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Liminal Spaces and Southern Sounds: Gospel, Blues, Country and the Birth of Rock

Your thoughts on the material in this module. What do you think the roots of blues, country and rock say about the potential of liminal spaces to foster the transmission of material culture? What type of liminal spaces do you think exist in the contemporary South and what type of music is emerging from them?

Material:

http://www.jimmierodgers.com/  (Links to an external site.) 

https://seesharppress.wordpress.com/2014/04/06/a-very-brief-history-of-country-music/

http://www.jimmierodgers.com/

https://youtu.be/B2V8HqgraaQ

https://youtu.be/ZSLBgPnYrsU

https://youtu.be/tYcadYXsTyM

https://youtu.be/Dan6idfM6sI




The word liminal comes from the Latin limen which means threshold. It is a place or state between two things. Think of the vampire legends where Dracula is caught between the worlds of the living and the dead – or in the case of the movie poster above, between the past and the future. Less fancifully, think of an open doorway allowing free passage between two spaces.

In a sociological sense a liminal place is one where different social worlds overlap, a doorway that allows people and culture to pass between the boundaries that demarcate social class, gender, religion or race. And it is in such places that some of the most vibrant elements of southern culture are born, certainly that is the case with the subject of this module – the music of the South.

We often think of the segregated South as two worlds strictly divided by color. Yet, liminal places existed even in the midst of segregation. The boundaries between white and black were always more porous than segregationist rhetoric would lead you to believe. Even in the 20th century as whites struggled to maintain a 19th century social order, African Americans and whites worked side-by-side in cotton fields. They hunted and fished together. Their lives intersected at multiple points where elements of material culture – including music -- were shared.

I think of my own family who for four generations fished with a guide named Scott Dunbar, who led fishing groups by day and then entertained at fish fries by night.

Those evenings spent on the banks of an oxbow lake near the Mississippi River were certainly a liminal experience.

A number of night clubs – from cross-road juke joints to sophisticated clubs like the Blue Room in Vicksburg, Mississippi (Links to an external site.) where inter-racial audiences listened to the likes of B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Louis Armstrong, Erskine Hawkins and Little Milton – were liminal spaces.

More than a decade before Alan Freed would begin playing R&B records on a white station in Cleveland, Ohio, a radio station in Florence, Alabama, WLAY, had an open format playing music by white and African American musicians. Talk about liminal spaces, this was a station that hosted live appearances by both blue grass legend Bill Monroe (Links to an external site.) and bluesman Son House (Links to an external site.).

It was in these liminal spaces where country acquired its soul and the blues its country twang, where white and African American gospel musicians traded notes, where the sounds of the South were formed and the seeds of rock and roll were planted.

The Blues originated in the Mississippi Delta, an alluvial flood plain that stretches 200 miles from Vicksburg to Memphis and is 70 miles wide at its broadest point. It was the music of poor African Americans who worked the plantations in this region. A distinctive fusion drawn from spirituals, hymns, and elements of African music, The Blues were little known outside the South until the development of recording studios and the Great Migration took the music to other parts of America. Incredibly vibrant and evocative, this music would eventually be known the world over.

Perhaps the greatest of the Delta bluesmen was Robert Johnson (1911 - 1938). According to legend, Johnson sold his soul to the devil in order to become the greatest blues man of all time. Between 1936 and 1937 he recorded 29 songs that arguably constitute the most influential American musical portfolio of the 20th century. His work influenced rock musicians from Eric Clapton and Keith Richards to Robert Plant to Bob Dylan.

Had it not been for the advent of recording technology and radio, the Delta blues might well have remained a regional art form. But, in an example of the ways in which technology shapes and transmits material culture, the blues captured the imagination of people the world over. And in England, a young generation of musicians that included Eric Clapton and Keith Richards was inspired by this music. In many ways, they were the ones who reintroduced the music to broad audiences in America. Clapton would even record a tribute album to Robert Johnson and duplicate the famous photo of Johnson on its cover.

When I was putting this course together, PBS still had a license to distribute the documentary Rumble. This film tells a remarkable and often overlooked chapter in the history of rock, namely the influence that native American music forms had on everything from jazz and rock-and-roll to heavy metal. However, this documentary is no longer available for free through PBS -- and I already have assigned several feature-length documentaries. So, I'm making it optional. You won't be tested on any of this material, but it is fascinating. I've included a link below to a trailer for the movie. Should you want to watch it, you can rent it from You Tube, Vudu, Amazon, etc.

Gospel, soul, the blues and rock all fuse together in the Muscle Shoals sound. With 13,000 residents in northwest Alabama, Muscle Shoals has had an outsized influence of popular music. Virtually every major recording artist of the late 20th century recorded there -- Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, The Rolling Stones, Tina Turner, Percy Sledge, and the list goes on. To understand the power of liminal spaces watch the documentary Muscle Shoals (2013) directed by Greg "Freddy" Camalier.




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References:

Cobb, James C. 2007. Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Frank, Andrew K. & Malcolm Swanston. 1999. The Routledge Historical Atlas of the American South. New York: Routledge.

Harvey, Paul. 2016.  Christianity and Race in the American South. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.