Customer Reviews

Sing Me Back Home: Love, Death, and Country Music

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

OK, I admit it. When it comes to real country music, and those whom I believe truly appreciate it as the art form that it is, I am prejudiced. Never in a million years would I believe that some guy from New Hampshire, a writer and editor for the New York Times, of all the newspapers in the word, for crying out loud, would know much about the real thing; no way would someone with that background actually understand the music and those who created it. Well, that was before I read Sing Me Back Home, by Dana Jennings, who is exactly the guy I just described.

I want to apologize, Mr. Jennings, and I salute you, sir.

Sing Me Back Home is not a straight forward history of country music. Books like those serve their purpose, certainly, and there are many worthy ones out there already that take that approach. Jennings, on the other hand, turns the history of country music into something very personal: a way to share his own family story.

As most country music historians (and knowledgeable fans) agree, the years from the late forties to the very end of the sixties mark the period of classic country music. The music reached its peak during those years and has faced a steady, downhill slide since 1970 with the exception of a small (and poorly rewarded) group of pickers and singers that refuses to let classic country music completely disappear. But, overall, country music has probably never been in a sorrier state than it is in today. According to Jenkins, in fact, "It can be entertaining, but the difference between today's country and the summits of the 1950s and `60s is the difference between the lightning and the lighting bug."

As Jennings puts it, "country music was made by poor people for poor people." At its best, country music reflected, and maybe even justified, the lives endured by the rural poor who lived all around the United States, not just those from the South or the mountains and coal-producing regions of the Southeast. It is the history of working people, those who made livings with their hands, often at the sacrifice of their health or even their lives, during those two decades. Nothing for them came easy and, when they finally made it to Saturday night, they became walking, talking country songs themselves. They lived the cheating songs and the drinking songs; they spent time in prison, went hungry in the bad times, hit the road out of desperation or despair, had love affairs end badly, and repented on Sunday mornings with the full knowledge that they would backslide again come the very next Saturday night.

But what makes Sing Me Back Home so memorable is the way that Dana Jennings readily fits a member of his own family to every kind of classic country song there is. He lived it - and he remembers it because it made him the man that he is today despite the fact that he sits behind a desk at the New York Times. Song by song, the reader meets members of Jennings' family who could easily have been the inspirations for those same songs because, not only did these folks love and surround themselves with country music, they lived the lifestyle at its heart.

For those of us of a certain age, and of a certain upbringing, this book is like preaching to the choir. We already knew this deep down in our souls. But having someone as frank, and just as importantly, as articulate, as Dana Jennings come along to tell the real story of country music's golden age and how its listeners related to those songs, is a real bonus.

Sing Me Back Home fits longtime country music fans like an old glove. But the book is also a perfect primer for those newer fans who wonder about the country music legends that are barely more than names to them today. In fact, the discography at the end of the book is worth its whole $24 dollar cover price. Those willing to spend the money and time required to surround themselves with the albums and box sets listed by Jennings in that discography will learn more about the history of America's working class than they could ever learn from any textbook.

Despite what David Allan Coe says to the contrary, I do not believe in the perfect country music song. But there just might be a perfect country music book. If so, this is it.

For anyone who thinks country music begins and ends with Kenny Chesney, here's your reality check. Part autobiography, part music appreciation course, the author gives the reader a lean, mean lesson in what country music -- in its Golden Age -- was all about. Far more than just twangy songs about drinking and cheating, the country music of those times and artists tied the music to the poorest, the marginalized, the most helpless of Americans. The prose is eloquent and evocative, yet sparse as a meal in the Depression. Also funny, biting, and wryly witty at times. The author reminds us, too, that country music didn't stem solely from, nor was it intended solely for the people of the rural south. Instead, artists like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Faron Young, the Louvin Brothers, Connie Smith, et al, were all people who came up from hardscrabble lives & times, and their music resonated with people everywhere who suffered from deprivation, whether the listeners lived in Kingston, New Hampshire, or Stollings, West Virginia. The music of our youth evokes the people, the pain, the loves, the losses, and the emotions of our youth. Like the author, I had turned away from country music during my youth, and when I returned to it later in life I found that there isn't any (almost none, anyway) country music anymore. No more fiddle, no more steel, no more twang. Honesty? Fuhgeddaboudit!

This book reminded me in so many ways of the music I love, but more than that, it brought back the people I loved most and who are no longer with me. Yeah, this book was a trip down memory lane for me, but it also felt like validation for the appreciation I've put into this kind of music. And it's a great tool for beginners who want to learn what the Golden Age of country music really sounded like, and where to begin listening.

