Customer Reviews

Ramblin' Rose: The Life and Career of Rose Maddox

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ever since I saw a PBS documentary on Woody Guthrie about 15 years ago, I was anxious to find more on Rose Maddox, someone who got a brief mention on the show for her radio show with Guthrie in the Central California Valley.

Since then, I've become a big fan of her bluegrass collaborations and the dusty, hard-scrabble existence they evoke. Her plain as dirt reading of classic folk & bluegrass songs is clearly one prototype (along with Hazel Dickens) for singers like X's Exene Cervenkova, who seek to convey the joy and dignity of American country music to new generations.

Reading about the incredibly tenacious Maddox family during the Dust Bowl days is actually more about that period in American history than it is merely just Rose's musical story. One need not be a fan of the music to regard her incredible tale with awe. It is a story about overcoming odds, about remaining irrepressible in the face of tumult and poverty, and having the wisdom to trust in what brings you joy.

"Ramblin' Rose" should be required reading for anyone interested in the history of the Okie migration to the West Coast. Its vivid portrait of Rose's own life becomes the telling of universal human truths.

This biography of West Coast country pioneer Rose Maddox is not to be missed. Actually, it's a rather heart-wrenching story: despite the phenomenal success of her family's kickass country band (Rose Maddox and the Maddox Brothers), Rose herself had a terribly hard life. Shrewishly dominated by her mother, screwed over by her first husband, and unable to sit still long enough to enjoy her family life, she struggled for decades to try and find equilibrium and independence. Reading about such a talented person being so unable to assert herself for so long is a rather painful experience. Yet the book is also a compelling history of one of the great hillbilly bands of all time: beloved by country and rockabilly fans alike, the Maddoxes were one of the most popular hard country acts of the 1940s and early '50s. They played everything in hyperdrive and did much to sculpt the sound of rocknroll, as well as the late '50s hard country revival in Bakersfield. Whiteside does a great job conveying what it was like working in the honkytonk bars, and the informal nature of the scene back then. Sadly, Rose Maddox passed away in early 1998, but this book is a fine tribute.

The book deservedly won the 1998 Association for Recorded Sound Collections annual award for biography. Rose Maddox's story is a fascinating one, and Jonny Whiteside provides an engaging narrative that covers Rose's life, and the rise of the Maddox Brothers and Rose, very well. Interviews in the book also provide important information about the rise of country music on the west coast in the mid twentieth century. Highly recommended!

I give one star to the author for his anecdotes about Rose Maddox's colorful mother and another star for his descriptions of the hootenannys where the Maddox family performed. But the rest of the book is too gossipy. And the prose style is too nerdy. Is this book about country & western music or ain't it ?

Who cares if Johnny Cash made a pass at Rose when they were both young and obscure ? We've heard so many times on Larry King Live about Mr. Cash's pharmaceutical drug problem and we've seen the poster in which he gives the finger to music industry executives. But we never hear about him lusting after another woman besides June Carter, daughter of Maybelle Carter. Let's keep it that way. If the author wants to smear people, why isn't he straightforward about it ? He could start a new version of the National Enquirer based in Nashville.

Rose Maddox in her declining years as an active performer was a somewhat tragic figure as is often the case with petered out seminal performers, who had otherwise faded from the stage for all the usual reasons. All to often these days obscure figures such as Maddox are coaxed out of their private retreats from the brutal carnival of greed and political power- brokering that is the reality of the entertainment business in the pressure cooker of hype, nepotism, and good looks which characterizes show business in America today. Rose Maddox knew the appeal that the cachet of turn of the century speech in Alabama had and continues to have for the now fifth and even sixth generation native Calif- ornians whose grandparents and great-grand par- ents migrated West from not only Alabama but Tennessee, Texas, Oaklahoma, Kansas Etc. as the well known song Do Re Mi, from the pen of Woody Guthrie, attested to. This biography even in- cludes a preface of sorts written by the great bard of the Dustbowlers himself. Knowing as she did that the appeal of C&W music lies not in the notes sounded to the four- harmony of Southern Gospel musical traditions, but rather in the well turned phrase and the druggy mannerisms of folk-heros like Hank Williams or the causual guitar slinging style of Merle Haggard coupled with Hag's own weird persona on stage.This biography even goes out of its way to tell us Haggard was one of the pall-bearers at Fred Maddox's funeral. Point being most of what this ragbag of memorabilia boils down to, is the same thing Rose herself came to learn, namely that the ledgends of the present are just rehashed, stirred up and spruced up versions of the ledgends of the past.To me there's nothing wrong with show business myths, they serve to preserve and perpetuate ingroup social mores and most of the major racial and ethnic groups prominent in modern-day America have them. My goal is here to simply point out that myths are being perpetuated here, but of course myths are the meat of what is consumed in today.

