Title: How Country Music Became the Sound of U.S. Patriotism

Micah Loewinger: Hey, you're listening to the On the Media midweek podcast. I'm Micah Loewinger.

[MUSIC - Lee Greenwood: God Bless The USA]

God bless the USA.

Micah Loewinger: That's one of Trump's most played songs at his rallies, his inauguration, and even at his June military parade, and it's one you might hear at a July 4th barbecue this week, depending on your host's taste in music and their politics, because today's country music industry is deeply associated with a certain jingoistic rally around the flag, support the troupe spirit. In this week's podcast, we're re-airing a conversation about that sound.

Joseph Thompson: We sort of take for granted that country music is a patriotic genre, and I think we've missed the story of how that happened.

Micah Loewinger: Joseph Thompson is an assistant professor at Mississippi State University and author of the new book Cold War Country: How Nashville's Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism. He begins the story in the 1940s with a man named Connie B. Gay, dubbed by the Washington Post as country music's media magician. Gay got his start in the Farm Security Administration, a New Deal program.

Joseph Thompson: He starts from really humble roots. He's born on a dirt farm in a little town called Lizard Lick, North Carolina. During the Depression, he gets a job at a radio station in Raleigh, North Carolina, and there he begins kind of understanding the power of what was then called hillbilly music, what we would now call country music, and understands that matching that hillbilly music with the information that he needs to relay to North Carolina farmers who are suffering during the Great Depression, that that makes for a powerful pairing of message and music.

He gradually becomes involved with the Farm Security Administration during the New Deal years in the early 1940s, moves to Washington, D.C., so the Department of Agriculture puts him to work writing and hosting something called the Farm and Home Hour radio show. That's a show that's used to promote the agency's farm improvement programs.

While working for this show, Gay figures out that if the accompanying music has anything with what he calls a rural flavor, then he gets a lot more participation from the listener. It's a lot more male than ever before. He uses this observation to launch a country music radio show in the Washington, D.C. area after World War II. He begins in 1946 on Station WARL in Arlington, Virginia, and he actually offers to work as an announcer for the station, strictly on commission, if they'll let him play whatever he wants to play.

Connie B. Gay: It's Town and Country Time.

[music]

Micah Loewinger: You're talking about his now legendary radio show and later TV show, Town and Country Time.

Joseph Thompson: In 1946, he begins hosting this show.

Connie B. Gay: Hi, neighbor, this is Connie B. Gay saying, "Pull up your mail keg and join us for--"

Joseph Thompson: In his recollection, he says, the phone started ringing and people were saying, "Lord, have mercy. Why hasn't somebody done this before?" This was a typical barn dance radio show. There were these types of shows being broadcast all over the country. Of course, the most famous one that people will know of is the Grand Ole Opry, so it's sort of a variety show for different types of hillbilly music. You might have a harmonica player, you might have some clog dancers.

Male Speaker: [unintelligible 00:03:41]

Joseph Thompson: Then you might have a bluegrass style band.

[MUSIC - Mac Wiseman: My Little Home In Tennessee]

I am always dreaming of my little home

Back among the hills of Tennessee

I am always yearning--

Joseph Thompson: Then a honky tonk band. It was a big deal both for Connie B. Gay and for hillbilly music when he managed to book a concert at D.C.'s Constitution hall in 1947. I grew up in D.C., I've seen concerts there. It's a really nice venue. It was a big deal that he managed to get hillbilly performers at the venue because of the stigma surrounding that genre at the time.

Hillbilly obviously comes with this connotation of someone who is perhaps unlearned, someone who's from a rural area, maybe from the mountains, possibly uncouth in a lot of ways. They would not be welcome in the polite confines of a space like Constitution Hall. In order to kind of overcome that stigma, Connie B. Gay labels his music as folk music rather than calling it hillbilly music.

Micah Loewinger: I read a Washington Post article from 1983 in which he claimed to have coined the term country music.

Joseph Thompson: I'm not going to give him that. In addition to being this media mogul, he was also great at self-promotion.

