02:00 Dr. Bill C. Malone is a professor and performer of country music; started off playing the folk festival at the beginning; Dr. Malone is from east Texas near Tyler, TX and is now a professor at Tulane University in New Orleans. 03:30 Demonstration 04:00 Wants to talk about how he got into country music scholarship and how he brought his experiences growing up to the University of Texas in 1954, and how that affected his scholarship; can’t underestimate the way that people who write, package, advertise music do a lot to shape the understanding and definition of music, for good or bad. 05:00 The first music he heard was fragments of old songs from his mother who was a Pentecostal woman; the memory of the Great Depression also shaped the writing he has done in his career; brought with him a paperback shape-note hymnal that he says can be found in many southern homes, and associates these songs with his mother; will demonstrate a song from this hymnal 06:50 Demonstration 08:00 Country people heard songs they liked and shaped them into their own aesthetics; many of these came from ballad books, but also magazines and newspapers; mentions the Dallas Semi-Weekly Farm News (1914-WWII) where people would write in about songs they liked 09:10 Demonstration: sentimental parlor songs that could be accessed through newspapers 10:25 Didn’t realize that many of these songs started as pop songs written by northern composers and published on sheet music before they ended up as folksongs in the south; isn’t sure where he learned that last song—could be the newspaper or the radio; his family got a radio in 1939, a Philco Battery radio, and they particularly liked the hillbilly shows from Dallas, Fort Worth, Shreveport, Chicago, Houston, the Mexican border, and Nashville; 1939 was also the year that the Grand Ol’ Opry began its network broadcast; Shelton Brothers and Callahan Brothers from Dallas, Cowboy Slim Rinehart from the Mexican border, Lou Childrey from WWL in New Orleans—thought of like family, and they would send in cards and letters to the radio stations; it gave them hope that they could maybe sing on the radio one day, too; mostly remembers the Mexican border stations—mentions a number of advertisements on the station, but remembers that it played the best old-time country music; his brother would tune in XCRL every weeknight to hear The Carter Family 13:25 Demonstration: Recording of The Carter Family, “Keep On The Sunny Side” 13:50 As a child, he had no idea of where this music came from, but knew it was older than the other pop songs, and they were intimate to his childhood; started college at the University of Texas at Austin in 1954 and was there until 1962 while he saw country music become commercially successful, then decline during the rock n roll invasion, then change during the folk revival in the late 1950s, and rise again in the early 1960s; feels that he was part of the country music revival by going to a hillbilly bar in north Austin called Threadgill’s with other graduate students and members of the UT campus Folk Songs Club; one of the members of the club was Janis Joplin, and he was seeing the music change as it was being adopted by a new generation and saw Austin become a headquarters of this change 16:15 One of his professors suggested he write a history of country music; encouraged him to extend beyond business into a total social history of country music; wanted to legitimize country music’s commercial evolution—the people who were public figures were just as valuable as those who played at home—and how that evolution reflected the culture from where it came; he also tried to validate his own life and experiences 17:30 He started to formally research in the early 1960s, finished his dissertation in 1965, and the book was published in 1968 as Country Music USA; remembers that there was no one doing this kind of work in academia, and relied on the vast network of record collectors and folklorists, particularly Archie Green, who were collecting early material and became known as “hillbilly folklorists”; the context of the time he was writing forced him to focus too much on proving the folk credentials of country music 20:00 Country music was a working-class music, and it was unpopular early on; Americans sought fantasy and romance, so it was easier to listen to faraway music than the important songs to its modern existence; his perspectives began to change as he delved into the scholarship, and saw that its folk roots were less important than its living, organic form; also found that this music was not formed in isolation, but is a product of the technological revolution that introduced various kinds of music to the country; there are more sources than just Celtic and Anglo-Saxon roots that have defined American country music; will play songs that demonstrate how eclectic country music can be 22:12 Starts out with what is considered the first recorded country song; in 1922, Eck Robertson went to Victor in New York and convinced them to record his songs; one of them was called “Sally Gooden” 22:50 Demonstration: Recording of Eck Robertson, “Sally Gooden” 23:50 Not only about Celtic roots, but the sounds of a contest fiddler who was striving for innovation that would impress listeners and overwhelm competitors 24:30 Demonstration: Recording of Doc Roberts, “All I’ve Got’s Done Gone” 25:15 More than just an old-time performance; Roberts claims the song was borrowed from a black fiddler in eastern Kentucky; shows that there was a strong black string band tradition, and white country music developed closely with that tradition 25:55 Demonstration: Recording of The Carter Family 26:45 Prototypical country song about nostalgia for home; song was written by Charles K. Harris who