By Chuck Poling
The recently released documentary “Shut up and Sing” chronicles the controversy that arose when a member of the popular country trio The Dixie Chicks criticized George Bush and the Iraq war during a performance in London. Natalie Maines’ comments that the president’s conduct made her ashamed to be a Texan sparked an intense but not entirely unexpected backlash. Radio stations refused to play their songs, concert dates were cancelled and protests were ugly. Many others rallied to the defense of the band, whose other members stood by Maines’ view. The incident reflects a larger one in a national divide that has become known as the culture war.
It should be no surprise that the core market for country music tends to skew toward the red states and that patriotism, rugged individualism and traditional values are tried and true themes in country songs. From Merle Haggard’s swaggering “The Fighting Side of Me” to Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue (The Angry American),” the genre has produced plenty of examples of good ole chest-thumping jingoism. Mother, the church and the old home place have all proved to be reliable topics as well for country music. Despite all the money that’s produced by worldly entertainment in the city, Nashville remains a very conservative place, headquarters to the largest concentration of Christian publishing and printing houses in the country and home to the Southern Baptist Convention.
And country music, for the most part, has tacked to the right, partly because of the natural inclinations of its performers and producers and partly because that’s what its audience has expected. Tammy Wynette campaigned for George Wallace, and Richard Nixon played piano at the opening of Opryland. But it was at the height of the Cold War (for purposes of this piece, let’s say 1948 to 1968) that country music really hit its stride with an impressive output of material covering the political, military, social and personal implications of a struggle that to many citizens represented a pitched battle between good, godly America and wicked, atheistic Communism. Of course, one advantage of having an atheistic enemy is that there is no ambiguity over whose side God is on.
We forget now how pervasive the Cold War was in our lives. Older baby boomers may remember the atomic fallout drills – “duck and cover.” Who would have thought a poplin windbreaker could protect you from gamma rays? An entire generation of kids grew up in a world that was starkly divided into camps of good or evil. Movies, TV shows and comic books all joined in the cause, and country music was out there on the front lines, telling it, as legendary songwriter Harlan Howard put it, with “three chords and the truth.” The Soviet Union represented a whole lot of evil to country music fans, especially in the South where even mainstream labor union leaders were regarded as outside agitators.
Cold War country songs covered a wide range of topics, which I have, rather arbitrarily, categorized as follows: Better Dead Than Red, Digging in on the Homefront, and Collateral Damage. I’ve also included a section on songs inspired by the language and imagery of the Cold War that are not necessarily about the conflict itself.I could have easily parsed this down into several subcategories, such as Better Dead songs that feature atomic weapons, but I am not attempting to provide a comprehensive academic analysis (The most extensive work on the subject is the recently published “Country Music Goes To War” edited by Charles Wolfe and James Akenson). Instead, I’m just hoping to illuminate a slice of Americana that, as the Cold War fades from America’s collective conscience, may be worthy of further study as our nation finds itself in a new era of global paranoia.
Better Dead Than Red
Better Dead Than Red describes the aforementioned chest-thumping affirmation of the superiority of American values and the will to defend these values with men and munitions when necessary.
World War II had already produced popular patriotic country songs such as “There’s a Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere,” “Cowards Over Pearl Harbor” and “Smoke on the Water.” And many of these songs from World War II featured strident, macho lyrics declaring how the “Japs” and “Krauts” were going to pay for their perfidy. In “Smoke,” the usually avuncular Red Foley sternly warns the legions of Hirohito of the day “when our modern ships and bombers make a graveyard of Japan.” And given the emotion and the stakes of the war, it’s not hard to understand why these songs were well received by a public that was involved in a huge national effort to defeat a relentless enemy. Men were fighting and dying in a war where the lines of good and evil were clear cut, and never before had the nation united in an all-out effort to defeat Fascism and militarism.
That this effort included a wartime alliance with the Soviet Union was a matter of military convenience. It was to both nations’ advantage to have Hitler involved in a two-front war, and it worked. But no sooner had the ashes of Berlin begun cooling than the two newly christened superpowers starting growling at each other and marking territory all over the European map. Out of this rivalry sprang the Cold War, and out of the Cold War came some of the most hysterical, feverish propaganda ever conceived on both sides.
Our partnership with “Ivan,” typically portrayed as a sturdy Russian peasant during the war, deteriorated into a near-nuclear pissing match with what Ronald Reagan later would dub the Evil Empire. Churchill gave his famous Iron Curtain speech in March of 1946, less than a year after Germany surrendered. Communist gains in Italy and France intensified the American fear that a red tide was sweeping over Europe. A continuing civil war in Greece, which peaked in 1946-49, now became a crucial battleground – the first of many proxy wars between east and west.
Against this backdrop, country music returned fire with the heavy artillery. Elton Britt’s “The Red We Want is the Red We’ve Got in the Old Red, White and Blue” is an unabashed paean to all that is good about America and all that is bad about Communism. Hank Williams, in his alter ego guise as Luke the Drifter, scolded Stalin with ten verses of “No, No Joe,” any one of which sums up the situation.
And you might be itchin' for a fight
Quit braggin' about how your bear can bite
'Cause you're sitting on a keg of dynamite
No, no Joe
Beginning in 1950, Korea became the battleground for the forces of capitalism in the south versus communism in the north. Officially, it was a U.N. policing action, but the vast majority of troops supporting the south were American. When Communist Chinese forces joined the fray on the side of North Korea, the threat of worldwide communist domination reached fever pitch. And back at the homefront, country music kept pace with the times. The Louvin Brothers, whose angelic, close harmony predated and influenced the Everly Brothers, recorded a slew of songs on the topic of Korea. “Robe of White” recounts the tale of a mother whose grief at the loss of her boy overseas is soothed by the consolation of knowing that he will join a heavenly band. “From Mother’s Arms to Korea” also pulls the on the maternal heartstrings. “I Died for the Red, White and Blue,” is another tribute to that most enduring of color combinations, although the purple in “Purple Heart” (popularized by the bluegrass duo Jim and Jesse) runs a close second. And titles like “A Soldier’s Last Letter” and “Searching for a Soldier’s Grave” pretty much tell the story right there on the record label.
The conflict slogged on through the Korean mud until 1953, when an armistice was declared. In an early lesson on the limits of American power, the partitioned Korea has endured for over fifty years of tense coexistence. (Amid all the nuclear posturing of the current North Korean regime, it’s important to realize that while an armistice, defined as a temporary suspension of hostilities, was agreed upon, a peace treaty has never been signed, and technically North and South Korea are still at war.)
But stalemate in Korea did nothing to subdue the ardor of red baiting at home. And whether or not politicians really believed that the nation was in imminent peril from communism, many of them, like Senator Joe McCarthy, learned that it was a powerful campaign issue and a convenient way to slander one’s opponent. And back in country music land things started to get a little ugly with offerings such as “Shoot That Bear” by Bobby Gregory and the joyful “Stalin Kicked the Bucket” by Ray Anderson. Ferlin Husky pleaded, “Let’s Keep the Communists Out,” and Grandpa Jones declared, “I’m No Communist” and let it be known exactly what this meant.
I'm no Communist, and I'll tell you that right now
I believe a man should own his own house and car and cow
I like this private ownership, and I want to be left alone
Let the government run its business and let me run my own
While many of these songs resorted to a crude macho posturing that would do Toby Keith proud, it’s important to remember that communism and particularly the aggressive policies of the Soviet Union were indeed a threat to the United States and its allies. For decades NATO and Warsaw Pact troops faced off for a possible battle on the plains of central Europe, spies crossed back and forth across borders and allegiances and both sides indoctrinated their people back home with heavy doses of propaganda.
Digging in on the Homefront
As much as Americans were concerned about the territorial and political gains made by communism, they were equally troubled by what they perceived as a threat to their very way of life, especially with regard to religion and morality. In the country music heartland, new ideas and educational methods were looked upon suspiciously by a populace that sought to maintain some sort of status quo in the face of a rapidly changing world. New forces of industrialization and racial integration threatened this bulwark of conservatism, and more was to come: television, rock and roll and a gradual unraveling of the societal fabric. More and more young people left the farm or small town for the opportunities and/or the temptations of the big city and became intemperate and irreligious.
