Thursday, April 16, 1998
Country’s rich history squandered in novel
BOOK: Judgmental view of legends neglects music genre’s lasting
value
By Michael Gillette
Daily Bruin Contributor
There is a wonderful story to be told about the early luminaries
of American country music. This list would include without fail,
Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, George Jones and many
others whose songs and voices have cast a long shadow over this
country’s musical terrain.
Author Nicholas Dawidoff’s new book, "In the Country of Country:
People and Places in American Music," stakes a claim at telling
this story. Dawidoff crisscrossed the nation to research his tome
and conducted exclusive interviews with Cash, Jones and several
other country giants.
However, what Dawidoff has written is a book that is more likely
to aggravate than satisfy a reader. He spends as much time judging
the people in American music as engaging with the music Americans
have created.
Among the strengths of the book is its practice of giving an
overview of an artist that is equal parts musical analysis and
social history. A good example of this is his chapter on Jimmie
Rodgers. Fittingly, this section is not a chapter proper, but a
prologue, for Rodgers is generally considered "the father of
country music."
The prologue itself starts at a party in Audrel, Mo., where
Rodgers himself lived. Dawidoff had attended this party with the
promise of learning more about Rodgers, and he writes about the
love/hate relationship that still exists between the conservative
townspeople (some of whom still remember the deceased singer), and
the decidedly rakish Rodgers.
Dawidoff alternates the stories these people tell with analysis
of Rodgers’ lyrics which deal with this same tension, using astute
observations of Rodgers’ singing style and the way its influence
has traveled through the passing generations of singers.
Less laudable is the treacly mission statement Dawidoff inserts
midway through the section. Apparently bearing his soul to a
partygoer named Finch, Dawidoff makes a series of long-winded,
pretentious statements concerning country music’s connection to
America’s social fiber. These beliefs were doing a fine job of
revealing themselves through the structure of the prologue, and one
could safely assume that Finch himself would have picked up on
Dawidoff’s plans when the author showed up.
This Finch-received thesis statement, however, introduces and
characterizes the shortcomings of the work, which all relate to
Dawidoff’s meaningless editorializing. A perfect example of this
practice comes with the author’s interview with Johnny Cash.
Once again Dawidoff picks a deftly emblematic place to start his
profile, accompanying Cash to a meeting between the star and a
hundred or so members of his fan club at the "House of Cash" museum
in Tennessee.
The author uses the meeting to analyze the politics that govern
the relationship between country musicians and their fans, and the
rituals that these politics embody. For instance, he notes that
country fans give offerings to their stars in the form of valuables
and cash. On that day, Cash received a check of $2,025.
As he continues with his profile, though, Dawidoff becomes
critical and judgmental. He dismisses Cash’s work of the last three
decades, calling it puerile and self-parodying, and reports
salacious stories about Cash’s drug use. By the end, his writing
becomes hopelessly melodramatic as he reports, "Not only is Cash
unwilling to slow down, he is also probably afraid to. Taking the
stage every night is a salve for whatever ails him."
Within that same profile, Dawidoff says that Bob Dylan, speaking
in an interview with the writer, told him that Cash’s songs were
"automatically perpetual. They always existed and always will
exist."
One wishes Dawidoff would have turned his attention to what it
is that makes Cash’s music seem so eternal rather than use Dylan’s
quote to underscore the fact that Cash never gets tired of
touring.
In the end, though, Dawidoff’s questionable approach to his
subject perturbs the reader and will likely leave him or her
turning elsewhere for this story.