Like the author, I was a yankee (New Jersey in my case, NH in his) who grew up in a poor white family whose main musical preference was country. I am older than the author, and his 1960's experiences were my '50's memories. My family was maybe a bit less broke, a bit more functional despite the presence of a lot of drinking. But Hank Williams and Slim Whitman and Eddy Arnold and the Sons of the Pioneers and Gene Autry and Roy Rogers and Jimmy Wakely and Red Foley and Tex Ritter were on our turntable all the time. Auto mechanics directly, and auto racing indirectly, and fishing and hunting and target shooting were the big recreational events of my youth. My folks had schooling that stopped at fourth grade for my orphaned dad and sixth grade for my ma. There were sporadic tragedies involving guns and cars and divorces and diseases and feuds in my extended clan. Dana Jennings has written about this kind of childhood, punctuated by what is now called "classic country music" and I identified with almost all of what he went through and what he thinks about it. Like him, I escaped into journalism. Despite our similar backgrounds, I could not have written nearly as well about my family as he wrote about his own. I think he did a grand job in this effort.

I enjoyed the country music part of the book; but I was disappointed in the portrayal of the extended Jennings family. I never felt like I got to know any of the family members. They came across as flat, one-dimensional people who led shallow lives of drinking, having sex, and shooting rats at the dump. I kept hoping one of them would do something that had some socially redeeming significance, like maybe robbing a bank or something, but that never happened.

I finished the book about two weeks ago and the only person I can remember is Grammy Jennings. And the only thing I remembered about Grammy was that she liked big men and lots of sex. Not exactly a memorable family portrait. I found myself wanting to know about the author and his journey from hanging out with the misfits, malcontents, and ne'er-do-wells of his youth to hanging out with the misfits, malcontents, and ne'er-do-wells at the New York Times. But the author chose not to reveal much of himself. I think it would have been a better book if he had.

Jennings has a love, knowledge and appreciation of country music and it shows. He writes about the working-class roots of country music, and the drinking , infidelity and the honky-tonk angels of country music songs. Millions of country music fans would agree with the author when he calls prison songs the third leg of country music. I disagree. Yes, Johnny Cash recorded a lot of prisons songs; and to a lesser extent, so did Merle Haggard. But once you get past Cash and Haggard, prison songs are hard to find. Jennings names some but there just aren't that many. I'm not saying that George Jones, Willie Nelson, Hank Snow, Hank Thompson, Red Foley and a score of other country music singers never recorded a prison song. I'm just saying, if they did, I can't think of any. They just aren't there.

The granddaddy of prison songs is aptly named "The Prisoner's Song" - If I had the wings of an angel, over these prison walls I would fly. Mac Wiseman did "Doin' Time". Hank Williams only wrote one prison song that I know of - "Lonesome Whistle Blues". "I'll be locked here in this cell till my body's just a shell and my hair turns whiter than snow. No more to see that girl of mine I'm in Georgia doin' time. I got that lonesome whistle blues." And when Hank Williams moans the word "lonesome", lonesome has 43 syllables. Okay, so it's only 27 syllables. I have a tendency to exaggerate.

One of the reasons why people think there's a lot of country music songs about prison is because they will hear a country song and think it's a prison song when it's not. For instance, the song "If I Shot Her When I Met Her I'd Be Out of Jail by Now" isn't a prison song. It's a commentary about the existential essence of the human condition - country music style; much like the penetrating insight Bobby Bare gave us when he sang that he never went to bed with an ugly woman but he sure woke up with a few.

Jennings points out that there probably won't be many more prison songs as there's no one around anymore with the gravitas of Johnny Cash. What you have today is a bunch of crossover lightweights. I agree. Also, you have to consider that the image of people in prison has changed; and I don`t think country music wants to go there. Back in the day, the image of people in prison was one of hard white men who led hard lives, such as James Cagney and George Raft. Today the image of people in prison is one of inked-up losers of every race, color, creed and whatever psychiatric disorder you care to name. Today Hank Williams would have to write, "I'm locked here in this cell with the Bloods, and the Crips and the Mexican Mafia and the Aryan Brotherhood till my body's just a shell and my hair turns whiter than snow. No more to see that girl of mine; I'm somebody's bitch just doing time. I got the lonesome whistle blues." No, I don't think country music wants to go there.

One more thing, the author includes Johnny Cash's "Busted" among the prison songs. It's a song about rural poverty, not prison. " I got a big stack of bills and the baby needs shoes and I'm busted. Cotton is down to a dollar a pound and I'm busted. I got a cow that went dry and a hen that won't lay; and a big stack of bills that gets bigger each day. And the county's gonna haul my belongings away and I'm busted. "

God bless county music.

Dana Jennings tells what Country Music means to him and the people he grew up with in New Hampshire. New Hampshire? Is that the Dana Jennings who is an editor at The New York Times, was interviewed on NPR about his ongoing battle with cancer, and who writes novels under the name of Dana Andrew Jennings? Yes, it is, but in Sing Me Back Home he gets in touch with his inner hillbilly, expressing himself in poetic prose that still sounds like a good ole boy, albeit one with a very large vocabulary. It is part memoir, part sociology thesis, part Country Music appreciation course.

