Music
In 2011 Southern Cultures released its fifth Special Music Issue, again with another classic FREE CD. You can view the Table of Contents and read each of our music issues through Project Muse from 2006, 2007, 2009, and 2010 (or click on the covers above). The 2010 and 2011 music issues also are available for Kindle, Nook, and Sony Library Reader, and include the CD mailed separately. The 2011 issue also comes in an enhanced Kindle edition that incorporates all the tracks from our CD.
The special CDs from our Music Issues in 2009, 2010, and 2011 are available at no cost while supplies last for use in college classrooms by professors or instructors who also teach Southern Cultures online essays and features from any issue.
Our music essays and features from the last two decades include the content from all five music issues, as well as essays and features from many other issues. To read this material through Project Muse, please follow the direct links below. We begin with material we've just posted online--vintage material available here for the first time.
From Il Trovatore to the Crazy Mountaineers: The Rise and Fall of Elevated Culture on WBT-Charlotte, 1922-1930
by Pamela Grundy
Southern Cultures, Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 1994
Saturday Night in Country Music: The Gospel According to Juke
by Stephen A. Smith and Jimmie N. Rogers
Southern Cultures, Volume 1, Number 2, Winter 1995
"Make Heaven's Portals Ring": Shape-Note Singing
by Gavin Campbell
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Number 2, Summer 1997: Writers on Art
"He Put His Thumb Up to His Nose, and Twirl'd His Fingers at His Foes": Presidential Campaign Songs in 1844
by Gavin James Campbell
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 1998: Politics
"Battle Songs of the Southern Class Struggle": Songs of the Gastonia Textile Strike of 1929
by Patrick Huber
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 1998
"Music With the Bark On": The Southern Journeys of John and Alan Lomax
by Gavin James Campbell
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 2, Fall 1998
Elvis, Martin, and Mentors: The Making of Southern History in Britain
by Brian Ward
How the British have mined popular culture to make sense of the South.
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 4, Winter 1998: The South in the World
King of the One-String
by Fetzer Mills Jr., photographs by Tom Rankin
Author and photographer team up to show and tell just what a diddley-bow can do.
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 1, Spring 1999: Scarlett O'Hara
"Hot Music on the Half-Shell for Two": Anton Rubinstein's Southern Fan
by Gavin James Campbell
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 1, Spring 1999: Scarlett O'Hara
Rednecks, White Socks, and Pina Coladas? Country Music Ain't What it Used to Be . . . And It Really Never Was
by James C. Cobb
Does old Hank really spin in his grave each time Garth Brooks launches a new mega-tour?
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 4, Winter 1999
Mozart Went Down to Georgia
by Gavin James Campbell
"‘Now don't you feel smarter already?'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 2000: Fifth Anniversary
I Don't Want Nothin' 'Bout My Life Wrote Out
by Patrick Huber and Kathleen Drowne
"Dorsey Dixon, a thirty-nine-year-old weaver, was tending his looms one rainy morning in the Winter of 1938 when he heard the news of a deadly automobile accident on nearby U.S. Highway 1."
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 2, Summer 2000
"The Outer Limits of Probability": A Janis Joplin Retrospective
by Gavin James Campbell
"Although Janis Joplin adopted Southern Comfort as her drink of choice, neither whiskey nor the South brought her much comfort."
