I mentioned the other day that classic rock, as a genre and as a radio format, is heavily segregated—apart from Jimi Hendrix, you won’t hear many actual black performers on the majority of classic rock stations, even though you’ll hear lots of white-boy blues and blue-eyed soul. Just last night I came across an article I’d been saving called “‘Luther King Was a Good Ole Boy’: The Southern Rock Movement and White Male Identity in the Post-Civil Rights South” by Mike Butler, which first appeared in the scholarly journal Popular Music and Society in 1999. It’s not nearly as dry as it sounds: Butler traces the influence of black music and musicians on the most prominent Southern rockers, including Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers Band. Some of the article touches on the degree of racism found—or not found—in Southern rock, an integral part of the classic-rock canon.
Southern bands often adopted Confederate imagery—Black Oak Arkansas once recorded “Dixie” and frequently displayed the Confederate flag at their shows; Skynyrd recorded “Sweet Home Alabama,” one of the most potent expressions of Southern/Confederate pride ever to blast into popular culture. For that reason, these bands were sometimes accused of “fostering silent racism,” although they claimed, in the manner of ex-Confederates since 1865, that their use of Confederate symbols was intended only to express pride in their roots and nothing else. (Honesty compels me to report that I have always considered this claim to be bullshit—when one’s roots are intimately connected with a culture built on white supremacy, claiming that the symbols are about roots and not racism is a distinction without a difference. The fact that a lot of Southerners seem conflicted about the symbols tells me they realize it to a certain degree as well.)
But Southern rockers’ relationships with their black neighbors were much more positive than their use of Confederate imagery would indicate. The Marshall Tucker Band was named for the black man who owned the band’s rehearsal hall. The first concert Duane and Gregg Allman ever attended featured Jackie Wilson, Otis Redding, B.B. King and Patti LaBelle. These young Southerners knew they were swimming against the tide of their culture: Against their parents’ wishes, Skynyrd’s Ronnie Van Zant hung out with a black musician named Curtis Loew and the Allmans joined an interracial band. Most Southern bands learned black blues songs. One of the Allmans’ first bands, 31st of February, recorded “God Rest His Soul,” a song about the death of Martin Luther King that praised him as a peacemaker. These are hardly the acts of white supremacists. As Butler notes, paying homage to blacks was only the beginning: “While covering old blues songs on their albums represented a step of rebellion in the post-civil rights South, the decision to pay tribute to the music, cuddle black children, and include blind bluesmen on the album covers [as Wet Willie did on their biggest album, Keep on Smilin'] proved to be even more rebellious.”
The story of Southern rock is another chapter in the ongoing assimilation of black culture by whites. Its lofty position in the classic-rock canon means that technically, classic rock is not a 100 percent lily-white format. But there’s room to go further. My station used to play “Green Onions,” “Funky Broadway,” “Mustang Sally,” and “The Dock of the Bay,” and they sounded perfectly at home there alongside Zeppelin and Floyd—and Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers. Which brings me back to the point that there’s no rational reason for classic rock to be as white as it is, even if it’s not quite as white as it seems.
“God Rest His Soul”/Duane and Gregg Allman (from an album released in 1972 or 1973 but clearly recorded earlier, and featuring only Gregg on this track; a version by 31st of February, an early band featuring the Allmans, is on the Dreams box set, although I don’t know whether it’s the same as this. Buy Dreams here; thanks to Whiteray for the mp3.)
“The Ballad of Curtis Loew”/Lynyrd Skynyrd (a low-fi mp3, but serviceable; buy Second Helping here)
Filed under: Tracks
…or even better: why don’t these classic-rock stations play some of the self-contained funk bands that were CONTEMPORARIES of Skynyrd, the Allmans, etc.? People forget that progressive soul acts like War, Stevie Wonder, Rufus, Mandrill, Curtis Mayfield, Osibisa, Mother’s Finest, Earth Wind & Fire and even Funkadelic got played on FM rock stations back then. With good reason, since most artists like these had a definite rock influence. ESPECIALLY the Isley Brothers. You listen to tracks like “Live It Up” or “That Lady,” you’ll hear that guitarist Ernie Isley could shred just as well as Ronnie Montrose or Jimmy Page.
I think it’s a stretch to call “Sweet Home Alabama” an expression of Confederate pride. Souther, of course, but I don’t see anything in the lyrics to link it to Confederate pride.
Very few white southerners actually owned slaves. Slavery was a convention of the upper class of the south. Many soldiers on both the Union and Confederate side really didn’t think/care about the cause of slavery. For the “Billy Yanks” the war was about preservation of the Union, for the “Johnny Rebs” the Civil War was about defending their homeland from an unwanted Northern aggressor.
The Civil War was largely a rich man’s war and the issue of slavery, at that time, was largely an economic issue, not a Civil Rights issue.
Philosophically speaking, the Confederacy was right about States Rights… They were wrong about slavery, of course, and thus they tried to wrap the issue they were wrong about inside the issue they were right about to try to legitimize it.
One correction. I personally know Marshall Tucker. He now lives in Columbia, SC. He is blind, but not black.
After 1865, everyone south of Maryland was reduced to their least common denominator, black and white. War starts in 1861 and after seriously getting his ass kicked for two years lincoln in sheer desparation introduces the Emancipation Proclamation freeing only the slaves in the rebel states. General Grant kept his slaves. General Lee freed his before the new law. So, Lincoln, after getting 300,00 of his boys killed and having murdered almost the same amount of Southern boys defending their home is the great liberator. Ever wonder why it took 100 years for the US government to recognize black folks as people.That wasn’t a southern thing. We didn’t have the money, respect or clout to hold anyone down. After 1865 we were all the N-word.