Micah Loewinger: He was actually a great talent scout. People like George Hamilton IV-

[MUSIC - George Hamilton IV: I Believe in You]

I believe, I believe in--

Micah Loewinger: Patsy Cline.

[MUSIC - Patsy Cline: Lovesick Blues]

I got a feelin' 'cause I'm blue, oh, Lord

Since my baby said goodbye

Micah Loewinger: Roy Clark, Johnny Cash.

[MUSIC - Johnny Cash: Big River]

Now I taught the weeping willow how to cry

Micah Loewinger: Andy Griffith.

[MUSIC - Andy Griffith: The Crawdad Song]

You get a line and I'll get a pole, honey

Micah Loewinger: All got career boosts from Gay.

Joseph Thompson: He discovered the accordion-playing comedian Jimmy Dean in a Washington D.C. beer joint.

Jimmy Dean: Howdy, howdy, howdy, good people everywhere.

[MUSIC - Elvis Presley: Blue Suede Shoes]

Well, it's one for the money two for the show

Three to get ready

Micah Loewinger: He booked an up and coming rockabilly star named Elvis Presley on Gay's Hillbilly Cruise on the Potomac River. He took the yodeling banjo-playing Lewis Marshall Grandpa Jones on a high-profile tour of U.S. military bases in Japan and Korea, where they visited the front lines.

[MUSIC - Grandpa Jones and His Grandchildren: Going Down the Country]

All the way down in the country, there's an old Kentucky moon,

And an old sweetheart awaiting, I'ma going to see her soon.

Micah Loewinger: This was, I think, one of Connie B. Gay's great country music innovations, as you write about in the book. He cultivated a new fan base among U.S. troops stationed overseas.

Connie B. Gay: This is the Armed Forces Radio Service.

Joseph Thompson: This is during the Korean War. He books Grandpa Jones and His Grandchildren, which was his backing band at the time. When Grandpa Jones and His Grandchildren go on tour, they're not only performing these concerts for service members, but these are being recorded as well. Those recordings are then pressed onto records. Those records are then shipped to DJs within the Far East Network, the FEN, which was the Asian branch of the Armed Forces Radio Service at the time.

Then that goes into circulation on DJ's playlist. There's a way in which the government and then these private promoters like Connie B. Gay and artists like Grandpa Jones are cultivating a real market and a real audience for country music amongst U.S. Service members, and we should mention, international civilian listening audiences who can hear the AFRs even though they're not part of the U.S. military.

Micah Loewinger: In the early 1950s, the military was facing a personnel crisis. It needed more recruits. Tell me about Talent Patrol and the role it played in recruiting new soldiers.

Joseph Thompson: If you turned on the radio, television, or opened a magazine at the time, you were probably getting some kind of a pitch to join the U.S. Military. Part of that was this show that you mentioned called Talent Patrol. Imagine Star Search or American Idol, but it only features service members from the U.S. Military as its contestants.

Female Speaker: Accompanying us in our service tonight, we have the renowned 9th Infantry Division band all the way from Fort Dix, New Jersey.

Joseph Thompson: They would go on and showcase their diverse skills, their diverse talents, and then be awarded first, second, third place. It was meant to generate goodwill toward the U.S. Military, but also serve as a kind of softer recruitment message.

Micah Loewinger: Who were some of the more memorable acts who participated in it?

Joseph Thompson: This is where a country singer named Faron Young launches his career as a country music army recruitment singer. Now, Faron Young would go on to become a Country Music Hall of Fame inductee. He's maybe best known as the first singer of Hello Walls, a song written by Willie Nelson.

[MUSIC - Faron Young: Hello Walls]

Hello walls (hello, hello), how'd things go for you today?

Joseph Thompson: In the early '50s, he was this kind of struggling singer from a dairy farm in Shreveport, Louisiana. He had started his music career in 1951 on a local barn dance show called Louisiana Hayride.

[MUSIC - Faron Young: Go Back You Fool]

You're heading down a lonely road that someday you'll regret

Go back you fool while you can

Joseph Thompson: By 1952, his career was on the uptick. He had signed a recording contract with Capitol Records. He had made his debut on the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, and then in November 1952, he gets his draft notice.