Jennings makes an excellent case that Country Music from 1940 to 1970 was at its peak, and has gone downhill since then. I tend to agree with him, but think that great Country Music is still being created, but not the commercial, watered down, saccharine sounds coming out of Nashville and winning the Country Music Association awards, made for people with weak viscera or none at all. He also contends that the rural areas of New Hampshire and other parts of the US of A where people are poor, not just the South, are just as much a part of the Red Neck Diaspora as 'Bama, Texas, and Oklahoma. And what about Bakersfield? It is only 100 miles from Hollywood, yet it's the birthplace of Merle Haggard and The Bakersfield Sound.

In the course of telling the story of Country Music, his own story gradually emerges: He got good grades and went to college, so he didn't quite fit in, but in spite of his ability to appreciate Coltrane and Cabernet, he would really rather crack a cold one, kick back in the dark, and listen to Hag. As Jeff Foxworthy might say, "If your house has wheels, and your car don't, Dana Jennings, you just might be a Redneck."

June 4, 2008, 8:54 am

New York Times Website
Living With Music:
A Playlist by Dana Jennings

On Wednesdays, this blog is the delivery vehicle for "Living With Music," a playlist of songs from a writer or some other kind of book-world personage.

This week: Dana Jennings, an editor at the Escapes section of the New York Times, and the author of "Sing Me Back Home: Love, Death, and Country Music."

10 Out of 20 from Dana Jennings's June 2008 Playlist:

1. I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, Hank Williams.

The Complete Hank Williams

2. It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels, Kitty Wells.

The best of Kitty Wells: Millenium Collection

4. Home of the Blues, Johnny Cash.

The Essential Johnny Cash 1955-1983

5. There Stands the Glass, Webb Pierce.

Honky Tonk Songs: 22 Country Hits

6. Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young, Faron Young.

The Classic Years 1952-62

7. Mom and Dad's Waltz, Lefty Frizzell.

Life's Like Poetry

8. Honky Tonk Man, Johnny Horton.

Johnny Horton - 1956-1960

14. She's Got You, Patsy Cline.

The Patsy Cline Story

15. Hungry Eyes, Merle Haggard.

Down Every Road

18. Pardon Me, I've Got Someone to Kill, Johnny Paycheck.

The Lost Masters: Collection

This is a wonderful joyride through personal memoir courtesy of the souped-up hot rod of the history of country music. The writing is not elegant: it's raw as moonshine, honest as the love of a good dog, and full of the sort of knowledge only a true enthusiast can have. Jennings is the sort of storyteller that pulled people from one house to another once, the kind that keeps everyone leaning forward, sitting only on the front edge of chair, couch, stool, or upturned apple box. This is a single sitting book, one of those that goes from 0-80 in a paragraph, and then doesn't slow down, even for curves--especially for curves. Highly recommended.

The voice in Dana Jenning's SING ME BACK HOME is accessible, open, brave and candid. I couldn't put it down!

I grew up in upstate New York on the Canadian border in the 50's and can remember listening to Country music in the 40's, actually. It was MY music! I was sixteen in 1957 when the author was born. I had about three years of guitar under my belt by then and had switched to Rockabilly but the love of Country remained. We weren't poor or dysfunctional but no more than blue collar working class people. I recall hearing more Country on Canadian radio stations than American up that way. But there was a lot of it. Lots of people young and old listened to Country back then in my hometown. The author confirms that that was happening all over the Northeast and I suspect all over the country. I enjoyed the book very much. I remember a friend of mine from North Carolina years ago telling me if it weren't for white trash there wouldn't be any Country music. He was joking but there is some truth in it I suppose. I would recommend this book to any Country fan young or old. A four star book for sure. It was a great era. It was certainly the golden age of electric Country music. This book defines it well.

While there are many things about this book I did not like, including its fundamental lack of any coherent world view, its inability to decide whether the fear of nuclear war did or did not impact these people--half the time he says they don't know and don't care about the outside world, half the time he's blaming their fatalism on their imminent immolation, its condescending jibes at religion, and its endless and trite pokes at governments that cannot articulate why we are fighting wars (I think, Mr. Jennings you may not like the justifications, but they have not been missing...) one thing endlessly annoyed me. At least 100 times in this book he says that these people, who fornicate, drink, fight, argue, cheat on their spouses, child-abuse, steal, avoid responsibility, and engage in every other vice certain to keep them poor and unhappy, are not responsible for their behavior. The century, or the Depression, or the government, or the recent wars, or their poverty, or their ignorance, or whatever is the favored argument of the blame-someone-else crowd, caused their despair. His own life disproves this, as he was poor, ignorant, nearly illegitimate, and yet somehow escaped.

Nope. Sorry, these people created a sordid and ugly world and embraced it with both arms. All along I waited to read about one person who said "You know, we don't have to live like this." I closed the book without finding that person. How he escaped this hole might have made an interesting story, but this disjointed narrative of squalid and stupid people who cannot even begin to imagine why their lives are such a mess left me sad. If these are the fans of country music, then I understand why I am not.

So, if you are on the left, and feel that circumstances make character and if you're a criminal or a wife-beater it's not your fault, you will probably like this book. If you believe that people control their lives and make decisions about how they live, then I don't think you will.