Country Music

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Tad Richards

Contrary to the popular stereotype, country music has not always been associated with political conservatism. One of the Opry's first stars, Uncle Dave Macon, was a fiery radical leftist. Even Gene Autry, early in his career, recorded "The Death of Mother Jones," a tribute to the legendary left-wing labor organizer. But New Deal populism was replaced, over the years, by entrenched racism, Cold War patriotism, and the growing generation gap. By the 1960s, youth, rebellion, and rock 'n' roll were on one side of a great divide, and country music was on the other.

The anthems of 1960s country conservatism were Merle Haggard's anti-hippie "Okie From Muskogee" and chip-on-the-shoulder patriotic "Fightin' Side of Me." But Haggard, an ex-convict who had been in the audience when Johnny Cash recorded his historic live album at Folsom Prison, represented his own kind of rebellion. Along with Buck Owens, Haggard had turned his back on not only the Nashville Sound but Nashville itself, setting up their own production center in the dusty working-class town of Bakersfield, California, and making music that recaptured the grittier sound of an earlier era. Haggard and Owens, for all their right-wing posturing, were adopted by the rockers. The Grateful Dead recorded Haggard's "Mama Tried," and Creedence Clearwater Revival sang about "listenin' to Buck Owens."

The conservative cause stood in staunch opposition to the women's movement, but in the 1960s women gained their first major foothold in country music. There had been girl singers before, even great ones like Patsy Cline, but now Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, and especially Dolly Parton established themselves as important figures. Lynn and Parton wrote their own songs, often with incisive lyrics about the female experience, and Parton handled much of her own production. Country music has been described as "the voice of the inarticulate," and these singers gave a powerful voice to a segment of the population that had never had their dreams and struggles articulated in this way.

The Nashville establishment was still hitching its wagon to a star that shone most brightly over Las Vegas. Still distrustful of rebellion and rough edges, they looked to Vegas pop stars for their salvation. In 1974 and 1975, John Denver and Olivia Newton-John swept the Country Music Association Awards (Denver was Entertainer of the Year in 1975). Country's creative edge moved away from Nashville to Bakersfield and elsewhere. Singer-songwriters Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings grew their hair long and hung out with hippies and rockers at the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas. They made the country establishment nervous, but it did eventually accept the so-called Outlaw Movement, and by 1979, Nelson was Entertainer of the Year. The real working-class music of the new generation of Southern whites never got that acceptance. Although the 1950s rockabilly rebels like Cash, Lewis, and the Everly Brothers now played country venues, the young rockers still scared Nashville. There was too much Jimi Hendrix in their music, too much hippie attitude in their clothes and their hair. The Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and others played something called Southern Rock that could have been called country, but wasn't. Nevertheless, the kid at the gas station in North Carolina was listening to them, not to John Denver or Barbara Mandrell. By cutting them out (along with white Midwestern working-class rockers like Bob Seger), country music lost a large portion of its new generation of potential listeners.