Transcript
Page 1: Hank Williams Lost Highway Playguide

Inside

Spotlight Matthew Brumlow ……….……………p. 2

Interview with Damon and Matthew…...p. 3-4

Hank Williams

F A L L 2 0 1 3

Country and Western Music..................p. 8-9

Created By Kelli Marino, Dramaturg

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The Grand Ole Opry and The Louisiana Hayride ……………………..p. 7

The Stage Biography ……….……………..p. 5

His Music and Audrey

………..……….........p. 6 Copyright  2013  

American  Blues  Theater  

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Hank Williams is no stranger to Matthew Brumlow. American Blues’ ensemble member has previously played the country singer in a premiere solo show called NOBODY LONESOME FOR ME at Milwaukee Repertory Theater. The show was written by Lanie Robertson and directed by Sandy Ernst. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel singled out the production in it's Best of 2011 Theatre Section as "one of the top solo shows of the year."

Critics in Milwaukee universally lauded his performance, and the show even took him to Kansas City’s American Heartland Theatre, where he continued to amaze audiences with his personal characterization of Hank, along with his well-tuned voice. New York Director/Actor Craig Fols directed the show.

“Chicago Actor Matthew Brumlow glides from unmistakable southern drawl to signature yodel and strums along to the songs interspersed between one-sided conversations. His expressiveness also conveys the pain caused not only by Hank’s spina bifida and substance abuse, but his disappointing and impoverished past. […] Brumlow holds the audience with the rapt intensity of praises and curses, of laughter and tears. Killing time between a series of emotional phone calls, Brumlow’s soliloquies detail Williams’ failed marriage and impoverished backwoods upbringing, peppered with bittersweet moments of happiness. Brumlow’s Williams unravels just a bit more with each shot of Jack Daniel’s. —Rosy Ricks, Third Coast Daily

“Matthew Brumlow, performing this show for the second time this year, embodies the version of Williams envisioned by Robertson but brings much more to the table by virtue of his own abilities. […]

Brumlow captures all of that more in a performance that is precise, nuanced, subtle—and at the same time bigger than life. Just as his songs would suggest, Hank felt more highs and lows than the average person and Brumlow deftly maneuvers the shifting emotional landscape between the two extremes. —Robert Trussell, KC Star

When Brumlow spoke about creating the character of Hank for American Blues Theater’s production of LONESOME HIGHWAY, and finding him within his music, Brumlow also noted that he enjoyed speaking with NOBODY

Spotlight on Matthew Brumlow, American Blues Theater’s Hank Williams

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LONESOME’s audience members after each performance. “I soon found that Hank fans are much like Elvis fans—they are passionate about his music and they are legion. I never got tired of talking to audience members, particularly older audience members who would tell me so many wonderful stories of when they saw Hank live and even talked with him after a show. After hearing those stories, I now have an even deeper connection with the power of Hank's music.”

As an actor prepares for a role based on a real person, like Hank, many actors study the individual, their history, view video footage or read biographies about their subject—it is a starting point for actors in biopic performance pieces. But Matt did not want to recreate Hank on stage, or do an impersonation; rather, with NOBODY LONESOME FOR ME and now LOST HIGHWAY, he strives to create a stronger, more complex character. “We have very few visual recordings of Hank,” remarked Brumlow, “but I have found that to be a blessing rather than a curse in my preparation. If I tried to do an impression of Hank, I would fall flat on my face—there was only one Hank.”

When he visited Montgomery and the Hank Williams Museum, people told him the only way to know Hank was to “listen to his music because what was inside, comes out. So, I listened to Hank, a lot. And I always hear more and more with every listen. I hear the great American rural poet; I hear the rowdy hillbilly; I hear the boy who learned the blues from an old black street singer named Tee-Tot; I hear the voice of a lost soul searching for redemption; I hear the scorned lover and the cheater; I hear the voice of a child, an honest voice. Hank said to a friend one time ‘If you wanna make it, you can't fake it...you gotta live it.’ Hank certainly experienced more highs and lows than the average human being...and for better or for worse, he lived it."

