Southern Rock: Revenge of the Rednecks
Posted: July 24, 2005 4:11 pm
Revenge of the Rednecks
There was a time when Southern rock was a reveille for radicals
by BUDDY SEIGAL
Mother Tuckers
I'm a Muswell hillbilly boy
But my heart lies in old West Virginia
Though my hills are not green
I have seen them in my dreams
Take me back to those black hills
That I've never seen
—The Kinks,"Muswell Hillbilly," 1971
The American obsession with The songs of the south is almost
timeless. Recall for a moment Pennsylvania-born-and-bred Stephen
Foster's romantic visions of "darkies" and plantation life in the pre-
Civil War era; the extraordinary "coon song" craze that swept this
country at the dawn of the recording era (even African-Americans were
in on that one: Ernest Hogan, an African-American, penned the 1890s
hit "All Coons Look Alike to Me"); the huge success enjoyed by
northern minstrel performers in blackface, such as Al Jolson and
Eddie Cantor. Even Paul Robeson, the legendary, New Jersey-born
singer best remembered for his precocious leftist politics, began his
career crooning such signature tunes as "Ol' Man River," "Shortnin'
Bread" and "When It's Sleepytime Down South" before re-examining his
comportment and becoming an outspoken civil rights activist in the
WWII era.
What the Kinks' Ray Davies seemed to recognize by 1971 was that such
contemporary country-rock groups as Creedence, the Band, the Byrds
and the Flying Burrito Brothers, legitimately lauded in their time as
groundbreaking artists, were simply the latest generation of Yankees
striking a hillbilly pose.
Right on the heels of all this contrived s***-kicker chic, the real-
live South rose again. Jan-yew-wine plaque-toothed, goat-ropin hayseed-rockers became all the rage; it was revenge-
of-the-rednecks time. In the hands of groups like the Allman
Brothers, Marshall Tucker and Charlie Daniels Band, sagas of Southern
life were related firsthand rather than filtered through the
hyperbolizing instruments of outsiders.
Southern rockers were at first countercultural; they clearly rejected
old-time, Deep South values. The Allmans' music—as down-home as a
reeking outhouse and as ethereally psychedelic as a tab of Owsley's
Orange Sunshine—was targeted directly at the same drug-gobbling,
anarchist freaks who embraced the Grateful Dead. Self-
proclaimed "Long Haired Country Boy" Charlie Daniels' first
hit, "Uneasy Rider," found him running just ahead of hippie-lynching
rednecks in Mississippi, although his music was rooted in the honky-
tonk tradition of his tormentors.
If Southern rockers embraced the great music of their region and
played it with an authenticity that most Northern groups could only
parrot, their stance and lyrical content were at odds with those who
initially formed the sound. It wasn't until much later that some of
the music's main protagonists ironically and dishearteningly switched
gears to become just the sort of hateful scum they so vocally
disdained in their youth—something in the water, perhaps? Other
Southern rockers were born right wingers.
Whatever its ultimate outcome, the Southern rock movement of the '70s
was fleeting but fertile, producing some of the finest, fiercest,
most eclectic rock & roll ever recorded. It drew from every classic
American music form—and all of those, of course, were Southern-born,
from blues and jazz to country and western swing. Much of this great
Southern rock is now forgotten, woefully dismissed or even unduly
derided 30 years after its heyday.
I blame "Free Bird."
There's a widespread and unfortunate misconception that Lynyrd
Skynyrd defined the Southern rock genre. In fact, Skynyrd was a late
entry in the Southern rock sweepstakes—and an anomaly. The group's
politics were hard right from the get-go; Skynyrd famously taunted
Neil Young for his anti-bigot anthem "Southern Man" in their own
anthemic retort, "Sweet Home Alabama." Ironically, Skynyrd's music
was also far less Southern than their brethren's; they owed a deeper
debt to British rock groups like Deep Purple and the Rolling Stones
than Bob Wills, Smokey Wood and George Jones. And they never
approached the talented Allman, Daniels and Tucker crews.
But Skynyrd did inadvertently define the genre in one important
regard: its members tended to drop like vermin in a Raid commercial.
Premature death was and remains the leading cause of death among
Southern rockers like some ancient Egyptian curse: so many key
members of Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers Band, Marshall Tucker Band
and Grinderswitch died prematurely that it's difficult to keep an
accurate body count.
The Marshall Tucker Band's brain trusts, Toy and Tommy Caldwell, lie
at rest. What's left plays tonight at Orange County Performing Arts
Pavilion. The very notion of this appalls me to the marrow: continued
use of the name is disrespectful to the Caldwell brothers' legacy—
especially Toy's; he was a hellfire guitarist, the group's primary
songwriter and a better singer than his frontman. The sole original
member, Doug Gray, has come to embody every negative stereotype of
Southern rock. He's a shameless douchebag who won national news
coverage during the Toby Keith vs. Dixie Chicks war a couple of years
ago as a clearly desperate Chicks-basher, clinging for dear life to
Toby's short coattails. Sans the fashionable fascist posture, Gray
would certainly never have warranted television exposure, even on his
hometown local news, had he done the gracious and gentlemanly thing
and croaked in Toy's stead.
