Likewise, I suspect that the reason that Cajuns got along so well with Anglo-Southrons when they first began coming into contact with each other was because the Anglo-Southrons were partly of Celtic heritage and also had a Norman influence in their culture, (more one or the other depending on family background and social class, etc.), whereas the Cajuns not only had Celtic heritage in their historical baclground, but were, in fact, Normans. Perhaps historians should look into how common Norman cultural influence affected various groups in the New World.

The above is also a very likely reason why Cajun music has similarities with Southern folk music, aside from cross-cultural influence.

But I’ve seen what I believe to be the remnants of the Cavalier culture here in the Deep(er) South; for example my boss speaks with that non-rhotic accent (he says “Atlanna, Jawjaw” instead of “Atlanter, Georger” or “Alanny Georgie”), wears a bow tie, and is a high-church Episcopalian. He’s from Atlanta, but from a rather well to do family, growing up in quite a nice neighborhood.

So, the Cavalier culture may be any Southerner who hasn’t been in a fist fight in their adult life, majority of whom that have a college education, and goes to a [conservative] liturgical church.

As a lyricist, Patterson [...] was beginning to grapple with the meaning and identity of the South itself .
Respectfully, no. Patterson was beginning to grapple with the meaning and identity of being Borderer-Backcountry (the misnamed “Scots-Irish”, who were neither Scottish or Irish). And these people and their culture, originating on the border between England and Scotland, can be found not just in the South, but also in Downeast Maine, western PA, southern IL, Indiana, and Missouri; scattered across the West, and in the Salinas valley.

On the whole, what is most striking about Patterson’s ruminations is that they are almost entirely without precedent in popular music.
Again, with respect, no. Patterson’s themes have been sung by us Borderer-Backcountrymen for 1000 years, just as we have lived in “various hovels [i.e., “cabins”] and broken-down [rack-]rented duplexes” and eating grits for a 1000 years. We are a warrior culture of a people who have been obliged to fight for our very existence, living in a world marked by impermanence, betrayal, fear of strangers, a necessary perchance to violence, and a need accordingly for “elbow room”. The very name “Drive-By Truckers” says it all.

So for the historical background, read David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed, the chapters on the Virginia Cavaliers (another and very different Southern culture, also unchanged for millennium, a chivalric culture predating the Normans), and the chapter on the Borderer-Backcountry. Then experience “the shock of recognition”. Then, more controversially, look at Thomas Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals, the first essay, to see if another ethnic group is a derivative of the Borderer-Backcountry. Sowell’s thesis is at least worthy of inquiry

PS: The Borderers, with their hatred of the Anglican establishment, were first Presbyterians. In the US, During the First Great Awakening in the mid 1700s, they become Methodists and Particular Baptists, a change foretold by the earlier New Light Presbyterians and by the Non-Subscriber Borderers in Ulster.

‘I kid I kid then daddy recited Shakespeare and mama’s heart began to sing she said see he’s more’n just a maypole he can do
just about any old thing…

‘Oh darlin: Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet’st,
And do what’er thou wilt, swift-footed time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets;
O carve not with the hours my Love’s fair brow
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.’

‘We weren’t sure what it meant,
But life around our house ain’t boring
Especially in Sunday’s tent…’

[sorry, guess i ain't cut out for country-?-nor city, nor space, I kid, I kid sorry, i'm 'alien' or am i?]

Lower Alabama.

As opposed to South Alabama, which is the immediate vicinity around Mobile Bay.

Anyway, Rublev’s Dog, about the “blues”:

That genre of music has more to do with the African slave experience with genuine European folk music than their own; and that genuine experience wasn’t down on the plantation, but up in the hills, where a slave knew and worked right alongside the various cultures of Europeans. There is a definite difference in music between, say, the field hollers of the Mississippi Delta, and the guitar driven “blues”, which was an import from Appalachia. Yes, I am claiming the “blues” as we know it today is an import from Appalachia.

It was commonplace for plantation owners to either have property in the Upland South, where his slaves would work sometimes, or even rented out to farmers in the Upland that needed labor. Think of slavery as a kind of forced-temporary employment service. These slaves in the Upland would work right alongside the European farmers and their family, so it is only reasonable that they would also pick up some of the same old European folkways. Hence the fife and drum bands of the Hill Country of Mississippi, or the formation of the “Piedmont blues” of the east, and best shown in Appalachia itself, where both Black and White musicians would play the same music, the same “blues”, the same instruments – including an African import: the banjo. The minority African population didn’t culturally overwhelm the majority European population in America; quite the opposite. As a matter of fact, from the very beginning, the differences between Black “blues” musicians and White “hillbilly” musicians was their race. The music is essentially the same.

I would say the blues is the greater musical achievement of the lowland South; it informs everything, from bluegrass to beach music to the Truckers.