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 3, Fall 2000
High Lonesome: The Story of Bluegrass Music
a film by Rachel Liebling
reviewed by Todd Moye
Southern Cultures, Volume 2, Number 3-4, Fall/Winter 1996: Double Issue
Ronnie Pugh's
Earnest Tubb: The Texas Troubadour
and
Craig Morrison's
Go Cat Go!: Rockabilly Music and Its Makers
reviewed by Bill C. Malone
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Issue 3, Fall 1997: Sports
Vernon Chadwick, editor
In Search of Elvis: Music, Race, Art, and Religion
reviewed by William McCranor Henderson
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 1998
Jon Michael Spencer's
Re-Searching Black Music
reviewed by Michael Taft
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 1998
Charles Reagan Wilson's
Judgment & Grace in Dixie: Southern Faiths from Faulkner to Elvis
reviewed by Wayne Flynt
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 2, Fall 1998
Music Recordings
reviewed by Gavin James Campbell
Roscoe Holcomb, The High Lonesome Sound
Voices of the Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs, 1960-1966
Don Rigsby, A Vision
A Treasury of Library of Congress Field Recordings
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 2, Fall 1998
Nolan Porterfield's
Last Cavalier: The Life and Times of John A. Lomax
reviewed by Beverly B. Patterson
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 4, Winter 1998: The South in the World
Music Recordings
reviewed by Gavin James Campbell
The Hammons Family: The Traditions of a West Virginia Family and Their Friends
Children of the Heav'nly King: Religious Expression in the Central Blue Ridge
The North Carolina Banjo Collection
Wade in the Water: African American Sacred Music Traditions
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 4, Winter 1998: The South in the World
Music Recordings
reviewed by Gavin James Campbell
Conjunto Bernal, 16 Early Tejano Classics, and: Santiago Jimenez Jr., Purely Instrumental
Jim Mills, Bound to Ride, and: Nashville Bluegrass Band, American Beauty
Mississippi String Bands: Traditional Fiddle Music of Mississippi
Mama Don't Allow No Easy Riders Here: Strutting the Dozens, and: Shake Your Wicked Knees: Rent Parties and Good Times
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 1, Spring 1999: Scarlett O'Hara
The Museum of the New South
Don't Touch That Dial: Carolina Radio Since the 1920s
reviewed by Lisa Yarger
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 1999
Music Recordings
reviewed by Gavin James Campbell
Chuck Guillory, Grand Texas, and: Wade Frugé, Old Style Cajun Music
Dock Boggs, His Folkways Years, 1963-1968
I Can't Be Satisfied: Early American Women Blues Singers—Town & Country (vols. 1 and 2)
Bob Holt, Got a Little Home To Go To
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 1999
Art Rosenbaum's
Shout Because You're Free: The African American Ring Shout Tradition
reviewed by Dale Volberg Reed
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 3, Fall 1999
Music Recordings
reviewed by Gavin James Campbell
Kentucky Old-Time Banjo, and: Morgan Sexton, Shady Grove
Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver, The Original Band, and: G.B. Grayson and Henry Witter, The Recordings of Grayson & Witter
Boozoo Chavis and the Magic Sounds, Who Stole My Monkey?
Caribbean Sampler
Lydia Mendoza, Vida Mia
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 3, Fall 1999
Music Recordings
reviewed by Gavin James Campbell
Big Joe Williams and Friends, Going Back to Crawford, and: Black Appalachia String Bands, Songsters and Hoedowns
Music From the Lost Provinces: Old-Time Stringbands from Ashe County, North Carolina & Vicinity, 1927-1931, and: Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers, vols. 1-3
Black Texicans, Balladeers and Songsters of the Texas Frontier, and: Cowboy Songs, Ballads, and Cattle Calls
Taquachito Nights, Conjunto Music From South Texas
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 4, Winter 1999
The Dixie Chicks Fly
by Gavin James Campbell
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 2000: Fifth Anniversary
The Cold Hard Truth
by Gavin James Campbell
"Shania and Garth, move over, 'cause The Possum's back."
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 2, Summer 2000
Phillip F. Gura and James F. Bollman's
America's Instrument: The Banjo in the Nineteenth Century
reviewed by Mark Roberts
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 3, Fall 2000
Our most recent essays and features on music:
The KISS Letter: An Encounter with Elvis
by Eugenia Dettelbach Wicker
with an introduction by Marcie Cohen Ferris
"The last time I kissed him he only had on half a shirt. He has a wonderful chest. I am really crazy about him now+have the funniest feeling in me, all over."
$0.99 download for Kindle, for Nook, or for Sony Reader.
