Pub Date : 2020-02-15DOI: 10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0002
Stephanie Vander Wel
Chapter 1 explores the theatrical context of 1930s country music on radio, specifically daily and weekly shows, including the National Barn Dance, on Chicago’s WLS. Similar to vaudeville, radio programmed the diverse strands of vernacular expression with music (including Western art music) that pointed to the high and popular aesthetics of the middle-class mainstream. With an emphasis on reception, this chapter demonstrates that listeners debated the merits of early country music as well as other musical styles and genres with a class-based understanding of aesthetics. The syncretic nature and theatrical characters of early country music (such as the singing mountaineer, the crooning cowboy, and the rustic buffoon) fit radio’s attempts to negotiate the crossing and blurring of the serious and the popular, the urban and the rural, and the sentimental and the parodic. Thus, through the technology of radio, early country music first secured a place in the American consciousness by rubbing against other styles and genres that transgressed cultural and musical divides.
{"title":"Early Country Music","authors":"Stephanie Vander Wel","doi":"10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 1 explores the theatrical context of 1930s country music on radio, specifically daily and weekly shows, including the National Barn Dance, on Chicago’s WLS. Similar to vaudeville, radio programmed the diverse strands of vernacular expression with music (including Western art music) that pointed to the high and popular aesthetics of the middle-class mainstream. With an emphasis on reception, this chapter demonstrates that listeners debated the merits of early country music as well as other musical styles and genres with a class-based understanding of aesthetics. The syncretic nature and theatrical characters of early country music (such as the singing mountaineer, the crooning cowboy, and the rustic buffoon) fit radio’s attempts to negotiate the crossing and blurring of the serious and the popular, the urban and the rural, and the sentimental and the parodic. Thus, through the technology of radio, early country music first secured a place in the American consciousness by rubbing against other styles and genres that transgressed cultural and musical divides.","PeriodicalId":335270,"journal":{"name":"Hillbilly Maidens, Okies, and Cowgirls","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129196059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-02-15DOI: 10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0004
Stephanie Vander Wel
Chapter 3 continues the focus on WLS’s 1930s radio stars and their treatment of gender by examining the musical and cultural significance of Patsy Montana’s singing cowgirl persona. Like Lulu Belle, Montana included a fluid mix of musical styles and vaudevillian practices. But instead of offering parodies of southern culture, Montana’s gender-bending songs took place in the imaginary West. In her musical depictions of tomboy cowgirls and glamorous western heroines, Montana combined virtuosic yodeling with what her listeners described as a “sweet” singing style. As such, she refashioned the West into a place where standard models of gender could include autonomous cowgirls who yodeled to the heights of their vocal range while singing sweetly about the symbolic freedoms associated with frontier individualism.
{"title":"Gendering the Musical West","authors":"Stephanie Vander Wel","doi":"10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 3 continues the focus on WLS’s 1930s radio stars and their treatment of gender by examining the musical and cultural significance of Patsy Montana’s singing cowgirl persona. Like Lulu Belle, Montana included a fluid mix of musical styles and vaudevillian practices. But instead of offering parodies of southern culture, Montana’s gender-bending songs took place in the imaginary West. In her musical depictions of tomboy cowgirls and glamorous western heroines, Montana combined virtuosic yodeling with what her listeners described as a “sweet” singing style. As such, she refashioned the West into a place where standard models of gender could include autonomous cowgirls who yodeled to the heights of their vocal range while singing sweetly about the symbolic freedoms associated with frontier individualism.","PeriodicalId":335270,"journal":{"name":"Hillbilly Maidens, Okies, and Cowgirls","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128013142","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-02-15DOI: 10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0006
Stephanie Vander Wel
Chapter 5 continues to explore the themes of theatricality and vocal performance in California country music by focusing on Rose Maddox as a member of her family band and as a solo recording artist during the 1940s and 1950s. In her farcical and striking covers of country songs, Maddox drew on a range of vocal styles, including a belting vocality that incorporated southern idioms, appreciated by her audience of Okies. Her various vocal approaches re-created the carnivalesque revelry of the roadhouse and helped to shape narratives that underscored the shifts in marriage and autonomy for Okie women after World War II. Because of the expressive power of her voice and her dynamic, fluid stage persona, Maddox helped carve out performance spaces for female artists such as Jean Shepard in 1950s honky-tonk and rockabilly artists like Wanda Jackson.
