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Introduction
Gordon E. Slethaug
In the past few years, several studies have appeared concerning the road in American culture, history, film, and literature, but none has been written about music and the American road, which is strange because this rich resource informs and colors the perception of the road and the experience of fans at every turn. Early on, before the twentieth century, folk songs celebrated the various modes of travel in America, but these were occasional and applicable to very specific groups of people. With the advent of the mass media in the twentieth century, road songs followed three main avenuesâall of them recorded and broadcast to small and large audiences: blues reflected the pain and grief of those on the road; country-western music picked up on the dreams, possibilities, and anxieties of the road through Southern habitats and others with frontier ideologies; and, finally, the emergence and ongoing popularity of rock ânâ roll extolled the speed and thrill of the road but also the heartbreak and despair that sometimes accompanied such travel. Altogether, these varieties of road music and more have been a formative part of the fabric of American society across the spectrum of race, class, gender, age, geography, and technology.
With the invention of the railroad in the nineteenth century and the automobile in the twentieth and their associated industries, new kinds of road experiences and music emerged with bands traveling by train, bus, van, car, and truck, and with passengers sitting privately or in groups listening to the radio, that wonderful 1930s invention of Motorola. Early performers of road music during the first half of the century included legendary blues singers such as Robert Johnson of the Mississippi delta, Blind Lemon Jefferson of Texas, and Buddy Moss of the Piedmont area. Some of their experiences and gigs were decidedly rural, but others were urban. This tradition continues into the present with many contemporary male and female African American blues artists. At the same time, mainly white country-western singers were taking the folk-song tradition and turning out some wonderful road songs. Later white rock ânâ roll bands and singers as well as others with people of color in the second half of the century took their music from small country towns to big cities and even to foreign destinations, writing memorable road songs that included Chuck Berryâs âMaybelleneâ and âNo Particular Place to Goâ; The Beach Boysâ âLittle Deuce Coupe,â âLong Promised Road,â and âCalifornia Dreaminââ; Steppenwolfâs âBorn to Be Wildâ; the Byrdsâ âWasnât Born to Followâ; Bob Dylanâs âBlowinâ in the Wind,â âLike a Rolling Stone,â and âOn the Road Againâ; Bruce Springsteenâs âBorn in the U.S.A,â âBorn to Run,â and âThunder Roadâ; and Paul Simonâs âAmerica,â âPapa Hobo,â âHearts and Bones,â and âGraceland.â
There were, of course, films that focused on singers and bands themselves, including such documentaries as Scorseseâs No Direction Home: Bob Dylan that lays out the trajectory of Dylanâs myth-making move from northern Minnesota to New York City and onto the road circuit. Then there are fictional films about singers and bands such as that of Clint Eastwood who âplayed a country singer in the sentimental Depression-era film Honkytonk Man as well as the impresario of a traveling show in Bronco Billyâ (Cohan and Hark, 10). Early on, there were the various âRoad To . . .â films that featured popular actor Bob Hope and singer Bing Crosby and fabricated romances of travel on the road. Then, too, there were later fictional films memorializing the lives of countercultural heroes and gangsters alike such as Bonnie and Clyde whose exploits were accompanied by tunes and lyrics that stayed with the audiences long after the big and small screens went dark. Various travelers, singers, bands, and listeners/viewers are as much tied to the road and vehicles as they are to the music, and this study will look at the semiotics of the road in American culture, the implications of the music of the road itself, and the experience of taking it on the roadâin short: the interaction of the road, travelers, and music. As Kurt Jacobsen notes of road music and film, road music âeither one, invokes the road as explicit theme, or two, is encountered while passing through strange regions, or three, heightens the road experience, whatever the origin of the song or subject of its lyricsâ (Chapter 12). This road music, then, has something special to do with freedom, independence, rebellion, and mobility that are part and parcel of the experience and cultural understanding of the road, but it encompasses many other aspects of self and culture.
Scholarship of music and the road
Although there is growing scholarship available concerning the road, only limited research currently exists on the link between music and the road or even road music and road films. In Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Harkâs The Road Movie Book, of the 17 chapters in the book, music is alluded to in only two, and the only chapter that deals centrally with music and the road is Corey K. Creekmurâs âOn the Run and on the Road: Fame and the Outlaw Couple in American Cinema.â This chapter, however, doesnât address the music of films but follows Creekmurâs contention that the outlaw road film follows the structural and stylistic features of musicals (91). Creekmur does note that âthe contemporary road film seems especially suited to the now dominant mode of constructing and marketing film soundtracks through a selection of semi-autonomous, nostalgic hits or newly recorded pop songsâ (101). In exploring Easy Rider in the chapter called âThe Road to Dystopia: Landscaping the Nation in Easy Rider,â Barbara Klinger briefly alludes to the road music of Steppenwolf and the Byrds that is paired with and assists in the celebration of âpanoramic point-of-view shotsâ of magnificent Southwestern wilderness landscape scenes that Wyatt and Billy travel through in the early part of Easy Rider compared to the use of Jimi Hendrixâs ânihilistic âIf Six Was Nineââ paired with the road montage of the threatening culture of the Deep South that eventually destroys the two riders at the end of the film (in Cohan and Hark, 188, 192).
