With many apologies for our extended absence (life intervenes...)
The introduction to the next section of the book, "Hillbilly Boogie," gives us essentially the story I've been building us up to all along. With the coalescence of rockabilly as a commercial form of music, and most specifically with the arrival of Elvis, "the focal point of a revolution in taste and style," (94), we arrive at a great "widening" of the appeal and cultural significance of popular American music. This is the beginning of the era of what our good friend Bob Christgau calls the "monoculture"--that moment in American social life when the vast, racially mixed majority of Americans actually participated in a shared popular culture. For Christgau, near as I can tell, the high point of the monoculture is Motown, but for Guralnick, it's Elvis all the way.
For those of you aspiring musicologists and historians out there, the story I think Guralnick won't be telling (at least, not in great detail--the Hank, jr. chapter heads in this direction), is the influence of this monoculture--essentially rock & roll plus Motown soul--has as it feeds back on what's left of country and the blues. Obviously (at least, for my dear readers), neither were properly "folk" musics as of at least the 1920s, but nonetheless, the indelible impact of rock and roll on both is a story that I can see (Shania Twain meet Mutt Lange, hijinks ensue), but that I can't tell with depth or nuance. Just a thought.
The songs today are mostly early proto-rockabilly numbers--honky-tonk music with "boogie" in the title. Enjoy.
Growing up in La Crosse, Wisconsin, there weren't many opportunities for "real" live music. There were the bars, and a few local (mostly cover) bands. My sister was in the high school choir, for what it was worth, and during my middle school years, a gothic/electronica club opened downtown that brought in a band every now and again. The main sources of professional live music were the universities (UW-La Crosse and Viterbo) and the civic center. As was to be expected, the universities tended towards upper-middlebrow culture--jazz, polite folk, anything with harps. The civic center was where the action was.
In his contribution to the 33 1/3 series (on the Replacements' Let it Be), Colin Meloy (of the Decemberists), who grew up around Helena, Montana, speaks of a similar scenario. While in middle school, he finds himself caught between two worlds--he watches "120 Minutes" and clips concert announcements from the New York Times for Depeche Mode and Echo & the Bunnymen, but when presented with the opportunity, he snaps up concert tickets to a Nylons show, starved for live music. He hates it, but is strangely fascinated by the performance--particularly the sexuality, and the effect it has on a female classmate. From what I can make of it, it's like a second-hand rock experience for Meloy--even if the Nylons are terrible, derivative schlock, seeing their performance crystallizes the power music has for him. If these guys can get the girls screaming, what might Westerberg be capable of?
For me, there were two similar shows, one well attended (like Meloy's) by my school cohort and the focus of youth culture in my town for some weeks, and the other largely unnoticed by my peers. In 1998, I saw Aerosmith live in concert (I still have the tee-shirt--find me on the right day and I'll flash it to you). While, like many a weakly-mustachioed boy, I was a fan of classic rock, this was the Armageddon-soundtrack, Diane Warren-singing Aerosmith. They played the old hits, but the girls, well, they didn't want to miss a thing, and Messers Perry and Tyler ensured them they wouldn't. It was a rote performance--a small scale version of rock stardom for the small stage of a small town. And when they packed up and left, we all sat around in first period algebra and spoke of having our worlds rocked--the way the bass felt in our bodies, the cheap beer that had been spilled all over us, the crowd-surfing (!?!). It was all a lot for La Crosse. But even then, I think I realized it was (as would have any other of the classic rock bands that made up most of my daily rotation those days) a simulacra of what I was really looking and hoping for, a shadow of rock, but not the thing itself.
