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Distinguished historian of country music Bill
Malone is interviewed by Southern Spaces editorial board
member Charles Reagan Wilson at the University of Mississippi
in October 2005. Malone offers a brief perspective on the beginnings
of his career and discusses themes in his work.
Videography by Joe York, University of Mississippi. |
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Part 1 (3:57 min.)
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Malone, born near Tyler, Texas in 1934,
talks about the music that he and his family sang and listened to
while he was a child: sentimental songs, gospel, and hillbilly.
He similarly recounts what the family heard on local and Mexican
"border" radio. |
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Part 2 (3:36 min.)
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Malone enrolled at the University of Texas in 1956.
He became a well- known local singer, performing the songs he grew
up with. This folk revival in Austin included another Texas student,
Janis Joplin. Malone's 1965 dissertation became Country Music,
USA, the first serious history of the genre, published in 1968. |
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Part 3 (4:05 min.)
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Country music style varies across the South. The honky
tonk music and culture of the oil boom in Louisiana, Texas, and
Oklahoma contrast with older Appalachian music. Malone addresses
the effects of radio and recording on the multiplicity of local
and regional styles. |
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Part 4 (3:25 min.)
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Commercialized and marketed, rural southern
music becomes "hillbilly," then "country" music. Whites and blacks
exchanged music with each other in a variety of spaces and places. |
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Part 5 (4:02 min.)
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The relationship between "southern" and "American"
music is a close bond as so many kinds of American music have their
origins in the South. Malone discusses how the music of new migrants
and cultural fusions, and he addresses the question of authenticity. |
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Part 6 (4:18 min.)
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Rootedness and rambling supply a tension in country
music, exemplified by the appeal of the outlaw figure archetype
and the idealized longing for home. |
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Part 7 (3:00 min.)
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Contemporary country music represents
the concerns of its largely nine-to-five audience. |
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Part 8 (1:28 min.)
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Malone discusses country music as a current area of
study. |