Brumlow gave one final quote on Hank Williams from Country Artist George Jones “There was something about Hank that was just real—that's why he was so big—his songs were about these people and not just one of 'em but, hell, all of 'em.” It is these reasons that he thinks Hank's story is perfect for American Blues Theater. “If you go back to our founding in 1985 and our original mission statements, we are about delivering great and powerful stories with which, particularly, a ‘blue collar’ audience can connect. Plain speech, raw and real. We will all try to ‘live it’ every night as we tell his story. And have a lot of fun along the way as well.”

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An  Interview  with    Damon  Kiely  and  Matthew  Brumlow  

KM: Please tell me a brief history of your work with American Blues. DK: I was the Artistic Director of ATC from 2002-2007. In my five years we doubled the budget and audience, and rewrote the mission statement to ask, "What does it mean to be an American?”. We had many successful productions during that period including OKLAHOMA! THE DARK AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS, AMERICAN DEAD, and THE HAIRY APE. MB: I joined the American Blues ensemble in 2001 during Brian Russell’s tenure immediately after appearing in the critically-acclaimed productions of CATCH 22 and WORKING. I now have 15 production credits with American Blues as an actor including THE HAIRY APE, OKLAHOMA! A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE, KID SIMPLE AND TRUE WEST AND TOPDOG/UNDERDOG.

KM: I know that you both worked on OKLAHOMA! together. Tell me about that experience. DK: The collaboration between Matt, music director Malcolm Ruhl, and myself for OKLAHOMA! was central to the show’s success. MB: OKLAHOMA! remains one of my all time favorite shows with Damon. DK: The singing was simple, the lyrics were important, we weren't after soaring Broadway voices. Also, the instrumentation was stripped down to banjo, guitar, bass, and fiddle. MB: I think Damon lets actors do their work. He doesn't micromanage and he fosters a very open collaborative spirit. He is one of my absolute favorite directors, and I think he is immensely talented, articulate and intelligent. He asks the right questions. I am ecstatic to work with him again! DK: We listen to each other and try to find the best way without ego.

Do you think that there are things from OK!, that you will be able to draw from in HANK? MB: As soon as Wendy acquired the rights, I immediately hoped Damon

would direct LOST HIGHWAY due to that OKLAHOMA! experience. Damon and I are both interested in doing some of the same things with LOST HIGHWAY that we did with OKLAHOMA!— really grounding it and exposing the dirt under the nails. DK: The music and instrumentation for LOST HIGHWAY is similar to that of OKLAHOMA!. Hank sang with a very simple direct style. He wanted his story to reach his audience. MB: The music will pop and the production values will be slick, but not at the expense of the story and the characters, particularly Hank himself, who was definitely all rough edges.

KM: What drew you to work on HANK? DK: I was asked to read HANK WILLIAMS: LOST HIGHWAY by Wendy Whiteside and I thought it was pretty good, and an interesting read. Once I heard Matt sing the songs at the reading, I was more than sold. Quite frankly he's so good at capturing the heart and soul of Hank Williams that he could just sing a concert and it would be worth the price of admission. MB: I am a Georgia boy so I grew up listening to Hank. Like Hank, I had strong women in my life: my mom was and is a powerful presence in my life, and my grandmother, who I affectionately refer to as “Nanny”, equally raised me. If you walked into Nanny's small house, you were going to hear Elvis, Johnny Cash or Hank on her record player...and always a Hank hymn on Sundays. As I got older, I can't say I listened to Hank as much, but it was always residing in the fabric of my subconscious. When I first had the opportunity to work on Hank's songs, they came back so quickly and triggered deep waves of emotion. I owe a great debt of gratitude to Sandy Ernst, the former casting director for Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, who gave me the opportunity to play Hank in the world premiere of a great solo show called NOBODY LONESOME FOR ME.

