"'All I gotta do is act naturally, ' Buck Owens sang, and Pamela
Fox knows where the acting comes in. From early hillbilly acts to
alt.country, "Natural Acts" lays bare, with wide-ranging
scholarship and incisive analysis, the ideologies of authenticity
on which country music rests. As engrossing and useful as any book
I know on country music."
---Eric Lott, author of "Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and
the American Working Class"
"The first completely mature book of country music historical
criticism. It is a deep investigation of country music's power to
articulate the displaced pleasures and anxieties of a society
wracked by structural change. Historically rigorous, Fox uncovers
documents that demonstrate the ongoing power of minstrelsy in barn
dance programs across the country past World War II; musically and
lyrically astute, she shows how the best honky-tonk music
simultaneously critiques the dangers of that setting while
seductively luring listeners to those sawdust and alcohol drenched
environments; with her ear attuned to the formal complexities of
autobiography, Fox directs our attention to the contradictory
performance of identity that characterizes the life stories of Reba
McEntire, Naomi Judd, Dolly Parton, and others. "Natural Acts" is
provocative, stunning, and engagingly written. Country music
studies has come of age."
---Barry Shank, The Ohio State University
Whether found in country barn dances, the plaintive twang of
Hank Williams, the glitzy glamour of Dolly Parton, or the
country-pop sound of Faith Hill, country music has always
maintained an allegiance to its own authenticity. Its specific
sounds and images have changed over the past century, but country
music has consistently been associated with rusticity, a notion
connected to the working class and rooted in ideals like unspoiled
rural life and values and humble origins. The music suggests not
only uncomplicated musical arrangements and old-time instruments
such as the banjo and fiddle, but performers who identify with
their everyday fans.
"Natural Acts" explores the ways that country
musicians---particularly women artists---have established a
"natural" country identity. Pamela Fox focuses on five revealing
moments in country performance: blackface comedy during country
music's "Golden Age" of pre-1945 radio and stage programming; the
minstrel's "rube" or hillbilly equivalent in the same period;
postwar honky-tonk music and culture; the country star memoir or
autobiography of the '80s and '90s; and the recent roots phenomenon
known as alt.country.
Pamela Fox is Associate Professor of English and Director of the
Women's and Gender Studies Program at Georgetown University. She is
the author of "Class Fictions: Shame and Resistance in the British
Working-Class Novel, 1890-1945" and coeditor (with Barbara Ching)
of "Old Roots, New Routes: The Cultural Politics of Alt.Country
Music."
Photo: Lulu Belle Wiseman and Red Foley, 1930s. Courtesy of
Country Music Hall of Fame (R) and Museum.
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