Full Issue for Kindle ($4.95 with embedded tracks), for Nook ($4.95, CD shipped separately), or for Sony Reader ($5.88, CD shipped separately)
Southern Cultures Volume 17, Number 4, Winter 2011: Music
Boss Jocks: How Corrupt Radio Practices Helped Make Jacksonville One of the Great Music Cities
by Michael Ray Fitzgerald
"Kickbacks from government vendors, jobs for cronies, sweetheart deals for contractors' were commonplace-‘It may have been the most corrupt city in America.'"
$0.99 download for Kindle or for Nook.
Full Issue for Kindle ($4.95 with embedded tracks), for Nook ($4.95, CD shipped separately), or for Sony Reader ($5.88, CD shipped separately)
Southern Cultures Volume 17, Number 4, Winter 2011: Music
Backstage Stories: Wonders, Relics, and a Beer Fridge
photographs by Daniel Coston
and tales from the artists themselves
"The headlining band were nasty rogues, hitting on freakishly skinny underage chicks while I heard it all half asleep."
$0.99 download for Kindle, for Nook, or for Sony Reader.
Full Issue for Kindle ($4.95 with embedded tracks), for Nook ($4.95, CD shipped separately), or for Sony Reader ($5.88, CD shipped separately)
Southern Cultures Volume 17, Number 4, Winter 2011: Music
Bobby Rush: "Blues Singer-Plus"
interviewed by William R. Ferris
"I try to get the people in my hand, for them to love me, and once I get them in my hand, I can then tell them what I've come to tell them. And I come to tell them about the blues. It's just like a preacher."
$0.99 download for Kindle, for Nook, or for Sony Reader.
Full Issue for Kindle ($4.95 with embedded tracks), for Nook ($4.95, CD shipped separately), or for Sony Reader ($5.88, CD shipped separately)
Southern Cultures Volume 17, Number 4, Winter 2011: Music
"Redneck Woman" and the Gendered Poetics of Class Rebellion
by Nadine Hubbs
"In 2004 Gretchen Wilson exploded onto the country music scene with ‘Redneck Woman.' The blockbuster single led to the early release of her first CD and propelled it to triple platinum sales."
$0.99 download for Kindle, for Nook, or for Sony Reader.
Full Issue for Kindle ($4.95 with embedded tracks), for Nook ($4.95, CD shipped separately), or for Sony Reader ($5.88, CD shipped separately)
Southern Cultures Volume 17, Number 4, Winter 2011: Music
For the Records: How African American Consumers and Music Retailers Created Commercial Public Space in the 1960s and 1970s South
by Joshua Clark Davis
"Record selling certainly had its glamorous moments; retailers could regale younger customers with stories of nightlife and even rubbing elbows with famous musicians and celebrities."
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Full Issue for Kindle ($4.95 with embedded tracks), for Nook ($4.95, CD shipped separately), or for Sony Reader ($5.88, CD shipped separately)
Southern Cultures Volume 17, Number 4, Winter 2011: Music
"Country Music Is Wherever the Soul of a Country Music Fan Is": Opryland U.S.A and the Importance of Home in Country Music
by Jeremy Hill
"Nixon's visit (only five months before his resignation) was seen by national journalists and politicos to be a trip to one of the few places where he would still receive a warm reception, and it was quite warm indeed. Nixon took the stage, played two songs on the piano, and bantered with Roy Acuff."
$0.99 download for Kindle, for Nook, or for Sony Reader.
Full Issue for Kindle ($4.95 with embedded tracks), for Nook ($4.95, CD shipped separately), or for Sony Reader ($5.88, CD shipped separately)
Southern Cultures Volume 17, Number 4, Winter 2011: Music
Poem with a Refrain from Charley Patton
poetry by Travis Smith
Full Issue for Kindle ($4.95 with embedded tracks), for Nook ($4.95, CD shipped separately), or for Sony Reader ($5.88, CD shipped separately)
Southern Cultures Volume 17, Number 4, Winter 2011: Music
Johnny Cash and the Paradox of American Identity
by Leigh H. Edwards
reviewed by Jocelyn R. Neal
"Johnny Cash is considered by many the quintessential country singer, yet others who claim to loathe country music are fiercely loyal to him."
