Don't Get above Your Raisin': Country Music and the Southern Working Class (Music in American Life) - Hardcover

Malone, Bill C

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0252026780 ISBN 13: 9780252026782

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2001

Synopsis

Combining a high-spirited history of country music's roots with vivid portraits of its principal performers, Don't Get above Your Raisin' examines the close relationship between "America's truest music" and the working-class culture that has constituted its principal source, nurtured its development, and provided its most dedicated supporters.
Widely recognized as country music's ranking senior authority, Bill C. Malone explores how the music's defining themes (home and family, religion, rambling, frolic, humor, and politics) have emerged out of the particularities of working people's day-to-day lives. He traces the many contradictory voices and messages of a music that simultaneously extols the virtues of home and the joys of rambling, the assurances of the Christian life and the ecstasies of hedonism, the strength of working-class life and the material lure of middle-class aspirations. The resulting tensions, Malone argues, are a principal source of the music's enduring appeal.
Country musicians have often been people from undistinguished blue-collar backgrounds who have tried to make their way as entertainers in a society that has little respect for the working class. From this ambivalent position, they have voiced the sometimes contradictory values and longings of their culture while also attempting to fulfill the romantic expectations of outsiders.
"For every Garth Brooks," Malone says, "there are a thousand country musicians who perform in local bars, taverns, and American Legion halls and who have never been able to ‘give up their day jobs.' These are musicians whose middle-class dreams are tempered by working-class realities." A powerful and honest expression of the hopes, longings, frailties, and failings of ordinary people, country music increasingly resonates with listeners beyond its core constituency as they struggle with a complex and uncertain world.
 

About this title

About the Author

Bill C. Malone, professor emeritus of history at Tulane University, is the author of Country Music, U.S.A.; Southern Music/American Music; Singing Cowboys and Musical Mountaineers: Southern Culture and the Roots of Country Music, and other books.
 

Reviews

The author of books like Singing Cowboys and Musical Mountaineers, Malone (history, emeritus, Tulane Univ.) here presents a lucid study of the relationship between country music and the Southern working class. Delving into the history and sociology of such topics as country humor, the relationships between country music and politics, the urbanization of the South, and the contradictory tendencies in country music toward religion and rambling, Malone covers much ground. He obviously loves the music and understands its relationship to the people who originally gave it life. The casual fan of country music, especially contemporary commercial country music, might not find much of interest present-day "hat acts" have relatively little to do with Malone's subject but readers looking to go beyond today's stars and into the very heart and soul of the music will not be disappointed. Essential for anyone interested in a well-grounded and -researched overview of the topic, this thoughtful book is highly recommended for all public and academic libraries, especially those with strong popular culture collections. James E. Perone, Mount Union Coll., Alliance, OH
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0252026780
• ISBN 13: 9780252026782
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432