Similarly, in Driving Visions: Exploring the Road Movie, David Laderman only once refers to âpopular musicâ as an integral part of road films, though he does bring in rock ânâ roll several times. As he notes, âthe distinctive emergence of the road movie in the late 1960s is culturally interwoven with the advent of rock and popular music and the genre usually deploys the former as another aesthetic expression of the visceral and sensual thrill of driving, of moving at high speedâ connected with âyouth rebellion driveâ (16, 19). He repeats such a comment in considering three American films and one German: the âmood-mixing, controversial banjo musicâ of Bonnie and Clyde, that conveys âthe thrill of road travel for the countercultureâ (69); the use of rock music to unleash âspiritual energy through a politicized drivingâ in Easy Rider (70); the âperipatetic mobilityâ of the countercultural figures and lifestyle suggested by Jimi Hendrixâs âAre You Experiencedâ and âBreak on through to the Other Sideâ in Two-Lane Blacktop (96); and the âvisionary, rebellious energy,â âfiery feminist perspective,â and ârebellionâ of the later German film Bandits (271).
Gordon E. Slethaug and Stacilee Fordâs Hit the Road, Jack: Essays on the Culture of the American Road does only slightly better in exploring music and the road. Two chapters focus exclusively on road music: Susan Kuyperâs âThe Road in American Vernacular Musicâ goes into detail on road musicâs early origins in folk music, and Paul Attinelloâs âAssassin in a Three-Piece Suit: Slow Fire, Minimalism, and the Eightiesâ looks at the road as represented in Paul Dresherâs contemporary opera. Otherwise, the chapters do not reference the music that is talked about in road literature or that accompanies various road films.
There is, then, little in the way of criticism that explores the relationship between music of or about the road and various kinds and examples of literature and film. Of course, those in the popular music scene know that these links between song and literature and film are intrinsic but have never subjected them to critical analysis as indicated by the numerous sites where interesting road music is identified by the number of tunes without commentary, such as the Ultimate Classic Rockâs âTop 10 Road Songs,â Playlistâs â20 Essential Songs for Your Road-Trip,â Buzzfeedâs âThe Only 39 Road Trip Songs Youâll Ever Need,â and Timeoutâs âThe 50 best road trip songs of all time.â These sites quantify and promote but do not analyze. That is the task of this book.
This compilation of essays, then, creates a unique and valuable collection that addresses a fundamental lack in the scholarship of the intersection of the road and popular music from the latter part of the nineteenth century to the present time.
The theoretical and narrative framework of this study
In âThe Semiotics of the Road,â Gordon Slethaug points out that the notion of the road in the United States is inextricably tied to the changing developments of American economics, politics, culture, and technology, so that, while key ideas of freedom, independence, and mobility may be relatively constant in the construction of the road over time, other factors such as individualism, identity, and rebellion are dependent on specific historical circumstances and social movements. Undergirding these historical changes are those in technology, such as development of the automobile, the availability of electricity and telephones at the end of the nineteenth century, and the rise of media and communications at the beginning of the twentieth century. Consequently, the music of the road that marks the focus of this volume depends on codes of the American road that developed in certain periods during that time. These include the development of âindividual and national freedom, independence, and mobility; democratic space in a simultaneously present and vanished frontier; self-reliance and liberal individualism; diversity in ethnicity, race, class, gender, and culture; communal and personal transformation; [and] rebellious countercultural challenges to a complacent and conservative society . . .â (Slethaug and Ford, âIntroduction,â 4). Consequently, this volume brings into focus the modern period in which technological developments radically changed modes of travel and networks of roads. It does not intend to represent all of the many forms of road music in the contemporary era because that would be a separate volume in itself, but this volume will explore the classic forms of recorded road music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries while also exploring contemporary forms in movies as well as those of an LGBT singer.
