Running time: 1:27:59.
Compiled by Aaron Smithers.
Mastered by Aaron Smithers and John Loy at the Southern Folklife Collection.
Special thanks to Steve Weiss, Curator, UNC’s Southern Folklife Collection.
We pulled off the main road, rolled down the windows, and drove toward the music. Tune into this playlist from our 2015 Music Issue, featuring off the beaten tracks suited to summer wanderings.
Pressed into the pages of an imagined southern music scrapbook, photos and clippings tell of the hard work, heartbreaks, late nights, and bar fights behind the major movements of our shared sonic history. Flipping through, we see jazz beneath Storyville’s red lights, country music’s “Big Bang” in Bristol, southern soul and rock ’n’ roll painting Memphis in black and white, and the “Dirty South” rising tall above Atlanta’s urban sprawl.
These remarkable cultural convergences flood our collective memory, consuming the pages of this imaginary scrapbook with grand gestures and giant personalities that obscure the people, places, and sounds in between. Like too many pictures of the Grand Canyon from a family road trip, the destination eclipses the magic of the journey. In pursuit of a more rambling route through our current aural landscape, we pulled off the main road, rolled down the windows, and drove toward the music.
Running time: 1:27:59.
Compiled by Aaron Smithers.
Mastered by Aaron Smithers and John Loy at the Southern Folklife Collection.
Special thanks to Steve Weiss, Curator, UNC’s Southern Folklife Collection.