Liam Kennedy
Country music’s obscured black roots The death of Charley Pride and the rise of new black artists provide a reminder of the racial diversity that led to the success of country music
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hen most people think of country music, they envisage plaid-wearing, guitar-strumming artists like Johnny Cash or Dolly Parton. They rarely think of black men like Charley Pride. Pride, who died on December 11 at the age of 86, was one of the very few black superstars in the history of American country music. Acknowledging his contributions to the genre, the Country Music Association Awards presented him with the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award in November. It was a symbolic moment for the industry as it celebrated the black presence in country music. It was also a moment that came in a year in which protests about racial injustice swept across the US, and the American country music industry had been pressurised to acknowledge its troubled history of racial difference. Much of the history of country music has been displaced by convenient myths created during the genre’s commercialisation in the early 20th-century. Travelling
20 ColdType January 2021 | www.coldtype.net
the American South in the 1920s looking for white performers and songs, Ralph Peers, a white record executive, played an important role in obscuring the black roots of the genre. The story of the “founding family” of country music, the Carters, is a well-known origin myth in country music. One of Peers’ discoveries, the Carter Family were a three-piece group from Virginia consisting of A.P. Carter, his wife Sara and sister Maybelle. The group are credited with popularising country music with their unique harmony style and catchy songs. Less well known, however, is the story of Lesley Riddle, the black woman who led A.P. Carter to black sources and songs, memorising melodies for Carter’s transcription. This is just one of the many examples of how country music has been whitewashed for nearly a century. The commercialisation of country music consigned the work of black artists to “race records”, while white performers were categorised as “hillbilly” or “country and western”. This was a filtering process, which determined the
mainstream sounds and performers in these categories for several generations. From the harmonica player DeFord Bailey in the 1920s and 30s, through to Pride in the 1960s and 70s, and Darius Rucker in the early 2000s, this categorisation also consistently sidelined the contributions of people of colour in country music, with the exceptions only proving the rule. Today, the country music industry and its mainstream sounds remain white and anodyne. The norm is songs, often mid-tempo ballads, about drinking, pickups and relationships. A benign feelgood vibe predominates and topics that might be deemed controversial are avoided. However, a new generation of black performers has emerged both within the mainstream and at the margins of country music. These performers are shifting the discourse around race and challenging the origin myths of country, much to the discomfort of the industry. The rise of Black Lives Matter last year has also upped the ante on Nashville’s silence around racial injustice.