Micah Loewinger: He tries to get out of service, right?

Joseph Thompson: Yes. He tried to convince a doctor that he had heart trouble, but the doctor reportedly said, "Yes, son, I can hear it breaking."

Micah Loewinger: [laughs] That's so good.

Joseph Thompson: You can imagine, I mean, this is a 20, 21-year-old kid, essentially, who thinks he's got the world on a string, and all of a sudden it all comes crashing down because of military service, or at least that's the way he saw it at the beginning.

Micah Loewinger: Little did he know, this might have been the best thing that ever happened to him.

Joseph Thompson: Absolutely. His luck really begins to turn around in January 1953. At that point, he's still serving in basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, but his song called Goin' Steady, which he recorded before he entered the service, breaks onto the Billboard charts at rocket stud number 2.

[MUSIC - Faron Young: Goin' Steady]

Well, me and my baby are goin' steady

Joseph Thompson: The army brass there at Fort Jackson realized that they have this potential resource on their hand to promote military service, and they put him to use. That spring, they send him off to compete on talent patrol, and lo and behold, he wins. That launches him on this career as someone who's tasked with both entertaining soldiers and then also being the voice of recruitment to lure others into the ranks.

[MUSIC - Faron Young: Goin' Steady]

You're goin' steady with me.

Micah Loewinger: He was among a rotating cast of MCs on a show called Country Style, USA.

Joseph Thompson: That's right. The Defense Department and U.S. Army, and Air Force Recruiting Service was casting this wide net for potential volunteer enlistees. That was very important to them. They wanted more volunteers rather than draftees. One of the ways that they're doing that is through a show that begins on radio and then transitions to a television version called Country Style, USA.

Faron Young: It's time for Country Style, USA.

[MUSIC - Willie Nelson: Stay All Night (Stay a Little Longer)]

Stay all night, stay a little longer

Dance all night

Joseph Thompson: Now, both the radio and television versions of this show were recorded by a Nashville country music legendary producer named Owen Bradley, the architect of the Nashville sound. He's also the producer behind people like Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, just to name a few. The U.S. Army and Air Force Recruiting Service links up with Owen Bradley, and they began producing this show called Country Style, USA.

Charlie Applewhite: Hi there, neighbors. My name is Charlie Applewhite, and welcome once again to Country Style, USA.

[MUSIC - Ferlin Husky: I Feel Better All Over]

I feel better all over more than anywhere else

Joseph Thompson: What Country Style did was present 15 minutes of country music with some of the top names in the genre at the time, along with a message about the career opportunities available through the armed forces.

?Charlie Applewhite: Congratulations, chum, you've got your high school diploma, and now you're really ready to step out. These days, it takes specialized training to get a really good job, but did you know that you can get that valuable training you need in the U.S. Army, and you'll be paid while learning?

Joseph Thompson: By the late 1950s, country music programming is really booming for the U.S. Army. It actually accounts for more than one-third of the U.S. Army's televised recruitment campaigns.

Micah Loewinger: Why country music? Why do you think the military found it so attractive as a recruitment tool, but also as a kind of cultural force in the military's hearts and minds fight against communism?

Joseph Thompson: I think country music serves a couple of purposes this way. One is a demographic purpose. The recruiting service noticed this kind of pipeline of young, white recruits coming from the South. They assumed that those white southerners would enjoy country music. There was some evidence to back that up based on the success of people like Grandpa Jones and Connie B. Gay.

In the mid-1950s, you have the country music industry beginning to really coalesce in Nashville. These songwriters, publishers, recording studios like Owen Bradley's, many of them on 16th Avenue south, which we now call Music Row, but also country music, particularly after its reputation has been burnished a bit and were moving away from that kind of style of country music and the reputation it had as hillbilly music, that begins to read as a particularly down home, safe, patriotic sort of message that fits really well with the political climate of the Cold War consensus.

Micah Loewinger: That's interesting because Black musicians played a significant role in creating the sound of country music, right? Yet they weren't as featured in these military recruitment campaigns.