The better show was the one I saw a year earlier at the same civic center. The B.B. King Big Band and Review was nothing I expected from the blues (a genre I knew exclusively from CDs), although as I've gotten older, I've realized just how typical of the modern blues it is. I sat in the 5th row, surrounded by baby boomers--the youngest non-chaperoned person in my line of sight. Much like the Bobby "Blue" Bland gig described by Guralnick, the show opened with extended vamping by the horn-laden "Big Band," purveyors of a half-jazz/half-jump blues sound that, while pleasant, wasn't anything special. It was bland, generic blues for almost an hour before King came on stage. While it was one helluva show-business entrance, the 45 minute set-as-payoff was both moving and disappointing at once. B.B. is a master showman, and while his singing is not what it was in the mid-1970s, his guitar style has held up reasonably well, and he played those single notes with impeccable phrasing and smooth interaction with his band. But even then (and I'm not shitting you--I did actually think this, or at least as reasonably inarticulate version of this, at the time), I think I realized just how far this music was from the stuff I'd fallen in love with on record. And I still loved it. But for the B.B. King Big Band and Revue, the music had become something different--something that could work for mid-sized audiences in Wisconsin.
This was a transition that, by the mid-1970s, Bobby "Blue" Bland was in the midst of making, and the growing pains were evident. Guralnick clearly thinks the world of Bland and his music (the only other places in the book where his fandom oozes through the cracks are when he talks about Charlie Rich and James Talley), and the man he portrays is having a hard time with the evolution. His band is in flux, he's still playing venues smaller than his stature merited, and his style of music has gone out of fashion (again? The point of course, being that his career has spanned enough eras that this wasn't the first time). His early tracks (which, I should point out, I had never heard before reading this book for the first time several years ago) are a revelation--tough, muscular guitar playing with tight horns--and of course, that voice. It wouldn't be Guralnick if it wasn't transitional music--sort of halfway between Wynonie Harris and Muddy Waters, a non-gospel bridge from the blues to early soul. In any case, it's my favorite of what I've discovered off this little project so far. It's got soul, you can use it to advance a claim about the history of American pop music, and he's the last artist in the "Honky Tonk Heroes" section. Look out for: 1) the complete Reading Rock: Lost Highway, pt. 1 ("Honky Tonk Heroes") .zip file round-up, and 2) the first post from Lost Highway (2), "Hillbilly Heroes."
Bobby "Blue" Bland is 79 years old today. Sing it.
Why was Rufus Thomas obsessed with animals? I have looked and looked, and I come to you today with no answers, only questions. And that's the thing about Rufus. Born in 1917 but not famous outside Memphis until the early 1960s, and a major factor in the early successes on Sun and Stax Records, two of the most influential labels in American history, Rufus Thomas bridged two eras in popular music, but never truly became a star in either. The first of the two "Honky Tonk Heroes" in Guralnick's book to have worked exclusively outside the honky tonk milieu (well, not really, if you're flexible on your terminology--the man worked the tent shows, dance halls, jook joints, and "Chitlin' circuit" venues, which Guralnick would probably be quick to point out, weren't all that different from "honky tonks" in most ways), Thomas's career is a pretty efficient metaphor for the creation of rock & roll and soul, and makes him the paradigmatic Memphis man.
Thomas started out in late-era minstrel tent shows in the late 1930s, but by the early 1940s he was a fixture on the Memphis music scene, hosting a popular amatuer show at the Palace Theater, and featuring B.B. King and Bobby "Blue" Bland. He held down a radio show on the celebrated radio station WDIA, the most influential station in the South to feature black performers and on-air talent, and later, the first programmed by African-Americans (Now, sadly, it plays what its management refers to as "light urban"). As Guralanick reports it, he was a one-man racial divide wrecking-crew (which, given the themes we've discussed thus far, would seem to be why he's included in this section)--an Opry fan hosting a show on a Black radio station, but also the "first black jock in the city playing the Beatles and the Rolling Stones" (p. 62). He sang and performed locally, cutting a few sides in the 1940s, but his first hit (and one of Sam Phillips' first Sun Singles) was "Bear cat," a response record to Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog" (#3, R&B). This was the transitional moment, in both my telling and Guralinick's--the birth of his obsession with animal songs (me), and the beginning of Sun's move to white artists, at the literal and figurative expense of performers like Rufus Thomas (Guralnick).