KM: Did you have previous knowledge of Hank Williams, his story, his life, and his songs? DK: I sort of knew Hank Williams, but not that much. I'd heard his music but not studied it. MB: When I first started working on Hank, I took a trip to the Hank Williams Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. I had great conversations with folks about Hank, his life, and his music; I was surprised to hear so many funny stories. It is easy for people to think about sadness with Hank knowing his struggles with the bottle, and the sad songs he wrote and sang with such conviction. His life wasn't just sadness though. Various band members talked of his sense of humor, his cockiness, the way he could work a crowd, how his legs would get goin' during a bluesy honky tonk number, the comics he would read, and the jokes he would tell. Those facts are an important part of the story to me...to expose that Hank to people.

KM: Can you tell me about his musical influences and the legacy he left behind? Do you personally listen to music like his, or the kind that influenced him? DK: I think it all started for me with a group called TANGLEWEED. Billy

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Oh is their fiddler and a friend of mine, and I was knocked out by their energetic, fun, funky bluegrass music. That led me to listen to a ton of bluegrass and to start tracing the history backwards, back to Earl Scruggs, back to Ralph Stanley, to Bill Monroe and back to old-time country music, or pre-bluegrass stuff—like the Original Carter Family. Now I'm a huge fan of all that stuff including Jimmy Rodgers (the originally yodeling cowboy) and even obscure stuff like Alfred Karnes and Ernest Stoneman. Hank Williams was certainly influenced by people like the Original Carter Family and their followers, like Ernest Tubb and Roy Acuff, but the he brought the influence of the African American blues into it. In many ways he was a white blues singer. I'd say all of country music owes a debt to Hank Williams, from Willie Nelson, to my new personal favorite Kacey Musgraves.

KM: What have you found most interesting in discovering this man/character, and the world in which he lived? MB: It seems Hank always felt a bit like a backslider, which is why he wrote so many hymns and had such a desperate need to sing those songs in addition to his broken-heart or honky tonk songs. The last thing you would expect to hear in a back room honky tonk somewhere is a group of rowdy people singing a hymn; Hank somehow managed to make that happen. I find that part of his character fascinating—it is that contradiction I am most interested in exploring. Rick Bragg said of Hank's lyrics and singing "He sang a lot about funerals, and sadness, and grief, and pain...but instead of making you think about all those things and making you sad, it was the opposite. It was as though he pounded out all that agony and grief and sadness thin enough to

where you could stand it." DK: I think he had a wild spirit on the inside, and he needed a way to get it out. Luckily he did and recorded it. MB: Another thing that I love about LOST HIGHWAY are the central roles Tee-Tot, Mama, and Audrey. Hank didn't have a daddy growing up, and in many ways I think Tee-Tot was a father to Hank with those blues lessons; he was pivotal to Hank finding his unique voice. I know Rufus Payne stayed with Hank during his career because you can hear it when Hank sings the blues. And if it weren't for Mama and Audrey, we wouldn't have Hank.

KM: Tell me about the affect Audrey had on Hank in life and in this play. MB: Both his mom and Audrey pushed him...put him in front of the right people at the right time. They kicked his ass when he needed it kicked. Audrey was a true love affair and true muse for Hank. They fought like cats and dogs. It was a messy relationship, but Hank loved her beyond measure. Audrey is a great source of comfort and conflict for Hank in the play, which seems true to their life experience. DK: Audrey is central in so many ways. Without her there's no career. She pushed him to get to the Hayride, and then pushed him again to get to the Opry. Also, I'd say a lot of his heartbreak songs came straight out of fights he had with her. I think he loved her deeply, but couldn't figure out a way to make her happy. MB: We wouldn't have those heart songs that Hank wrote without Audrey.

KM: Tell me briefly about the Opry's and WSM's importance in Hank's career. MB: No doubt, it was a big deal when Hank finally got to play The Grand Ole Opry. That was the pinnacle! When he and The Drifiting Cowboys got their first shot and played "Lovesick Blues," it was a career-making moment. It instantly introduced Hank to a much larger audience and helped make him a superstar—a label he struggled with at times. But while Hank could step up to the mic and work a crowd at The Grand Ole Opry, he could also do the same in a church or seedy honky tonk. He wasn't just singing for the suits, he was singing for the poor and working class folks, even after the Opry made him a star.

