"We're in the heartland of American music": This week's newspaper column

[Willie G. Moseley]

We’re in the heartland of American music

For all of the snide invective directed at the Deep South, one historical facet that can’t be denied is its overwhelming position in American music history.

About a quarter-century ago, a manufacturing mogul in Meridian, Mississippi asked me to envision “…a square that’s about 250 miles long on each side, where the bottom borders the Gulf of Mexico, the west side is just on the other side of the Mississippi River, the north side is the northern border of Tennessee, and the east side goes down from the eastern border of Tennessee.”

He then cited all of the musical styles and genres that came from that area, in which Meridian was “dead center,” according to the captain of industry.

And in the two and a half decades since, how the musical entertainment scene has continued to, er, evolve seems to validate the tycoon’s proprietary attitude. Examples include most of what is now pronounced to be Country music sounding almost exactly like what used to be called Top 40 rock or pop, as well as the ongoing rap phenomenon, which may not actually be “music” per se—instead, it might be appropriate to call it “entertainment with a beat.”

Consulting a map of the U.S. also validates the mogul’s perspective, and it’s intriguing to consider the distance from Tallassee to each of the metropolises that are generally acknowledged as the focal point of classic American music styles and genres. To wit:

Cited as the home of Country music, Nashville is right at 300 miles from here, and has really grown since around the last decade of the last century. Many musicians have been relocating to Music City from elsewhere, including Los Angeles, and Nashville is exploiting its original history along with such expansion (geographical and musical) in a noticeable manner.

The thing is, when one examines the roots of Country music, Bristol, Tennessee (edge-to-edge with Bristol, Virginia) gets cited, because that’s where the Carter family (A.P., Sara and Maybelle) made some primeval recordings in the late ‘20s.

There was also Jimmie Rodgers (a.k.a. “The Singing Brakeman”), who was from Meridian, although some sources indicate he was actually born in west Alabama.

Macon is about 170 miles east of Tallassee. It’s noted for legends like Otis Redding and Little Richard, plus an ancillary association with the rise of James Brown, who pretty much founded the Funk genre all on his own (Brown was born in South Carolina).

There’s also the Allman Brothers Band and the advent of what was called Southern Rock, as promulgated by Macon’s Capricorn Records in the ‘70s.

New Orleans’ polyglot musical history is fascinating, and includes Brass Band (RE: Those parades in the middle of the street without someone prancing out front with a fancy umbrella), Ragtime, Dixieland (a combination of Brass Band and Ragtime that also allows improvisation), Cajun, Zydeco, Gypsy Jazz, and even some new hop-hop genre called Bounce. Whew… NOLA is located some 340 miles from Tallassee.

It’s 351 miles to Clarksdale, Mississippi, located in the Mississippi Delta, the home of blues music. While the legends of the blues were scattered all over the Delta—B.B. King hailed from Indianola, for example—Clarksdale is an appropriate location because it’s the site of an iconic intersection called the Crossroads that figures into the history of blues music. Clarksdale is also the home of the Delta Blues Museum.

Other Delta musicians migrated to Memphis, of course, and that city not only nurtured the blues, but also oversaw the birth of rock and roll at Sun Studios in the mid-‘50s. The Bluff City subsequently begat the gritty-and-greasy Southern soul music genre, with Stax Records leading the charge.

Muscle Shoals is about 200 miles from here, and unlike the previously-mentioned locales, it didn’t really nurture a particular musical movement, but added its own unique styles and embellishments to recordings of Southern soul music. In other words, it seems appropriate that it’s situated between Memphis and Macon. Local legends like Percy Sledge and Arthur Alexander are exemplary, but other musicians from elsewhere came to the Quad Cities to record.

And any of the preceding municipalities cited is within a day’s drive from Tallassee. The music born and nurtured in the Deep South ultimately made its mark, world-wise, and any resident of this area who has an interest in American music history certainly doesn’t have far to go to visit iconic sites.

 

[Jakeboy]

A great read. Loved every word!

[zorrow]

Great read!

I however wonder... if rap was "entertainment with a beat" to the writer, why metal couldn't be "entertainment with noise"?  

Tallassee is 465 miles from Tampa Bay, the cradle of death metal, as well as the epicenter of American power-prog, with Savatage hailing from Tarpon Springs, to the North of the bay, and Crimson Glory coming from Sarasota, right to the South. 

 

[mc2]

I expressed my opinion on rap before, with many not "getting" it.

Rapped lyrics over a drum beat is NOT music. It falls into the "spoken word" genre, although the record industry made sure not to  classify it correctly for marketing reasons.

