Images of the South: Constructing a Regional Culture on Film and Video (review)

Reviews515 piece. Lipscomb's version is actually derived from a recording by Lonnie Johnson. The white musician Jimmie Rodgers is said to have passed through Navasota in 1922, even though he was still a railroad brakeman in Mississippi at this time. It's much more likely that he came there in the early 1930s after taking residence in nearby Kerrville, Texas. Alyn says that Rodgers became known as the "Blue Brakeman," when in fact he was known as the "singing brakeman" and "America's blue yodeler." John A. Lomax is called "the cofounder of modern American folklore as a disciplined study." Lomax was certainly an early American folklorist, but he was by no means the first. (And who was the other cofounder?) Alyn says that Lipscomb was receiving a Social Security check in 1956 at the age of 61 at a time when Lyndon Johnson was trying to get a Civil Rights act passed by Congress. Both facts appear to be about eight or nine years too early. He calls American blues researcher Sam Charters an Englishman and mentions a Monterey Pop Festival in 1962 or 1963, though this event actually took place in 1967. No effort seems to have been made to check Lipscomb's family history against census or court records, and some of Lipscomb 's own statements appear to be the result of poor memory that could have been corrected by a knowledgeable editor. He claims that he helped Blind Willie Johnson to tune his guitar in Navasota before World War One, even though Johnson would only have been a teenager at the time. Lipscomb attributes two Memphis Minnie songs inconectly to Bessie Smith, with no correction offered by Alyn. The song "Angel Child" is said to have been heard in the fields in 1917, but in fact it is derived from a later commercial recording. Many of Lipscomb's songs are derived from the records of other artists, though he claimed them himself and his claims are repeated in the song list at the end of the book. Lipscomb even claims that Bob Dylan stole two songs from him and is supported in this claim by Alyn, when in fact the two songs are based on earlier recordings by Washboard Sam and Roosevelt Sykes. These kinds of errors seriously weaken this otherwise worthwhile and interesting book, particularly for readers with a special interest in Lipscomb's music. The author must, of course, bear the ultimate responsibility, but some of the mistakes are so glaring that one wonders why they weren't caught in the publisher's editorial process. Images of the South: Constructing a Regional Culture on Film and Video. Edited by Karl G. Heider. University of Georgia Press, 1993. 207 pp. Cloth, $32.00; paper, $16.00. Reviewed by Ruth A. Banes, associate professor ofAmerican Studies at the University ofSouth Florida. Her publications include "Dixie's Daughters: The Country Music Female" in You Wrote My Life: Lyrical Themes in Country Music. She L· currently writing an article entitled "Bayard Wootten: Commercial Photographer within a Context ofCultural Intervention." In his autobiographical Tristes Tropique ([1955] 1973) structural anthropologist Claude LéviStrauss lamented that societies appropriate for anthropological study were rapidly disappearing , partially because of contacts with outsiders, including anthropologists. This may have been true, but as Heider's book shows, anthropologists have vastly expanded their approaches and are substantially redefining their subject matter. Anthropology is becoming interdisciplinary and may be difficult to distinguish from American studies, history, education, or literature. Some anthropologists are filmmakers; others write fiction. Accordingly , this anthology presents eleven very different selected papers from the 1991 meeting 516Southern Cultures of the Southern Anthropological Society. All explore the mythic South(s) depicted/constructed in popular culture, especially through drawings, documentary and feature films, folklore, photographs, and video. Most of the essays include black and white photographs, which enliven the text and help to persuade the reader. The authors label their work "visual anthropology." "Fictions From the Studios," the first and strongest part of the book, shows how the boundaries between anthropology, literature, geography, and American studies seem to be shifting. Correspondingly, definitions of the South and southern cultures are more inclusive. The authors define the...