Johnny Cash quote

[ghost of miles]

Reading a new book, Johnny Cash and the Paradox of American Identity, for an upcoming WFIU interview and came across this quote from Cash (taken from his 1997 autobiography):

Country life as I knew it might really be a thing of the past and when music people today, performers and fans alike, talk about being "country," they don't mean they know or even care about the land and the life it sustains and regulates. They're talking more about choices--a way to look, a group to belong to, a kind of music to call their own. Which begs a question: Is there anything behind the symbols of modern "country," or are the symbols themselves the whole story? Are the hats, the boots, the pickup trucks, and the honky-tonking poses all that's left of a disintegrating culture? Back in Arkansas, a way of life produced a certain kind of music. Does a certain kind of music now produce a way of life? Maybe that's okay. I don't know.

I think (I guess it's pretty obvious) that you could roughly translate that statement into commentary on all kinds of 20th-century music, from jazz to punk rock. And what kind of music is produced by a way of life produced by a certain kind of music? And what new music is emerging now, from the culture of hyperspeed interconnection and shard-strewn landscape of modernist/postmodernist texts? Beyond a fair-ish amount of new jazz (of all sorts) and a smattering of new indie-pop, I haven't really been paying enough attention. (Beware, Mr. Jones! )

[JSngry]

There still are remnants of Cash's America, but to be honest, they're so small & so real that to get out you have to lose it in the first place,and there you go. Has that always been true? Yeah, to an extent, but not then as much as now, not now hat, as the man says, you can get over with the symbols more than the harder reality. And besides, damned near everything and everybody is wired up now, so the true isolation might exist at a far deeper (as in sublimated) level than the (at least) perceived connection.

But I can promiose you - you go out in the country, deep into it, deep up into the hills and back into woods, and you can find some real "country" living still goiing on. But it's too real to be a "symbol", too hardcore, too disengaged and disinterested in the machine that makes the money for them what wants it.

[Drew Peacock]

Reading that quote the first thought I had was that Johnny Cash sure thought highly of himself. He makes it sound as if the music (his music in particular) is the only 'real' country left and that everything else is just marketing.

I do agree that the country lifestyle makes up a much smaller percentage of our population today, and in the 70s, but that has far more to do with society changes and technology advances. People now have more choices on what to do for a living and where to live. And lets face it, being a cowboy on a ranch is hard hard work.

To the broader question - does a certain type of music produce a way of life? I think yes but its impact is not profound. NYC jazz musicians have their own dialect, different from New Orleans jazz musicians or European jazz musicians. Being in close proximity to one another create a certain sameness even in a music that strives for artistic originality. Over time musicians become friends, better understand each other musically, and begin to create a 'localized' sound.

I am sure that many NYC jazz musicians have failed not because of their talent but because they did not get along with other musicians on a musical level. They played loud, or hard, or soft, or whatever. It didn't fit. It wasn't country enough or it wasn't real country.

[Hot Ptah]

I think that the situation described by Cash is really true for blues music. The rural South which produced the acoustic blues musicians of the late 1920s, and the urban scenes of the 1945-64 period which produced the seminal electric blues artists and recordings, seem to be gone.

In their place, you have suburban white kids with their father's Lynyrd Skynyrd albums, trying to boogie like they did in 1973, calling it "the blues". There are some exceptions to this at today's blues clubs and festivals, but not that many.

[JSngry]

And what new music is emerging now, from the culture of hyperspeed interconnection and shard-strewn landscape of modernist/postmodernist texts?

I'm telling you, the very best house music (and it's waaaaaaay underground, btw) is so damn chock full of information as to be the only true (ok, "truest") "music of now" that I've heard. But it ain't about "songs" nearly as much as it is about sound, texture, and peacefully and prosperously populating multiple layers of a sonic landscape. Which more and more is how life is lived, not one thing in one place at a time, but several/many things in several/many places occurring simultaneously. Viewed from the outside (or by those who don't live that way, it's either chaos or noise or redundancy or whatever. But for people who live that way, it's pretty much natural, second nature. This music is constructed in the same way & should, I thnk be listened to for what it does, not for what it doesn't do, becuase although there is an overwhelming amount of the latter, there is a tantalizing and provocative amount of the former.