Full Issue for Kindle ($4.95 with embedded tracks), for Nook ($4.95, CD shipped separately), or for Sony Reader ($5.88, CD shipped separately)
Southern Cultures Volume 17, Number 4, Winter 2011: Music
The Full Track List and Liner Notes
for Loving, Leavin', Liquor, and the Lord: Songs in the Southern Vernacular, the FREE CD.
Full Issue for Kindle ($4.95 with embedded tracks), for Nook ($4.95, CD shipped separately), or for Sony Reader ($5.88, CD shipped separately)
Southern Cultures Volume 17, Number 4, Winter 2011: Music
Blacks and Irish on the Riverine Frontiers
The Roots of American Popular Music
by Christopher J. Smith
"One of the realities of American life is that certain features of African American performance style will remain strange and alluring to those outside the culture. Not least among such features is the making of hard social commentary on recurring problems of life, often through cutting and breaking techniques-contentious interactions continually calling for a change of direction."
Full Issue for Kindle ($6.95), for Nook ($6.95), or for Sony Reader ($6.95)
Southern Cultures Volume 17, Number 1, Spring 2011: The Irish
"A lengthening chain in the shape of memories"
The Irish and Southern Culture
by William R. Ferris
"Irish rockers U2 are committed fans of B.B. King and wrote the song ‘When Love Comes to Town' at his request. The song introduced King to important new rock audiences."
Full Issue for Kindle ($6.95), for Nook ($6.95), or for Sony Reader ($6.95)
Southern Cultures Volume 17, Number 1, Spring 2011: This Irish
Playing Chicken With the Train
Cowboy Troy's Hick-Hop and the Transracial Country West
by Adam Gussow
"‘My belt buckle is my bling-bling. It's just going to keep getting bigger.'"
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96), for Nook ($7.96), or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 4, Winter 2010
“Fabor”
from the novel Nashville Chrome
by Rick Bass
with an introduction by Jocelyn R. Neal
“She wasn’t going to sleep with him, of course—not to improve her voice, or for any other reason—but she worried about it, was made a little insecure by that sustained gnawing that she was somehow holding her siblings back.”
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96), for Nook ($7.96), or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 3, Fall 2010: Music IV
“Fixin’ To Die Blues”: The Last Months of Bukka White
interviewed by David W. Johnson
with an afterword from B. B. King on Bukka White’s Legacy
“There’s a gang that would travel if you get on a freight train and couldn’t get off. If I’d stayed on there I’d been getting killed.”
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96), for Nook ($7.96), or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 3, Fall 2010: Music IV
The Legend Catcher (Photo Essay)
Rarities from the Collection of Photographer Dick Waterman
“The backstage Dylan— dutifully practicing with harmonica and guitar— wouldn’t have predicted a portfolio that would include forty-five more albums.”
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96), for Nook ($7.96), or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 3, Fall 2010: Music IV
Touching the Music: Charles Seeger
interviewed by William R. Ferris
“Pete thumbed his way all over that triangle from Maryland to Florida to Texas. Whenever he saw someone carrying a banjo or guitar, he would cotton up to them. And if they knew anything he didn’t know, he’d just find out what it was, learn to do it, and then go on to the next.”
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96), for Nook ($7.96), or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 3, Fall 2010: Music IV
Top Ten Southern Folk Singers
by Charles Joyner
“Frank Proffitt learned most of his repertoire of songs, hymns, ballads and banjo tunes from his family and sang them in a hickory-smoked baritone that flowed subtly and poignantly through his ballads like a quiet mountain stream.”
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96), for Nook ($7.96), or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 3, Fall 2010: Music IV
Hello, America: The Life and Work of Willie French Lowery
interviewed by Michael C. Taylor
“The Oak Ridge Boys—you’ve heard of them—came into town, and they said, ‘Willie, we’d like for you play.’”
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96), for Nook ($7.96), or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 3, Fall 2010: Music IV
Growing Roots in Rocky Soil: An Environmental History of Southern Rock
by Bartow J. Elmore
“In 1967, the Allman brothers headed to California, hoping to make it big in a band called Hour Glass. The band quickly became popular on the Los Angeles music circuit, playing at popular clubs like the Whiskey a Go Go and drawing the attention of rising rock stars like Neil Young and Janis Joplin.”
