The sound of American patriotism April 20, 2024
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
For decades, country music has had a close and special relationship to the U.S. military. In his new book, Cold War Country, historian Joseph Thompson shows how the leaders of Nashville’s Music Row found ways to sell their listeners on military service, at the same time they sold country music to people in uniform.
Shane Harris spoke with Thompson about how, as he puts it, Nashville and the Pentagon “created the sound of American patriotism.”
Thompson’s story spans decades and is filled with famous singers like Roy Acuff, Elvis Presley, Merle Haggard, and Lee Greenwood. Collectively, Thompson says, these artists helped to forge the close bonds between their genre and the military, but also helped to transform ideas of race, partisanship, and influenced the idea of what it means to be an American.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Giving this a listen then going to get on my soapbox. Be forewarned.
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Anyone ever see “Generation Kill,” the series about US Marines in the invasion of Iraq? Given the multi-ethnic make-up of the unit, their preferred music of choice was actually hip-hop/gangsta rap. But the main hero figure had a strict policy of no country music in his humvee:
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And yet they sing a Roger Miller song. It’s kind of like when I say I like country music people think I mean Toby Keith (dating myself with that one, so pick another modern “country” singer) but I mean anything but…
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Touché YC!
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Great show. Book it is based on is an under-rated classic of war journalism I think.
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and at this point I’m just looking for an excuse to play a John Prine song. Still dating myself, I don’t care.
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influenced the idea of what it means to be an American
“But what kind of American”, to use a line from the film Civil War?
We went to see the latter in the flicks up in Dublin last night. It’s alright. Obviously it’s asking some serious questions about whether America really wants to go that direction. From this remove one sort of gets the impression that yes, maybe sufficient numbers of Americans do actually want to go there. Which is rather scary if so. I doubt the film will be any sort of catalyst for a moment of self reflection or anything. It’s not good enough a film to do that, even if such a thing was possible. Hollywood getting ahead of itself maybe.
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Entirely removed from the topic of the aforementioned film, but let me just say, “loyal to neither California or Texas, but to Colorado”. 😉
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