Hidden in the Mix: The African American Presence in Country Music

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Introduction. Country Music and Racial Formation / Diane Pecknold 1
Part One. Playing in the Dark
1. Black Hillbillies: African American Musicians on Old-Time Records, 1924-1932 / Patrick Huber 19
2. Making Country Modern: The Legacy of Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music / Diane Pecknold 82
3. Contested Origins: Arnold Schultz and the Music of Western Kentucky / Erika Brady 100
4. Fiddling with Race Relations in Rural Kentucky: The Life, Times, and Contested Identity of Fiddlin' Bill Livers / Jeffrey A. Keith 119
Part Two. New Antiphonies
5. Why African Americans Put the Banjo Down / Tony Thomas 143
6. Old-Time Country Music in North Carolina and Virginia: The 1970s and 1980s / Kip Lornell 171
7. "The South's Gonna Do It Again": Changing Conceptions of the Use of "Country" Music in the Albums of Al Green / Michael Awkward 191
8. Dancing the Habanera Beats (in Country Music): The Creole-Country Two-Step in St. Lucia and Its Diaspora / Jerry Wever 204
9. Playing Chicken with the Train: Cowboy Troy's Hick-Hop and the Transracial Country West / Adam Gussow 234
10. If Only They Could Read between the Lines: Alice Randall and the Integration of Country Music / Barbara Ching 263
11. You're My Soul Song: How Southern Soul Changed Country Music / Charles L. Hughes 283
12. What's Syd Got to Do with It? King Records, Henry Glover, and the Complex Achievement of Crossover / David Sanjek 306
Bibliography 339
Contributors 361
Index 365

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Country music's debt to African American music has long been recognized. Black musicians have helped to shape the styles of many of the most important performers in the country canon. The partnership between Lesley Riddle and A. P. Carter produced much of the Carter Family's repertoire; the street musician Tee Tot Payne taught a young Hank Williams Sr.; the guitar playing of Arnold Schultz influenced western Kentuckians, including Bill Monroe and Ike Everly. Yet attention to how these and other African Americans enriched the music played by whites has obscured the achievements of black country-music performers and the enjoyment of black listeners.

The contributors to Hidden in the Mix examine how country music became "white," how that fictive racialization has been maintained, and how African American artists and fans have used country music to elaborate their own identities. They investigate topics as diverse as the role of race in shaping old-time record catalogues, the transracial West of the hick-hopper Cowboy Troy, and the place of U.S. country music in postcolonial debates about race and resistance. Revealing how music mediates both the ideology and the lived experience of race, Hidden in the Mix challenges the status of country music as "the white man’s blues."

Contributors. Michael Awkward, Erika Brady, Barbara Ching, Adam Gussow, Patrick Huber, Charles Hughes, Jeffrey A. Keith, Kip Lornell, Diane Pecknold, David Sanjek, Tony Thomas, Jerry Wever

Reviews

The Journal of American Culture

The collection helpfully analyzes the paradox that country music has been stereotypically framed as 'white music,' but a long tradition of black performers and fans exists. It uncovers the historical discourses that over time obscured country music's multiracial origins and history." -- Leigh Edwards

Hidden in the Mix . .. steps in to set the record straight, within a dozen essays that tackle varied topics while persistently analyzing the racial history of country music and how it manifests itself, or is ignored, in the present - including in the works of country-music historians." -- Dave Heaton

A fascinating and long-overdue compendium of essays that shed new light on country music's complex and diverse history." -- Bill Baars

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