Linthead Stomp: The Creation of Country Music in the Piedmont South (review)

In the past ten years, country music scholarship has focused on reassessing the Malone thesis; that is, revising the narrative of country music first published by Bill C. Malone, in his iconic Country Music U.S.A. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968). Patrick Huber's Linthead Stompfollows that wealth of books. Contrary to Malone, Huber claims a greater influence for Piedmont musicians on country music in general. He also asserts that the music was a product not of rural areas (although rural cultures would still influence the sound of the music), but of the industrial mechanisms that dominated the South in the 1920s. Because Piedmont textile mills dominated the industrial South, Huber argues, the music produced there became the core of what were early versions of country music, and was a profound influence on the country music that later followed.

Country music scholars typically focus on biographies of musicians to identify the personal and cultural roots that made the music possible. Huber is no different, focusing on the biographies of five musicians: Fiddlin' John Carson, Charlie Poole, Dave McCarn, and Howard and Dorsey Dixon (the Dixon Brothers). To document those musicians, he moves beyond liner notes and discographies to examine a substantial number of newspapers, private collections (most notably Archie Green's interviews with Dorsey Dixon), government documentaries (census records are a core part of the book), and a substantial number of oral interviews with surviving relatives (Dave McCarn's son, Johnny, for instance) to form his conclusions.

Those conclusions may surprise some. Contrary to Carson autobiographer Gene Wiggins ( Fiddlin' Georgia Crazy, [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987]), who portrayed Fiddlin' John as a mountaineer who stumbled on fame and fortune, for example, Huber argues that Carson consciously used modern industrial practices, especially new media like radio and records, to build his career, making him more of a musical entrepreneur than a hillbilly just off the farm. Charlie Poole's ability to perform a broad range of musical styles newly available allowed him to integrate those sounds with his experiences in the textile mills or, more accurately, his desire to avoid them. "Cotton Mill Colics," a specialty of Dave McCarn's, entered into the musical protest vernacular that followed textile workers out on strike in the 1920s and 1930s while Dorsey Dixon's tragic ballads, such as "Wreck on the Highway," questioned whether this new world of music, media, and mills was worth the cost to families and religious values, an ironic song for a group of men who all struggled with depression, alcoholism, and unemployment.

If one were to read only the text, one might question Huber's 1942 date for the end of Piedmont influence on hillbilly music. Proof for that assertion lies more in his substantial appendix A where Huber identifies 128 artists who were both textile mill workers and musicians between 1923 and 1942. The lack of gender analysis in the book, except for one section in the McCarn chapter where Huber probes his lyrical analysis of flapper values, is troubling. His focus on men without understanding how music made them manly is one flaw in the book. Another is the lack of discussion about women, especially Moonshine Kate who was Fiddlin' John Carson's daughter, and their role in this new musical world. Still, Linthead Stompis a good book that should be a part of any book collection, particularly for Huber's focus on the Southern industrial relations that made the music possible.