Joseph Thompson: Yes, we should acknowledge that there's white supremacy baked into the country music industry really from its beginnings. There's a concerted effort on the part of record labels going back to the 1920s and '30s to create hillbilly music as essentially an all-white genre. Now, that is overlooking the influence and the pioneering music of African Americans who played hillbilly or country music, for sure. Particularly by the 1950s, that is definitely the case. At least when we're talking about the industry and the artists that are being promoted through this professional infrastructure of Nashville, it's all white, and that's not going to change until the late 1960s with Charley Pride.

Micah Loewinger: If you were a Black folk or blues singer, you would literally be marketed as making race music.

Joseph Thompson: That's correct. At least through the 1920s and '30s. That begins to change in the late 1940s when the label R&B comes around. Now, this is not to say that country music did not benefit from the labor and talent of Black musicians. In fact, one of the stories that I tell in the book is about Cecil Gant, a Black R&B blues pianist, singer, songwriter from Tennessee, who actually played on a lot of country music sessions back in the 1940s, but didn't get the credit that he really deserves, I think. Cecil Gant actually billed himself in 1944, '45 as Private Cecil Gant. He had a huge hit with a song called I Wonder.

[MUSIC - Cecil Gant: I Wonder]

I wonder, my little darling, when

Joseph Thompson: He could not translate that wartime success and the labeling of himself as a military service member into a kind of post-war success because, I think, a lot of the racism that was baked into the record industry in Nashville where he was cutting records, one of the biggest stars of the Grand Ole opry in the 1920s and '30s was DeFord Bailey, an African American harmonica singer. By the 1940s, he's actually fired from the Grand Ole Opry, and so when we're talking about this kind of Cold War era of country music in the 1950s and early '60s, it's an all-white genre, for sure.

Brooke Gladstone: Coming up, the relationship between the military and country music hits a bump in the road in the 1970s with the anti-war movement.

Micah Loewinger: This is On The Media.

Brooke Gladstone: This is On The Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

Micah Loewinger: And I'm Micah Loewinger. Picking up on my conversation with Joseph Thompson, author of Cold War Country. In it, Thompson explains how country stars, some of whom got their start in the armed forces, lent their sound and fame to U.S. Military recruitment efforts. In turn, as the Cold War kicked off in the 1940s and '50s, the Department of Defense became a major importer of country records and provided the country music industry with a captive audience abroad. By the 1960s and '70s, that dynamic was complicated by the war in Vietnam and the birth of a counterculture peace movement.

Joseph Thompson: Because of depictions of service members in country fighting in Vietnam, in both fictional films and documentaries, there's a kind of baby boomer understanding of what that music was. It was Creedence Clearwater. It was Jimi Hendrix. It was rock and roll songs.

Micah Loewinger: Thompson says that most soldiers were probably listening to country music. That was what was being pushed at the time to the vast majority of U.S. service members around the world who were working menial jobs and not stationed in Vietnam. The war in Vietnam also marked a turning point when country music went from being patriotic to being partisan, as the war became less and less popular among Americans.

Joseph Thompson: If you still supported the military, you were seen as going along with this partisan agenda. There's a sort of capturing of this idea of patriotism, very narrowly defined as supporting the troops no matter what by partisan actors. Richard Nixon and the Republican Party at the time were definitely part of that.

Micah Loewinger: Even as country embraced conservative pro-war messaging, for many country artists, it was way more complicated than that. In fact, some of the musicians who helped create that image of country music were fighting against it at the same time, like Merle Haggard, known for his two backlash anthems, Fightin' Side of Me, and especially Okie From Muskogee.

Joseph Thompson: That was the kind of character study of what Merle Haggard and his co-writer thought that a small town person would think about the peace movement and the anti-war movement. If people know the song, it's we don't smoke marijuana in Muscogee, we don't take our trips on LSD, we used to wave Old Glory down at the courthouse, et cetera. He supposedly said that Muskogee, Oklahoma, was the only place he didn't smoke marijuana in 1969. Of course, that kind of nuance is lost on not only country fans, but is lost on politicians like Richard Nixon, who thought, "Oh, I have essentially a spokesperson for my politics," in which he wanted to beat up hippies and kill the peace movement.