Daniels, though, was the first to switch gears. He pulled a
commercially expedient political 180 at the dawn of the Reagan era,
becoming a spokesman for just the sort of murderous peckerwoods he'd
castigated in song only a few years before. Retarded jingoism,
violently hateful gay-bashing, unclever Arab-baiting: Daniels'
material became so extreme as to make former KKK politico David Duke
blush in mortification. And his record sales soared. There's a market
in hate, and Daniels remains somewhere to the right of Kim Jong Il,
but the hits ceased long ago. Though I'm loath to admit it, his music
is still magnificent; just don't listen to the lyrics.
That seemed to be the advice of Dickey Betts, former Allman Brothers
guitarist/current front man of Great Southern. When I spoke to him
recently, Betts said Daniels "is frightening, and I didn't even know
Doug Gray had gotten involved in that stuff. But they don't represent
all us players from down South. I enjoy playing with 'em, but let's
just leave it at that. Bob Dylan can take care of the political
stuff."
The positive legacy of Southern rock endures to this day, albeit
largely uncredited. While the Grateful Dead seem to serve as official
avatars of the modern jam-band scene, most contemporary jam bands owe
a larger musical and spiritual debt to the greasier, bluesier and
tighter Allman Brothers, forever godfathers of the sphere they
fashioned back in the late '60s. Modern Allman devotees include Gov't
Mule and the Derek Trucks Band (both groups actually feature current
ABB guitarists), Robert Randolph & the Family Band (think ABB-meets-P-
Funk), North Mississippi Allstars (ABB-meets-the-Ramones), Blues
Traveler, Widespread Panic, and even such non-jam-band kindred souls
as White Stripes and Black Keys—tell me Jack White hasn't worshiped
at Duane Allman's altar, and I'll tell you grits ain't grocery, eggs
ain't poultry and Mona Lisa was a man.
Interested in the modern groups above but never heard the old-timers?
Check out early releases by the Allman, Daniels and Tucker crews, and
I guarantee you'll be hooked, even if the music comes as a guilty
pleasure in light of subsequent political reversals. When you see
Marshall Tucker in concert tonight, tell Doug Gray the Dixie Chicks
sent you.
There was a time when Southern rock was a reveille for radicals
by BUDDY SEIGAL
Mother Tuckers
I'm a Muswell hillbilly boy
But my heart lies in old West Virginia
Though my hills are not green
I have seen them in my dreams
Take me back to those black hills
That I've never seen
—The Kinks,"Muswell Hillbilly," 1971
The American obsession with The songs of the south is almost
timeless. Recall for a moment Pennsylvania-born-and-bred Stephen
Foster's romantic visions of "darkies" and plantation life in the pre-
Civil War era; the extraordinary "coon song" craze that swept this
country at the dawn of the recording era (even African-Americans were
in on that one: Ernest Hogan, an African-American, penned the 1890s
hit "All Coons Look Alike to Me"); the huge success enjoyed by
northern minstrel performers in blackface, such as Al Jolson and
Eddie Cantor. Even Paul Robeson, the legendary, New Jersey-born
singer best remembered for his precocious leftist politics, began his
career crooning such signature tunes as "Ol' Man River," "Shortnin'
Bread" and "When It's Sleepytime Down South" before re-examining his
comportment and becoming an outspoken civil rights activist in the
WWII era.
What the Kinks' Ray Davies seemed to recognize by 1971 was that such
contemporary country-rock groups as Creedence, the Band, the Byrds
and the Flying Burrito Brothers, legitimately lauded in their time as
groundbreaking artists, were simply the latest generation of Yankees
striking a hillbilly pose.
Right on the heels of all this contrived s***-kicker chic, the real-
live South rose again. Jan-yew-wine plaque-toothed, goat-ropin hayseed-rockers became all the rage; it was revenge-
of-the-rednecks time. In the hands of groups like the Allman
Brothers, Marshall Tucker and Charlie Daniels Band, sagas of Southern
life were related firsthand rather than filtered through the
hyperbolizing instruments of outsiders.
Southern rockers were at first countercultural; they clearly rejected
old-time, Deep South values. The Allmans' music—as down-home as a
reeking outhouse and as ethereally psychedelic as a tab of Owsley's
Orange Sunshine—was targeted directly at the same drug-gobbling,
anarchist freaks who embraced the Grateful Dead. Self-
proclaimed "Long Haired Country Boy" Charlie Daniels' first
hit, "Uneasy Rider," found him running just ahead of hippie-lynching
rednecks in Mississippi, although his music was rooted in the honky-
tonk tradition of his tormentors.
