Brothers That Bring The Roots
Today is the release of 90-year-old blues legend T-Model Ford’s latest album Taledragger, recorded with blues band GravelRoad. You can get from Amazon for only $5.99, and download the first track “Same Old Train” for FREE (Review from ninebullets.net).
Even though T Model is solidly blues, like so many other roots-based independent artists, he has turned to the same underground resources that many independent country acts use to get their music to the people. This has formed the big tent movement that can be seen in things like the Muddy Roots Festival lineup where you have country and blues musicians booked side by side, and nobody bats an eyelash.
And to be a master of the obvious, T-Model happens to be black. The topic of race has come up around here quite often, from the hubub over country rapper Colt Ford, to the talk of the two music super-genres (hip hop and country) that dominate the music culture and split right down racial lines.
Some call the blending of traditionally white and black music in the mainstream creative, and strain to find similarities in the histories of country and rap to fit flimsy premises that we’re all just brothers of different mothers and all music when broken down to origin is ostensibly the same. If someone can blend two unrelated genres of music in a tasteful manner that is still respectful to the roots, then more power to them. But I think people like Colt Ford and Jason Aldean do it because they find it financially lucrative. Yes, there are similarities in all genres, but instead of looking at genres or racial styles of music as something that needs to be destroyed to create harmony, or as a way to create mass appeal, I’d rather celebrate the diversity in music and keep the differences stark and pure to keep the musical spectrum healthy.
One of the things I am most proud of about the current underground country/roots insurgency is the diversity, with genres and sex, and race as well. There are African American artists that use the same music infrastructure, have the same managers, labels, etc. as the country bands we discuss here. This is just a few, but they illustrate the diversity that the broad roots insurgency boasts.
I also plan to highlight the few times when the mixing of country and rap has worked in the future.
The Carolina Chocolate Drops
They could be mistaken as just a black bluegrass band, but The Drops go back even farther to when the genres of American music were still forming. Jazz, blues, and old-time string music worked in concert with each other much more fluidly, and this is what makes The Drops music so appealing and authentic. Let’s not forget, the banjo originated in Africa. Their manager is Dolpf Ramseur, who also manages The Avett Brothers. They have a great album out called Genuine Negro Jig that’s a good one that I hope to have a review up for soon, but listen to them talk about the music and their approach–an authentic appreciation for the music that is uncompromising to the influences of industry-based image:
Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
What REAL and neo-traditionalist country bands are doing for the roots of country music is what Black Joe Lewis is doing for the Blues/Jazz/Soul mix that was so great in the 60’s and 70’s, and has died a slow death at the hands of mainstream hip-hop. Black Joe is on Lost Highway Records, the same label as Hayes Carll and Ryan Bingham. When I saw him at South By Southwest last year, he played the same showcase as Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers and Slim Cessna’s Auto Club. Definitely worth checking out:
T Model Ford
Booked by the Bucket City Agency that also books acts like The .357 String Band, Joe Buck, Rachel Brooke, and many more, and a performer at the Deep Blues Festivals that helped codify elements of the independent country movement and blend them with the muddy blues resurgence, T Model Ford is an ancestor to us all. 90 years of hard living? Meh. Recent stroke? Meh. He’s still out there on the road kicking people’s asses on a nightly basis.
January 11, 2011 @ 2:31 pm
If you listen to country music from the early 1900’s you can’t tell you was black and who was white. As they say down here – Same dog, different leg action. Kick ass music is kick ass music.
January 12, 2011 @ 2:42 pm
Well said hard to follow your comment.
January 11, 2011 @ 2:41 pm
Awesome blog! Am off to work soon but will listen to those tracks when I get home. Have you seen the documentary You See Me Laughin’? Amazing, amazing amazing film, definitely one of my all time Top 10 movies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWxvlLFkHK4&NR=1
Actually those two skinny white boys who started Fat Possum Records deserve alot of recognition for what they have done for those old blues dudes like Model T, RL Burnside, Cedell Davis ….
It’s funny, you were saying the other day Kid Rock seems to haunt you and you can’t shake him, I feel that way about Bono. EVERY SINGLE music documentary, regardless of the genre, seems to interview that idiot. Jeez. Who gives a rat’s what he thinks? Doesn’t he have something more important to do like saving the planet?
By the way, I missed Black Joe Lewis at SXSW but I went to Waterloo in Austin and picked up his CD just cos you recommended him 🙂 Awesome stuff.
