C
asting
a net over some of country music’s better-known female performers and most
interestingly over obscure pioneers, this collection, the fourth in a country
music series that the University of Kentucky Press has launched, marks
an important advance in the academic study of American popular music.
Although inevitably of varying interest and success, almost all of the
essays highlight the cultural obstacles that women have confronted in the
country music industry and their accomplishments in either working within
or challenging iconic country standards of performance.
One
of the best aspects of this collection is the authors’ eagerness to treat
their subjects as worthy targets of academic scrutiny without resorting
to the lazy tropes and jargon that too often define pop cultural studies.
As one might expect, gender analyses play prominent roles but not in ways
that would alienate readers inexperienced with academic prose and theory.
Will the average fan of, say, Reba McEntire want to read much of this book?
Probably not, but to the authors’ and editors’ credit, any interested reader
could gain much from the collection.
Perhaps
most invaluable are the essays focusing on previously neglected figures.
Although not veering very far from the terrain of discography/biography,
several essays shed important light on issues facing women performers in
the early period of country music. Charles Wolfe’s “‘And No Man Shall
Control Me’” focuses on Roba Stanley, a fifteen year old Georgian whose
1924 recordings marked her as in all likelihood the first female soloist
in the “hillbilly” genre. Wolfe stresses Stanley’s self-assured vocals
and her striking, almost proto-feminist lyrics: “Single life is a happy
life,/ Single life is lovely,/ I am single and no man’s wife,/ And no man
shall control me.” Wayne Daniel showcases the vaudeville career of
Polly Jenkins, who toured the country during the Depression and World War
II eras with “Her Musical Plowboys.” Jenkins specialized in novelty
instruments, such as musical coins (brass discs of varying sizes that were
spun, each coin ringing a different note of the scale), a collection of
sixty different cowbells that were struck with a xylophone mallet, and
musical funnels (rods taken from an old pump organ and retrofitted with
rubber bulbs–squeezing the bulbs produced 
a
different note for each funnel). Shades of d.i.y. punk rock!
Tracey Laird writes on Mira Smith and Margaret Lewis, two stalwarts of
the Louisiana Hayride, Shreveport’s more eclectic answer to Nasville’s
Grand Ole Opry. As did the Hayride’s most famous alumnus, Elvis Presley,
Smith and Lewis bridged musical traditions, combining hillbilly and blues
sounds. After relocating to Nashville, the songwriting team continued
to exploit this talent, penning songs that might show up on country or
on soul/R&B charts, depending on who recorded them. Since returning
to Shreveport, Lewis has taken the lead in using the city’s rich musical
legacy as a means of reviving the downtown area.
Other
essays attempt more analytical arguments. In “Working on Barn Dance
Radio,” perhaps the collection’s strongest piece, Kristine McCusker focuses
on Rose Lee Maphis, a performer on Chicago’s National Barn Dance radio
program. McCusker uses Maphis’s labor experiences as a window into
the cultural images that the country music industry sought to project.
While male performers met few behavioral constraints, women had to conform
to set images. Sexuality might be hinted at, but ultimately women
were to contain these elements within a pure, matronly pose. Cooperative
singing was prized over individual performance, as it promoted “an old-time
community based on faith and love.” Usually, such standards extended
beyond performance. Women were expected to live up to their stage
personae; not doing so jeopardized their careers.
The
sexual double standard within country music shows up in other essays.
In “The Cow That’s Ugly Has the Sweetest Milk” Rebecca Thomas finds that,
contrary to what many have claimed, a vein of ribaldry ran through early
country music. Male performers often patterned their images, and
lyrics, after blues singers whom they admired. Women, however, could
never flirt with even covert references to sex. Although Thomas paints
southern culture, black and white, with an overly broad brush, she succeeds
in showing how important it has been for female country performers to act
lady-like. Indeed, even the recent trend toward diva-esque images
among women in country music has not changed such standards. Jocelyn 
Neal’s
“The Voice Behind the Song” focuses on the career of Faith Hill, specifically
her transformation from fairly standard country singer to pop-styled superstar.
Neal argues that as Hill’s image has adopted the more overt sex appeal
of pop music, her lyrics have remained rooted in traditional concepts of
wifely love and spiritual commitment. Although her music may hardly
count as country anymore, her words speak directly to the industry’s core
audience.
Any
collection will include a few clunkers, and this one offers no exception.
Most disappointing of the lot is Gloria Nixon-John’s “Getting the Word
Out,” a self-indulgent discussion of the author’s admiration for the Canadian
poet Bronwen Wallace. Through Wallace the author gained an appreciation
for Emmylou Harris, whom she sees as a witness against patriarchal capitalist
oppression. Lovely. Also disappointing is the editors’ failure
to include a discography. It might have been nice had they pointed
readers to musical collections that feature some of the artists under discussion.
Still,
all in all The Women of Country Music succeeds. It highlights some
of the obscure pioneers who have gained scant attention from most country
music scholars and exposes the constraints that women singers have confronted
in this most conservative of American popular entertainments.
