Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South

by Charles L. Hughes

Overview

In the sound of the 1960s and 1970s, nothing symbolized the rift between black and white America better than the seemingly divided genres of country and soul. Yet the music emerged from the same songwriters, musicians, and producers in the recording studios of Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee, and Muscle Shoals, Alabama--what Charles L. Hughes calls the "country-soul triangle." In legendary studios like Stax and FAME, integrated groups of musicians like Booker T. and the MGs and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section produced music that both challenged and reconfirmed racial divisions in the United States. Working with artists from Aretha Franklin to Willie Nelson, these musicians became crucial contributors to the era's popular music and internationally recognized symbols of American racial politics in the turbulent years of civil rights protests, Black Power, and white backlash.

Hughes offers a provocative reinterpretation of this key moment in American popular music and challenges the conventional wisdom about the racial politics of southern studios and the music that emerged from them. Drawing on interviews and rarely used archives, Hughes brings to life the daily world of session musicians, producers, and songwriters at the heart of the country and soul scenes. In doing so, he shows how the country-soul triangle gave birth to new ways of thinking about music, race, labor, and the South in this pivotal period.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469622446
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	03/23/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Charles L. Hughes is director of the Memphis Center at Rhodes College.

What People are Saying About This

Mark Anthony Neal

The sweet sounds of Soul make it easy to imagine an American South that, perhaps, never existed, where the music had folk dancing across color lines. Those lines remain intact in Charles L. Hughes exhaustively researched and provocative book Country Soul: Making Music and Making in the American South. In it, Hughes celebrates the most American of American music and the genius of musicians who may not have changed the world, but certainly made the world a better sounding place.

Karl Hagstrom Miller University of Virginia

With Country Soul, Charles L. Hughes offers a much-needed revisionist history of southern soul and country music, one that takes the music and musicians seriously while remaining critical of both the contemporary racial politics of the music business and the accumulated romanticism of the surrounding scholarship. It's a massive achievement and a gentle ode to the legacy of musicians who built American culture before being tossed out of the history books

From the Publisher

With Country Soul, Charles L. Hughes offers a much-needed revisionist history of southern soul and country music, one that takes the music and musicians seriously while remaining critical of both the contemporary racial politics of the music business and the accumulated romanticism of the surrounding scholarship. It's a massive achievement and a gentle ode to the legacy of musicians who built American culture before being tossed out of the history books.—Karl Hagstrom Miller, University of Virginia

The sweet sounds of Soul make it easy to imagine an American South that, perhaps, never existed, where the music had folk dancing across color lines. Those lines remain intact in this exhaustively researched and provocative book. In it, Charles L. Hughes celebrates the most American of American music and the genius of musicians who may not have changed the world, but certainly made the world a better-sounding place.—Mark Anthony Neal, author Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic

Editorial Reviews

A deep, fresh examination of various power relations involved in the making of soul music, country music, and the sonic space between them.—The Wall Street Journal



An essential piece of Southern musical history.—Kirkus Reviews



A powerful work.—Library Journal



An eye-opening corrective to notions of racial harmony in the recording studio or on the bandstand." —Memphis Flyer



With its courageous, thoroughly researched, and deeply considered take on the racial politics of the southern music industry in a pivotal period for not just the music but the South and the nation at large, Country Soul claims its own essential place in the telling of that messy history.—Paste



A fascinating read on many levels.—Stillwater News Press



A valuable corrective to the misleading renderings so often encountered in the literature about the period and in the popular imagination." —Memphis Magazine



Country Soul is an excellent place to begin a more honest accounting of this golden era.—Pitchfork Review



This carefully researched study...presents interesting insights into the music and racial politics of a turbulent era.—CHOICE



Country Soul is a valuable addition to the literature on southern music, black and white.—American Historical Review"

From the Publisher

03/01/2015
The accepted version of the production of the great soul hits of the 1960s from Stax, Muscle Shoals, and assorted other Southern studios paints a picture of an oasis of biracial harmony in largely segregated communities. In this book, Hughes (history, Oklahoma State Univ.) presents a decidedly less sanguine version of these events. Using case studies from such pioneering soul singers as Joe Tex and Arthur Alexander, Hughes shows a pattern of racism in the creation, finances, and critical reception of this genre that within the space of a decade went from dominance to marginalization in the marketplace. Even more distressing (and covered with a detail and focus heretofore unseen) is the career of African American country sensation Charley Pride, whose racial identity was hidden until his records were popular enough to minimize the risk of alienating his audience. While not condemning revered figures such as Rick Hall of FAME Studios, the author shows that instead of curing racism these pioneers at best perfumed it. VERDICT A powerful work that should find a place in larger popular music collections.—John Frank, Los Angeles P.L.

Library Journal

2014-12-29
Exploration of the racial politics that defined the country and soul music scenes during the 1960s and '70s.Perhaps nothing better represented the racial divide in American culture in the wake of desegregation than country and soul music. The racial tension embodied by these dueling cultures was perpetuated by the "musical color line" separating black soul and white country. The crux of Hughes' (History/Oklahoma State Univ.) analysis is the "country-soul triangle" represented by music communities in Memphis and Nashville, and Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and epitomized by the Stax label and FAME and American Studios. The musicians who traversed this triangle, both white and black, recorded for artists as disparate as Aretha Franklin and Hank Williams Jr. However, Hughes deftly notes the contradiction represented by country and soul studios as racially integrated workplaces whose music would only reinforce racial divides, despite the musicians themselves championing their music as symbols of interracialism and christening it the "Memphis sound" to reflect their progressive relationship. However, the idealism of this arrangement was not so perfectly enacted. Hughes corrects the misrepresentation of this narrative, which heralds white musicians as stewards of racial progress in the South but often downplays or outright avoids the contributions of black artists, such as Arthur Alexander. Moreover, black musicians saw their white counterparts not as "freedom fighters" but potential collaborators and competitors whose whiteness threatened their livelihood. Rich with anecdotes of major artists like the Osmonds, Willie Nelson and Jerry "Swamp Dogg" Williams, Hughes dissects the racial interplay that defined the triangle against the conservative "New Right," whose reactionary politics were embodied by traditional country music. As the scenes continued to meld and the musical divide between country and soul became less noticeable and more commercialized, it was clear that white musicians benefited far greater than their black counterparts, while racial disparity continues to linger today in songs like the bungled collaboration "Accidental Racist" by LL Cool J and Brad Paisley. An essential piece of Southern musical history.

Kirkus Reviews