But this was not the end for Rufus. He continued his radio work, gigged out locally and toured, and when he and his daughter Carla (yes, that Carla Thomas) recorded a duet for a local record label, Satellite, its success led to wider distribution of Rufus's work and a new name for his label--Stax. He spent the rest of his career playing off the success he had in 1963 with his seminal dance hits, "The Dog" and "Walking the Dog" by touring and playing festivals, recording a number of minor dance hits (nearly always prefaced in name with the phrase "Do the Funky" and suffixed with the name of an animal), and eventually settling into a groove as a local Memphis legend and periodically recording for late-model blues labels like Alligator. He passed in 2001 (but this week, we're forgoing headstone pictures in favor of animal pictures, in fitting tribute).
Why Rufus? Because he exemplifies two of Guralnick's unspoken main points--that black and white music were thoroughly intertwined before Elvis, and that certain crucial performers were living, breathing bridges between the traditions of musical performance and dissemination in the rural South prior to WWII, but also personified the very rise of rock and roll itself--the role of radio deejays and small labels, as well as the radical re-inventions in sound. All of what we're presenting here (constrained as we are by the text) is Rufus's later work (excepting "Bear cat"), but I imagine that with better ears than mine you can imagine how American pop went from the minstral show to "Do the Funky Chicken" in one move.
Oh, and that last sentence is not an attempt to denigrate Thomas's work or imply his stage act or his act is "modern minstrelry"--because it's not (even though when "Do the Funky Penguin" hit, he sometimes wore a giant penguin suit). He was simply a malleable performer able to work in a pop/soul vein to appeal to new audiences--just as the grittiest of delta bluesmen often performed (if rarely recorded) pop songs and sentimental music alongside their more "gritty" material.
Now, Deford Bailey is where things start to get interesting. Not only the first African-American to appear on the Grand Ole Opry, but the first man to play, so the story goes, on the night that the Opry got its name (December 10, 1927), he's so little known that I can't predict if our visits for this post will go up (because people have heard vaguely of him and are curious) or will plummet (because people have not heard of him and are not curious). A harmonica player of the first rate (even if I can't really make any guess as to his influence on the titans of post-war blues harmonica, the Little Walters and James Cottons of the world) whose trademark was an imitation of a train engine that formed the backbone to his best-known song, the "Pan-American Blues." He was a fixture on the Opry in its formative years, before being kicked off in 1941 during the ASCAP/BMI war, when unable to perform his signature material, he came into conflict with Opry management.
"A victim of the licensing battle between ASCAP and the newly formed BMI in 1941, Bailey was told he could no longer play on WSM the tunes that he had played on the air for over 15 years and had made him famous. Instead he would have to play completely new ones on WSM [ed - the Opry's 50,000 watt station]. He did not fully understand what was going on and his simple reaction was that he would leave the show if he could no longer play his tunes. As a result he was terminated from the program; and although the licensing battle between the two groups was resolved a few months later, this effectively ended his performing career. He continued to play his harmonica on a daily basis and enjoyed entertaining friends and patrons of his shoe shine shop, but he seldom performed publicly after this." (http://defordbailey.info/biography)
Circa 1930
Following his (unwilling) exit from the Opry, he essentially quit public performing. He continued to run the shoe-shine business he had established with family in Nashville, and led a private life. He appeared several times at Opry "old-timers" events at the end of his life, urged on by friends interested in gaining him his (due) recognition from the Opry establishment, but aside from the 8 sides he cut in 1928 (in the very first recording session in Nashville!), he never again recorded professionally (a friend and amateur historian, David Morton, recorded conversations and harp playing in the 1970s, and these recordings are available here).
