Author: Bill C. Malone

ISBN: 0-8203-2551-1

The following review was contributed by: Kathryn Atwood: Click Here To View More Of Kathryn's   Reviews

When it comes to tracing the roots of American music, there's just no place like
the South: jazz, rhythm & blues, rock & roll, gospel - most music that comes
with a "made in America" stamp originated south of the Mason-Dixon line.  While
the world obviously owes a huge musical debt to African-Americans for their
contributions in the aforementioned genres, what we now call "Country" music
primarily evolved from the souls and throats of white rural southerners.  It is
these singers - and their songs - that are the focus of Bill C. Malone's "Singing Cowboys and Musical Moutaineers."

Malone's first concern is to precisely define white rural southern music,
especially that which was sung in the 19th century South (just before this music
was discovered by the rest of the world). Was it - as early 20th century British
musicologist Cecil Sharpe wanted to believe -  merely a twangy re-definition of
ancient British ballads?  Sharpe collected hundreds of Appalachian songs that
were clearly traceable to the British Isles, but as Malone points out in
"Singing Cowboys," Sharpe was in the South specifically looking for this
connection.  He found it in spades but because the other songs he surely heard
echoing through the mountains didn't concern his thesis, he simply ignored them.

There was a lot to ignore.  Country music has many primary sources, and although
Malone claims that a detailed history of the genre is nigh impossible, he does a
masterful job of describing most of its influences in fascinating detail.
British ballads,  black spirituals, minstrel show songs (most of their composers
ironically Northern), German bands and hymns all had a major role in shaping the
white folk music of 19th century America.  Rural southerners were very catholic
in their love for music: a good tune was a good tune, whether it originated in
ancient Britain or at the desk of a contemporary New York composer.

By far the most fascinating aspect of Malone's book is hinted at in its title
and answers this question: why did Country singers such as Hank Williams, Johnny
Cash and Alan Jackson -- who all hailed from the southeast - dress as though they had been raised on a Texas ranch?  Simple: a national hunger for symbols.  Before the cowboy singer took over as Country music's  mascot in the 1930's, it was the mountain man of the 1920's, romanticized by
novels and the "Great War" hero, Alvin "Tennessee Mountain Boy" York,  that  exemplified a rural, unfettered,  Anglo-Saxon America for an increasingly urban and immigrant-heavy America.  It was primarily the Carter family and Bradley Kincaid whose performances first personified this mountain
personality; their success paved the way for many other southern musicians of  the era to cash in on the hunger for the quintessential American symbol.

However, when reports of aberrant behavior and oppression from coal companies
began to trickle out of the Appalachians, along with the proliferation of
vaudeville acts that degenerated the mountain man's vigorous image into a
ridiculous caricature (think "The Beverly Hillbillies"),  the cowboy - whose
manly persona and limitless freedom was being popularized in countless films and
dime novels -- became the preeminent and permanent symbol of Country music.  The
actual canon of authentic cowboy songs is much smaller than the amount of folk
songs originally from the eastern south, but an image is an image and the
singing cowboy is here to stay.

"Singing Cowboys and Musical Mountaineers" is a very enlightening read regarding
the roots of Country music and provides the definitive explanation for the
connection between Country music and cowboy hats.