Rose Maddox was a sadly overlooked influence on rock & roll vocal styles. Those who listened to her before they became famous include Janis Joplin. This book ignores that fact, but a still-in-print 1985 Joplin bio by David Dalton reveals it. (Janis and her legendary Austin friend Ken Threadgill called her "Rosie Maddox.") I don't know if later female rockers such as Stevie Nicks or Patti Smith ever mentioned Rose's name publicly. But we know that 1950s country helped launch rockabilly, allowing singer-guitarists like Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings to cross over on the pop charts, and we know they were familiar with Rose and her family.

Bravo to Mr. Whiteside for his stated goal of paying tribute to Ms. Maddox even if it warrants a minor publishing company and small bookstore and mail-order profits. But shame on him for including so much sensationalism. Who cares about Rose's husband walking all over her and undermining her self-confidence? Many women put up with that in the pre-feminist era.

Also, Mr. Whiteside rambles on so much about the music industry's avoidance of her name in the 70s, 80s and 90s that you wonder about his attitude. He sounds like a very intelligent person with contacts in his longtime home of Southern California who prefers talk to action. During all those years he worked on the book why didn't he do something to get Rose on a nationwide cable channel?

If he wanted to give her her due in American music history, he would have had to pick up the telephone, visit a certain restaurant and sell her to the right people. You get the feeling from his prose that he devoted all his energy to the book and then once it came out his attitude became "Buy my book" instead of "Would you like an excellent programming idea? You'd have a television monopoly on it."

Mr. Whiteside spent a lot of time with Rose, so he had to have known she wouldn't live to be ninety. He should have known his book wasn't nearly enough to get her on cable television, but his publishing deal evidently gave him a swelled head. He got his money, so why network with entertainment brokers like Joel Schumacher or Barry Levinson? What are they, phony or something? Lots of people are phony. By violating the non-phony Rose Maddox's privacy and dignity, Mr. Whiteside is doing the same stupid thing as those who profit from immortalized giants of yesteryear like Elvis, Hank Williams Sr., Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday.

If a media blitz makes the music easily available to millions, then they can overlook the dirty gossip about personal problems. But if all one has is a book by Jonny Whiteside and an obscure CD that requires four weeks of shipping and handling, then one is forced to look at the dirt without hearing the sweet sounds.

The same problem surrounded Mr. Whiteside's earlier attempt to revive the singer and sex symbol Johnnie Ray as a milestone in American music history. Johnnie suffered even worse oblivion than Rose because he died five years before the Whiteside book hit the market. Mr. Whiteside interviewed this singer in 1989 more than once and sat on the project while Johnnie's health failed. Five years later bookstores offered an "alternative" account of homosexual sex connected with Johnnie's music that required four weeks of shipping and handling. That was late 1994 and 1995. Where is Johnnie's music in 2002? Still four weeks away. Translation: a few retirement villages.

When you make your next attempt at preservation, Mr. Whiteside, use your noggin. You seem to idolize aging talented people who can't think for themselves, promote themselves or get attached to "a Colonel Tom Parker." They embody the naivete and "Let sleeping dogs lie" attitude of White America in the 1950s. So you have to help them. Please do it better. I would if I could afford white skin, a home in Burbank and a car that endures freeways. My Internet access by itself does nothing.