Exploring American Folk Music

by Kip Lornell

  Border radio reigned virtually unchecked for more than twenty years, well into the rock ’n’ roll era. Its influence diminished in the 1950s as the FCC and Mexican government began a series of legal actions to limit them. As late as 1960 Wolfman Jack launched his broadcasting career as a disc jockey on XERF in Del Rio. Changing tastes in radio and even more stringent regulations have all but shut down these powerful stations. Well into the 1980s rock groups like Z.Z. Top and Wall of Voodoo continued to celebrate the zaniness and power of border radio: “I wish I was in Tijuana, eating barbecued iguana . . . I’m on a Mexican radio” (“Mexican Radio” by Wall of Voodoo, 1982).

  THE ANCESTORS OF MTV AND VH-1

  Postmodern television history would have you believe that such cable outlets as MTV (Musical Television) and VH-1 (Video Hits–1) pioneered the integration of musical themes with visuals, which became known as music videos. In essence, music videos are three- to ten-minute short films that illustrate a song. MTV in particular initially relied heavily on the same format as found on most radio stations: the intermixing of short musical selections with an interlocutor and commercial messages. In the early part of the twenty-first century, the MTV format has expanded to include half-hour programs, documentaries, and retrospective programming.

  The truth is that filming musicians is not new, nor is filming vernacular music particularly innovative. It is part of a lineage that can be traced back for decades. Because music videos have exploded in popularity since the middle 1980s, it is worth examining their origins—a legacy that extends back to just before the Great Depression.

  As early as 1928, shortly after the advent of “talking pictures,” American folk musicians were captured on film. These short pieces played at commercial theaters, permitting the viewers to watch and hear two to three minutes of contemporary folk music artists. Bela Lam (Stanardsville, Virginia), Whistler’s Jug Band (Louisville, Kentucky), and the Rust College Jubilee Group (Mississippi) were among the groups documented during the first few years of this new wave of technology. The closest parallel to MTV from this period is “St. Louis Blues,” a twelve-minute film starring Bessie Smith that chronicles the love problems that entangle the legendary blues singer. It closes with Smith and a group of singers in a beer joint singing the theme song.

  At least two well-known folk artists from the 1920s and 1930s, Lead Belly and Charlie Poole, made trips to Hollywood to star in feature-length films that were never completed. Of course some of the singing cowboys of the silver screen, most notably Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, began their careers as folk singers. The early recordings of both men display the distinctive flavor of the blues-influenced country yodeler Jimmie Rodgers, whose Victor recordings were highly influential. But most folk performers were limited to short clips that appeared on movie screens as a prelude to a feature film. In the late 1940s some jukebox operators distributed machines that for a dime would play a two- to three-minute musical short called a soundie. The intent of soundies is identical to a music video on MTV: a thematic musical short designed to get you to purchase their product.

  UNCLE DAVE MACON AND THE ELECTRONIC MEDIA

  To exemplify the relationship between folk artists and the mass media in its infancy, let’s turn to Uncle Dave Macon—one of country music’s most influential and colorful characters. Born in 1870 in central Tennessee, Uncle Dave Macon first entered a recording studio at the age of fifty-four. For many years Macon farmed and operated the Macon Midway Mule and Wagon Transportation Company, hauling freight between Murfreesboro and Woodbury, Tennessee. He also learned banjo picking under the expert tutelage of minstrel and circus veteran Joel Davidson, who exposed Uncle Dave to his own repertoire and taught him the importance of raconteurship. In 1920 Macon quit the hauling trade and soon after turned to music full time. He played locally but quickly joined the vaudeville circuit, bringing his considerable skills to engagements arranged by the Loew’s organization.