KM: What is your favorite Hank Williams’ song, or the one with which you most identify? DK: I'm always knocked out by his two

biggest hits: “I saw the Light” and “Lovesick Blues.” “I Saw the Light” actually influenced me to start writing an adaptation of The Bacchae (I'm still working on it). When I listen to “I Saw the Light” I truly do feel full of the spirit. I feel closer to God; it makes me want to dance in a church. “Lovesick Blues” is just an incredible song and I can understand why he was asked to give six encores at the Opry. The song is so heartfelt that he cuts straight to your soul. MB: When I was able to sing, "I Saw the Light" to my Nanny moments before she peacefully passed away two years ago, it was one of my best memories. For this reason working on "Hank" has become an even greater privilege. Every night I get to sing that encore with our fine cast and audience, I will be thinking of loved ones, family, my Nanny...and I know Hank would love that.

KM: What is the story you want to tell through creating HANK? DK: Hank was always struggling to get into the light, but I think he also knew that it was in the shadows where he found his best material. He wanted to be a great singer and to do that he needed to live through pain, which tore him apart in the end. MB: I am really excited to introduce people to Hank who might not be as familiar with his music as well as celebrate with those who already know and love his work. Hank was one of the first mega stars of country music and he forever changed the way people thought of the country music label. It would be reason enough to tell his story due to the huge catalog of great songs and number one hits he left in such a short careerBut it really was how he did it. Hank was one of the first to inject the Blues into Country...but it wasn't simply the music—it was really the "Blues." He felt every syllable he sang. Colin Escott (who is my favorite biographer of Hank) said "His songs transformed and transcended the country label by looking deep inside and Hank was unafraid to confront what he found there. He taught people that is was alright to bear your soul and bear it in everyday plain speech."  

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Hank  Williams  Born: Hank Hiram Williams in Mount Olive, Alabama on September 17, 1923.

Hank helped support his family as a youth, selling peanuts and shining shoes. It was during this time he took guitar lessons from Rufus Payne, a black street musician, who helped Hank develop his blues rhythms and phrasing.

At 13, he made his radio debut in Montgomery with WSFA radio station, and by the age of 14, Hank would drop out of school and perform regularly. At the Empire Theater, in an amateur contest, Hank won $15 singing “WPA Blues.” “He never learned to read music, and for the rest of his career, he based his compositions in storytelling.” At the age of 17, Hank was thrown from a horse, causing a spinal ailment that would result in a drug addiction for the rest of his life. In 1939, he formed his first band, The Drifting Cowboys.

Because of his spinal disability, during WWII, Hank was unable to serve based on his 4-F status. During this time Hank began drinking heavily—this would continue throughout the rest of his life and affect his music career. When Hank met his idol Roy Acuff backstage at a performance later in life, Acuff warned him of the dangers of alcohol: “You’ve got a million-dollar talent, son, but a ten-cent brain.”

He met his first wife Audrey in 1943 and married her in 1944. They would embark on a musical journey together to Nashville where Hank was signed by music publisher Fred Rose, and first released “Calling You”/”Never Again” with Sterling Records, but then procured a contract with MGM to release “Move it On Over”/“Last Night I Heard You Crying in Your Sleep.”

Shreveport, Louisiana’s 50,000-watt radio show the Louisiana Hayride first exposed Hank to a wide American audience in 1948. His rendition of the 1922 hit “Lovesick Blues” rocketed him to radio stardom—it sold one million records.

On June 11, 1949, at the age of 25, Hank joined the Grand Ole Opry and sang “Lovesick Blues” where he gave six encores. From 1949 to 1952, Hank scored over 25 top ten singles. His albums released under Luke the Drifter, and the religious duets recorded with Audrey did not do as well as Hank’s solo career. Hank would soon become well known for his own songs and lyrics too. In 1951, Hank earned around $175,000 per year making personal appearances. When travel and performances began to wear on him, Hank hired ex-con and mail order doctor Tony Marshal for $300 per week to prescribe him drugs (American Decades).

