Workin' Man Blues: Country Music in California

Rating:
Summary: an entertaining review of California's Valley and its music
Review: As one who was born and reared in California's Great Central Valley, and is old enough to remember the country music of the 30's and 40's, I very much enjoyed this book. Haslam not only brought back lots of memories, but he also skillfully told the story of the rise and fall of country music in California. Clearly, he's been there and he "talks the talk". As an admitted liberal, he unfortunately litters the landscape with some superfluous "social commentary". Nonethe less, it's a fine book, deserving of reading by all who like country music and/or the Central valley.

Rating:
Summary: A must read for serious students of the genre
Review: I simply can't recommend this book highly enough! It was the first scholarly work on Country Music that I read, and it really opened my eyes to country music as a serious field of study. Being a native Californian, I had always been aware of the pivotal role the CA scene played in Country Music history, I was exposed to the music of Haggard at an early age and became familiar with the music of Buck Owens through Hee Haw, but I didn't know too much about other important players such as Chester Smith, The Maddox Bros & Rose, Wynn Stewart Etc. This book inspired me to go out and discover the music of these pioneering artists. The author also discusses the way rock and roll influenced west coast country and vice versa. If you're a serious student of country music history, this book is a must read! It should be required reading in all CA schools :)

Rating:
Summary: Country music before Nashville . . .
Review: Nashville has not always been the home of country music. Following migrations westward from the South and Dust Bowl states during the 1930s and 1940s, country music flourished in California, where it thrived in Hollywood, throughout the agricultural interior valleys and around the war-related industries in Los Angeles. And it continued in the post-war years, peaking in creative output one final time in the 1960s.

Author Gerald Haslam's history of country music in California tells a story full of rich appreciation for its many musical styles, from hillbilly (the Crockett Family, seen on the cover), to the singing cowboys (Gene Autry), to the heyday of western swing (Bob Wills and Spade Cooley), to Tennessee Ernie Ford, and the Bakersfield music scene, centered around Buck Owens in the 1960s. Haslam then tracks its story since those golden years in the careers of Californians who made it big in the Nashville years, such as Merle Haggard.

Haslam's sympathies are clearly with performers who have bucked the homogenizing trends of Nashville and the dominance of a music today that calls itself country but has largely lost contact with its roots. He praises the musical mavericks and outlaws who keep traditional and "hard" country alive in California, giving special attention to Dwight Yoakum, who stubbornly and fiercely chose Los Angeles as a base to launch a career that got national attention in the 1980s.

You may or may not love the author's blue-collar bias. He notes the frequent theme of discontent in traditional country music, characterizing it as the music of the hard-working men and women who labor not always successfully in pursuit of an American dream. Their yearning for simpler times and rural values is a sensibility mostly absent from today's country play lists, with only rare exceptions like Alan Jackson. It's a sentiment that finds its parallel in the traditionalist's dislike for the urban market-driven output of Nashville's lucrative music industry.

This is a highly readable book, with over 50 photographs of performers, and it's also a reference based on a good deal of scholarship. There's a 22-page bibliography and both a song title index and a subject index covering another 24 pages. Readers interested in western swing will especially appreciate the author's extensive study of this subject. As a companion volume, I'd also recommend "The Rough Guide to Country Music."