  From 1923 until his death in 1952 Uncle Dave Macon entertained people with his music and stories. Inspired by the success of Fiddlin’ John Carson, Sterchi Brothers Furniture Company (Nashville’s Vocalion Record distributors) arranged for Macon and his fiddling partner, Sid Harkreader, to record in New York City. Macon’s first session in July 1924 suggests the breadth of his experiences, interests, and tastes all tempered by what he knew the people wanted. He combined elements of his stage act, including his popular comic piece “Chewing Gum,” with traditional material, “The Fox Chase,” and his own version of William Shakespeare Hays’s composition “Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane.” Future sessions were equally broad in their interpretation of country music for the masses. One of his most famous sessions came in May 1927, with his Fruit Jar Drinkers performing classic renditions of Anglo-American fiddle tunes and lyric songs: “Sail Away Ladies,” “Carve That Possum,” and “Tommy and Jerry” as well as eight sacred numbers. “Carve That Possum,” written by black minstrel performer Sam Lucas and published in the middle 1870s, underscores Macon’s own minstrel roots. Its humor relies on racial and rural stereotypes that seem far removed from those living in an urban, high-tech world. This performance is sung in “negro dialect” and features a response by the band, which is shown in parentheses:

  My dog treed, I went to see (Carve him to the heart).

  Dar was a possum up dat tree (Carve him to the heart).

  And dat possum begin to grin (Carve him to the heart).

  I reached up and took a pin (Carve him to the heart).

  Chorus: Oh, carve that possum, carve that possum, children.

  Carve that possum, children, oh carve him to his heart.

  Carried him home and dressed him off (Carve . . .).

  Hung him out that night in the frost (Carve . . .).

  But the way to cook the possum sound (Carve . . .).

  First parboil, then bake him brown (Carve . . .).

  Chorus

  Possum meat am good to eat (Carve . . .).

  Always fat and good and sweet (Carve . . .).

  Grease potatoes in the pan (Carve . . .).

  Sweetest eating in the land (Carve . . .).

  Chorus

  Some eat early and some eat soon (Carve . . .).

  Some like possum and some like coon (Carve . . .).

  That possum just the thing for me (Carve . . .).

  Old Rattler’s got another one up a tree (Carve . . .).

  Chorus

  Macon recorded nearly 180 songs during his lengthy commercial recording career that stretched well into the 1930s. His final, rather informal recordings were done by folklorist Charles Faulkner Bryant in 1950, shortly before Macon’s death.

  Not only did Macon sell records and appear on the stage, he became one of hillbilly music’s early radio artists. His debut came late in 1925 over Nashville’s WSM, home of the recently established Grand Ole Opry, where he remained a fixture for fifteen years and regular performer until his death. Macon was not limited to the three- to five-minute confines of the contemporary Opry; he often had fifteen- to thirty-minute blocks of improvisatory time permitting him to stretch out by telling jokes, comic tales, and music. Over his nearly thirty-year radio career Macon reached the ears and hearts of millions of Americans.

  Uncle Dave Macon late in life. Courtesy of Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution.

  Uncle Dave Macon’s career stretched from the age of minstrelsy to the year before Elvis Presley first walked into Sam Phillips’s Memphis Sun studio. He very clearly recognized the vital impact of radio and records as forces in disseminating his music to an audience far more vast than touring could ever hope to reach. Unlike Ernest V. Stoneman, who all but boycotted radio and rarely toured until the renaissance of his musical career in the mid-1950s, Macon embraced both aspects of the new technology to further his professional career. By the end of his life Uncle Dave was a true anachronism. He remained true to his creative muse. As a fiercely individua
listic, perhaps eccentric, man, Macon brought his nineteenth-century musical vision to people across modern-day America.

  FINAL THOUGHTS

  The electronic media has shaped postmodern America in many and varied ways. It helps to define and promulgate popular trends in fashion, language, dance, and music. American folk music has been intrinsically linked with radio and the recording industry since their inception, both of which have assisted in the breakdown of the cultural traits that delineate regional American culture and music. But traditional music is far from dead. It continues to lurk just beneath the commercial underbelly, infusing younger musicians who seemingly annually discover the old records of Robert Johnson, Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers, Elmore James, the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, and the Golden Gate Quartet—truly American originals.

  KEY FIGURES AND TERMS

  A & R Men

  aural transmission

  barn dance radio shows

  blackface

  commercialization

  Vernon Dalhart

  down-home

  field recordings

  Grand Ole Opry

  hillbilly music

  independent record company

  “Jump Jim Crow”

  KDKA

  Uncle Dave Macon

  minstrel show

  Petrillo Ban

  popcountry

  race records

  show dates

  vaudeville

  SUGGESTED LISTENING

  Carter Family. The Carter Family on Border Radio. Arhoolie CD 411-13. These three compact discs contain a cross-section of songs and talking taken from 1939 border radio transcriptions.

  Adolph Hofner. South Texas Swing. Arhoolie 7029. The master of “Czechstern Swing” from the 1930s, including a brief radio broadcast.

  Louvin Brothers. Radio Favorites ’51-’57. Country Music Foundation 009. The title sums up the contents of this release by one of the best of the “brother groups.”

  Maddox Brothers & Rose. On the Air. Arhoolie 222. These performances are from live radio broadcasts that originally aired during the 1940s, including two songs from the Grand Ole Opry.

  Emmett Miller. The Minstrel Man From Georgia. Columbia/Blues & Roots CK 66999. The “missing link” between minstrelsy and country music recorded twenty wonderful selections, including “Lovesick Blues” and “Big Bad Bill Is Sweet William Now” for OKeh in the late 1920s and they are all here.

  Dewey Phillips. Red Hot & Blue. Memphis Archive MA 7016. A collection of “airshots” by this truly wild Memphis disc jockey taken from 1952 to 1964 when he was pioneering the broadcasting of rockabilly and rock ’n’ roll in the mid-South.

  Merle Travis. “Unreleased Radio Transciptions 1944–1949.” Country Routes RFD 09. Excerpts from California radio broadcasts, many of them from the Hollywood Barn Dance, that place Travis in several musical contexts.

  Hank Williams. Health and Happiness Shows. Mercury 314-517862. A double CD set brings you eight complete twelve-minute radio shows recorded and broadcast in the fall of 1949. Colin Escott’s essay greatly helps to contextualize these programs in light of William’s career.

  Various. Early Roanoke Country Radio. Global Village/BRI 010. A lengthy monograph accompanies this compact disc, which encompasses the period between 1925 and 1955.

  SUGGESTED READING

  Bill Barlow. Making Waves. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1998. A well-researched and broad introduction to the history of black radio personalities (primarily disc jockeys) from the middle 1920s through the mid-1990s.

  Chad Berry. The Hayloft Gang: The Story of the National Barn Dance. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. This edited volume contains essays about radio broadcasting in the 1930s and 1940s and Chicago as a center for country music as well as writings about the National Barn Dance itself.

  John Broven. Record Makers and Breakers: Voices of the Independent Rock ’n’ Roll Pioneers. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Please don’t let the title fool you, as Broven underscores in this excellent book, these independent record companies also recorded a great range of blues, country, and gospel music.

  Louis Cantor. Dewey and Elvis: The Life and Times of a Rock ’n’ Roll Deejay. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005. One of the wildest of all mid-century disc jockeys, Dewey Phillips (the creative voice who helped to integrate the airways in Memphis) is a key figure in this entertaining book.

  Dale Cockrell. Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Cockrell provides a new look at the importance and significance of the “blacking up” tradition and its underlying meanings.

  Bill Crawford and Gene Fowler. Border Radio. Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1987. An entertaining and informative account of Mexican border radio.

  Jonathan Hartley Fox. King of the Queen City: The Story of King Records. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009. A comprehensive look at the development and history of King Records, which brought artists ranging from Grandpa Jones and the Stanley Brothers to Ike Turner and James Brown.

  Craig Havighurst. Air Castle of the South: WSM and the Making of Music City. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007. The author examines the intersection of radio and the development of Nashville as “(country) music city.”