January 11, 2011 @ 2:43 pm
Black Joe Lewis & the Honey Bears are a must see live show. Last year at the Bowery Ballroom he had Cedric Burnside & Lightnin’ Malcom open and it was fantastic. They all brought the house down,
January 11, 2011 @ 2:46 pm
Sure it’s a cheap plug for my video but I have about 2.5 hours from this show and just gotta add that it was easily one of the most mesmerizing nights of my life watching him perform.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCQOWFno4z8
January 11, 2011 @ 2:56 pm
Hey Trig. Thanks for posting this. I’m glad these artists are getting recognized on this site even though they aren’t necessarily country music. We all know that country music derived from african american culture..from the influences Hank Williams, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Elvis, etc. got their style and teachings from. I listen to primarily country music but have always listened to other genres of music that have southern roots…Blues such as T. Model Ford, Left Lane Cruiser, Muddy Waters, Keb’ Mo’…..Rock/Metal such as Maylene and Sons of Disaster, Primus, Black Stone Cherry, Texas Hippie Coalition….etc. My ipod has all these artists on there and it’s always on random play. I personally don’t bat an eye when it goes from one artist to another because I don’t really see that much different between the styles myself.
I’m also proud that there are black musicians out there who stand up and do something different than following what popular culture pushes. They aren’t joining the rap bandwagon and living that lifestyle. I hope we start to see more black artists performing other types of music genres. I feel that most african american people nowadays are embarrased by their past and feel like they turned their back on their heritage in regards to music. They don’t want to be associated with country or bluegrass music. I hope I’m wrong about that.
January 11, 2011 @ 3:56 pm
Great article, Triggerman. I love stuff like this. Don’t forget the one and only Charley Pride.
January 11, 2011 @ 5:18 pm
I was really focusing on more current artists. I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with Charley’s music. I think the Jack Clement-produced stuff is pretty good, but at times he was way too Conway Twitty for me.
January 11, 2011 @ 5:46 pm
what’s wrong with Conway?
>_>
January 11, 2011 @ 5:50 pm
I like Conway singing with Loretta
January 11, 2011 @ 6:25 pm
I don’t know, there was just that period where you have the “Nashville Sound” with the strings and the choruses that drives me a little crazy that both Conway and Charlie participated in for a while.
Yes, the Loretta duets are an exception. Not against all Conway, just against most of that overproduced stuff that came out of RCA’s studio B during that period.
January 11, 2011 @ 8:09 pm
Charley Pride! I saw him play at the Grand Ole Opry a few years back. What a treat. He was such a darling, sounded great and I even got a wink!
I’m so fascinated by the social and racial implications of country music. As a foreigner I am always blown away by the sea of white faces at the gigs I attend in the states: whether it be Hank III, Scott H Biram, JWW & The Prospectors, seeing Charlie Louvin years ago in NYC. Where are the brown people? They like good music too, so why are they not here? Are they not welcome? Is country music, like at one time jazz and blues, considered ‘race music’?
I come from a small country where everywhere you go it’s a cosmpolitan sea of colours and nationalities. Regardless of the music genre it’s a melting pot. For example: we had our annual ‘Elvis In The Park’ concert here in Auckland last weekend. There was about 4000 people there of every race and creed imaginable: Maori, Pacific islander, Asian, Indian, Africans, Middle Eastern. Infact over half the Elvis impersonators that performered were Maori.
This issue was first brought to my attention when I filmed my Elvis doco in the states 7 years ago. I was told by some folks in Memphis that black people didn’t like Elvis as they felt he’d ‘stolen’ their music and homogenised it for the masses. A generalisation I know, but you know me: I like to generalise it saves time.
I understand this is a huge and complicated issue (or maybe not?) and would love to hear others weighing in on this. Surely I’m not the only one who’s observed this?
January 11, 2011 @ 8:41 pm
No Carla, that’s the point. Popular American music these days IS race music. Music was more diversified in the 30’s than it is now, which I think speaks volumes to the devolution of American music.
At the Black Joe Lewis concert I was at, the crowd was 90% white. If you watch the video of the Carolina Chocolate Drops above, the crowd is probably 90% white. The girl tells a story about a black person coming up after a show and bashfully admitting that they like country music. It is sad what we have become.
January 12, 2011 @ 8:09 am
Perhaps if you go to a Lil Wayne show, the mix would also be 90/10. Exceptions would be individualistic rather than the exception, where rap is more accepted in the African American population than in the moonshine listeners. Break it further down: guns, ho’s, money and drugs versus stuggle, pain, love and stills.
January 12, 2011 @ 8:32 am
I went to the Jam Master Jay Awards with the lineup of: Snoop Dogg, Mobb Deep, EPMD, DMC, De La Soul, Raekwon, Jim Jones, Papoose, M.O.P., Q-Tip, Kid Capri, Everlast feat. DJ Muggs, Bumpy Knuckles, Marley Marl, and Dead Prez. When Everlast came out, the love left. It was uncomfortable. The room was mixed but everyone agreed that Everlast was not welcome. The thing about that lineup is Everlast sticks out not because of his skin color, but because he”™s considered more pop than the rest of the list. He certainly thinned out the crowd and by the time Dead Prez came on it was me and bunch of thugs hopping up and down with our hands in the air.