Country music struck back in strident, sometimes shrill fashion. The Louvin Brothers led the charge with such moralistic screeds as “They’ve Got the Church Outnumbered” and “Don’t Let Them Take the Bible From Our Schoolrooms. In “If We Forget God” they intone
The stories and pictures in most magazines
Now feature new stylings unfit to be seen
They’re placed on the newsstands where children can buy
When they go wrong, do we wonder why
If the magazines of the 1950’s upset Ira Louvin, you can imagine what he’d think of the Internet. When they go wrong, do we wonder why, indeed!
Other such tales were told in “The Bible on the Table and the Flag Upon the Wall” by the Georgia Crackers and “God, Please Protect America” by Jimmie Osborne. The Cold War years were reminiscent of the jarring social and moral upheaval following World War I. The 1920s had seen a rise in religious fundamentalism, propagated by the new medium of radio, in response to a world seemingly off its ethical axis. Jazz, automobiles and the growing independence of newly franchised women scared the bejabbers out of folks who’s been used to ballads, horse-drawn carriages and subservient wives.
One could make the case that the present day is another period in which Fundamentalist Christians are circling the wagons to defend against an enemy they perceive as hostile to their beliefs. The reaction toward the Dixie Chicks for criticizing President Bush was notable not only for its ferocity but also for its coordination and effectiveness. DJs on country radio stations and right-wing talk-radio personalities joined in a frenzy of denunciation and vitriol aimed at the Chicks. Their music was banned from playlists on many stations sponsored events such as “The Dixie Chicken Toss,” where ex-fans were exhorted to destroy CDs and ticket stubs (One of the less obvious downsides of digital technology is that media like DVDs and CDs don’t make adequate fuel for a good old fashioned bonfire.). On the other hand, Maines’ outspoken stance has made The Dixie Chicks controversy a cause celebre among liberals who, while not necessarily country music fans, rushed to the band’s defense in the name of free speech.
Collateral Damage
Country music was very popular with servicemen and was a staple on Armed Services radio. A poll taken found that Roy Acuff bested Frank Sinatra as the most top male singer among soldiers during World War II. But songs of battles and braggadocio mattered less to the average soldier then those that reminded him of home, mother and the gal he left behind. It was especially the last, the girl back home whose unflagging devotion and tender lips were an inspiration to the warrior as he slogged through the mud of Korea. All too often though, absence, rather than making her heart grow fonder, caused her eyes to wander and take stock of the possiblities closer at hand. And the result was the dreaded “Dear John Letter,” immortalized in the song of the same name recorded by Jean Shepard and Ferlin Husky. It begins with Shepard singing the chorus:
Dear John, oh I how hate to write
Dear John, I must let you know tonight
That my love for you is gone
Like grass upon the lawn
And tonight I’ll wed another, Dear John
With Shepard’s vocals muted, Husky then recites a tale of a soldier who fights through a horrendous battle and survives only to receive the fateful “lettre de Cher Jean.” He reads her note out loud as she requests that he send her picture back because her new husband wants it. Oh, and by the way, she’s marrying his brother. And just in case she hasn’t poured quite enough salt in the wounds, she asks for his blessing:
Well the wedding’s about to begin and I will wed your brother Don
Will you wish us happiness forever, Dear John?
Ouch!
My wife and I used to perform that song with our band, Jeanie & Chuck’s Country Roundup. After one show, an elderly gentleman said that the song had haunted him, not because he had received such a letter, but because during the Korean War he was a counselor to men who had. He dreaded hearing the song on Armed Forces Radio because he knew many soldiers who suffered through the abandonment of a lover and then reacted suicidally in battle.
