In Linthead Stomp: The Creation of Country Music in the Piedmont South, Patrick Huber attempts to reexamine and recontextualize the perceived authenticity of early country sound recordings. The prevailing view of these recordings is that of a pure representation of rural or mountain music and culture of the poor white southerner. The concept that these early vernacular records are actually the outcome of exposure to other ethic groups, as well as to popular and mainstream recordings, is not new. However, this critical reexamination resides predominately in early blues scholarship. Amateur and professional music historians, such as Elijah Wald, Peter Guralnick, Ted Gioia, Don Kent, Tony Russell, Richard Nevins, and Alex van der Tuuk, have
…show more content…
Patrick Huber expands this line of historical thought to the other vernacular music introduced in the 1920s in sound recordings, country music, which was then referred to as hillbilly or old …show more content…
Carson was a resident in the burgeoning city of Atlanta, Georgia and thus exposed to and recorded songs that are not be found in a songbook of traditional mountain music of the time or earlier. Huber points to his recording of “The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane,” a popular minstrel song from the 1880s, often considered the first country recording, as a substantive example to illustrate his point. Additionally, he documents both Carson’s and his Okeh’s efforts to perpetuate the image of this music as something from the past that might be lost to the rapid modernization in the 1920s. Similarly, Huber subjects Charlie Poole and his recordings to the same critical analysis and discovers a similar narrative. Huber illustrates how Charlie Poole and “the North Carolina Ramblers did record traditional southern fiddle tunes and ballads, the majority of the band’s recorded output consisted of arrangements of turn-of-the-century “coon songs,” vaudeville numbers, and sentimental parlor pieces such as “Leaving Home,” “There’ll Come a Time,” and “He Rambled,” which the band rendered as spirited dance
Patrick Huber expands this line of historical thought to the other vernacular music introduced in the 1920s in sound recordings, country music, which was then referred to as hillbilly or old …show more content…
Carson was a resident in the burgeoning city of Atlanta, Georgia and thus exposed to and recorded songs that are not be found in a songbook of traditional mountain music of the time or earlier. Huber points to his recording of “The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane,” a popular minstrel song from the 1880s, often considered the first country recording, as a substantive example to illustrate his point. Additionally, he documents both Carson’s and his Okeh’s efforts to perpetuate the image of this music as something from the past that might be lost to the rapid modernization in the 1920s. Similarly, Huber subjects Charlie Poole and his recordings to the same critical analysis and discovers a similar narrative. Huber illustrates how Charlie Poole and “the North Carolina Ramblers did record traditional southern fiddle tunes and ballads, the majority of the band’s recorded output consisted of arrangements of turn-of-the-century “coon songs,” vaudeville numbers, and sentimental parlor pieces such as “Leaving Home,” “There’ll Come a Time,” and “He Rambled,” which the band rendered as spirited dance