Charles L. Hughes. Country Soul

Race discrimination has long plagued the American South (along with the rest of the country), stretching from the colonial period into the present. Racial conditions have continually changed, however, depending on regional as well as national political, economic, social, and cultural conditions. Popular music’s circumstances have been part of the story, with an ongoing belief that beginning in the 1950s with the rise of the soul and country music recording studios in Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee, as well as in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, racially integrated musical groups successfully challenged the South’s ingrained racial discrimination and polarization. (The transition from rhythm and blues to rock and roll has also been widely interpreted as promoting civil rights.) Charles L. Hughes in Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South directly challenges this perception. Drawing upon a wide range of primary and secondary sources, the author contends that while some of the musical groups were indeed racially integrated, they nonetheless continued the South’s racial hierarchy, with the white owned recording studios mostly favoring white over black musicians. Hughes deftly explores the country-soul recording triangle, the two Tennessee locations and Muscle Shoals. In 1961, Rick Hall’s FAME studio had a hit with the African American Arthur Alexander’s “You Better Move On” backed by white musicians. This somewhat indicated a racial musical partnership, but not one of equal partners, far from it.

Art · Art history · Black music · Blues · Civil rights · Country · Literature · Musical · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Racism · Sociology · Soul · Studio · Theology · Visual arts · White (mutation) · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies