Tag: Country Music

“Up on Cripple Creek”

“Up on Cripple Creek”

Simon Buck
Hearing Waycross

Hearing Waycross

Abigail Greenbaum, illustrations by Phil Blank

In this piece, a longtime Gram Parsons fan grows suspicious of the myths that surround the singer's life and music. A visit to Waycross, Georgia; interviews with people connected to Parsons's South Georgia childhood; and investigations of the area's musical, industrial, and socioeconomic histories reveal whose stories are heard and whose are silenced by such myths. The piece explores how one might hear the oppressive structures that echo in the music, such as the exploitation of Black laborers, the anti-Black violence of the region, the deforestation of South Georgia's longleaf grassland, and the impact of that ecological harm on Black and white family farmers.

Bobbie Gentry’s Odes to Mississippi

Bobbie Gentry’s Odes to Mississippi

Kristine M. McCusker
Going Up and Coming Down

Going Up and Coming Down

Alex Macaulay, with illustrations by Phil Blank

Macaulay's essay traces the highs and lows of country singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson’s early music career when he emerged as the standard bearer for a supposedly new and authentic Nashville sound. Focusing on the late 1960s and early 1970s, it examines the critical, commercial, and personal impact of such expectations at a time when Americans from varied walks of life latched on to country music and its performers as founts of honesty and authenticity that sustained often competing images of the South and the nation.

Down in the Hole

Down in the Hole

Max Fraser, with illustrations by Carmen J. Price
Discovering Carl

Discovering Carl

Shawn Pitts
Rednecks, White Socks, and Piña Coladas?: Country Music Ain’t What It Used to Be . . . And It Really Never Was

Rednecks, White Socks, and Piña Coladas?: Country Music Ain’t What It Used to Be . . . And It Really Never Was

James C. Cobb
Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’: Country Music and the Southern Working Class (Review)

Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’: Country Music and the Southern Working Class (Review)

Patrick Huber
Aiming for Fame and Riches

Aiming for Fame and Riches

John Shelton Reed
Blue Yodeler: Jimmie Rodgers

Blue Yodeler: Jimmie Rodgers

Bland Simpson
King of the Hillbillies: Hank Williams

King of the Hillbillies: Hank Williams

Bland Simpson
Country Music Stars

Country Music Stars

Jocelyn R. Neal