{"title":"Rose Maddox","authors":"Stephanie Vander Wel","doi":"10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 5 continues to explore the themes of theatricality and vocal performance in California country music by focusing on Rose Maddox as a member of her family band and as a solo recording artist during the 1940s and 1950s. In her farcical and striking covers of country songs, Maddox drew on a range of vocal styles, including a belting vocality that incorporated southern idioms, appreciated by her audience of Okies. Her various vocal approaches re-created the carnivalesque revelry of the roadhouse and helped to shape narratives that underscored the shifts in marriage and autonomy for Okie women after World War II. Because of the expressive power of her voice and her dynamic, fluid stage persona, Maddox helped carve out performance spaces for female artists such as Jean Shepard in 1950s honky-tonk and rockabilly artists like Wanda Jackson.","PeriodicalId":335270,"journal":{"name":"Hillbilly Maidens, Okies, and Cowgirls","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131530018","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-02-15DOI: 10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0007
Stephanie Vander Wel
Chapter 6 traces the musical and lyrical developments of honky-tonk in the late 1930s and 1940s with Al Dexter, Ernest Tubb, and Hank Williams and remained a predominant mode of country music after World War II, right when Kitty Wells, Goldie Hill, and Jean Shepard contributed to the musical discourse. These female artists, taking over male-defined and often parodic representations of women, developed narratives that articulated class-specific voices couched in the metaphors of sexual and material desire, heartache, and loss juxtaposed with 1950s ideals of domesticity. Examining the particulars of musical style and vocal expression, this chapter argues that female artists in their various enactments of the honky-tonk angel, the angry, jilted housewife, the single mother, and the forsaken lover disclosed the paradoxes of class and gender and helped to lift the cloak of invisibility shrouding working-class women.
{"title":"Voices of Angels","authors":"Stephanie Vander Wel","doi":"10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 6 traces the musical and lyrical developments of honky-tonk in the late 1930s and 1940s with Al Dexter, Ernest Tubb, and Hank Williams and remained a predominant mode of country music after World War II, right when Kitty Wells, Goldie Hill, and Jean Shepard contributed to the musical discourse. These female artists, taking over male-defined and often parodic representations of women, developed narratives that articulated class-specific voices couched in the metaphors of sexual and material desire, heartache, and loss juxtaposed with 1950s ideals of domesticity. Examining the particulars of musical style and vocal expression, this chapter argues that female artists in their various enactments of the honky-tonk angel, the angry, jilted housewife, the single mother, and the forsaken lover disclosed the paradoxes of class and gender and helped to lift the cloak of invisibility shrouding working-class women.","PeriodicalId":335270,"journal":{"name":"Hillbilly Maidens, Okies, and Cowgirls","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133548365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-02-15DOI: 10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0008
Stephanie Vander Wel
Chapter 7 positions the commercial success of female country artists and the narratives of honky-tonk music against the marketing strategies of 1950s country music. As the country music industry strove for commercial acceptance in the popular music market, it promoted its male (including Hank Williams and Webb Pierce) and female performers (such as Kitty Wells, Jean Shepard, and Goldie Hill) as examples of middle-class propriety. This chapter argues that the contradictions between the lyrical themes of honky-tonk music and the 1950s tropes of domesticity used in marketing individual country artists spoke of and assuaged the anxieties and tensions of social class and geographical migration for an audience of displaced white southerners.
{"title":"Domestic Respectability","authors":"Stephanie Vander Wel","doi":"10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 7 positions the commercial success of female country artists and the narratives of honky-tonk music against the marketing strategies of 1950s country music. As the country music industry strove for commercial acceptance in the popular music market, it promoted its male (including Hank Williams and Webb Pierce) and female performers (such as Kitty Wells, Jean Shepard, and Goldie Hill) as examples of middle-class propriety. This chapter argues that the contradictions between the lyrical themes of honky-tonk music and the 1950s tropes of domesticity used in marketing individual country artists spoke of and assuaged the anxieties and tensions of social class and geographical migration for an audience of displaced white southerners.","PeriodicalId":335270,"journal":{"name":"Hillbilly Maidens, Okies, and Cowgirls","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128000226","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-02-15DOI: 10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0003
Stephanie Vander Wel
Chapter 2 focuses on Lulu Belle’s 1930s radio career on WLS’s National Barn Dance as the first female radio star to embody the parodies of southern culture and early country music. Connecting her theatrics and vocal styling to a history of vaudevillian comediennes, this chapter explores Lulu Belle’s early radio performances of unruly hillbilly characters, such as the naive country girl or the man-hungry gal. In her highly publicized marriage to Scotty Wiseman, Lulu Belle’s rustic domestic image was easily conflated with notions of nostalgia, sentimentality, and romance. However, this did not prevent her from slipping in and out of roles to play the part of the demanding, comic wench or the flirtatious mountain gal. Her protean transformations persisted throughout her radio career and into film, helping give shape to historic performative models for women in country music.
