When I was a little kid I probably had even more eclectic taste in music than I have now. I think that’s pretty normal for kids. When you’re six years old it’s all just music. My dad was one of those “I like both kinds of music, country and western” kind of people so I heard a lot of country music in the 60s and early 70s. My mom has always had somewhat broader tastes and had a few pop albums and even one classical. It had The 1812 Overture and I can’t remember what else.
I listened to rock and roll during the 70s, like all the other kids. By the 80s I had stopped paying much attention to music and it became just background noise. Then, slowly, I started listening to classical music because I was tired of being bored with the music I was listening to and by the mid to late 90s I had stopped paying attention to everything else.
Living in Oklahoma it is impossible to avoid hearing country music even if one doesn’t listen to it but I still don’t know anything about what’s going on in the country music world these days. A few days ago we had the TV tuned to the local news. We were talking and not paying much attention when I heard country music on TV and saw an African-American face. I was surprised and a little sad that I was surprised. Is this still unusual? As I said, I haven’t been keeping up but it seems to me that country music is still very white.
The singer was Darius Rucker. Later I looked him up on YouTube. I listened to a few of his songs: It Won’t Be Like This For Long and Alright and Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It. I don’t have much to say about those. Typical country sound; not bad for country music.
Naturally, I started thinking about the only other Black country singer I’ve ever heard of: Charley Pride. I guess back in the 60s it was a Really Big Deal that he was “colored”, as people used to say then but I don’t remember any of the adults I knew being especially worked up about it. I remember some people saying, in slightly awe-struck voices, “That n****r can really sing!” but no one that I knew seemed to think there was anything wrong with it and they were happy enough to buy his records and listen to him on the radio. I have heard that at first his race was kept secret – his picture wasn’t on his album covers and he didn’t appear on TV – but I personally don’t remember ever not knowing that he was Black.
This was one of the songs I liked when I was a little kid. Very cute, a love song about wooden Indians.
Here’s another one; something a little more traditional.
October 27th, 2009 - 8:18 am
Darius Rucker – wasn’t he Hootie of Hootie and the Blowfish?
When and where I was a kid, the big thing was Top 40 pop. Most of it was pretty blah; some of the New Wave type stuff was interesting because of its calculated weirdness. (Then hair metal got popular.)
In my family, we listened to classical and “standards.” I had most of the Sound of Music soundtrack memorized by age 7 or so. Which just contributed to my being a weird little kid. I remember as a teenager forcing myself to listen to Top 40 radio to try to make myself “normal.” It didn’t work.
October 27th, 2009 - 10:11 am
There has always been more appreciation of black artists by white audiences than vice-versa. In Nathan McCall’s book Makes Me Wanna Holler McCall talks of how, during his childhood, he was never exposed to white music, never listened to it on the radio, and only after a prison term did he attempt to broaden his horizons by listening to white artists, being of the opinion that it was good to know your enemy. While white racism is indeed part of the reason for few black country artists, self-segregation and yes, racism, on the part of black artists and audiences is also part of it.
In addition to Charley Pride, Big Al Downing also had a successful country career, and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown also tapped the country tradition, being a fiddler as well as a guitarist.
October 27th, 2009 - 12:32 pm
My Mexican-born father had more than a few issues with white non-Hispanic Southerners but that didn’t prevent him from being a big country music fan and from passing on his love of country music to me and at least two of my siblings. Granted, it’s a bit scary how many country songs this Northern-born half and half knows by heart, especially if it’s sung by Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette or Kenny Rogers & the First Edition.
Apart from the black artists mentioned above in the posts above, the only black artist that comes to my mind is the would-be country rapper Cowboy Troy who used to sing with the group Big & Rich and then promptly went on to have a solo career that apparently lasted for about five minutes.
But then I don’t listen to modern country stations as often as I used to so he may still be recording.