Social Studies
While Music Row continues to focus on selling country music to the masses, a little farther down West End, two Vanderbilt University professors are taking a scholarly look at popular music. In a town where country music might be considered the hottest export, John Sloop and Richard “Pete” Peterson remind us that music is also a viable, living cultural artifact. Both men have recently released books that provide an in-depth study and analysis of trends in popular music, and Peterson’s book focuses on country music in particular.
Sloop, a mass communications professor, coedited Mapping the Beat: Popular Music and Contemporary Theory (Blackwell Publishers) with Drake University professors Andrew Herman and Thomas Swiss. The trio has quickly earned attention in academic circles for the insights gathered in its volume. The book addresses music from a cultural-studies perspective, with 15 essays on topics such as rock cover songs, MTV, Selena, and corporate culture in pop music.
“While we saw a number of pop books about music and some academic treatments of it, we didn’t see a number of strong treatments of various marginal musics or audiences,” Sloop says. “We wanted to gather together a number of people who have been working on multiple areas of music that have a bearing on other issues, such as legal, community, and sexuality.”
The book takes an inter-disciplinary approach, including the writings of professors who teach English, women’s studies, sociology, and communication. “Like any good theory or criticism, this book forces us to be reflective about our activities and enjoyments, what we are doing when we buy something or dance to something,” Sloop says. “It forces us to understand that nothing is just entertainment.”
Peterson’s book, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity (University of Chicago Press), should be of more interest to local audiences because it explores the issue of purity in country music. Billboard magazine’s Timothy White has called the volume “one of the most important books ever written about a popular music form.”
Peterson, an author/editor of seven books and a Vanderbilt sociology professor since 1965, traced the development of country music over three decades, from its first recordings in 1923 to the 1953 death of Hank Williams Sr. Interestingly enough, the professor notes that Williams is the very personification of the fabricated authentic country artist.
Creating Country Music shows us that today’s ongoing debate about imaging is an argument that began decades ago. Peterson reports that new developments in country music were greeted with skepticism even in the early 20th century, when English balladry began to be replaced by more commercial sounds. In the 1940s, for instance, purists bemoaned the encroachment of honky-tonkers, whose electrified instruments were a definite break with tradition. In the early 1980s, meanwhile, those same upstart honky-tonkers turned up their noses at the rising popularity of Barbara Mandrell and the Oak Ridge Boys.
Imaging, Peterson suggests, happened long before the creation of stylists and music videos. In the 1930s, for example, singers donned either cowboy or hillbilly clothing, but neither approach worked until performers thought to combine the two. Cowboy acts, who sang about ranges and horses, were viewed as “great outfit, lousy songs,” while hillbilly songs about heartache and lost love were more appealing than the overall-clad singers delivering them. Ironically, when the two were combined, the resulting hybrid not only worked—it was considered authentic.
Peterson says it’s critical to remember country’s past as the music moves into the future. “I think what happens before happens again; I firmly believe in circles. One of the cycles I find is a relationship between hard-core country music and soft-shell country music.”
Hard-core country is best represented by the more bluesy, down-to-earth singers such as Hank Williams and Roy Acuff, while the author describes soft-shell singers as crooners who “effectively present a song.... They’re clearly playing a role.” Country audiences saw just such a stylistic shift in the 1960s, when smooth singers like Eddy Arnold and Jim Reeves reached the peak of their popularity. At the time, purists might have hated this music, but today both of these artists are held up as “traditional” country singers.
“Country music attracts a larger audience because of its sense of authenticity and grittiness,” Peterson says. “People from outside of country music are attracted to it because it’s different, it’s real. Then people say, ‘But if you take off some of that twang, some of that steel guitar, we’ll sell more records,’ and they do.... People turn to other things than country music. Then it [eventually] falls back to a more root-oriented, hard-core music.”
Authenticity, like beauty, is in the ear of the listener, he concludes. There is no real, clear standard in country music, since this so-called genuineness is simply a reconstruction of selected elements from the past. “It depends utterly on the audience,” Peterson remarks. “The fans are very much at the center of what makes authentic country music, and that’s different from my experience with jazz, for sure.”
Peterson’s observations are especially timely, given the current climate in the country-music industry. In the end, he affirms, no single authority can dictate authenticity in country music—it’s a question that’s continually being negotiated. “So long as country music remains the shared property of performers, the industry, and fans,” he writes, “the sense of authenticity will be preserved as it is changed.”
Nash bashing
Entertainment Weekly writer Alanna Nash was unfairly criticized not once, but twice, in last week’s Tennessean for her review of Lorrie Morgan’s autobiography, Forever Yours Faithfully, which she gave a C rating. At issue was Nash’s assertion that Morgan “doesn’t do much soul searching about the four marriages she’s racked up by age 38. And when she fails to even mention her current spouse, singer Jon Randall, you can’t help but size him up as a future ex-husband.”
Tennessean writer Brad Schmitt dubbed Nash “catty,” quoting Morgan’s manager, Susan Nadler, as saying the review was just sour grapes; several years ago, Nash approached Morgan about writing her autobiography and was turned down. “It’s true that years ago, after I interviewed Lorrie for Entertainment Weekly at Susan’s request, an editor at some New York publishing house called me and said it might make an interesting book,” the writer says. “I called them, and Susan took it to her and said she wasn’t ready to do a book.
“One thing I try desperately to watch is a conflict of interest. If someone makes me angry, I’ll wait a long time to review their work, or not review it at all. For example, I don’t review Reba McEntire because there was a conflict over her book. I didn’t feel the same with Lorrie’s book. Because she didn’t want to do the book then didn’t mean she didn’t want to do it now.”
Nash is a highly respected author who has written about Elvis Presley, Col. Tom Parker, and network anchor Jessica Savitch. Two movies, including the recent Up Close and Personal, have been based on her work.
Frankly, I was thrilled to see a journalist point out Morgan’s slight toward her latest husband. After elaborating on her relationships with Troy Aikman, Kenny Rogers, and Sen. Fred Thompson, it seems strange that she should completely ignore Randall. I can’t help wondering how he must feel, especially since Morgan has spoken at length about Rogers and Aikman in recent interviews.
“This seems to me to be Nashville’s continuing inability to separate one thing from another, as far as publicists go,” Nash says, noting that all publicists/managers don’t get defensive in response to negative press. “Nashville is still looked at by some of the larger entertainment capitals as being second-rate because they have this ‘feelings on their sleeves’ attitude. It’s an apples-and-oranges situation.”
