Dawidoff - In the Country of Country

The Fly Swatter:
Portrait of an Exceptional Character

In the Country of Country:
A Journey to the Roots of American Music

The Catcher Was a Spy:
The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, MAY 1998

Copyright 1997 by Nicholas Dawidoff

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc. in 1997.

Portions of this work were originally published in somewhat different form in The New Republic, The New York Times, and The New York Times Magazine.

The Library of Congress has catalogued the Pantheon edition as follows:

Dawidoff, Nicholas.
In the country of country : people and places in American music / Nicholas Dawidoff.
p. cm.
1. Country musicHistory and criticism. 2. Country
musiciansUnited States. I. Title.
ML 3524. D 39 1997
781.6420973dc20 96-34682
MN

eISBN: 978-0-307-80708-3

Author photograph Donna Ferrato
Map design by Vikki Lieb

Random House Web address: www.randomhouse.com

v3.1

For
Sally Dawidoff
and for
Robert Dawidoff

Fruit packers take a break, Copiah County, Mississippi, 1936.

And perhaps a man brought out his guitar to the front of his tent. And he sat on a box to play, and everyone in the camp moved slowly in toward him, drawn in toward him. Many men can chord a guitar, but perhaps this man was a picker. There you have somethingthe deep chords beating, beating while the melody runs on the strings like little footsteps. Heavy hard fingers marching on the frets. The man played and the people moved slowly in on him until the circle was closed and tight, and then he sang, Ten-Cent Cotton and Forty-Cent Meat. And the circle sang softly with him. And he sang, Why Do You Cut Your Hair, Girls? And the circle sang. He wailed the song, Im Leaving Old Texas, that eerie song that was sung before the Spaniards came, only the words were Indian then.

And now the group was welded to one thing, one unit, so that in the dark the eyes of the people were inward, and their minds played in other times, and their sadness was like rest, like sleep. He sang the McAlester Blues and then, to make up for it to the older people, he sang Jesus Calls Me to His Side. The children drowsed with the music and went into the tents to sleep, and the singing came into their dreams.

And after a while the man with the guitar stood up and yawned. Good night, folks, he said.

And they murmured, Good night to you.

And each wished he could pick a guitar, because it is a gracious thing.

JOHN STEINBECK, The Grapes of Wrath

Crossville, the crossroads of East Tennessee.