Imperialist

The late great Harlan Howard once said, "Country music is three chords and the truth."

Obviously Ray Charles agreed with Harlan, the beloved country songwriter.  His cover of Harlan's "Busted" is quite famous.

Simplicity and truth.  These are fairly universal attributes.

* * *

Amanda Petrusich is a staff writer for Pitchfork:  

Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on independent music,[1] especially indie rock. However, the range of musical genres covered extends to electronic, pop, hip hop, dance, folk, jazz, metal, and experimental music (Wikipedia).

I picked up her book, It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, And The Search For The Next American Music.  In it, Amanda describes an interesting phenomenon: the intellectual's interest in country music.

Scholars and academics still toil in libraries and archives and cornfields, rolling up their trousers and wiggling out of their corduroy blazers, tying cardigans around their waists, trying their best to help these songs endure.  Part of that impulse comes from the preservationist instinct of people who read too many books; part is imperialist; part is love (15).

In some ways, I am a preservationist and I readily acknowledge my own inclinations to idealize the past.  I just bought my very first record player.  I am fascinated by records.  The sound of the needle rubbing against the vinyl, the entire experience is magical to me.  

"Part is imperialist."  Music preservationists scoured the rural South, competing to find the purest, most obscure songs and thus attaching their own names to timeless songs.  They were driven by the thrill of discovery and the opportunity to gain a form of intellectual acknowledgment.  Musical preservationists are like archaeologists: they compete to be the first to make unprecedented discoveries.  Obviously, I am not a song collector, but I do enjoy obscurity.  I like feeling that I have discovered something that others, my peers, are unaware of.  In the most pretentious terms, it is a feeling of musical enlightenment, an awareness that one is privy to a secret world.

Three chords and the truth.  Country music is an oxymoron of sorts.  Hank Sr. is known as the "Hillbilly Shakespeare."  Somehow a nearly illiterate, drunk was able to write profoundly poetic lyrics.  The music itself is eloquent but quaint.  Simple but profound.  This contradicting nature makes the music ripe for intellectual inspection.

* * *

It Still Moves is a travel log.  In her travels, Amanda, a native of New York, was disturbed by the homogenization of America: "Witness nasty symptoms of mass homogenization: identical Wal-Marts, McDonald's, Pizza Huts, Exxons, Waffle Houses, and Burger Kings, colossal plastic signs poking up into the atmosphere, announcing the new regime (20)."  America seems to be amidst an identity crisis, and the American culture seems to be defined by consumerism.  

Musically speaking, contemporary, popular American music is almost entirely disposable. People are no longer interested in albums.  Songs nowadays are ring-tone fodder: repetitive catchiness manufactured for mass consumption.  

Forgettable.  

Digitized.  

Soulless.  

I've struggled to find meaningful American music.  

Something heartfelt, something legitimate.   

I found it.

Raw.  Aching.  Unpolished.  Uncontrived.  

It's a companion for the lonely.  A remedy for heartache.  

It awakens my American unconsciousness, my sense that I belong to my homeland.

* * *

Whether I am a preservationist, an imperialist, or a true fan, I still remain an outsider. 

 

Tomato Sauce

The tiny, funny-haired fellow delivered an absurd yet straight-forward talk. It was factual but engaging. He had found a simple way to illustrate the importance of a democratic ideal—there is no single right answer in anything. There’s no perfect coffee brew, and there is no perfect tomato sauce. Chunky is not an appetizing word.

Your favorite tomato sauce isn’t my favorite tomato sauce.
Pepsi.
Diet.

I almost forgot, all of this began with Diet Pepsi. Imagine, Diet Soda did something important for all of us.

I’m curious as to what type of scientist this fellow is. I took calculus. I have no clue what calculus is though. I believe it has to do with measuring the volume of irregularly shaped objects. Hmm. Perhaps an elaborate food metaphor would help. Yes. Ragu.

"South Jersey Cowboy Songs"

I came across Lovesick Blues: The Life of Hank Williams while perusing the music section of Borders.  The appealing cover, featuring a painting of a strikingly young Hank, caught my eye.   After reading the first chapter in the store, I purchased the book.

I devoured it in a single day, and I was tempted to e-mail the author and tell him the story of my own preoccupation with all things country.  After struggling over several drafts, I opted not to send an e-mail.

For a biography, the book is uniquely personal.  The prologue transports the reader back to 1949.  Young Paul Hemphill, a Tennessee native, underwent a rite of passage: he accompanied his father, a truck driver, on a run to Maryland.  It was Paul's first glimpse into his father's world, a place filled with the lonesome sounds of country music, "bennies," truck stops, eggs, bacon, and the American road.  Paul bonded with his father, and they both shared a love for a particular song, "Lovesick Blues," a hit for the young upstart, Hank Williams.

The biography is written in a warm, inviting, and distinctly-Southern language.  I remember being particularly moved by the climax: Hank's death.  I knew it was coming, but the simple treatment of the tragedy was affecting.  

In the epilogue, Paul describes his own father's death.  His father's enthusiasm for the music of Hank Williams never wavered; however, he felt that country music died with Hank.  

The reader cannot help but feel that Hank is synonymous with the author's father.  This creates the book's personal tone.

When I contemplated my e-mail to Paul Hemphill, I felt compelled to share my connection to the music.  I wanted to describe how it felt for me to ride in my father's truck (during his commute to work) listening to Johnny Cash and Marty Robbins.  Like Paul, I associated these men with my father.  However, unlike Paul, I was born and raised in Southern New Jersey.

Perhaps my Dad and I should have bonded over this man's music.  

Which brings me to a question: why does vintage country music appeal to me?  Should it?

Am I alone?

And what about New Jersey?

Nicholas Dawidoff's In the Country of Country: A Journey to the Roots of American Music offers some insight.  The book's epilogue briefly explores Bruce Springsteen's connection to country music.  

A Freehold native.

"Country asked all the right questions," according to Bruce.  "It was concerned with how you go on living after you reach adulthood."  He even admits to writing "South Jersey cowboy songs" (Dawidoff 311).  

Apparently, young Bruce felt that country music explored the struggles of adolescence.  Since everyone is at one time an adolescent, this is certainly a universal theme and one frequently explored in almost every genre of music.  Bruce's rationale is vague.  

I need to further explore country's universal quality.