Transitions: The disappearing frontier and rise of transportation and the media
When in 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner announced that the American frontier had closed, he also identified the traits that had been necessary to settle the United States and which in his mind accounted for the characterization of present-day Americans as well. Key traits included:
That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy, that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedomâthese are the traits of the frontier. (227â28)
Susan Kuyperâs âThe Road in American Vernacular Musicâ paid close attention to these traits as evidenced in the American frontier itself and in the subset of road songs in folk vernacular music that was produced before the twentieth century, noting that they âresonate with the weariness of travel, tell stories of terrible challenges, but also never lose hopeâ in work, play, love, and worship (55). This was not a small subset, Kuyper notes, comprising roughly one-third of the 317 folk songs collected in Alan Lomaxâs Folk Songs of North America; so mobility, travel, and the road in all its forms has been an enduring part of American history and culture (57).
This present study of music and the American road begins where Kuyperâs leaves off, marked by the transition from anonymous folk songs to those written, played, sung, and increasingly copyrighted by particular artists and groups. In âEasy Riders and Hard Roads in the Early Recorded Blues,â Steve Knepper and Jim Tuten write about the early country-blues tradition that had such a profound influence on American popular music, including later blues and rock ânâ roll. As they note, country blues first flourished in three seminal areas of the Southâthe Mississippi delta, Texas, and the Piedmont area of the East Coast (the Carolinas and Georgia) and was spearheaded by Robert Johnson (the rural Delta), Blind Lemon Jefferson (urban Texas), and Buddy Moss (Atlanta and surroundings) whose music helped to consolidate the blues as an art form and to shape the myth of road mobility. Theirs was African and American music to the core, the rhythms and patterns reflecting early roots in Africa as well as American folk songs, and the themes expressing their aspirations, values, and challenges in an American racialized South at the first half of the twentieth century.
In the Mississippi delta, Robert Johnson traveled in almost every conceivable way: he walked on dirt roads and highways; he sat on a pile of corn in a wagon pulled by a tractor; he rode freight trains and buses; he hitchhiked rides in pickup trucksâall to perform on street corners or in front of barbershops and restaurants in adjoining towns (Guralnick 20) An old-fashioned traveling minstrel, Johnson and his blues songs truly represented the rural Southern delta.
While Johnson traveled the dirt roads of the rural delta, blues musicians Texas bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson and Atlanta blues singer Buddy Moss traveled in the urbanizing areas of Texas and the Georgia Piedmont. In these locations the automobile gave musicians access to more commercial possibilities in both urban and out-of-the-way places of the South and, increasingly with the Great Migration, the North. Indeed, in Texas and the Piedmont the automobile came to be seen as a palpable object of desireâa sign of sexual possibility and potency, achievable luxury, and even conspicuous consumption for fortunate black musicians. Incarnated in the automobile, the road emerged in blues music as a promise of freedom, adventure, agency, and financial reward but also conveyed nostalgia for places and people left behind as well as anxiety about the perils of driving under the vigilant eyes and oppressive Jim Crow laws of Southern white communities. The earliest country blues, then, embrace contrary extremes of possibility, hope, and frustration and often position the musicians and their listeners on a knifeâs edge of hope and existential despair.
As Knepper and Tuten note, however, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson, and Buddy Moss were not the only ones singing and recording blues during the first half of the twentieth century, but are representative of many of their compatriots and followers. Jefferson himself influenced Texas musicians Leadbelly, Lightninâ Hopkins, and T-Bone Walker as well as leading blues artists from outside Texas, including such Delta blues luminaries as Chester Arthur Bennett (Howlinâ Wolf), McKinley Morganfield (Muddy Waters), and Son House, while Buddy Moss influenced those such as Blind Blake. The influence does not stop there, however. As Knepper and Tuten note, musical techniques and themes in âAdia Victoriaâs 2016 album Beyond the Bloodhoundsâ contain âa pervading Johnson-esque Gothicismâ (Chapter 3).
In the explicitly racialized culture and politics of the South and indirectly of the North, the whites dominated the blacks, but whites also were divided by geography, economics, gender, and class. Virginia Shayâs study of early and late American country music, âEasy Street on Mud Tires: The âHeartlandâ and the Frontier of the Road in Country Music,â notes the way in which road music has been shaped by, and responded to, the simple rural, white, blue-collar life of the South with real links to the Midwest heartland and more imagined links to manifest destiny and the Western frontier. While country music had roots in early folk music and the 1920s âhillbillyâ Appalachia, and still waxes nostalgic about its common people and villages, these towns and their inhabitants have generally become more imaginary and mythic than real in connecting with the larger population across the country in their interrogation of urban corporate ways. âAs Scherman remarks, âCountry music was born of the trauma of rural peopleâs adjustment to industrial society. . . . Severed from its working-class origins, country music is becoming a refuge for culturally homeless Americans everywhereââ (Scherman qtd. in Peterson, Creating Country Music, 222). This country-western road music is marked as white, and culturally and politically conservative both in its inception and in the recent Nashville iterations. What black blues and white country-western musical traditions share is a common disdain for exploitative urban environments as well as a hope for ...