Noontime Notions – “Nashville and the New Breed of Country Music – Like Paris (France, not Tennessee) in the 1920s”:

Alex Macaulay will focus on a group of Nashville singer-songwriters from the mid 1960s and early 1970s who had an indelible but often overlooked impact on country music and its history.  Kris Kristofferson, Tom T. Hall, Mickey Newbury, and John Hartford wrote, sold, and performed “progressive,” left-leaning country music at a time when “Okie From Muskogee,” “Fightin’ Side of Me,” and “Red Necks, White Socks and Blue Ribbon Beer” dominated many Americans’ image of the genre and the white, working class Southerners for which it supposedly spoke. While the burgeoning countercultural music scene in Austin, TX of this era has received its fair share of popular and scholarly attention, songs, lyrics, and lifestyles in Music City, USA also spoke to younger, “hip” listeners who craved “authenticity” in their lives and their art.  The heyday of the musicians listed above marked a transitional period between the Nashville Sound and “The Outlaws,” building upon established country themes while broadening and diversifying the music’s audience, style, and substance.  As such, these singers found themselves embroiled in debates over the culture, economics, and politics of county music especially when it came to issues of authenticity, respectability, and regional identity.

Macaulay is an Associate Professor of History at Western Carolina University.  He grew up in Walhalla, South Carolina and graduated from The Citadel in 1994.  After that, he went on an extended tour of the Southeastern Conference, getting a Master’s at UT-Knoxville and a PhD at the University of Georgia.  His book on the history of The Citadel, Marching in Step: Masculinity, Citizenship and The Citadel in Post World War II America was published in 2009.   He authored an article in Southern Cultures on the early music career of Kris Kristofferson.  Maccaulay’s favorite Kristofferson song is “The Silver Tongued Devil and I,” but he likes all of Kristofferson’s work.  He is currently working on a book about the post-World War II history of the Citadel and a biography of Kris Kristofferson.