In 1952, after a battle of heavy drinking and missed performances, the Grand Ole Opry fired Hank. He would return to the Louisiana Hayride and perform in small bars. At the end of 1952, “he and the Drifting Cowboys had been booked to play a show in Canton, Ohio, and Williams hired a driver to chauffeur him through a snowstorm to the gig. He fell asleep along the way—but when the driver tried to rouse him at Oak Hill, West Virginia, Williams was dead” (Roughstock). His song “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive” had been released just before his death.

Over 20,000 people attended his Montgomery funeral. MGM released several recordings after his death that went to the top ten. In subsequent years, his songs were covered by other artists, both in and out of country music.

“Elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1961, his plaque reads: ‘The simple, beautiful melodies and straightforward plaintive stories in his lyrics of life as he knew it will never die.’”

“In April 2010, the Pulitzer Prize Board awarded Williams with a posthumous Special Citation lifetime achievement award to honor his contributions to music” (Encyclopedia of Alabama). September 21 is Alabama’s “Hank Williams Day.”

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Hank’s  Music  “A  song  ain’t  nothin’  in  the  world  but  a  story  just  wrote  with  music  to  it.”  –  Hank  Williams  (San  Francisco  Chronicler)  

Hank’s “work alternated between maudlin and vengeful romantic sentiments such as ‘Why Don’t You Love Me’ and ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart’ and expression of giddy and humorous elations such as ‘Hey, Good Lookin’ and ‘Baby, We’re Really in Love.’” (Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians)

“Hank Williams's songs most often featured themes of heartbreak, heartache, and the dissolution of relationships. Some of these songs, including ‘The Blues Come Around,’ ‘You're Gonna Change, or I'm Gonna Leave,’ and ‘Why Don't You Love Me,’ were set to up-tempo rhythms that belied the despair and anger behind the lyrics. Mid- and slow-tempo numbers such as ‘I Don't Care If Tomorrow Never Comes,’ ‘Long Gone Lonesome Blues,’ and ‘I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry’ offer unparalleled images of loneliness and longing, with heartfelt singing that adds considerable weight to powerful lyrics.” (Encyclopedia of Alabama)

His music has been covered by artists such as Tony Bennett, Jerry Lee Louis, Joni James, Linda Ronstadt, and Charley Pride. His influence can be seen in the honky-tonk genre by Clink Black, Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, George Strait, and Randy Travis.

Audrey  Williams  

Audrey Mae Sheppard met Hank Williams in 1943, and a Justice of the Peace in Alabama married them at a gas station in December 1944.

She joined Hank on a trip to Nashville to meet music publisher Fred Rose. She worked her way into singing and playing the upright bass with William’s backing band. Country biographer Colin Escott wrote “Her duets with Hank were like an extension of their married life in that she fought him for dominance on every note.”

When Hank began drinking heavily again in 1948, they separated. A year later, they reunited and gave birth to son Randall Hank Williams (later renamed Hank Williams Jr.).

On December 31, 1951, Audrey called Hank and told him to leave their house by the time she returned home. After their divorce in 1952, Audrey was awarded their house and child, as well as half of his future royalties (on the condition she never remarried).

Audrey died in 1975 from heart failure.

Together, Audrey and Hank recorded many songs including “Something Got a Hold of Me”, “Dear Brother”, “Help Me Understand”, and “I Want to Live and Love.”