If Southern rockers embraced the great music of their region and
played it with an authenticity that most Northern groups could only
parrot, their stance and lyrical content were at odds with those who
initially formed the sound. It wasn't until much later that some of
the music's main protagonists ironically and dishearteningly switched
gears to become just the sort of hateful scum they so vocally
disdained in their youth—something in the water, perhaps? Other
Southern rockers were born right wingers.
Whatever its ultimate outcome, the Southern rock movement of the '70s
was fleeting but fertile, producing some of the finest, fiercest,
most eclectic rock & roll ever recorded. It drew from every classic
American music form—and all of those, of course, were Southern-born,
from blues and jazz to country and western swing. Much of this great
Southern rock is now forgotten, woefully dismissed or even unduly
derided 30 years after its heyday.
I blame "Free Bird."
There's a widespread and unfortunate misconception that Lynyrd
Skynyrd defined the Southern rock genre. In fact, Skynyrd was a late
entry in the Southern rock sweepstakes—and an anomaly. The group's
politics were hard right from the get-go; Skynyrd famously taunted
Neil Young for his anti-bigot anthem "Southern Man" in their own
anthemic retort, "Sweet Home Alabama." Ironically, Skynyrd's music
was also far less Southern than their brethren's; they owed a deeper
debt to British rock groups like Deep Purple and the Rolling Stones
than Bob Wills, Smokey Wood and George Jones. And they never
approached the talented Allman, Daniels and Tucker crews.
But Skynyrd did inadvertently define the genre in one important
regard: its members tended to drop like vermin in a Raid commercial.
Premature death was and remains the leading cause of death among
Southern rockers like some ancient Egyptian curse: so many key
members of Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers Band, Marshall Tucker Band
and Grinderswitch died prematurely that it's difficult to keep an
accurate body count.
The Marshall Tucker Band's brain trusts, Toy and Tommy Caldwell, lie
at rest. What's left plays tonight at Orange County Performing Arts
Pavilion. The very notion of this appalls me to the marrow: continued
use of the name is disrespectful to the Caldwell brothers' legacy—
especially Toy's; he was a hellfire guitarist, the group's primary
songwriter and a better singer than his frontman. The sole original
member, Doug Gray, has come to embody every negative stereotype of
Southern rock. He's a shameless douchebag who won national news
coverage during the Toby Keith vs. Dixie Chicks war a couple of years
ago as a clearly desperate Chicks-basher, clinging for dear life to
Toby's short coattails. Sans the fashionable fascist posture, Gray
would certainly never have warranted television exposure, even on his
hometown local news, had he done the gracious and gentlemanly thing
and croaked in Toy's stead.
Daniels, though, was the first to switch gears. He pulled a
commercially expedient political 180 at the dawn of the Reagan era,
becoming a spokesman for just the sort of murderous peckerwoods he'd
castigated in song only a few years before. Retarded jingoism,
violently hateful gay-bashing, unclever Arab-baiting: Daniels'
material became so extreme as to make former KKK politico David Duke
blush in mortification. And his record sales soared. There's a market
in hate, and Daniels remains somewhere to the right of Kim Jong Il,
but the hits ceased long ago. Though I'm loath to admit it, his music
is still magnificent; just don't listen to the lyrics.
That seemed to be the advice of Dickey Betts, former Allman Brothers
guitarist/current front man of Great Southern. When I spoke to him
recently, Betts said Daniels "is frightening, and I didn't even know
Doug Gray had gotten involved in that stuff. But they don't represent
all us players from down South. I enjoy playing with 'em, but let's
just leave it at that. Bob Dylan can take care of the political
stuff."
The positive legacy of Southern rock endures to this day, albeit
largely uncredited. While the Grateful Dead seem to serve as official
avatars of the modern jam-band scene, most contemporary jam bands owe
a larger musical and spiritual debt to the greasier, bluesier and
tighter Allman Brothers, forever godfathers of the sphere they
fashioned back in the late '60s. Modern Allman devotees include Gov't
Mule and the Derek Trucks Band (both groups actually feature current
ABB guitarists), Robert Randolph & the Family Band (think ABB-meets-P-
Funk), North Mississippi Allstars (ABB-meets-the-Ramones), Blues
Traveler, Widespread Panic, and even such non-jam-band kindred souls
as White Stripes and Black Keys—tell me Jack White hasn't worshiped
at Duane Allman's altar, and I'll tell you grits ain't grocery, eggs
ain't poultry and Mona Lisa was a man.
Interested in the modern groups above but never heard the old-timers?
Check out early releases by the Allman, Daniels and Tucker crews, and
I guarantee you'll be hooked, even if the music comes as a guilty
pleasure in light of subsequent political reversals. When you see
Marshall Tucker in concert tonight, tell Doug Gray the Dixie Chicks
sent you.