Richard Nixon invites Merle Haggard to the White House to perform, and Merle Haggard describes that experience as one of the worst in his life. The people that he was performing for, including the president, didn't know his music, didn't like country music, and the only song that they responded to was Okie from Muskogee and Fightin' Side of Me, the other backlash anthem.

[MUSIC - Merle Haggard: Okie From Muskogee]

In Muskogee, Oklahoma, USA

Micah Loewinger: As you've observed, there were musicians who kind of tried to straddle the line with more complicated songs that, in one way or another, kind of subverted the government's Cold War messaging.

Joseph Thompson: That's right. The person I really home in on is a country music songwriter named Tom T. Hall. He himself was an army veteran, had served in Germany back in the 1950s, then launched a country music songwriting career. He wrote songs that we now hear as a jingoistic anthem like Hello Vietnam-

[MUSIC - Johnnie Wright: Hello Vietnam]

Goodbye my sweetheart, hello Vietnam

Joseph Thompson: -or What We're Fighting For.

[MUSIC - Dave Dudley: What We’re Fighting For]

There's not a soldier in this foreign land who likes this war

Oh, Mama, tell them what we're fighting for

Joseph Thompson: Then in 1971, Tom T. Hall releases his song Mama Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken). It's a story about a wheelchair-bound Vietnam veteran who's coming home from the war. He starts out by saying, "The people are staring at me as they wheel me down the ramp toward my plane. The war is over for me. I've forgotten everything except the pain." In the chorus, you hear he's making a request for his homecoming meal, "Mama bake a pie. Daddy kill a chicken. Your son is coming home 11:35 Wednesday night."

[MUSIC - Tom T. Hall: Mama Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken)]

Your son is coming home 11:35 Wednesday night.

Joseph Thompson: Throughout this song, we hear the voice of this soldier and his interactions with his family and his acquaintances. People are learning that he's disabled. His drunk uncle makes this terrible suggestion about getting wooden legs. His former girlfriend who had been waiting for him is now no longer interested in staying with him, that he is disabled. He is self-medicating with alcohol that he keeps under the blanket over his wheelchair. I argue that Hall is using this to cut through the debates about the Vietnam War, the debates about what is patriotism. He's making people listen really to the consequences of war.

Micah Loewinger: This phenomenon you're describing reminds me of Toby Keith's 2002 anthem, Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue (The Angry American).

[MUSIC - Toby Keith: Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue (The Angry American)]

My daddy served in the army

Where he lost his right eye, but he flew a flag out in our yard

'Til the day that he died

He wanted my mother

Micah Loewinger: Keith later felt pretty pigeonholed. He told Billboard that he didn't want to seem like this Captain America, right-wing lunatic. I didn't know this, but he was actually a registered Democrat at the time that he wrote the song.

Joseph Thompson: He did come to regret that, although it's obvious why he was pigeonholed as this Captain America, because Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue (The Angry American) released in the wake of 9/11. It's, "We're going to get revenge. We're going to put a boot up your ass. It's the American way."

[MUSIC - Toby Keith: Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue (The Angry American)]

Hey Uncle Sam, put your name at the top of his list

And the Statue of Liberty started shakin' her fist

And the eagle will fly

Micah Loewinger: No subtlety whatsoever.

Joseph Thompson: Zero subtlety. It comes across as this ballistic anthem about, "Let's just go kill a bunch of people in revenge." He wrote that as a sort of character study of the way he thought his father, who was a veteran, would react to the 911 attacks, but we often confuse the singer for the song, particularly in country music, where ideas about authenticity are so highly valued. We could also acknowledge that Toby Keith wrote a song called the Ballad of Balad, which is about a recruiter who essentially suckers a high school dropout into joining the military, and then before he knows it, he's off fighting a war that he doesn't even understand what's going on.

[MUSIC - Toby Keith: Ballad of Balad]

I met an army recruiter down at the Wynn Dixie

He said "Son, you've no future, pack up and go with me."

