This last year I’ve been living in upstate New York, and the people have been great. Delightful students at Skidmore College, for one. But now, largely thanks to Lucas Morel, author of one of our better books on Lincoln, I’m returning to what’s become my home away from home, the so-beautiful-you-might-fight-a-hopeless-war-for-it state of Virginia! Previous years I’ve lived in Charlottesville, Lynchburg, and now it’ll be Lexington, where I’ll be teaching a year at Washington and Lee University.
So it’s time for a few songs, and not rock ones. The best version of “I’m Comin’ Virginia” I know of is by Jimmy Rushing, but not every moment of human existence is available on you tube yet. The other good vocal version is a very early Bing Cosby 78, but I’ll give you the wordless Benny Carter/Django Rheinhardt version instead.
My favorite so-glad-to-be-returning-to-the-South song is not “Sweet Home Alabama,” a great but overplayed icon, but Johnny Cash’s “Hey Porter.” Yup, I know that feeling will even hit Californian Yankee me as we hit the Mason-Dixon, even without being on a train. (Cash had the class to sing so many songs about trains, that they made a whole album of them!)
Other good return-to-the-South songs out there?
Or, what really was the dust up with Neil Young that elicited “Sweet Home Alabama’s” rebuke? I’ve never understood why LS sings Watergate, it doesn’t bother me.
July 14th, 2011 | 7:26 am
Neil Young’s “Southern Man” was a slap at the segregated South and the boys from Alabama had supported the presidential run of their beloved governor George Wallace when he ran as a third party candidate against Nixon and McGovern. They voted Wallace so Watergate didn’t bother them!
A song to remind you of the wonders of the South is Sweet Southern Comfort by Buddy Jewel. You can almost smell the magnolias.
And one final parting thought to welcome you back South – My precious grandmother always told me “Honey, Southerners aren’t better than other people; it just seems that way!”
July 14th, 2011 | 8:08 am
After you have taken us through American music which is largely African American music, and then through Caribbean, Brazilian and African music, regarding Neil Young I wonder where in the world does Canadian music fit in? Is it–as is Young’s–primarily an appropriated American music? Does Young even identify with Canada or has he become American via folk, blues, rock ‘n roll, and rock?
Agreed, Virginia is a beautiful state. Best of luck on your move.
July 14th, 2011 | 8:53 am
So Fr. Powell–you are right. It is a Wallace-voting song, if perhaps only ambiguously a segregationist song. SHA is a much better SONG (who doesn’t love to hear it?) than that whine by Neil Young, which is doubtless more just. So maybe we can say that SHA is a transition to the defense of the “place” or “sweet home” detached from segregation. (Wallace himself managed to detach his populism from his racism eventually.) I recently heard a hugely talented black guy who just graduated from a local high school and is on his way to the Berklee School of Music play it on the fiddle. And blacks and whites got up and danced at the same time, if not quite together. The best neoconfederate band in a way is THE BAND with Virgil Cain (Stoic/Biblical name) and all that, because whatever they’re defending (as Canadians) is so obviously detached from the injustice of racism.
July 14th, 2011 | 8:57 am
I might add that we should say a lot more about TRAINS–a theme that came up over SUPER 8. And I’m not talking about those super-fast trains that they have in Europe and Japan and other non-reproducing places. The passenger train (with the porter) that goes from town to town is of course just about dead in the South, and so the region is full of beautiful and abandoned (or gentrified for some other purpose) train stations. But we still have lots of FREIGHT TRAINS all day long in Rome, GA, and who doesn’t love to hear THEM?
July 14th, 2011 | 9:20 am
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6166l_video-bob-dylan-1970-east-virginia_music
July 15th, 2011 | 9:14 am
I don’t know quite how accurate it is, but the Drive-by Truckers/Patterson Hood, on SOUTHERN ROCK OPERA, assert that SHA was “in the tradition of Merle Haggard writing ‘Okie from Muskogee’ from his father’s point of view,” as an attempt to give voice (more than defense, even) to Alabama. Which would, if true, mesh fairly well with the ideas of place and the beginning of a separation of its defense from that of segregation as well.
As for return-to-the-South songs, I tend to go through DBT albums, more or less in order, on the drive from Chicago to Kentucky, though I do also like blare some Waylon once I finally get free of Chicago traffic and those awful tollbooths.
July 15th, 2011 | 10:15 am
George Wallace had Lynyrd Skynyrd’s support?! How has this vital piece of information gone unmentioned in all the stuff I’ve read about George Wallace over the years? Not that I go out of my way to study-up on Wallace…but he always pops up in the political histories of WWII-present.
Thanks all for the info and song tips.
July 16th, 2011 | 6:41 am
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July 16th, 2011 | 3:24 pm
“Return of the Grievous Angel” (Gram Parsons) and “Oh My Sweet Carolina” (Ryan Adams), oddly enough, both backed up by Emmylou Harris, are two great ones.
July 17th, 2011 | 7:16 pm
There are an amazing number of songs about the south. “I’m Coming Virginia” is a splendid tune. Bing’s version is tremendous. However, I’ve been in a few conversations about ye olde Melungeons of late and Dr. Plecker and on and on.
On this day I will submit John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” as a great song about the south, depending on where you place W. Virginia, home of the late Senator Byrd. I’ve been thinking of it a whole lot recently, listening to various covers, even one by Toots and the Maytals.
But no one beats John’s version.
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