***
When I first came across Bailey's music in 2006 (thanks to Cantwell and Friskics-Warren's Heartaches by the Number: Country Music's 500 Greatest Singles), I found it nearly impossible to track down, even with the best web, torrent, and p2p sources at my disposal. I'm happy to report now that thanks to the exposure of the documentary "Deford Bailey: A Legend Lost," produced by National Public Television and aired on PBS in August 2005, and the amazingly comprehensive site maintained by Bailey's friend and biographer David Morton, that his music and his story are far more readily known now than even just a few years ago.And this, in a way, is one of the main reasons Lost Highway remains compelling (and in print) today. Guralnick's influence in helping to publicize Bailey in the late 1970s must have been important in reviving his legacy as a performer. Equally, it contributed to a greater awareness beyond the academic community (and a greater attention in the academic community, if the publication record is any evidence) to the influence of African-Americans and their culture and music in the development of "white" hillbilly and country music.
The importance of this was struck home to me when I was preparing the first of these posts, on Jimmie Rodgers. Looking for the Youtube link I eventually posted, I was surprised to find in the video comments section a very tense discussion going on about the "black" influence on Rodgers' songs and style. There were, to be sure, simplistic (if forgivably so, given the obvious connection of Rodgers; style, phrasing, and lyrics to the blues of his time period) arguments that Rodgers was "stealing" the blues. But there were also, much to my shock, a series of posts violently "defending" Rodgers from claims that he was influenced by black culture, arguing that country music was a "pristine" form of folk culture descended from the balladry tradition of the British Isles, transplanted to Appalachia. Now again, forgiving the first error (Rodgers was not Appalachian), there's truth to the "balladry" argument as well--there are strong connections in style and lyrical theme in early country that go back to Europe. No one disputes this. But the notion that Jimmie Rodgers was not influenced by contemporary African-American musicians he met and heard is patently absurd. That anyone would need to make this claim is also absurd (both in terms of readily available knowledge of his biography, and in terms of the obvious sonic debt).
The same, of course, is true for Bailey as well. Deford's formative musical experiences were with the same sorts for fiddle music being played in Georgia by Fiddlin' John Carson. These songs were were part of a shared pre-blues and pre-country musical tradition of "reels and breakdowns" (p. 51) that crossed ethnic and racial lines in the South, and that provided the raw material for both emerging styles. This relationship was encapsulated by one of the commercial releases RCA made of Deford's recording of "John Henry." Unlike the vast majority of records at the time, it was released as both a "race" and "hillbilly" side, with an African-American playing on one b-side, and a white harp player on the other.
Guralnick's book goes to great pains to make the reciprocal link between black and white Southern cultures in musical terms during the pre- and early post-war period. What the pay-off will be (and given that rockabilly and Elvis are up next, I have my suspicions) of this musical intersectionality will be the subject of many of my future posts in Reading Rock: Lost Highway. Deford Bailey - Pan-American Blues Deford Bailey - John Henry Deford Bailey - Ice Water Blues Deford Bailey - Davidson County Blues Deford Bailey - Alcoholic Blues & It Ain't Gonna Rain No Mo'( these last are from the Morton recordings. I couldn't find the original version, although it looks to be available here. If I can find the original versions, I'll replace them.)
Some old-time songs mentioned as relevant to Bailey's musical development: (Fare You Well) Old Joe Clark (here, by Fiddlin John Carson) Lost John (here, by Burnett & Rutherford)
And please, please do take a small moment and poke your head in here, at the Morton site, to here some of the audio clips of Deford (musical and interview) he's posted from his private collection of personal recordings.
Hank Snow, another of the Nudie Suit-wearing, honky tonkin' stars of early post-war country music is, for Peter Guralnick, a pair with Ernest Tubb. Both were profoundly shaped by their early exposure to Jimmie Rodgers, and worked to maintain his legacy (most notably at the Jimmie Rodgers Country Music Festival, annually in his hometown of Meridian, Mississippi). Both served long apprenticeships prior to "making it" in mainstream country, including unsuccessful stints in Hollywood trying to fit the Gene Autry mold. Both encapsulated the "Golden age" country sound, a sound that was the face of American popular music for an enormous share of the nation between 1940 and 1956, and both (but especially Hank) helped to sponsor and usher in the music that would eventually surpass their own in popularity in Tennessee and far, far beyond.