The first place we landed was a base called Ballad

Joseph Thompson: President Nixon ended the draft in 1973. That signals the beginning of a shift in country music's relationship to the military. By the 1980s, there's less of a need for the country music industry to sell its products to soldiers, service members, and they're using the military more to sell the idea of country music as a particularly patriotic genre to civilians. To me, this is when the relationship between country music and the military becomes a bit more symbolic. I think that that's what really carries on into our current day.

For artists nowadays, if they want to garner more listeners, if they want to really tap into country music's culture, then they play to that sort of version of patriotism that was defined way back in the Cold War days. Lee Greenwood is kind of the perfect example of that.

Micah Loewinger: Lee Greenwood wrote God Bless the USA, "Proud to Be an American," as a sort of wartime song in search of a war.

Joseph Thompson: That's right. In September 1983, a Korean airliner was shot down by the Soviet Union. It contained U.S. citizens, and Lee Greenwood assumed we were about to go to war. He wrote this song out of this impulse to write a song that would express his trepidation, but also his support for the troops with this impending war on the horizon, or so he thought-

[MUSIC - Lee Greenwood: God Bless the USA]

And I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free

Joseph Thompson: -but then nothing happens, so he's stuck with this wartime song, this wartime anthem, and no conflict to support it. He releases it anyway in 1984, and so it then becomes about just a general patriotism that supports the military in a very traditional way that hearkens back to Cold War consensus days of the '50s and '60s, a pre-Vietnam patriotism. That is ripe for the picking for Republican politicians. People like Ronald Reagan adopt Lee Greenwood's song as his anthem. He begins to inject the lyrics into his speeches, and then George H.W. Bush actually does deliver the war, Operation Desert Storm.

Of course, that is a very short-lived conflict, but Lee Greenwood nevertheless capitalizes on that and becomes surrogate for the Bush administration and for the U.S. armed forces overall with that song during the early 1990s. He's going to reprise that after 9/11, but the first Iraq war is the one that really gives him the war that he was in search of back in 1983.

Micah Loewinger: In a way, former President Donald Trump has also capitalized on Lee Greenwood's legacy.

Joseph Thompson: Yes. The God Bless the USA Bible is a Bible that Lee Greenwood is selling. It contains the lyrics to the song. It contains copies of our founding documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, and then a King James version of the Bible. Then, back in March of this year, people started sending me the commercials for God Bless the USA Bible with Lee Greenwood and Donald Trump lending his endorsement.

Donald Trump: Partnering with my good friend Lee Greenwood, I encourage you to get this God Bless the USA Bible. Let's make America pray again. God bless you and God bless the USA.

Joseph Thompson: To talk about this move from a utilitarian use of country music in recruitment campaigns to this more political and symbolic connection, I think that's a prime example of what I'm talking about.

Micah Loewinger: I noticed in your book there's this tension between a kind of anti-big government ideology that many of us might associate with country music and the role that the big federal government played in helping popularize the genre. Do you think that's an important part of the story of country music?

Joseph Thompson: I do. I grew up in a small town in north Alabama in the 1980s and '90s at a time when that kind of small government conservatism was sweeping the South, this idea that government was the problem, big government needed to get out of their lives, and at the same time, I was looking around and seeing people who drove an hour every day to work at Redstone Arsenal or to work at one of these engineering firms in Huntsville, Alabama. They were essentially government employees by another name. That federal money was just being filtered through a private contractor, even though they were building weaponry and software and this kind of thing for the defense state.

I think there's a kind of irony in that country music so associated with conservatism, rightly or wrongly, so associated with the white south, rightly or wrongly, gets affiliated with that sort of small government politics and people's imaginations. What I hope to show is that the very industry that makes the music that so many people latch onto from those communities was actually also built in a way by big government spending during the Cold War.

Micah Loewinger: Joseph Thompson is a history professor at Mississippi State University and author of the new book Cold War Country. Joseph, thank you very much.

Joseph Thompson: Thank you, Micah.

Micah Loewinger: Thanks for listening to the On the Media midweek podcast. Tune into the big show on Friday to hear about what's at stake if public radio stations lose their federal funding. I'm Micah Loewinger.

 

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