Hidden in the Mix: The African American Presence in Country Music

Description

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." Contributors. Michael Awkward, Erika Brady, Barbara Ching, Adam Gussow, Patrick Huber, Charles Hughes, Jeffrey A. Keith, Kip Lornell, Diane Pecknold, David Sanjek, Tony Thomas, Jerry Wever Contents Introduction: Country Music and Racial Formation - Diane Pecknold Part One: Playing in the Dark Chapter 1. Black Hillbillies: African American Musicians on Old-Time Records, 1924-1932 - Patrick Huber Chapter 2. Making Country Modern: The Legacy of Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music - Diane Pecknold Chapter 3. Contested Origins: Arnold Shultz and the Music of Western Kentucky - Erika Brady Chapter 4. Fiddling with Race Relations in Rural Kentucky - The Life, Times, and Contested Identity of Fiddlin' Bill Livers - Jeffrey A. Keith Part Two: New Antiphonies Chapter 5. Why African Americans Put the Banjo Down - Tony Thomas Chapter 6. Old-Time Country Music in North Carolina and Virginia: The 1970s and 1980s - Kip Lornell Chapter 7. "The South's Gonna Do It Again": Changing Conceptions of the Use of "Country" Music in the Albums of Al Green - Michael Awkward Chapter 8. Dancing the Habanera Beats (in Country Music): The Creole-Country Two-Step in St. Lucia and Its Diaspora - Jerry Wever Chapter 9. Playing Chicken with the Train: Cowboy Troy's Hick-Hop and the Transracial Country West - Adam Gussow Chapter 10. If Only They Could Read between the Lines: Alice Randall and the Integration of Country Music - Barbara Ching Chapter 11. You're My Soul Song: How Southern Soul Changed Country Music - Charles L. Hughes Chapter 12. What's Syd Got to Do with It? : King Records, Henry Glover, and the Complex Achievement of Crossover - David Sanjek Bibliography Contributors Index