Hidden in the mix : the African American presence in country music / Diane Pecknold, ed.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Pecknold, Diane.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--Music--History and criticism.

African Americans.

African Americans--Music.

Country music--History and criticism.

Country music.

African American country musicians.

Physical Description:

383 pages : illustrations ; $c 24 cm

Place of Publication:

[Durham, NC] : Duke University Press, 2013.

Summary:

Country music's debt to African American music has long been recognized. Black musicians have helped to shape the styles of many of the most important performers in the country canon. The partnership between Lesley Riddle and A. P. Carter produced much of the Carter Family's repertoire; the street musician Tee Tot Payne taught a young Hank Williams Sr.; the guitar playing of Arnold Schultz influenced western Kentuckians including Bill Monroe and Ike Everly. Yet attention to how these and other African Americans enriched the music played by whites has obscured the achievements of black country-music performers and the enjoyment of black listeners. The contributors to Hidden in the Mix examine how country music became "white," how that fictive racialization has been maintained, and how African American artists and fans have used country music to elaborate their own identities. They investigate topics as diverse as the role of race in shaping old-time record catalogues, the transracial West of the hick-hopper Cowboy Troy, and the place of U.S. country music in postcolonial debates about race and resistance. Revealing how music mediates both the ideology and the lived experience of race, Hidden in the Mix challenges the status of country music as "the white man's blues." Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: country music and racial formation / Diane Pecknold

Black hillbillies: African American musicians on old-time records, 1924-1932 / Patrick Huber

Making country modern : the legacy of modern sounds in country and western music / Diane Pecknold

"In a class by himself" : Arnold Schultz and categorical ambiguity among western Kentucky thumbpickers / Erika Brady

Fiddling with race relations in rural Kentucky: the life, times, and contested identity of Fiddlin' Bill Livers / Jeff Keit

Why African Americans put the banjo down / Tony Thomas

Old-time country music in North Carolina and Virginia : the 1970s & 1980s / Kip Lornell

"The South's gonna do it again" : changing conceptions of the use of "country" music in the albums of Al Green / Michael Awkward

Dancing the habanera beats (in country music) : the creole-country two-step in St. Lucia and its diaspora / Jerry Wever

Playing chicken with the train : Cowboy Troy's hick-hop and the transracial country west / Adam Gussow

If only they could read between the lines : Alice Randall and the integration of country music / Barbara Ching

You're my soul song: how Southern soul changed country music / Charles Hughes

What's Syd got to do with it? : King Records, Henry Glover and the complex achievement of crossover / David Sanjek.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780822351498

0822351498

9780822351634

0822351633

OCLC:

816030825