An Introduction to America’s Music

264 PART 3 | FROM WORLD WAR I THROUGH WORLD WAR II

CREATING HILLBILLY MUSIC

Although hillbilly records were a new phenomenon in the 1920s, the music on

them was purported to be much older. Indeed, marketing terms such as “old-

time music” indicate that the music’s old-fashioned quality was a primary sell-

ing point. But just how old was it?

Addressing that question soon leads to two related ones: Is old-time music

folk music, and are the performers on hillbilly records folk musicians? As chap-

ter 9 has implied, what is or is not folk music depends on what the person who

is doing the asking hopes to fi nd. For some of the song catchers, a folk song had

to be a British ballad of great antiquity; for others, a folk song could be of more

recent origin. But even in the latter case, a folk song had to demonstrate its con-

nection to traditional styles of singing, playing, and songwriting. Even a new

song, in other words, had to sound old.

The key difference between folk music and early country music lies perhaps

not so much in the music itself, nor in the musicians who created it, but in the

goals and attitudes of the outsiders who brought the music to a wider audience.

Folk song collectors framed the music they loved in opposition to the mass-market

popular music of Tin Pan Alley, which was then in its ascendance. Folk music,

they argued, represented an older, purer culture untainted by the commercial-

ism of the twentieth century. Their attitude could not be further from that of

the record industry executives, such as Ralph Peer, who created hillbilly records.

For Peer, who didn’t care for hillbilly music—his disdain is evident in the term

he used for it—the music of rural white southerners was valuable only as a com-

modity that could turn a profi t. Any distinction, then, between the folk music of

rural white southerners and country music, at the moment of its birth, has more

to do with how the music was bought and sold than with its musical features.

But a too-narrow focus on economics obscures what musical differences in fact

existed. Because A&R men cared little about cultural purity, they were willing to

sell to the hillbilly market anything its customers were willing to buy. For that

reason, hillbilly records document the eclectic, wide-ranging tastes of their buy-

ers. Some of the music fi ts neatly into the category of folk, but much of it does

not. To understand the variety of music captured on hillbilly records, it is useful

to consider fi rst how music was disseminated in the rural South at the beginning

of the twentieth century.

SPREADING MUSIC AROUND THE RURAL SOUTH

The most powerful force in creating a shared musical culture throughout the

United States in the nineteenth century was the sheet music industry. But sheet

music’s reach depended on musical literacy, the music lessons that promoted

literacy, and the ownership of musical instruments, especially the piano. Such

advantages were beyond the reach of many Americans, especially in the least

prosperous regions of the country. For a song originally published as sheet music

to reach that population, it had fi rst to enter the oral tradition; simply put, most

poor people could learn a song only by hearing someone else sing it.

Alongside the sheet music industry was a lively tradition of stage musical

entertainment that afforded just such opportunities for disseminating new

songs. Both the minstrel show and its offspring, vaudeville, were primarily

old-time music

folk and country

compared

stage entertainment

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