The Cities Go Country

...On Music THE CITIES GO COUNTRY BY BRUCE COOK I remember climbing into a New York taxicab not long ago for the ride out to La Guardia Airport and being surprised to hear the twang of country music on the radio "You like that kind of music...

...Hardly The rapidly rising popularity of the country sound in the cities is the music industry's most talked-about phenomenon Radio stations that broadcast nothing but country are receiving high audience ratings in metropolitan centers like Los Angeles and Detroit, and even the megalopolitan stronghold of New York joined the trend earlier this year when WHN "went country " The first urbanites to catch on to it were the young, who may have been attracted initially by rock-'n'-roll's obvious debt to the simple chords, basic rhythms and heartfelt lyrics of the country style After all, Elvis and Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis all started out as down-home boys, and Bob Dylan himself said Johnny Cash was OK Yet if wasn't until Kris Kristofferson came along that the kids became really enthusiastic Now they are turning out in numbers for concerts by Earl Scruggs, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and a few other performers who successfully bridge the gap between old-time country and modern pop For that cab driver and millions of others like him, however, the appeal of country music lies not in its rock-'n'-roll associations--if these were noticed at all, they would probably be counted against it--but rather in its grass-roots populist values It glorifies the old virtues of independence and self-reliance (in songs like "Pride in What I Am' ), it extolls hard labor ( 'WorkingMan Blues' and all those truck-driving songs), it finds dignity in ordinary human occupations ("Wichita Lineman") And it's patriotic ("When you're running down our country you're walking on the fighting side of me") Indeed, the spread of country music to the cities is symptomatic of the disaffection that in the 1968 Presidential election brought George Wallace big chunks of the Northern blue-collar vote--in addition to the endorsement of nearly every name performer along Nashville's Music City row The feeling was well summed up by the Merle Haggard tune, "Okie from Muskogee," which swept the nation about that time And its persistence is evidenced by the current high ranking on the country and western charts of "Red Necks, White Socks, and Blue Ribbon Beer"--about as close to an anthem of American working-class solidarity as anything that ever appeared in the IWW's Little Red Song Book No, we don t fit in with that white-collar crowd We're a little too rough and a little too loud This sentiment erases the old boundaries between North and South When working men get together in the bars of Shreveport, Louisiana, or Bridgeport, Connecticut, to sip their beer and grumble about the "pseudo-intellectuals" and "those clowns in Washington," chances are that the jukebox in the corner is giving out the same whining steel-guitar sounds and featuring Tammy Wynette or Conway Twitty on the vocal With some justice and considerable disdain, a university professor friend of mine recently described it as "Archie Bunker music '" Though there is an appalling amount of trash written and recorded in country music, once you start listening to it seriously you find that the best of it is far subtler and more expressive than you may have expected Not harmonically, and certainly not rhythmically, for--except in the hands of a few of the younger composers--it lacks musical sophistication and tends, in large doses, to sound repetitious But the lyrics cover a wider range of human experience--from having a religious conversion to riding the rails to robbing a gas station--than any other form of popular music Moreover, country songs are realistic They are honest about life's defeats and not terribly encouraging about the odds on coming up a winner They tell the troubles of an unwed girl having a baby all alone in Manhattan, Kansas, of a boy working on an assembly line in Detroit city who goes out and tries to drown his homesickness in booze every night, of a good-hearted woman in love with a good-timing man Love, country style, is seldom the chaste ecstasy warbled about in the Hit Parade of the '40s and '50s, it is usually either the we'll-grow-old-together-and-raise-our-family variety or, more likely, the slipping-around adulterous kind If we are to go by such songs as "Midnight Oil,' "Lead Me On," and "You've Never Been This Far Before," adultery is one of the most popular, or at least one of the most interesting, of all activities to country-music listeners Its consequences are not ignored either the neurotic children of "Skip-a-Rope,' the travails of "D-I-V-O-R-C-E," and sometimes even murder, as in "Tell Me What He's Got That I Ain't Got " In its preoccupation with the everyday lives of ordinary people country remains true to the two musical traditions from which it derives, black blues and white folk In fact, country owes a debt to black music it seldom acknowledges and can never repay The feeling of the blues pervades the music and lends it depth of expression Listen, for example, to Merle Haggard, the ex-con who was born in California of Okie parents and learned the blues by living them His fame has come from his reactionary ballads (which are, incidentally, quite good-natured in tone), but his most moving songs are those he has dredged up from his own past "They're Tearing the Labor Camps Down,' "I'm a Lonesome Fugitive," "Momma Tried,' "Branded Man," and "Hungry Eyes ' Or take Tom T Hall, the modern country balladeer par excellence A very facile songwriter who turns out his share of junk--his biggest hit was "The Harper Valley PTA"--he is at his best working close to the eastern Kentucky hills he hails from His memory of "The Year That Clayton Delaney Died" is classic of its genre, an honest elegy for a personal hero And his "Trip to Hyden" is a beautifully detailed and evocative first-hand account of a trip to a Kentucky coal town where a mining disaster had just occurred It is, in the positive sense, journalism in song Despite the electrified instrumentation and elaborate sound-studio work that go into most modem country recordings, "Archie Bunker music" is really a continuation of the American folk tradition It springs from the same impulse to articulate the struggles of the common man, and it serves the same purpose of sustaining him through his defeats and celebrating his occasional victories Listening to the infinite variety and considerable subtlety of the lyrics, you may find that the people country describes--and appeals to--are not what you thought The music can be brutally honest about their faults and weaknesses, yet it leaves no doubt about their essential goodness And besides, they are the only Archie Bunkers we've got...

...I asked the driver "Sure," he said "I listen to it all the time " A glance at his identification card revealed that he had a Lithuanian name, but the way he spoke established beyond any doubt that he was a native of New York City "What do you like about if" I persisted He screwed around and looked over his shoulder at me "What do you mean...

...I just happen to like it, that's all Is there a law or something...