"Songs" used to be the whole deal in popular/vernacular music. Then, as songs often became weaker but production techniques became stronger, records came to potentially matter as much as songs, sometimes more. Now, I think we're evolving to a point where a song is just part of the overall recipe, and an optional one at that. The evolution of sensory input capacities cannot help but influence the evolution of the direction of comparable sensory output .

[AllenLowe]

"very best house music (and it's waaaaaaay underground, btw) is so damn chock full of information as to be the only true (ok, "truest") "music of now" that I've heard. But it ain't about "songs" nearly as much as it is about sound, texture, and peacefully and prosperously populating multiple layers of a sonic landscape. Which more and more is how life is lived, not one thing in one place at a time"

this, actually, is nearly identical to the concept of "new" literature and the "new" novel as identified by Samuel Beckett and Alain Robbe Grillet a long time ago - not to mention Peter Handke - it's a different idea of "the real" but, they theorized, more "real" than mimeographic or photographic realism - interesting how different forms come together -

as for country and blues forms, well, I've always felt they need more than the regurgitation of riffs and themes that are just dressed up in new clothing. For that reason I find a lot of alt country disappointing. Hope to get to more of this myself in the next few years -

Edited April 2, 2009 by AllenLowe

[Dave James]

I think what Cash said is on the money, but the point he's making resonates in areas of entertainment other than just C&W. There's simply a lot of posing going on when it comes to music in general. By posing, I mean creating an image that has way more to do with what an artist perceives his or her audience to want the performer to be rather than a reflection of who or what that artist is really about. For example, does anyone really believe that Toby Keith is some kind of hard ass who'd just as soon hit you as look at you? Does anyone think that 50 Cent is really a gangster? All Mr. Keith and Mr. Cent are trying to do is sustain an image because that image has sustained them. It's as phony as a three dollar bill, but their constituents lap it up. That translates to money in the bank and that, after all, is what this is all about. So, when Johnny Cash says that the music is creating a lifestyle, I don't think he could be more right.

Up over and out.

Edited April 3, 2009 by Dave James

[Neal Pomea]

I am not familiar with the book but sociologists DO talk about such things as symbolic ethnic identity, so maybe what JR Cash meant was that some of our contemporaries who have no experience of rural life (at least as HE experienced it) still want to identify with it and believe they live it vicariously by identifying with country music. The concept of symbolic ethnic identity applies to ethnic groups, for instance, who have assimilated to the prevailing American lifestyle, language, customs, etc. but want to retain their identity. Where I am from people cling to Cajun identity, for example, through symbols such as celebrating Mardi Gras, eating ethnic Cajun food etc. while living just about exclusively in English rather than French. Creativity today in the area of Cajun music comes mostly in the form of assimilating and transforming prevailing American musical styles, so that it's "rocked up" to sound more attractive to contemporary ears familiar with rock-sounding rhythm sections. Almost never anymore in the form of sly French lyrics like it used to.

The contemporaries who identify with "countryness" seem to be doing something similar. They don't have to do the chores on the farm that JR Cash had to do (who does nowadays?), but they somehow still identify themselves as country. Does that affect their music? You decide. Sounds like Eagles country-rock to me, for the most part. I know Joe Bussard well enough to realize that he would say that JR Cash himself was very far removed from country music, given that Joe Bussard thinks of country music as the music of Uncle Dave Macon, Weems Family, Da Costa Waltz's Southern Broadcasters, Clarence Ashley, Dykes' Magic City String Band, Burnett and Rutherford and the like. "Country" changes over time. A lot.

What's the problem? No way the people who created American rap music knew much or cared about life or dancehall toasting music in Jamaica or the funk of the American south (roots of rap), and the suburban white kids who love rap don't care about the roots of rap in the Bronx, Bedford-Stuyvesant, or anything like that at all. Still creative.

My 2 cents!