1946 Calling You/Never Again (Will I Knock on Your Door) 1947 Move It On Over (Last Night) I Heard You Crying in Your Sleep 1948 Pan American Long Gone Daddy Lovesick Blues 1949 Wedding Bells My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It 1950 Long Gone Lonesome Blues Why Don’t You Love Me Moanin’ the Blues

1951 Cold, Cold Heart—sold one-million copies Hey, Good Lookin’ 1952 Jambalaya (On the Bayou)—sold one-million copies, crossed over to the pop charts Honky Tonk Blues Half as Much Settin’ the Woods on Fire 1953 I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive Kaw-Liga Your Cheatin’ Heart Take These Chains from My Heart

Top  Ten  Hits  

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The Grand Ole Opry “The Symbolic Center of Country Music”  

1925: George D. Hay, a former WLS Chicago announcer of the music program The National Barn Dance takes a job in Nashville at the newly founded thousand-watt WSM radio station. This show, named The WSM Barn Dance, featured down to earth performers of the banjo, fiddle and guitar. His first guest, fiddler Uncle Jimmy Thompson, played for two hours. Hay decided to keep the show’s theme focused on old-time music—known as “hillbilly.”

1926: “The [Opry’s] first solo singing star is Uncle Dave Macon, a vaudeville performer, banjo player and gospel singer.”

1927: Renamed The Grand Ole Opry, Hay sought “performers who could project primitive rural images and material with nostalgic themes,” and now included an African-American musician into the lineup, blues harmonica player Deford Bailey.

1930s: The Grand Ole Opry reaches thirty states and part of Canada. The music trends toward modern country music, and less toward the rural twang that had previously been heard.

1938: Musician Roy Acuff leads The Opry with his band the Tennessee Crackerjackers. Bluegrass sounds begin to influence the bands on the

Opry. His “repertoire of hymns, love songs, and old ballads sung with emotion and sincerity” made him a favorite.

October 1939: The Opry goes national on NBC’s Saturday-night line up. “Due to the visual component of the show, Hay costumed his performers to look more interesting, with many musicians dressing in pseudo-rustic ear, and rustic comedians providing visual humor for the watching crowds.” (WSM Launches…)

November 21, 1939: Ryman Manager Lula Naff goes to court for the right to present the provocative play, Tobacco Road. When the Nashville Board of Censors tried to stop the performance by threatening to arrest star John Barton, manager Lula Nuff filed a suit and won the right to show the work.

June 5, 1943: After four previous venues, The Grand Ole Opry moves into the Ryman Auditorium.

1943: Texan Ernest Tubb introduced the Opry to honky-tonk, or hard country music. He sang of failed love and marriages, divorce and hard times, which soon became staples of country music. Tubb’s music featured an electric lead guitar—later a steel guitar with prominent string bass and drums.” (WSM Launches…)

1948: The Opry develops a spin-off show called Friday Night Frolics.

1949: Hank Williams brings honky-tonk music to the Opry.

1950s: The Opry begins looking at younger, fresher talent to expand the audience. They host Johnny Cash, Webb Pierce, Stonewall Jackson and others.

“For  its  rural  listeners,  spread  out  across  the  vast  stretches  of  open  space,  the  Opry  became  art  of  the  common  bond  that  united  rural  folk  across  the  

country,  not  only  providing  musical  entertainment,  but  also  creating  a  cultural  home  for  its  many  

thousands  of  rural  listeners.”    –Encyclopedia  of  Popular  Culture  

The  Louisiana  Hayride:  1948-­1960  

Broadcast from Shreveport, Louisiana’s Municipal Auditorium, The Louisiana Hayride launched the careers of Hank Williams and Elvis Presley. Each Saturday night, KWKH broadcast a musical variety show to cities like Chicago and Los Angeles. CBS picked up the show in 1953 and broadcast to over 200 stations.

In KnowLA Encyclopedia of Louisiana, Tracey E.W. Laird notes “The relatively late arrival of television to the Shreveport market helped maintain a live audience that averaged around 3,300 people.” With the music industry growing in Nashville, both with record labels and The Grand Ole Opry, the Louisiana Hayride took pride in its Western and Southern location, as well as fostering new artists who were looking to grow their careers, including a previously Opry-rejected, young Elvis Presley.

The Hayride gradually diminished into 1960.