Of course, there are other takes on this situation. It was a decade before Stephen Stills penned, “(If You Can’t Be with the One You Love) Love the One You’re With,” but the sentiment is certainly nothing new to soldiers. Sometimes it was Dear John who sent a letter to Ina Joe regretting to inform her that he had met someone new and well, no hard feelings, but it looks like we’re kaput. Perhaps it was because of a certain “Fraulein,” a monster crossover hit for Bobby Helms in 1957. Buck Owens’ “Girl Made in Japan” kicks off with a brilliant faux Japanese guitar intro, based on the pentatonic scale that is used widely in Asia (think chopsticks on a Telecaster). The first verse reflects the contemporary impression of Japan to most Americans in the early 1960s
My transistor radio comes from far away
And when it’s night over here, over there it’s the breaking day
I remember all the good times I had walking in the sand
With the beautiful girl I met made in Japan
In a creative twist, Wynn Stewart in “Yankee Go Home,’ sings from the perspective of a serviceman back in the USA, now pining for the foreign girl he had unceremoniously dumped before returning. A plaintive female voice sings the chorus:
Yankee go home, you’ll never love me
Your heart is miles away across the foam
Go on back to Tennessee, to your pretty bride to be
You don’t love me, so Yankee go home
Ultimately, after giving himself a severe chastisement for telling her she was right, he declares (in yet another lump-in-the-throat recitation) that he’s “going back across the sea, because she’s the only girl for me.” Ahh, how cute. Mmm, no mention of what happens to his pretty bride to be in Tennessee. Maybe she can hook up with Dear John.
I hear he’s available these days.
But what about the women’s perspective? Not to worry. There is a veritable treasure trove of songs from this period that, though they may sound overly sentimental in today’s cynical climate, truly convey the sense of loss and fear that a woman feels when her love is planted thousands of miles away in harm’s way. In “Heartbreak USA” Kitty Wells’ concerns are less about her man losing his life in battle than losing his heart to a foreign belle.
Don’t let that geisha girl put your heart in a whirl
And if you meet some sweet fraulein, remember you’re mine
Loretta Lynn plaintively muses on the conflict between patriotism and passion for her lover, who is set to be sent overseas in “Dear Uncle Sam”. “My darling answered when he got that call from you.” she sings, and then practically moans, “You said you really need him but you don't need him like I do.” Lynn just as easily turns the tables around with “I’ll Be True to You Honey While You’re Gone, If You’re Not Gone Too Long.” A girl can keep the home fires burning only so long without a needing a little, uh, fuel.
The Cold War As Metaphor
There are many other songs that sort of hitched a ride on the Cold War wagon, capitalizing on phenomena such as the atomic bomb and using other imagery of war to add some contemporary flavor to the song. The Louvins were ahead of the pack with numbers like “Great Atomic Power” and “Weapon of Prayer.” Lowell Blanchard’s “Jesus Hits Like an Atom Bomb’ likens the Lord’s power to that of nuclear fusion. Dozens of songs with the words “bomb,” “atom,” and “war” were produced during the 1948-68 period.
Love gone wrong is what country music does best. Whether it’s a bluegrass standard like “Little Maggie,” a country shuffle like “Heartaches By The Number” or a slicked up Nashville Sound production like “D-I-V-O-R-C-E,” country songs just cut through the crap and go straight for the heart – which is alternately broken, aching, yearning, burning or crying, or any combination thereof.
My favorite, usage of the Cold War as a metaphor is Floyd Tillman’s “This Cold War With You.” The song is a slow honky tonk ballad delivered in a lazy, bluesy style with his voice intentionally slurring the notes above and below pitch (a style that heavily influenced Lefty Frizell and, later, Merle Haggard.). Twin fiddles drone as the song kicks and then Tillman’s voice starts swerving around the scale like a drunken driver trying to stay on the road:
The sun goes down and leaves me sad and blue
The iron curtain falls on this cold war with you
Though you don't speak and I won't speak it's true
Two stubborn people with a cold war to go through
This song is a great example of the country music “hook,” a songwriting device designed to be catchy, clever and, above all, memorable. Released in 1949, “This Cold War With You” became an instant hit on jukeboxes all over the country. Tillman, whose forte was cheating songs (like the classic “Slipping Around”), used the nomenclature of the Cold War to describe the woes of a love that has simply burned out and can generate no more heat. No blame, no personal drama, no patriotic posturing, just a sad tale that drew on current events of its day to tell an old story in a new way.