Edited April 3, 2009 by It Should be You

[AllenLowe]

I agree with the above -

and I like Joe Bussard. And I'm a Jew and I want to play only country music of the pre-1935 kind. And I was raised in fields filled with white bread.

Of course, prior to the 1900 Census Jews were considered to be non-white ethnics -

I feel so damned authentic -

Edited April 3, 2009 by AllenLowe

[Alexander]

Yeah, Joe's a dude. I'd love to meet him someday. He's got amazing taste and I'd love to hear some of the stuff he keeps in that basement of his that HASN'T made it to CD or LP reissue.

But, that being said, I think he's waaaaay off in his assessment of "real" music and its limits and boundaries. I know he doesn't think of Johnny Cash as being "country," but anybody with ears should be able to tell that he's just as "real" as Clarence Ashley, Kelly Harrell, or Dock Boggs.

But it's all cool, of course. I don't begrudge Bussard his opinions, especially since the dude really knows his shit.

Edited April 3, 2009 by Alexander

[JSngry]

Maybe what happens is that things change faster than most of us are able and/or willing to go with, so instead of just rolling with it, we get all antsy that something is being lost or destroyed (which is a more polite way of telling life how DARE it change on us, even though its doing so is what made room for us in the first place...)and began wanting "proof", some kind of evidence that they aren't. So that's when people start selling image rather than spirit, because you can "prove" image, it's tangible. "Spirit, what got us hooked in the first place, is abstract, ephemeral, but nevertheless very real. But nervous people don't want spirit, they want proof. So they go for the image, something they can see and own. By buying it, of course. How convenient. Hell, it's as old (or older) than the Old Testament, this demand for the tangible rather than the abstract, even thought the abstract is the more real deal. The more things change...

[fasstrack]

Reading a new book, Johnny Cash and the Paradox of American Identity, for an upcoming WFIU interview and came across this quote from Cash (taken from his 1997 autobiography):

Country life as I knew it might really be a thing of the past and when music people today, performers and fans alike, talk about being "country," they don't mean they know or even care about the land and the life it sustains and regulates. They're talking more about choices--a way to look, a group to belong to, a kind of music to call their own. Which begs a question: Is there anything behind the symbols of modern "country," or are the symbols themselves the whole story? Are the hats, the boots, the pickup trucks, and the honky-tonking poses all that's left of a disintegrating culture? Back in Arkansas, a way of life produced a certain kind of music. Does a certain kind of music now produce a way of life? Maybe that's okay. I don't know.

I think (I guess it's pretty obvious) that you could roughly translate that statement into commentary on all kinds of 20th-century music, from jazz to punk rock. And what kind of music is produced by a way of life produced by a certain kind of music? And what new music is emerging now, from the culture of hyperspeed interconnection and shard-strewn landscape of modernist/postmodernist texts? Beyond a fair-ish amount of new jazz (of all sorts) and a smattering of new indie-pop, I haven't really been paying enough attention. (Beware, Mr. Jones! )

Let's face it: every sector, every culture---especially in the arts---is rife with poseurs, wannabes, and copycats. The genuine voices and men/women of integrity are rare---and usually pay dearly for said integrity. Anyone telling me the jazz world is any different will get a hearty snicker from this 30-year veteran of it. Phoniness is as inexpensive, seemingly, as it is common.

The Man in Black was such a man of integrity, as still is, blessedly, the great Pete Seeger. They are about keeping it real right down the line, and, as such, do not suffer fools, misrepresenters, or liars. They also have a rare gift of combining original, distinctive voices with an empathy that resonates with the vox popular. I also would rather hear Johnny Cash tell a story than many if not most 'jazz' players on the current scene---especially the self-absorbed ones who bore my ass off with a million choruses of what they practiced that afternoon with Aebersold records, and can't---or won't---relate to either audience, fellow players, or pretty much anything other than their all-important and suspect 'creativity'.

It ain't about 'country' or 'city', anyway, but what's common in the human experience. Those who speak to it with artistic skill and accomplishment are artists.