January 14, 2011 @ 8:36 am
Well, if the audience was 10% black at those shows, maybe that’s not too bad as it’s roughly the percentage of the US population that is black. At the blues shows and festivals I’ve seen in the Mid Atlantic and Northeast, I’d say a typical crowd is closer to 99% white. In my couple of trips to Chicago, I’d say that there were a good deal more black folks in the crowd at the various blues club I went to.
January 11, 2011 @ 5:36 pm
Who was it that said, “if you can’t feel the blues, you can’t feel too much” or something along that line? Great blog Triggerman.
January 12, 2011 @ 9:09 am
Enjoyed every one of the tracks! Good music is good music. Love the horns a lot, am a horn player myself and have always loved Huey Lewis with his kick butt harmonies and big horn sound.
Gotta sit back and wonder why we have become musically and culturally what we have become but that wears me out, am a social worker/sociologist and get so tired of trying to figure things out, here I just wanna enjoy, which, by the way, you have me wanting to move to TEXAS, specifically Austin.
Thanks for another enlightening and pure enjoyment blog!
January 12, 2011 @ 9:58 am
I agree with you on Charley Pride (and most of Conway).
It’s funny how nowadays we all talk so much about real versus pop country music, largely forgetting that the argument has been going on for decades just in different forms. Country versus Western kicked it off, then came the damn strings, then you have the non-outlaw 70’s, and 80’s and 90’s well that just speaks for itself…
As for black country singers, in my opinion Stoney Edwards is still the cream of the crop.
.
January 12, 2011 @ 10:14 am
Conway’s rockabilly stuff kicked ass.
January 12, 2011 @ 10:29 am
Now that is 100% true!
January 12, 2011 @ 1:54 pm
Nice! She’s my Rock! Thanks for sharing!
January 12, 2011 @ 11:53 am
Howard and Adam,
Amen and Amen to Conway and Stoney!
Just realized how quickly we can find just about any music we want on the Internet these day! Instantly.
January 12, 2011 @ 11:55 am
Hah, didn’t JUST realize it, but was thinking about how it has changed in just a few short years. I remember trying to find a song for my daughter to sing for an audition just three years ago and it took some real research and now, just type in the song and it appears in many different forms!
January 12, 2011 @ 3:23 pm
Yes you sure can and if it wasn’t for Saving Country Music and spending the last few years of my life exploring new music, I’d never know and have heard what I have. I never heard of Stoney Edwards, but now I have. Excellent.
January 12, 2011 @ 5:56 pm
Conway was one of the greatest country. Singers ever.. I’ve refered to him as the white Al Green. Now, I love old blues and it was for the most part responsible for rock n roll. I don’t understand folks that keep sayin that country western music came from Africa. It came from Irish Scottish and Appalachian traditions. Hank was influenced by blues but was as much influenced by. Acuff and Tubb and not so much by Rodgers who was also influenced by blues. But Hank did help invent rock n roll with basically his own style. ..Some call the blending of traditionally white and black music in the mainstream creative, and strain to find similarities in the histories of country and rap to fit flimsy premises that we”™re all just brothers of different mothers and all music when broken down to origin is ostensibly the same”…. I think African music of the past had more meaning, soul, and was a hell of a lot more honorable and self-respectful and less materialistic than most of this follow the leader hip hop bullshit of today. People tend to confuse black music of the past with the new. That’s like saying pop country and Johnny Cash is the same. Not True.
January 14, 2011 @ 11:09 am
I think the blues music you’ve been covering lately fits perfectly with the rest of this site Triggerman. Blues and country music are more than cousins, I think they are brothers. And just as I was surprised and delighted three years ago to discover there were plenty of underground bands keeping REAL country music alive, it is likewise refreshing to now be hearing all these blues artists doing the same for the blues.
January 22, 2011 @ 4:40 pm
Let’s not forget Barrence Whitfield. He recorded 2 albums with Tom Russell, and also with The Mercy Brothers. Totally different from his regular soul r&b rock&roll. Black Joe Lewis was good when I saw him last year, but couldn’t match what Barrence did on the same stage 20 years earlier.
And of course Snoop Dogg. He did some pretty cool Johnny Cash-tributes, and his friendship with Willie Nelson is well known.
I’ve read that black people listened to country-music because of the storytelling and because of the humor, that was rare in the blues and gospel. And I think that Johnny Cash is the one american artist who was loved by people of all races and colours.