This panel was a part of the 2021 Country Soul Songbook Summit and aired on December 10th. Please support Country Soul Songbook at countrysoulsongbook.com!
Country music is often about remembering. But what exactly does the country music industry want us to remember? And what does it want to ensure we forget? One of the deeper ways that country music has helped to keep white supremacy in place is through the industry’s special brand of nostalgia. Professors Francesca Royster, Nadine Hubbs, and Charles Hughes and Karen Pittelman of Karen & the Sorrows will take a hard look at the political work nostalgia does by analyzing a series of country songs—and without sparing their faves. We will also think about how Linda Martell explains that country music is “really all about remembering, knowing what has been, and what is, and what can be” and what kind of radical possibilities emerge when this music starts remembering—and reckoning with—the violent, racist American past and present that the country music industry would prefer we forget.
More about the Panelists
Francesca T. Royster is a Professor of the English at DePaul University in Chicago and has written scholarly work on Shakespeare, Black Lesbian Country music fans, Prince, and Fela Kuti on Broadway among other topics. Her special issue of the Journal of Popular Music Studies, on the futures of Country Music, “Uncharted Country,” co-edited with Nadine Hubbs, won the 2021 Ruth Solie Award. Her creative work has appeared in the anthologies Untangling the Knot: Queer Voices on Marriage, Relationships and Identity and Queer Praxis, as well as in the journals Feminist Studies, Slag Glass City, LA Review of Books, The Huffington Post, The Windy City Times, and Chicago Literati. Her books include Becoming Cleopatra: The Shifting Image of an Icon (2003), Sounding Like a No-No: Queer Sounds and Eccentric Acts in the Post-Soul Era (2013), Can’t Nobody Tell Me Nothing: The Sonic Insurgencies of Black Country (Forthcoming), and Fierce Love: A Journey of Black Queer Motherhood (Forthcoming). She’s lives in Chicago with her partner Annie, her daughter Cecelia and two pups.
Nadine Hubbs is a musicologist, historian, theorist, and publicly engaged scholar. She is professor of women’s and gender studies and music at the University of Michigan and author most recently of Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music. She is currently researching and writing on Mexican Americans in country music. She is the co-editor, together with Francesca T. Royster, of a special issue of the Journal of Popular Music Studies, “Uncharted Country: New Voices and Perspectives in Country Music Studies” which gathered more BIPOC and LGBTQ authors on country music than any volume before and won the 2021 Ruth Solie Award. She was also featured in “Jolene” episode of Dolly Parton’s America podcast—watch “Queer Jolene” here.
Charles L. Hughes is a writer and teacher based in Memphis, Tennessee. He is the author of two acclaimed books, Country Soul: Making Music & Making Race in the American South (2015) and the recently-released Why Bushwick Bill Matters. His work focuses on the historical intersections between popular culture and racial politics in the United States, and he has spoken and published widely on the topic. He is Associate Professor of Urban Studies at Rhodes College, where he is also the director of the Lynne & Henry Turley Memphis Center.
Playlist
Here’s a playlist with some of the songs we’ll be talking about. And lyrics to some of the songs we focused on are also below. And you can buy DeLila Black’s song “Accountability” here!
Lyrics
Chicken Fried
Zac Brown Band
You know I like my chicken fried
Cold beer on a Friday night
A pair of jeans that fit just right
And the radio up
Well I was raised up beneath the shade of a Georgia pine
And that’s home you know
Sweet tea pecan pie and homemade wine
Where the peaches grow
And my house it’s not much to talk about
But it’s filled with love that’s grown in southern ground
And a little bit of chicken fried
Cold beer on a Friday night
A pair of jeans that fit just right
And the radio up
Well I’ve seen the sunrise
See the love in my woman’s eyes
Feel the touch of a precious child
And know a mother’s love
Well its funny how it’s the little things in life that mean the most
Not where you live or what you drive or the price tag on your clothes
There’s no dollar sign on a piece of mind this I’ve come to know
So if you agree have a drink with me
Raise you glasses for a toast
To a little bit of chicken fried
Cold beer on a Friday night
A pair of jeans that fit just right
And the radio up
Well I’ve seen the sunrise
See the love in my woman’s eyes
Feel the touch of a precious child
And know a mother’s love
I thank god for my life
And for the stars and stripes
May freedom forever fly, let it ring.