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Country  and  Western  Music  Excerpts  from  Encyclopedia  of  American  Social  History,  1993  

In forty years of rapid modernization after 1920, much of the southern-eastern United States was transformed from a rural, agricultural society to an urban, industrial one. During this time the region also endured a severe economic depression, contributed heavily to a world war, and accommodated new government programs designed to commercialize agriculture, import new economic systems, and improve home life. One by-product of these changes was a dramatic increase in migration throughout the region and subsequent economic displacement, divorce, and social disruption among families. This situation was congenial to the rise of a popular music focusing on personal hardship or invoking nostalgia for a more orderly way of life imagined as the region's rural past.

During the same forty years that southerners were displaced from rural environments, complex institutions to promote popular entertainment were built in the South. New technologies were essential to this process. Radio broadcasting, phonograph recording, and electrical amplification equipment used in concerts made it possible for large numbers of people to hear intricate levels of nuance in singing and instrument playing. Concerts became both a source of major income and an important setting where entertainers could build emotional relationships with their fans by singing of personal hardship or pain, love traumas, memories of family and kin. Movies, television, music festivals, and concert tours spread this musical subculture widely in the 1950s and 1960s. Combining a fortunate location in the middle South with business entrepreneurship and investment capital, Nashville, Tennessee, became a major center for the nationwide marketing of country and western entertainment by 1960.

An Emerging Star System In the early 1920s recording-company entrepreneurs began packaging mountain string music into rustic formats with market appeal. A style that would later come to be known as

"hillbilly" music began in June 1922 when Alexander Campbell "Eck" Robertson and Henry Gilliland, old-time fiddlers from Texas and Oklahoma, were recorded at Victor studios in New York City. Radio broadcasting quickly embraced rusticity. On 24 January 1923 station WBAP in Fort Worth, Texas, aired the first radio program of hillbilly string music to an extremely receptive audience that responded with telephone calls and telegrams of praise. Successful radio barn-dance programs were soon begun in Chicago, Atlanta, Nashville, and other cities.

The Carter Family This trio had a pervasive influence on subsequent performing styles. Probably most important for the formation of country music instrumental styling was Maybelle Addington Carter, a creative guitarist and alto singer. A.P. (Alvin Pleasant) Carter, Maybelle's brother-in-law, sang bass and managed the act.

Signature innovations of the Carter Family in the late 1920s were crucial to their commercial success and influence. Maybelle Carter perfected a distinct guitar style by playing melody on bass strings with her thumb while chording rhythm on treble strings. A.P. Carter's song arrangements reduced complicated traditional melodies and accompaniments to standard vocal lines sung in a repetitive fashion against a regular rhythm of basic chords.

The Carters' promoters recognized the audience appeal of rustic music and used it heavily; consequently, the Carter Family received nationwide exposure

virtually every evening at a time when radio listening was America's novel form of popular entertainment.

Jimmie Rodgers Rodgers was an enduring role model for male stardom and a symbol of individual wealth and popular acclaim, and his performance innovations

helped to define a "western" musical genre.

Two of Rodgers's songs [were] performed each in a slow tempo and sang from a woman's point of view. "The Soldier's Sweetheart" was a popular World War I song, a lament about a lover lost in battle. "Sleep, Baby, Sleep" was a mother's soothing lullaby to an infant. It included a novelty, item--a variation on the Swiss yodel that had been a stage feature of vaudeville.

In a contribution analogous to the Carter Family's innovations in rhythm and instrumentation, Rodgers combined the yodel with the blues to create his signature "blue yodel." Rodgers had learned blues from black workers during his fourteen years on the railroad, beginning as a teenage water boy. When he brought together the yodel and blues traditions, Rodgers was able to express personal emotion, particularly the pain of vagabond living or turbulent love relationships, in a novel way. In 1928 "Blue Yodel" ("T for Texas") became the first hit record of modern country music.

