Unsung Singing

Arguments for Why It's a Good Time to Celebrate the "Year of Music" in Alabama

If I bothered your average man or woman on the street and asked for a definition of Alabama music, what would I hear?

Hillbilly music.

Probably.

Blues music—and stand up straighter.

Yup, that too.

Muscle Shoals soul!

Yes.

To describe Alabama music, those three genres must be named, but they don't, on their own, go far enough.

You get closer if you say: "Hillbilly and blues and soul equal the sound of Alabama."

But closer or not, the bull's-eye remains unpricked.

That's because Alabama's music is all over the map—complex and diverse and impossible to shove into a handy nutshell.

It has to be mentioned that Alabama boasts a long line of jazz virtuosi. And a rambunctious catalog of garage rock. An illustrious heritage of gospel. A star-studded cast of r&b masters and mistresses. A contemporary scene loaded with genre-bending talent.

And so on and so on.

I understand that to survive, facile labels (sharp curve!/foul-tasting!/too hot!/too cold!) must be slapped on just about everything—and quickly.

We also want to be able to step outdoors without being struck numb by stimuli. A walk in which life's details gushed at you democratically would drive you bonkers. If we couldn't simplify things, a face wouldn't be menacing or friendly but its parts: glabella, nasion, rhinion, vestibulum oris, etc.

So, yes, let's classify the world's dangers and fast-rushing stimuli so as to retain health and sanity. But let's recognize that the consequences change when our propensity for categorizing is used on matters knottier than hot or cold. Like art.

You can begin getting a grip on Alabama music by trying to name the most talented musician to hail from the state. If you asked a fair variety of experts for their votes, you wouldn't just get one name. You'd get a lot. Including:

Hank Williams, Sun Ra, Nat King Cole, Candi Staton, Emmylou Harris, Arthur Alexander, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Ballard, W.C. Handy, Drive-By Truckers, Erskine Hawkins, Dan Penn, Percy Sledge, The Treniers, Spooner Oldham, The Louvin Brothers, Martha Reeves, Boyd Bennett, The Temptations, The Drifters, The Commodores, The O'Jays, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Big Mama Thornton, Cow Cow Davenport, Lucky Millinder, Travis Wammack, Wilson Pickett, Dorothy Love Coates, Jake Hess, Jimmy Murphy, Sandy Posey, Hank Penny, James Reese Europe, Steve Young, and so on and so on and so on.

All of these artists represent Alabama, but good luck trying to cram them into one category. The best you'd be able to come up with is something like: The "They-all-come-from-Alabama-and-they-are-all-great-but-they-all-sound-different-from-one-another" category.

I dote on the complexity and variety of the sublime frequencies we label Southern music. The stuff never ceases to replenish or astonish me. You can't get to the bottom of Southern music, and the deeper you go, the more you realize its vastness—and rewards. Often it works the other way. Often if you dig deep into something, you end up heart-broke.

But art seems to survive, if not thrive, on scrutiny, on probing. I still ponder the insight Morgan Freeman had about the way in which Hollywood handles the South: They make movies, he said, that are "teeming with old wounds and wrongs," while ignoring "what keeps it glued together here."

What keeps it glued together here is the other part of the story—the beauty behind the scenes.

A variation on this theme might be what the hero of Kent Priestley's piece says in this issue: "There's so much knowledge in the world that if you tried to take it all on at once it would crush you. It would take probably a hundred lifetimes to address all of the stuff that would be interesting to learn about."

You could test the truth of that statement in a number of ways. For example: That paragraph up above with the names of all those Alabama-born musical masters? Not one of those essential artists appears on the Alabama music CD you will find in this issue.

Does this mean we think Sun Ra and Dorothy Love Coates suck? No, friends, we do not. (In fact, the two artists have indestructible value—as do the others on the list—and were on previous OA CDs.) The implication is simply that it'd be impossible to convey Alabama's musical depth without...one hundred CDs! A single CD can't capture the vastness. Not even close.

So why are we doing this one CD if it's an exercise in futility?

Well, for starters, you can fail and achieve excellence at the same time. You wouldn't, after all, deny an athlete's excellence just because the scoreboard says a loss happened. (If you would, I'd challenge you to go five minutes with the "loser" of a heavyweight bout.) Samuel Beckett: "Try Again. Fail again. Fail better." William Shawn: "Falling short of perfection is a process that just never stops."

But other than being clearheaded about the hopelessness of heaving the entirety of Alabama music into a single CD, we had other reasons for continuing with this brash undertaking of putting at least some Alabama magic on an OA CD.

It's fun. Unshackled, fly-by-your-seats, roller-coaster fun. To jigger, and to shift around, and play with, the endless possibilities that could go into making a really great party mix of Alabama music is, for some of us, like being in the driver's seat of the universe for a few turns.

Beyond the fun factor, we have an academic defense for our attempt: The OA Bama CD means to suggest that beyond the greatness of the well-known names, there is greatness residing in lesser-known, or just downright forgotten, names. (We've placed a few famous acts on the CD, but most are "obscure.") It's almost as if each obscure artist on the CD is a playful taunt: If we don't know this nifty artist, whom else don't we know?