Cold Hard Cash and the American Way
Keep in mind that these records were produced to sell. While many musicians and record executives may have shared some or all of the sentiments the music expressed, the overriding concern was to sell product. The larger studios in Nashville such as RCA and Decca were often overseen by executives imported from New York headquarters. These men may not have agreed with the conservative religious and social views of the rural South, but they understood how important these values were to the people they were selling records to.
Smaller, independent labels, of which there were many, were always on the lookout for a chart hit that would put them in the black and hopefully attract new talent to their label. They were more likely than the major labels to take a chance on a novelty record, and most of the “Better Dead Than Red” songs were cut at indies. But whether a song was recorded in a makeshift garage studio or in the posh confines of RCA’s Nashville offices, it was aimed at the same audience using the language and imagery of country, home and church in a world threatened by outside aggression and internal erosion of traditional values.
The Cold War was a time of great paradox for the United States. At home the nation was prospering as it never had before. The GI Bill had opened up higher education and home ownership to millions of Americans who could only have dreamed of such opportunities during the Depression. American manufacturing was at its peak – its chromed, tail-finned automobiles were the symbol of middle class prosperity.
But at the same time, the country was beset by the insecurity of sharing the planet with another superpower that was as every bit as assertive in extending its global hegemony. For the first time in the nation’s history, a peacetime draft was instituted. The Red Scare ruined the lives and careers of many innocent people in the name of rooting out Communist agents. Progressive governments in Guatemala and Iran were toppled by CIA-backed coups because their reforms threatened American business interests. It was not until withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975 that the message was driven home that there really were limitations to America’s power and that letting the Communists take over South Vietnam was not the end of the world.
Few voices in country music doubted the necessity of the Vietnam War, or even questioned whether all the purple hearts were worth it. Johnny Cash’s “Singing The Talking Vietnam Blues,” written about his 1971 tour to entertain troops in Southeast Asia, was an exception in that it expressed some ambivalence about America’s presence there. Perhaps the fact that Saigon came under mortar fire by the Viet Cong during his stay influenced his views.
In 1969 as the casualty lists in Vietnam mounted and America seethed with protest and dissension, Kenny Rogers' released “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town” by Mel Tillis. “Ruby” may be the strongest anti-war song of the Cold War period – or perhaps of any time, precisely because it was not written as an anti-war song. Rogers’smooth baritone voice describes a disabled veteran who pleads with his wife not to leave him, though, sadly he understands.
It’s hard to love a man whose legs are bent and paralyzed
And the wants and the needs of a woman your age, Ruby I realize
But it’s not too long I’ve heard them say until I’m not around
Oh, Ruby, don’t take your love to town
The heart wrenching message of a man who answered his country’s call only to be left a crippled cuckold exposes the human costs that were not included in casualty lists or carved into a tombstone. And really, what was it all about?
It wasn’t me who started that old crazy Asian war
But I was proud to go and do my patriotic chore
As the war in Iraq enters its fifth year, the American public has turned sharply against our involvement there. What was sold to the country as precision strike at an imminent nuclear threat has bogged down into a morass of occupation, corruption, civil war and brutality on all sides. Polls show that at least two-thirds of Americans believe that the Bush administration has bungled the war and that they have no confidence in his leadership.
As country music has, in the past, reflected the views of a more conservative, Southern white tradition, it’s interesting to see where it will go from here. Historically, country music has also been ahead of the curve on many societal issues. In the early 1950s country jukeboxes were full of songs dealing with drinking, infidelity, and violence that were taboo in the pop music of the day. One of country music’s greatest strengths is its honesty – which is often what scares city people off. More sophisticated audiences are uncomfortable when confronted with the naked emotion that a singer like Loretta Lynn or George Jones can pour out on the stage.
The failure of the war in Iraq has tested even the most ardent supporters of the administration, and in the country music heartland there has to be a lot of concern about where and how it will all end. While it is unlikely the country music fan base would do a complete 180-degree turn and take to the streets to protest the war, it wouldn’t be surprising if the frustration and betrayal resulting from the tragedy wrought by a war of choice seeps into more than one song and finds a receptive audience. Country music is nothing if not honest. Let’s hope that it continues to be at a time when America needs a good dose of straight talk.
###