{"title":"The Rural Masquerades of Gender","authors":"Stephanie Vander Wel","doi":"10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 2 focuses on Lulu Belle’s 1930s radio career on WLS’s National Barn Dance as the first female radio star to embody the parodies of southern culture and early country music. Connecting her theatrics and vocal styling to a history of vaudevillian comediennes, this chapter explores Lulu Belle’s early radio performances of unruly hillbilly characters, such as the naive country girl or the man-hungry gal. In her highly publicized marriage to Scotty Wiseman, Lulu Belle’s rustic domestic image was easily conflated with notions of nostalgia, sentimentality, and romance. However, this did not prevent her from slipping in and out of roles to play the part of the demanding, comic wench or the flirtatious mountain gal. Her protean transformations persisted throughout her radio career and into film, helping give shape to historic performative models for women in country music.","PeriodicalId":335270,"journal":{"name":"Hillbilly Maidens, Okies, and Cowgirls","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134378035","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-02-15DOI: 10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0009
Stephanie Vander Wel
The conclusion considers the ways in which female country artists of the 1960s and 1970s and more contemporary artists have drawn on the performative and singing practices of women in early country music. Specifically, it examines Loretta Lynn’s inclusion of the musical tropes and vocal expressions of honky-tonk and how Dolly Parton has combined past theatrical conventions with contrasting vocal approaches in her fluid play of gender. The Dixie Chicks, Gretchen Wilson, and Miranda Lambert have also carried the recurrent themes of the past to the dynamic present in their performances of the singing cowgirl, the redneck woman, and the crazy ex-girlfriend. The conclusion argues that the stylized displays of rusticity, working-class womanhood, confrontational narratives, and vocalities redolent of past traditions have all had a lasting influence on recent female artists.
{"title":"Conclusion","authors":"Stephanie Vander Wel","doi":"10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"The conclusion considers the ways in which female country artists of the 1960s and 1970s and more contemporary artists have drawn on the performative and singing practices of women in early country music. Specifically, it examines Loretta Lynn’s inclusion of the musical tropes and vocal expressions of honky-tonk and how Dolly Parton has combined past theatrical conventions with contrasting vocal approaches in her fluid play of gender. The Dixie Chicks, Gretchen Wilson, and Miranda Lambert have also carried the recurrent themes of the past to the dynamic present in their performances of the singing cowgirl, the redneck woman, and the crazy ex-girlfriend. The conclusion argues that the stylized displays of rusticity, working-class womanhood, confrontational narratives, and vocalities redolent of past traditions have all had a lasting influence on recent female artists.","PeriodicalId":335270,"journal":{"name":"Hillbilly Maidens, Okies, and Cowgirls","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114680680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-02-15DOI: 10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0005
Stephanie Vander Wel
Chapter 4 shifts the subject matter to 1940s California country music and connects the musical career of Carolina Cotton to the vibrancy and theatricality of that scene. Cotton emerged as a formidable vocalist in the leading western swing bands in which her virtuosic yodeling style matched and helped to enliven the rhythmic language of this hybrid style. In film, she continually used the yodel’s historical links to pastoralism, female virtuosity, and vaudeville slapstick to play a variety of roles—the Alpine maiden, the hillbilly clown, the jazz soloist, or the tomboyish singing cowgirl. With thespian flair, Cotton negotiated the aesthetic and cultural terrain of 1940s country music and opened up a performative space in California’s dance halls, where she yodeled swinging rhythms to an Okie audience of women working in World War II-era production plants.
{"title":"Carolina Cotton","authors":"Stephanie Vander Wel","doi":"10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 4 shifts the subject matter to 1940s California country music and connects the musical career of Carolina Cotton to the vibrancy and theatricality of that scene. Cotton emerged as a formidable vocalist in the leading western swing bands in which her virtuosic yodeling style matched and helped to enliven the rhythmic language of this hybrid style. In film, she continually used the yodel’s historical links to pastoralism, female virtuosity, and vaudeville slapstick to play a variety of roles—the Alpine maiden, the hillbilly clown, the jazz soloist, or the tomboyish singing cowgirl. With thespian flair, Cotton negotiated the aesthetic and cultural terrain of 1940s country music and opened up a performative space in California’s dance halls, where she yodeled swinging rhythms to an Okie audience of women working in World War II-era production plants.","PeriodicalId":335270,"journal":{"name":"Hillbilly Maidens, Okies, and Cowgirls","volume":"96 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124927658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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