Once  you add an instrument into the mix and the vocal rap and the percussion track, then it becomes music. If it has bass, it becomes music. So, a lot of basic "bass and drum" rap is still, technically, music because of the melody line of the bass track. If the rapper actually SINGS the rap and it has a melody, rather than simply a spoken, non-melodic cadense, it becomes "music" (usually, poorly Vocoded music but still music.)

It is similar to the 60s beat poets, reading poetry in coffee houses over bongos.

A noted early/proto example of a black rap could be Gil Scott Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." The original version was SPOKEN WORD, as it was only over a percussion track. It was later enhanced with musical instruments, for radio airplay, and hence became classified a "music" track.

Zorrow.....Not many, if any, metal tracks that are only a spoken voice that is not sung with some semblance of melody, over only a percussive truck. So,  metal is still "music" but could be described as "entertainment with noise" for non-musical reasons.

[princeofdarkness56]

I work security for a few music venues in the area. For the rap acts we cover, we always say you can't spell crap without the rap in it.  

[cynic]

Here we go again with the middle-aged white guy what is and isn't music discussion.

How about we let the artist decide what their art is. 

 

[zorrow]

I was kidding. Anything containing pitches and/or beats, is music. African and voodoo drums and stuff like that, it is music. Even silence is music! So, rap is music too, no matter how bad and boring it might often be. And metal is music too... no matter how bad and boring it might (less often) be!

[princeofdarkness56]

Here is what bothers me when I have to work a rap show. There is no band. Just a guy or two with a I pad and a light show. That's a half step above a karaoke machine.  Now I have seen a lot of lame acts crossing different styles of music but at least they played instruments and at a high level of talent even if I did not care for product. 

[soulfield]

On 5/14/2017 at 6:02 PM, Willie G. Moseley said:

We’re in the heartland of American music

For all of the snide invective directed at the Deep South, one historical facet that can’t be denied is its overwhelming position in American music history.

About a quarter-century ago, a manufacturing mogul in Meridian, Mississippi asked me to envision “…a square that’s about 250 miles long on each side, where the bottom borders the Gulf of Mexico, the west side is just on the other side of the Mississippi River, the north side is the northern border of Tennessee, and the east side goes down from the eastern border of Tennessee.”

He then cited all of the musical styles and genres that came from that area, in which Meridian was “dead center,” according to the captain of industry.

And in the two and a half decades since, how the musical entertainment scene has continued to, er, evolve seems to validate the tycoon’s proprietary attitude. Examples include most of what is now pronounced to be Country music sounding almost exactly like what used to be called Top 40 rock or pop, as well as the ongoing rap phenomenon, which may not actually be “music” per se—instead, it might be appropriate to call it “entertainment with a beat.”

Consulting a map of the U.S. also validates the mogul’s perspective, and it’s intriguing to consider the distance from Tallassee to each of the metropolises that are generally acknowledged as the focal point of classic American music styles and genres. To wit:

Cited as the home of Country music, Nashville is right at 300 miles from here, and has really grown since around the last decade of the last century. Many musicians have been relocating to Music City from elsewhere, including Los Angeles, and Nashville is exploiting its original history along with such expansion (geographical and musical) in a noticeable manner.

The thing is, when one examines the roots of Country music, Bristol, Tennessee (edge-to-edge with Bristol, Virginia) gets cited, because that’s where the Carter family (A.P., Sara and Maybelle) made some primeval recordings in the late ‘20s.

There was also Jimmie Rodgers (a.k.a. “The Singing Brakeman”), who was from Meridian, although some sources indicate he was actually born in west Alabama.

Macon is about 170 miles east of Tallassee. It’s noted for legends like Otis Redding and Little Richard, plus an ancillary association with the rise of James Brown, who pretty much founded the Funk genre all on his own (Brown was born in South Carolina).

There’s also the Allman Brothers Band and the advent of what was called Southern Rock, as promulgated by Macon’s Capricorn Records in the ‘70s.

New Orleans’ polyglot musical history is fascinating, and includes Brass Band (RE: Those parades in the middle of the street without someone prancing out front with a fancy umbrella), Ragtime, Dixieland (a combination of Brass Band and Ragtime that also allows improvisation), Cajun, Zydeco, Gypsy Jazz, and even some new hop-hop genre called Bounce. Whew… NOLA is located some 340 miles from Tallassee.

It’s 351 miles to Clarksdale, Mississippi, located in the Mississippi Delta, the home of blues music. While the legends of the blues were scattered all over the Delta—B.B. King hailed from Indianola, for example—Clarksdale is an appropriate location because it’s the site of an iconic intersection called the Crossroads that figures into the history of blues music. Clarksdale is also the home of the Delta Blues Museum.