wrote “After the Ball” and was a prolific writer in Tin Pan Alley, who was a Jewish composer in New York City who said he had never been to Virginia when the wrote this song; next will play a religious song by his favorite old-time string group 27:30 Demonstration: Recording of the Blue Sky Boys, “Whispering Hope” 28:30 Southern gospel in its shape and sound, but was written by Septimus Winner in the 1850s who lived in Philadelphia; many of these songs have several origins 29:10 These bands performed a lot of school house shows, “the kerosene circuit”; The Blue Sky Boys were from North Carolina and The Carter Family were from Virginia; the harmony style was learned in church; early country musicians would sing in unison or an octave apart 30:10 Many country musicians also wrote their own songs, but wants to point out that they also borrowed many songs from a variety of sources and converted them into a southern style; these musicians were working-class men and women who had no community models to draw from; almost all early commercial photographs of country artists were in their best Sunday clothes, not overalls; however, the world of entertainment in business and academia have insisted that country musicians conform to stereotypes about the south and about folk music; in show business they looked for identity for the stage and the hillbilly persona would at least make people laugh and has been a long-lasting aesthetic; the cowboy and the mountaineer have persisted until the modern-day 32:20 From the beginning of country music history, the cowboy and mountaineer has affected performances; Eck Robertson wore a cowboy costume when he made that first record; in 1927 Ralph Peer recorded musicians in Bristol, Tennessee which included The Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers, because they represented the cowboy and the mountain image; the impulses of home (domesticity) and rambling have appealed to the image of country music 33:45 The Carter Family came from the mountains and represented rootedness, stability, tradition, and morality associated with the Appalachian Mountains; Nashville argues that they put out nothing but moral musicians; Jimmie Rodgers represents the rambling impulse for people who had neither the freedom nor the money to ramble; during the Depression he could live luxuriously and demonstrated to people that you could make money playing country music 35:05 Demonstration: Recording, Jimmie Rodgers 36:05 This song shows a rare praise of work; Rodgers sung about hobos and tramps as both pitiful and masculine, and also sung cowboy songs; in the 1930s, this trend became popular; the cowboy image was really solidified by Rodgers’ disciple Gene Autry; from Texas, and became the first singing cowboy in 1934 37:10 Demonstration: Recording, Gene Autry (1936) 38:05 Autry became the most popular country singer in the world through movies and radio; Allison remembers that his television show made the south seem like a mysterious and adventurous land of the cowboys; “Blueberry Hill” was originally an Autry song; had a clear, popular sound and also promoted a respectable image that surpassed the hillbilly image 40:00 Notes that the cowboy and the mountaineer were never anything more than metaphors for what country music represented; after the 1930s country music became more representative of the southern world of the working-class; these artists who were popular in the 1930s and 1940s do not embody the cowboy image or mystical western landscape, but the labor movement from agriculture to urban areas 41:37 Demonstration: Recordings, Bob Wills and Ernest Tubbs 43:25 Both recordings display the dominance of electric instruments; music moves from the church and kerosene circuit, into the honky-tonks which become a defining space for country; after the war, country starts to boom; he will play Hank Williams who borrowed from Bob Wills, Ernest Tubbs, and Roy Acuff to develop the commercial country style 44:25 Demonstration: Recording, Hank Williams 44:55 Williams, Tubbs, and Wills all dressed like cowboys but had more realism in the music because it related to real feelings; Hank Williams spent a lot of time in Louisiana and was a prolific songwriter and so he became a superstar, and died early at 29 years old; started singing in honky-tonks when he was 14, but his first real moment was at the Louisiana Hayride; changed the way people thought about writing country music 46:20 Bill Monroe saw the music changing and was committed to reviving tradition; found ways to make old music commercial by putting a punch to it; “White House Blues” was written about the assassination of William McKinley—will play the version in 1920s by Charlie Poole and North Carolina Ramblers, then Monroe’s version to demonstrate how he shaped these old songs 47:30 Demonstration: Recordings, “White House Blues,” by Poole and Monroe 48:55 Monroe created bluegrass in the late 1940s, and was reaching all kinds of people like Sonny Curtis, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly; the future rockabilly artists were listening to this music and bringing it into new genres 50:20 Demonstration: Recording, “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” by Bill Monroe, then by Elvis Presley 51:51 Legend says that Elvis was fooling around with that song and it became one side of his first recording; will play Travis Tritt who embodies what the music really is—started singing in a Pentecostal church and then became interested in Elvis and southern rock 52:45 Demonstration: Recording, Travis Tritt, “Lord Have Mercy on the Working Man” 54:00 Thanks, and advocates for music education that talks about the contributions of black and white culture to American music; southern music really is American music
