least one commentator thought I might be, I guess. I played on them when I was young, and fully recognize the difference between sandlot baseball (and if you are in the baseball town St. Louis in the 1940s, corkball/stickball) and the hyper-organized "Little League" baseball. And many, many were the days when as a child I shouldered my BB gun, and with my little Cocker Spaniel traipsed off to the woods for the day, for some "adventure".
But I have grown up, and now choose to listen mostly to serious (classical) music, although I do have some folk music in the collection. Most recent purchase: Victoria de los Angeles singing "Songs of the Auvergne". And a second music interest? What used to be called "Progressive" or "Modern" Jazz.
Any riposte?
Howard Sitton