Hank Snow's story is nonetheless a unique one--the first Canadian to become a star in a most American style of music. His youth in Nova Scotia, to parents whose economic lives weren't all that dissimilar to the lives of most poor whites in the American South. His abusive step-father and hard economic times sent him to sea as a cabin boy in his early teens, but that couldn't stop him form having that same epiphany young Ernest Tubb did, when at age 16, he heard Jimmie Rodgers for the first time. But years of struggles, as a DJ and singer on Canadian radio, barnstorming, and finally (with the better-established Tubb's help), a gig at the Grand Ole Opry, one that turned into a 40+ year permanent gig.
Hank Snow on Jimmie Rodgers' influence on his own songwriting
Ultimately, aside from his own iconic status, he's here for two reasons--his role in helping to get a 19 year old Elvis the Opry gig that helped to launch his career, and as proof of the both the influence of his kind of country music had on such a large cross section of the U.S., and his continued support of the country mainstream in the face of its erosion in the 70s. Like Tubb, he continued to appear regularly on the Opry well after the biggest stars no longer appeared regularly. And his singles, like Tubb's were, as Guralnick puts it on page 46, the music "that marked a whole generation's passing into musical maturity." Guralanick's project with Snow reminds me of my own efforts to convince myself of how good the Rolling Stones really were as a teenager. When I bought Hot Rocks, I was unconvinced--"Satisfaction" and all the rest were on my Dad's oldies channel, and they sounded played-out to me. I couldn't hear them with open ears. It took Exile on Main Street, packed full of songs I'd never heard out of tinny clock radio speakers, to convince me how good they really were. Hank Snow's influence is, as Guralnick argues, hard for a post-Elvis generation to appreciate, but it is, as I noted with Tubb, what my grandparents would have recognized as archetypal country music (He also had a keen ear for the novelty song, as tracks like the "Rhumba Boogie" bear out).For those looking for direct lines of influence, check out part 13 of an ongoing series of posts over at another Whoopee in Hell favorite, "Any Major Dude With Half a Heart" (yes, that's a Steely Dan reference, but don't be frightened off, good people, it's an excellent blog) looking at original versions of famous songs. Your curiosity will be rewarded with a Hank Snow song that became a big (US #2) hit for Elvis in 1959.
Hank with Elvis (circa 1956). Note the sneer and the tux.
As with Tubb, in this chapter Guralnick's interest is with Snow's first big recordings, rather than on the 1950s singles like "I've Been Everywhere," "Miller's Cave," and "The Golden Rocket" that are the "Singing Ranger's" (because, of course, he's Canadian) best legacy. He's a man few people alive remember as a young performer--he lingered on for such a long time that he's remembered more for his golden years on the Opry (the reference to him in Smokey and the Bandit, e.g.) than for his early hit-making. But here's those early hits, nonetheless.
My wife is from Fort Worth, Texas--a city of great country music tradition and heritage, the long time home base of Bob Wills and the Light Crust Doughboys (singers of the immortal "Pussy, Pussy, Pussy," still the best double entendre record ever released by a country act, Brad Paisley's "Ticks" included)--
and for a while the base of the most important of country music's third wave singers, Ernest Tubb. Naturally, it took meeting me for my wife to learn of any of this. One of her favorite stories is about my second trip home to see her family. I asked very politely to be taken to Fort Worth's main tourist quarter, the "Stockyards." an area of town I had not been shown on my first trip, apparently because my mother-in-law is not fond of it. As the proud owner of a variety of western shirts (I was married in this one):
(several of which were, graciously, presents from said mother-in-law, who has become aquainted with my predilections), I was excited by the prospect of a few hours of cowboy culture. Most importantly, though, I had my eyes on the Mecca of honky tonk, the Fort Worth branch of Ernest Tubb's record shop. My wife and mother-in-law dropping me off there for an hour so they could peruse something a little less "down home," I went a little "hillbilly nuts," if you'll excuse the BR5-49 reference, eventually purchasing 12 CDs for the low, low price of $150 dollars. Hearing of this, my mother-in-law was flabbergasted. It genuinely amazed her, not just that anyone could spend so much on records, but more, that any kid from Wisconsin (let alone one engaged to her daughter) could be so taken by the corniest, most obviously tourist part of her adoptive hometown--a part of town she herself had little business with. My in-laws have always looked at me a little cockeyed since.