Salute the ones who died
The ones that give their lives so we don’t have to sacrifice
All the things we love
Like our chicken fried
Cold beer on a Friday night
A pair of jeans that fit just right
And the radio up
Well I’ve seen the sunrise
See the love in my woman’s eyes
Feel the touch of a precious child
And know a mother’s love
Ballad of Sally Ann
Mark O’Conner, written by Alice Randall
With love in his heart and flowers in his hand Johnny proposed to Sally Ann
Sally shivered as she said, “I’ll love you ’til the day I’m dead”
Johnny got married in his one good suit
But the ride from church bore strange fruit
Down by road you can hear her cry
As he hung from a tree, she watched him die
Who’s gonna dance with Sally Ann Who’s gonna touch her tremblin’ hand
When the fiddler takes the stand Who’s gonna dance with Sally Ann
Sally attends every wedding ’round here Lookin’ for her Johnny dear
You can feel them in the room If the fiddler plays that tune
Who’s gonna dance with Sally Ann Who’s gonna touch her tremblin’ hand
When the fiddler takes the stand Who’s gonna dance with Sally Ann
Sail away ladies, Sail away!
Sail away ladies, Sail away!
Darkened shadows cross the floor As ghostly lovers dance once more
When weddin’ bells ring in that town A ghostly virgin strolls the ground
Who’s gonna dance with Sally Ann Who’s gonna touch her tremblin’ hand
When the fiddler takes the stand Who’s gonna dance with Sally Ann
Long Time Gone
The Chicks
Daddy sits on the front porch swinging
Looking out on a vacant field
Used to be filled with burley t’bacca
Now he knows it never will
My brother found work in Indiana
Sister’s a nurse at the old folks home
Mama’s still cooking too much for supper
And me, I’ve been a long time gone
Been a long time gone
No, I ain’t hoed a row since I don’t know when
Long time gone, and it ain’t coming back again
Delia plays that ol’ church piano
Sittin’ out on her daddy’s farm
She always thought that we’d be together
Lord, I never meant to do her harm
Said she could hear me singin’ in the choir
Me, I heard another song
I caught wind and hit the road runnin’
And Lord, I’ve been a long time gone
Been a long time gone
Lord, I ain’t had a prayer since I don’t know when
Long time gone, and it ain’t comin’ back again
Now me, I went to Nashville
Tryin’ to beat the big deal
Playin’ down on Broadway
Gettin’ there the hard way
Living from a tip jar
Sleeping in my car
Hocking my guitar
Yeah, I’m gonna be a star
Now, me and Delia singing every Sunday
Watching the children and the garden grow
We listen to the radio to hear what’s cookin’
But the music ain’t got no soul
Now they sound tired but they don’t sound Haggard
They’ve got money but they don’t have Cash
They got Junior but they don’t have Hank
I think, I think, I think, the rest is
A long time gone
No, I ain’t hit the roof since I don’t know when
Long time gone, and it ain’t coming back
I said a long time gone
No, I ain’t honked the horn since I don’t know when
Long time gone, and it ain’t coming back again
I said a long time, long time, long time gone
Well, it’s been a long time
Long time, long time, long time gone
Oh, it’s been a long time gone
Long time, long time, long time gone
Yeah, yeah
Accountability
DeLila Black
Have you no shame?
You know you should when you recall all the things you say.
When you recall all the things you do who gets the blame.
It’s always the same.
Have you no shame?
I know you do when thinking of all the measures that you took
To be absolved, who is at fault? Everyone but you. It’s never you.
You blame your mom, your dad, the childhood you never had,
your friends, your fears, your thoughts.
It’s all the heart break to blame. Everyone but you. It’s never you.
What do you think about, what do you figure out
as you wonder how this came to be?
Do you ponder when you wonder before you fall gently to sleep?
And in the night do you awake
because your mind is all a flutter with all these things?
Does accountability come one day to everyone but you?
You blame your mom, your dad, the childhood you never had
your friends, your education.
You blame your job, your home, your kids, your wife,
the law, the church, your god, your life,
the way you feel today, the love that let you slip away,
your fears. Your validation:
It’s all the heart break to blame.
Everyone but you. It’s never you.