Howdy,
Cool. I'm through with work for the day (there's still a great big pile of
it on the desk, but I've seen all I care to see of it for the day), so
here's my timely response to an article posted about a week ago...
The Philclip(TM) says of country fashion: <<Compared to today's styles, the
corn-pone, countrified heydays of Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn and Minnie
Pearl seem like a century ago.>>
If my memory isn't totally faulty, I once saw Loretta Lynn in a gingham Hee
Haw type dress once while guest starring in a Hee Haw skit. I believe that
Mr. Houk chose the wrong examples for illustrating his "corn-pone" evidence.
As a matter of fact, I can't think of two worse examples than Wynette and
Lynn who always seemed to be dressed in formal (or at least semi-formal)
gowns whenever I saw them on stage.
Actually, beyond comedy acts like Minnie Pearl, I'm having a hard time
thinking up the names of women who regularly took the "corn pone" route in
stage costuming. Almost every example I come up with usually involves a Hee
Haw skit, medicine show, or alt-country band.
But that really isn't the part of the article I wanted to quibble about.
Mr. Houk's Dixie Chick article yanks my chain when he says: <<Why the
change? Take a look at the country as a whole and see how it has morphed.
The Deep South was much more isolated from the rest of the country in 1968
than it is in 1998. Back then, there was a much greater difference between
Janis Joplin and Loretta Lynn than there is between Alanis Morissette and
Shania Twain. Styles worn by Nashville stars tended to stay in Nashville.
Today, with videos and full-time country cable channels, women from
Portland, Maine, to Portland, Ore., can identify with music coming out of
Tennessee.>>
Umm, I'm sorry was he talking about 1968 or 1768? Thank God for the miracle
of color television so the poor ol' South wouldn't be isolated any more.
Gee-aww-ly, but that new-fangled electricity sure did introduce us to a
whole new world. Oh, and thanks for showing us how to use can openers and
teaching us that we didn't have to use flintlocks, too. We can credit the
end of those particular examples of Southern isolation on the Food Network
and the hunting shows on TNN.
Mostly though, I am weary of the "Southern vacuum" theory. It is tiresome
and more subversive to the Southern culture than anything the producers of
Hee Haw ever dreamed up (Hey, Carl).
I won't argue that there weren't pockets of true isolation, but by and large
those pockets existed by choice (and in the case of this discussion, their
existence in comparison to the whole is negligible). The vast majority of
the South had access to the same tools available elsewhere (in this case,
read: radio, automobiles, trains, movie theaters, newspapers, and other
items which would make true isolation near impossible). Mr. Houk and his ilk
usually confuse the difference between "rural" and "isolated" or fail to
recognize that ethnic (or regional) cultures extend beyond the "isolated"
neighborhoods in the five burroughs.
Referring to the change from the author-defined "tacky" look of the 70s and
80s, the author says: <<To some, a change this radical is just that; an
aggressive effort to stay current and relevant. Others see it as an
abandonment of country music's roots and soul.>>
And now, I wonder if this isn't one of those articles Jeff Wall has been
writing in an apparent audition for The Onion. I cannot read further...
Take care,
Shane Rhyne
Knoxville, TN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