But this isn't about Ernest Tubb's Record Shop (although the Memphis branch, which was the site of the Grand Ole Opry afterparty for many years, figures in the chapter), it's about the man himself. The first one of Guralnick's five "Honky-Tonk" heroes (only three of whom played anything approaching country music) which presaged the rockabilly culture and music that seems to be his first and strongest love in this book, Ernest Tubb's story is one of the first generation of country musicians to mature as the genre itself was becoming respectable. His personal hero Jimmie Rodgers was not the first "hillbilly" singer to record, but he succeeded (unintentionally) in codifying many of the memes that would standardize themselves in a generation, and in doing so pushing out the "Weird, Old America" semi-pros (Dock Boggs), contemporary anachronisms (Blind Alfred Reed), and reformed opera singers (Vernon Dalhart) from the genre, paving the way for the real professionals. The ten years between Rodgers and Tubb, what I'll call the "Second generation" for clarity's sake, were men like Roy Acuff, staunch traditionalists who retained the image of down home amateurism while becoming far more commercially savvy, with original, professional songs and musicians (in fact, Jimmie Rodgers' sister-in-law, a professional songwriter, wrote some material for Tubb at Rodgers' widow's request).
In the Guralnick narrative (Which I've expanded, obviously), Ernest Tubb is the fully professional, flour-schilling, radio-recording, barnstorming (and drum set using) link between the real traditional music and the revolution of Hank Williams (which was, of course, not really a revolution at all and soon gave way to the more radical reformulations of Elvis). His path to stardom was inexorably linked with the height of the Opry's influence on American life, and his relentless touring and recording well into the 1970s were an effort to retain the vitality of country music's height of cultural influence, even as country music (and society) changed radically, and MCA studio studio execs dropped the 61 year old from their roster.
Tubb is, in essence, what my grandparents (of the age to have served in WWII) would have known as country music, a music halfway in between its rural roots and something more, an incomplete creole of black and white, rural and urban, at the height of its influence but on the cusp of something more. The songs from the chapter emphasize Tubb's earliest hits, especially the enormously influential "Walking the Floor Over You" over his 50's material (because by then, in Guralnick's storyline, Tubb isn't really the story anymore).He was (at the writing of this piece in the mid-70s) interesting as a performer in his own right and as a link to the past, but Tubb and the four singers who'll follow in this section are here to prime us for what comes next--rockabilly, outlaw country, and in the end, a return to the blues.
Ernest Tubb - There's a Little Bit of Everything in Texas
Oh, and bear in mind, as I hit the end of each section in the book, I'll throw all the tracks together in a .zip file for easy downloading. If the downloads don't work, it's because we've run out of bandwidth temporarily. Just come back the next day, or wait for the .zip. Thanks, y'all.
Of course, all songs provided here are for sampling/illustrative purposes only (which we believe to constitute fair use). Do try to support your local independent music retailer (especially if they love to do special-orders, god bless 'em), and contact us at whoopeeinhell@gmail.com if you are an artist or label and would like your music removed (don't be snarky and go straight to Blogger--we'll happily take it down!). Word.
Oh, and holler at your boys: whoopeeinhell[at]gmail.com
With many apologies for our extended absence (life intervenes...)
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