To address the rather distasteful matter of contemporary life and get it over with quickly: people nowadays are buffaloing themselves into thinking they are 'connected' in this atomized, faster-than-light-but saying nothing 'wired' culture. They certainly are not. To quote an old Billy Crystal SNL skit: 'I'm nauseous already'......But, not to worry, 'this too shall pass'. The more thoughtful of the young that grew up on the Net know something's missing and will figure it out. Everything will get back to basics anyway. It always does, that's a guarantee.

Finally, all things being connected, when I saw this thread the other day, one thing led to another and I arranged Folsom Prison Blues for my trio. We will play it on an upcoming gig.

Edited April 3, 2009 by fasstrack

[Guest Bill Barton]

"It ain't about 'country' or 'city', anyway, but what's common in the human experience. Those who speak to it with artistic skill and accomplishment are artists."

Well said!

[ghost of miles]

And what new music is emerging now, from the culture of hyperspeed interconnection and shard-strewn landscape of modernist/postmodernist texts?

I'm telling you, the very best house music (and it's waaaaaaay underground, btw) is so damn chock full of information as to be the only true (ok, "truest") "music of now" that I've heard. But it ain't about "songs" nearly as much as it is about sound, texture, and peacefully and prosperously populating multiple layers of a sonic landscape. Which more and more is how life is lived, not one thing in one place at a time, but several/many things in several/many places occurring simultaneously. Viewed from the outside (or by those who don't live that way, it's either chaos or noise or redundancy or whatever. But for people who live that way, it's pretty much natural, second nature. This music is constructed in the same way & should, I thnk be listened to for what it does, not for what it doesn't do, becuase although there is an overwhelming amount of the latter, there is a tantalizing and provocative amount of the former.

"Songs" used to be the whole deal in popular/vernacular music. Then, as songs often became weaker but production techniques became stronger, records came to potentially matter as much as songs, sometimes more. Now, I think we're evolving to a point where a song is just part of the overall recipe, and an optional one at that. The evolution of sensory input capacities cannot help but influence the evolution of the direction of comparable sensory output .

I believe you and anticipated such a post when I started the thread... I definitely need to check more of said music out. Music (in general, as a response to the circumstances around it) doesn't die; people do.

That said, I'm old enough to still have a serious hankering for song form, at least in pop music--replete with tasty hooks/recurring and attractive musical motifs (which also certainly exist in "soundscape," to use my rough/crude term for what you're describing above).

[fasstrack]

Music (in general, as a response to the circumstances around it) doesn't die; people do.

That said, I'm old enough to still have a serious hankering for song form...

That first statement says a mouthful. With your permission I will steal it.

Re: the song form: Good for you. Glad I'm not the only old fart........

[AllenLowe]

yes, but there are many different kinds of songs - hence many different kinds of song form -

[fasstrack]

yes, but there are many different kinds of songs - hence many different kinds of song form -

'Strophic'-based is the only kind I know. But what I don't know can fill several volumes. Anyway I have my hands full trying to master that type of song. One lifetime ain't enough........

[randyhersom]

And what new music is emerging now, from the culture of hyperspeed interconnection and shard-strewn landscape of modernist/postmodernist texts?

I'm telling you, the very best house music (and it's waaaaaaay underground, btw) is so damn chock full of information as to be the only true (ok, "truest") "music of now" that I've heard. But it ain't about "songs" nearly as much as it is about sound, texture, and peacefully and prosperously populating multiple layers of a sonic landscape.

I believe you and anticipated such a post when I started the thread... I definitely need to check more of said music out. Music (in general, as a response to the circumstances around it) doesn't die; people do.

Were you planning to fork over any names, Mr. Sangrey???

Cash's statement didn't strike me as particularly egotistical or judgemental. I agree with the basics, and have no problem if a suburbanite making music for suburbanites likes to flavor it with a little Brooks, Haggard or Frizell. No need for felony convictions or cotton picking scars.