Other Delta musicians migrated to Memphis, of course, and that city not only nurtured the blues, but also oversaw the birth of rock and roll at Sun Studios in the mid-‘50s. The Bluff City subsequently begat the gritty-and-greasy Southern soul music genre, with Stax Records leading the charge.

Muscle Shoals is about 200 miles from here, and unlike the previously-mentioned locales, it didn’t really nurture a particular musical movement, but added its own unique styles and embellishments to recordings of Southern soul music. In other words, it seems appropriate that it’s situated between Memphis and Macon. Local legends like Percy Sledge and Arthur Alexander are exemplary, but other musicians from elsewhere came to the Quad Cities to record.

And any of the preceding municipalities cited is within a day’s drive from Tallassee. The music born and nurtured in the Deep South ultimately made its mark, world-wise, and any resident of this area who has an interest in American music history certainly doesn’t have far to go to visit iconic sites.

 

As a GA native and one who was indeed raised on music primarily from the south I agree wholeheartedly!  When you really look at it the south east has generated a serious share of legendary music compared to many other regions.  Most modern music certainly owes its birthright to the blues for sure.  

On 5/15/2017 at 9:55 AM, mc2 said:

I expressed my opinion on rap before, with many not "getting" it.

Rapped lyrics over a drum beat is NOT music. It falls into the "spoken word" genre, although the record industry made sure not to  classify it correctly for marketing reasons.

Once  you add an instrument into the mix and the vocal rap and the percussion track, then it becomes music. If it has bass, it becomes music. So, a lot of basic "bass and drum" rap is still, technically, music because of the melody line of the bass track. If the rapper actually SINGS the rap and it has a melody, rather than simply a spoken, non-melodic cadense, it becomes "music" (usually, poorly Vocoded music but still music.)

It is similar to the 60s beat poets, reading poetry in coffee houses over bongos.

A noted early/proto example of a black rap could be Gil Scott Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." The original version was SPOKEN WORD, as it was only over a percussion track. It was later enhanced with musical instruments, for radio airplay, and hence became classified a "music" track.

Zorrow.....Not many, if any, metal tracks that are only a spoken voice that is not sung with some semblance of melody, over only a percussive truck. So,  metal is still "music" but could be described as "entertainment with noise" for non-musical reasons.

I share this view.  If there was more melody and more rappers actually sang, instead of "spoke at you" I'd receive it as music.  Im sure a lot of them do sing, or perhaps perform with actual musicians playing instruments rather than a beat, but spoken word is a more accurate term for what I hear (IMO).  That said art can be anything but just because its art does not mean its music!  Beating a trash can with a bat and screaming could be art as well and if thats what some people like, hey more power to them!  

12 minutes ago, princeofdarkness56 said:

Here is what bothers me when I have to work a rap show. There is no band. Just a guy or two with a I pad and a light show. That's a half step above a karaoke machine.  Now I have seen a lot of lame acts crossing different styles of music but at least they played instruments and at a high level of talent even if I did not care for product. 

Hey at least with the Karaoke machine people are trying to sing (melodic).  I do think that a rap "concert" is a pretty hilarious concept when you have a big venue, and then just dude talking monotone while somebody plays other recordings off a computer.  Is that a "performance"?  The dancers in tight dresses certainly help with the entertainment aspect though!  

[soulfield]

New good music coming out of the southeast???

With a lot of the current music in this country being either POP or POP with a cowboy hat on, check out this young dude from Greenville SC.  The marcus king band is really picking up steam and Ive caught 2 of their shows in the last year.  This guy just turned 21 I believe and Warren produced their second record + played on one of the tracks.  Live his playing is high energy slathered in southern blues soul!  The horns, organ, and solid rhythm section along with his guitar chops and voice make for one hell of a show.

The video below is of a song from their first album which would have put him is his lat teens!  Serious talent from every member of the band. Had to share this one

 

[mc2]

WOW!!! GREAT band!!  ^^^^^^^

[Willie G. Moseley]

^^^^^

Sharp. Somewhat intriguing and encouraging to see a horn section in a band of millennials. Old fart like me still has to get used to the man bun on the bass player, however.

Sort of reminded me of a slightly-more frenetic version of the Electric Flag's version of "Killing Floor" but this has much more appropriate vocals for such rollicking 12-bar songs.

[crunchee]

On 5/15/2017 at 10:14 AM, cynic said:

Here we go again with the middle-aged white guy what is and isn't music discussion.

How about we let the artist decide what their art is. 

 

Kinda like this?