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96), for Nook ($7.96), or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 3, Fall 2010: Music IV
Women Dancing With Babies on Their Hips
poetry by Cathy Smith Bowers
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96), for Nook ($7.96), or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 3, Fall 2010: Music IV
Jimmy Anderson: Natchez Swamp Blues
by Vincent Joos
“I learned how to sing from the radio. I didn’t care what kind of songs. I like music, period. Any kind, you know. Country-western or blues, I would jump on it.”
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96), for Nook ($7.96), or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 3, Fall 2010: Music iV
Saxie Dowell: Saxaphonist, Bandleader, War Hero
by Terrence S. Tickle
“Admiral Davison recommended that Captain Gehres abandon ship. The captain refused, fearing that there were sailors still alive below decks. Dowell was one of those soldiers.”
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96), for Nook ($7.96), or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 3, Fall 2010: Music IV
Hazel Dickens and Bill C. Malone
Working Girl Blues: The Life & Music of Hazel Dickens (review)
Bess Lomax Hawes (review)
Sing It Pretty: A Memoir (review)
reviewed by Joshua Guthman
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.69) or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 1, Spring 2010: Southern Lives
The Devil and his Blues: James “Son Ford” Thomas
with William R. Ferris
“You can't always go by what them preachers say, because right now some of them drink more whiskey than me.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 3, Fall 2009: Music III
Top Ten Southern Jazz Musicians
by Charles Joyner
“John Coltrane played his hyperactive ‘sheets-of-sound’ with a scorching intensity, faster than most jazz fans could listen.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 3, Fall 2009: Music III
“When I Say Get It”: A Brief History of the Boogie
by Burgin Mathews
“‘I like to boogie-woogie,’ Madonna proclaimed. ‘It’s like riding on the wind and it never goes away.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 3, Fall 2009: Music III
Blues Power in the Tuscarora Homeland: The Music of Pura Fé
by John W. Troutman
“Pura Fé has developed a highly unusual style of weaving a fast-paced and complex, sinewy web of notes to follow and accent her extraordinarily dynamic vocal range. . . a unique and engagingly melodic tour de force.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 3, Fall 2009: Music III
Top Ten Country Music Stars
by Jocelyn R. Neal
“Patsy Cline had a great big barrel of a voice that cut straight into the heart of everyone who heard her sing.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 3, Fall 2009: Music III
Winston-Salem Blues: Captain Luke, Macavine Hayes, and Whistlin’ Britches
photographs by Joanna Welborn
“A round of ‘chicken,’ or moonshine, was ordered, and Macavine and Whistlin’ Britches were one-upping each other with insults and dirty jokes. Captain Luke played it cool in the corner, sipping a can of Natural Light and smoking a cigar.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 3, Fall 2009: Music III
Mill Mother’s Lament: Ella May Wiggins and the Gastonia Textile Strike of 1929
by Patrick Huber
“Ella May Wiggins, the ‘poet laureate’ of the Gastonia Textile Strike of 1929, was silenced by a mill thug’s bullet on September 14, 1929.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 3, Fall 2009: Music III
Top Ten Blues Greats
by William R. Ferris
“The true Hootchie Kootchie Man, Muddy Waters summons all the powers of the voodoo doctor in his guttural, deep blues voice.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 3, Fall 2009: Music III
Haunting America: Emmett Till in Music and Song
by Philip C. Kolin
“Dylan linked Till’s innocent blood to a Mississippi downpour—so much blood shed from the brutal beatings; Till’s killers ‘rolled his body down a gulf of bloody red rain.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 3, Fall 2009: Music III
Legend
poetry by Al Maginnes
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 3, Fall 2009: Music III
Top Ten Southern Rockers
by Joshua Guthman
“Let’s be honest: Southern rock is a critically despised genre, a redneck sound draped in the Confederate flag and fueled by an oh-so-’70s mix of Jack Daniels and Quaaludes.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 3, Fall 2009: Music III
More at MUSIC (part II).