[Hot Ptah]

Here's a recent blues song by a white artist which touches on this topic:

MY FIRST NAME AIN'T MUDDY

MY LAST NAME AIN'T KING

THEY DON'T CALL ME LIGHTNIN

I DON'T HOWL WHEN I SING

I WASN'T BORN IN MEMPHIS

OR DOWN IN MOBILE

WELL I AIN'T GOT NO GUITAR

NICKNAMED LUCILLE

BUT OF EVERY TYPE OF MUSIC

THIS IS WHAT I CHOOSE

SOMETIMES I WONDER

AM I TOO WHITE TO SING THE BLUES?

WELL I LIVE IN THE SUBURBS

DRIVE A TOYOTA VAN

I GOT MUTUAL FUNDS

I AIN'T NO HOOCHIE COOCHIE MAN

WELL I AIN'T GOT NO MOJO

OR BLACK CAT BONES

WELL I LIKE THE BEATLES

WAY MORE THAN THE STONES

BUT OF EVERY TYPE OF MUSIC

THIS IS WHAT I CHOOSE

SOMETIMES I WONDER

AM I TOO WHITE TO SING THE BLUES

MY WOMAN AIN'T LEFT ME

WELL I AIN'T GONE BLIND

I AIN'T GOT NO CROSSCUT SAW

JUST THE SEARS CRAFTSMAN KIND

I AIN'T BEEN DOWN TO THE CROSSROADS

BY NIGHT OR BY DAY

IF I SELL MY SOUL TO THE DEVIL

IT'S GONNA BE ON EBAY

BUT OF EVERY TYPE OF MUSIC

THIS IS WHAT I CHOOSE

SOMETIMES I WONDER

WELL AM I TOO WHITE TO SING THE BLUES

Words & music by Joe Medeiros, BMI, Midair Rose Publishing, 2005

[danasgoodstuff]

In a word, "yes".

[AllenLowe]

some of the forms I know repeat, some don't - some have no chord structure, some do - some sound like Richard Rodgers, some like CHarles Ives, some like Schubert - some have variable bar lengths (like a few field hollers I've listened to recently), some are call and response, and the response time can vary - some are AABA, some AB, some ABCD -

some are made-up songs that don't rhyme, don't have a strict bar length and have variable chords -

so one man's anarchy is another's method of structure and organization -

[Jazzmoose]

What's the problem? No way the people who created American rap music knew much or cared about life or dancehall toasting music in Jamaica or the funk of the American south (roots of rap), and the suburban white kids who love rap don't care about the roots of rap in the Bronx, Bedford-Stuyvesant, or anything like that at all. Still creative.

That's strange to me, because the first thing I thought of when I read the Cash quote was early rap, and how it developed out of a culture as an expression of that culture, and then later just became another refuge for posters and wannabes.

As for the early practitioners not knowing or caring about their roots, I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

[Jazzmoose]

In a word, "yes".

Yeah, if your choice is between the Beatles and the Stones, I'd have to agree...

[fasstrack]

some of the forms I know repeat, some don't - some have no chord structure, some do - some sound like Richard Rodgers, some like CHarles Ives, some like Schubert - some have variable bar lengths (like a few field hollers I've listened to recently), some are call and response, and the response time can vary - some are AABA, some AB, some ABCD -

some are made-up songs that don't rhyme, don't have a strict bar length and have variable chords -

so one man's anarchy is another's method of structure and organization -

Me like too. Still, anarchy is a bit inconveniant when playing in a group.

Taste and growth (not the kind Dr. Van Nostrand removes) is one thing, the 'path of least resistance' in organized groups having to survive in the brutal music biz, sadly another. It's really a miracle---or close---when innovation (to me in large part improvement people embrace) happens and things actually change.

[Jazzmoose]

I agree with the basics, and have no problem if a suburbanite making music for suburbanites likes to flavor it with a little Brooks, Haggard or Frizell.

I not only agree with that, I have a serious problem with people who talk about the outrage of artists stealing from other artists. To use the obvious and most often used example, Elvis Presley. People act as if he had no interest in the music he performed but was just using it to get rich at the expense of African-American artists who came before him. This is such a silly perspective I have to wonder what causes it.