ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 28, 1996 TAG: 9602280038
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Ben Beagle
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
It is my understanding that certain experts say country music has become suburbanized.
They say country music is no longer a primitive matter of looking at the world through the bottom of a shot glass. They say that morality is the big thing in country music these days.
No more Tammy and George and D-I-V-O-R-C-E? No more honkytonk angels? I'm glad I've just about signed on for the last roundup.
I don't know about suburbia promoting such great moral values, and I'll tell those people one thing: This country wouldn't be where it is today without a couple of good cheatin' songs.
What does your average suburban person know about country music? You ever hear of one of those guys who has a Volvo station wagon and Land Rover listening to a whippoorwill? Or getting lonesome enough to cry? Or...oh, never mind.
I won't say I didn't know this was going to happen. I knew something was wrong the first time I saw drums on the stage at the Grand Ole Opry.
When I was a boy, country music had an Old Testament morality about it. Of course, vinyl siding hadn't been invented, and the Ten Commandments were a lot younger then.
On Arch Street on a summer day in the 1930s, you could hear Roy Acuff through the screen doors singing about the wreck on the highway and whisky and blood mixed together and how nobody was around to pray. That was morality, pal.
These people say that the new country music teaches that you can get over despair and be happy.
Well, despair makes some of us happy. We like Mother Maybelle standing by the window and watching the hearse come to carry her mother away. With gut-wrenching Everyperson music like that, who minds a little despair?
Besides, didn't these people ever hear of A.P. Carter and "Keep on the Sunny Side"?
Even suburban types in the upper five figures have got to love Maybelle trying to stand up and be brave but breaking down at the graveside - the number of Rimsky-Korsakov tapes they have to the contrary.
I know what's happened here. It's those drums we were talking about up there and those country music videos - which make about as much sense as the ones on MTV. Except the haircuts and clothes are usually better on a country video.
See you later. I'm putting on Hank Sr. and that song about the wooden Native American.
LENGTH: Medium: 53 linesby CNB