  Rick Kennedy. Jelly Roll, Bix, And Hoafy: Gennett Studios and The Birth Of Recorded Jazz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Kennedy documents the history of the Richmond, Indiana, based Gennett label, which made the first recordings of Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbeck, and scores of other blues, gospel, hillbilly, and jazz performers for a just over a decade beginning in the early 1920s.

  Rick Kennedy and Randy McNutt. Little Labels—Big Sounds: Small Record Companies and the Rise of American Music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Unevenly written profiles of ten independent record companies, ranging from Gennett to Sun, that helped to document American vernacular music from the 1920s through the 1960s.

  Eric Lott. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. A revisionist look at the meaning and uses of minstrel shows and blackface minstrelsy in American culture.

  Brooks McNamara. Step Right Up. New York: Doubleday & Company, 1976. Despite its publication date, this remains the best account about the development and history of medicine shows from the mid-nineteenth through the early twentieth century.

  John Minton. 78 Blues: Folksongs and Phonographs in the American South. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010. Minton has written an in-depth study of southern folk-derived music on phonograph records before World War II and their impact on artists and audiences.

  Dick Spottswood. Ethnic Music on Record. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990. This seven-volume discography documents all of the “ethnic” recordings done in the United States between 1893 and 1942. It is a monumental work.

  Robert Toll. Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. Toll’s work exams the history of nineteenth and early twentieth century minstrelsy during its heyday.

  Ethnic Recordings in America: A Neglected Heritage. Washington, D.C.: American Folklife Center—Library of Congress, 1982. This book of essays remains the best source of information regarding the recording of ethnic music in the United States.

  SUGGESTED VIEWING

  The Life and Times of Rose Maddox. Produced by Gail Waldron, this 1983 documentary recounts Ms. Maddox’s career (including her work on radio) through interviews, photographs, and a live performance.

  Various. Cradle of the Stars: The Story of the Louisiana Hayride. This production of Louisiana Public Television chronicles the development and impact of this barn dance program, which was broadcast over clear channel KWKH during the 1940s and 1950s and that helped to launch the careers of Johnny Horton and Elvis Presley.

  Various. On Air Country. Blue Ridge Institute, Ferrum College. This 1
988 documentary is about country radio in Roanoke, Virginia, from the early 1920s through the late 1950s, which complements BRI 010, Early Roanoke Country Radio.

  Chapter 3

  FIELDWORK IN TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY AMERICA

  • Musical Communities and Fieldwork

  • Accomplishing Fieldwork

  • Some Nuts and Bolts of Fieldwork

  • Final Thoughts

  Exploring American Folk Music: Ethnic, Grassroots, and Regional Traditions in the United States has described the rich history and development of our roots music, an aspect of our expressive culture deserving of far more historical and contemporary research. This work can be undertaken with relative ease because we are quite literally surrounded by and often immersed in our own musical culture. American folk music touches everyone’s lives at some juncture: overhearing the jump-rope songs of children as we walk down the street, watching B. B. King and Lucille (his guitar) perform a blues number as part of the annual Grammy Awards ceremony, listening to a documentary on Polish American music on public radio, recalling the lullabies sung to us by our mothers, or hearing a string band play an old-time fiddle tune at the local music festival. Despite its reputation as old-time or conservative music, American folk music has always been characterized by innovation within artistic and culturally defined norms. After more than 235 years of development it remains abundantly clear that our own rich musical worlds demand serious attention. In my opinion field research is the most important and timely path that one can take to study these genres.

  This chapter encourages and helps to prepare you to explore the musical world around you with an open, more informed ear and mind. Libraries, archives, and private collections contain invaluable, irreplaceable, and rich caches of printed and aural material. There are a number of noteworthy repositories across the United States. The Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress, the Southern Archive at the University of North Carolina, the Wisconsin Music Archive at the University of Wisconsin, the Ralph Rinzler Archives at Smithsonian Folkways, the Blues Archive at the University of Mississippi, and the Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University each contain unique material: manuscripts, field recordings, videotapes, photographs, and interviews.