The idea that there is more artistic greatness out there in the world than we know about is what I call good news.

And why shouldn't we ponder, or even celebrate, good news? Just because it's trendy to believe that only badness and negativity constitute "news," and anything else is unworthy of serious attention, we shouldn't accept such thinking as if it were God's ultimatum.

But if we want to see our day, or others, as eras of pure ugliness, fine. But we must still admit that great art is often created in times of ugliness (certainly that's when a lot of Southern art came into being). What's remarkable is that there's still more worthy art from those times that hasn't yet gotten its proper due, that hasn't yet been entered into the record books, that maybe hasn't even been discovered. We have to dig a little, or a lot, to get to this less-known art, but that only proves that it is reachable.

As a thought-experiment, or provocation, I want to call out more Alabama artists who, just as with the first group, are not on this year's OA CD, but who are just as fervently recommended:

Cleveland Eaton (of Birmingham, the smoothest bassist of all time?), Fred Wesley (of Mobile, who led James Brown's funky horn group), Mitty Collier (of Birmingham, a breathy vocalist who recorded a staggering number of classic tunes for Chess Records), Eddie Floyd (of Montgomery, who's well-known for "Knock on Wood" but should be better known for many others), Frankie "Half-Pint" Jaxon (of Montgomery, a trail-blazing blues & r&b shouter who did a little cross-dressing on the side), Teddy Hill (of Birmingham, a grossly underrated big-band leader), Little Sonny (of Greensboro, a demon on the harmonica and vocals who plays it both funky and bluesy), and...Nolan Strong and The Dexateens and Jimmy Jones and The Candymen and Travis & Bob and Nelson Williams and Cliff Nobles and Marion Worth and Ray Agee and The Carter Brothers and Lee Maye and Linda Manning and Gus & Bobo Jenkins and The Distortions and Ernie Ashworth and Felt and The Phantom and Jeanne Pruett and The Heavenly Gospel Singers and String & the Beans and Jo Jones and Dud & Paul Bascomb and Terry Fell and Jerry Woodard and Johnny Smith and Zeke Clements and Tom Reeves and Lawrence Shaul and Stone Country and Billy Bang and The Primitons and Tommy Spurlin and Rabe Perkins and Melba Montgomery and Wanda Wayne and Whitey Pullen and, hell, have you heard Jim Nabors's version of "Wichita Lineman"? It's really quite great and...I must cease—even though there are many more to go. This list business is for idle dandies.

I'll point out, though, that we are currently devoting our website to artists we couldn't fit on the CD. We do this from an excess of enthusiasm for Alabama music. If you can handle the possibility of getting lost in the mere wonderment of it all, please visit oxfordamerican.org for more music, more articles, and plenty of Top 10s, videos, and funky surprises.

So yeah, yeah, yeah, no single CD can encompass the totality of Alabama music. Nonetheless, we are grateful for this opportunity to fail at perfection, and we are hopeful that the CD we have been able to put together is a good way to get the party moving.

Once again, we realize that our Music Issue and CD couldn't be accomplished without a swarm of lovable people: musicians, songwriters, book writers, magazine writers, producers, managers, labels, advertisers, even some lawyers. You will find their names dropped throughout the issue, in both prominent and subtle places, but the fact is, we couldn't do this alone and we thank, with sincerity, everybody who helped (many of whom are Alabamians). We love how great music brings people together. It really does.

In addition, specific Alabama groups helped light our way. Joe Reddick and his fellow fanatics from Birmingham Record Collectors and The Alabama Record Collectors Association proved to be incredibly helpful. When you need trustworthy guides, I say seek out art geeks. (Thank you, Mike Burnett, for your sweet-sounding archives.) The word on the street, by the way, is that the annual Birmingham Record Collectors' Show has surpassed the Austin Record Convention as the throw-down of the year. I've not been to the Austin gig, but last year's Birmingham Show was indeed a mind-blower; I'll vouch for that much. Debbie Bond and friends at the Alabama Blues Project are spot-on in believing that Alabama's blues deserves the attention of our ears. Some of the blues artists I've learned to love in the past year are: Edward Thompson, Ed Bell, Wild Child Butler, Jaybird Coleman, Eddie Kirkland, Jerry McCain, and that's just scratching the surface. The Alabama Center for Traditional Culture in Montgomery is multifaceted and energetic and we're glad it exists. The Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in Birmingham excited the hell out of me, frankly. They've got items that I've never seen anywhere else. Once they are able to display their immense archives online, the world will be a better-looking place. The Alabama Music Hall of Fame in Tuscumbia is definitely worth a visit. We also found their website, especially the platform called "Alabama's Music Achievers," to contain more important names in Alabama music history than any other single source.

I know this is reading like a got-dang prize acceptance, but every time I start zeroing in on the Music Issue, I can't stop thinking about our readers, without whom, of course, there is nothingness. While art will always be made, even in the absence of an audience, it's also true that the very act of art appreciation has power. That's why I advocate viewing art in front of your kids, or with them. The art that holds us in its sway usually has nothing to do with: money, celebrity, party politics, race, or ugliness. Our kids need practice in how to identify and enjoy such freedom.

Now dig it!