Major Trends and Stars Since the 1950s country and western music has become a sophisticated commercial enterprise. Yet it has continued to emphasize themes of personal hardship and emotional trauma consistent with its social origins. As a musical tradition it, like

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Country  and  Western  Music  continued  Excerpts  from  Encyclopedia  of  American  Social  History,  1993  

the blues, has evolved distinct conventions. To become a star, a performer must devise a novel way to address traditional themes and musical styling--through voice innovations, creative instrumental motifs or special dexterity, elaborations on stage manner and performing style, or modification of existing genres to create a new one. Country and western musicians are highly conscious of one another, and the work of a successful performer influences that of aspiring ones.

Western Swing: Bob Wills

Early southwestern swing music modified by popular dancehall bands and broadcast nationally by radio networks in the late 1930s and early 1940s came to be known as western swing. Bob Wills was among its most significant innovators. As a child in migrant labor camps Wills, the son of a country fiddler from Texas, listened to blues musicians and other ethnic performers. As an adult he admired Bessie Smith as well as the dance orchestras of Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie, Bob Crosby, and Glenn Miller. Famous for a signature blues fiddling with a string band that yielded a jazzy swing, Wills added woodwinds, horns, and drums so that his Texas Playboys could perform numbers ranging from Jimmie Rodgers's blues to popular dance-band and jazz renditions to Rossini's "William Tell Overture."

Bluegrass: Bill Monroe Bill Monroe created a modern style of string-band playing and vocal harmonizing that has attracted numerous followers to an elaborate country and western subgenre known as bluegrass music.

In 1938, in Atlanta, Monroe formed the Blue Grass Boys; this band gave its name to a new type of string-band music and trained many of the musicians who spread it. Monroe's bluegrass used five instruments: mandolin (played with great dexterity by Monroe), fiddle (played in a jazzy and soulful manner), banjo (played in a charismatic picking mode introduced to this audience by Earl Scruggs), guitar, and bass. By 1939 Monroe was on the Grand Ole Opry, where his first performance was an adaptation of Jimmie Rodgers's blue yodel "Mule Skinner Blues."

Bluegrass is a distinct style within country and western music. Its rhythms stress offbeats, tempos are usually quite fast, vocal harmonizing is intricate and high-pitched, and instrumental virtuosity is prominent. Lyrics are conventional, focusing on home, family, love, hard times, work, and religion. Bluegrass invokes a potent tone of nostalgia for the rural past.

Country & Western Music & Social History Country and western music emerged in the late 1920s partly as a reaction to modernization--it provided musical images of rural rusticity on radio programs and promoted recording stars who expressed emotions typical of the personal hardships and romantic traumas evident during social change. The themes of country songs, however, remained close to the impulses that initiated them; in its first six decades of growth to a multimillion-dollar enterprise, country and western music has offered traditional agrarian values to an audience for whom rural life probably functions more as nostalgia than as lived experience.

Perhaps partly because of this, the country and western subculture is usually associated with the white majority in America, and most of its major stars have been white males. Yet many of its important instrumental and vocal innovations were inspired by the art of minority musicians. By adopting blues and jazz motifs such as persistent rhythms, improvisational instrumental features, and emotionally expressive vocal renditions, country and western musicians played a role in bringing musical motifs associated with nonwhite Americans to the general popular culture, and influenced the early era of rock and roll.

Rustic imagery, adaptations of jazz and blues motifs, conventional gender roles, and pathetic themes of broken hearts are central features of country and western music. They resonate with a tacit assumption: the proper way to confront hardships in a difficult world is to live in a monogamous marriage with traditional family life and conventional religion. Even though country and western stars are often unable to meet this standard themselves, they persistently elaborate upon an art that celebrates it. Fans know this.

Perhaps they admire in their stars this elusive striving for a stability not characteristic of their historical experience. Regarded this way, despite its modernity, country and western music in American life amounts to a conservative critique of modern society and a very human resistance to social change.

Honky  Tonk  music  embodied  the  spirit  of  

dancing  and  drinking,  and  loving  and  then  losing  the  

one  you  love.  –  Roughstock  

FALL  2013