Dixie Lullaby (Hardcover)

by Mark Kemp (Author) "THE studio went silent..." (more)
Key Phrases: Lynyrd Skynyrd, Van Zant, Allman Brothers (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Part memoir, part music history and part social history, Kemp's book cannot decide quite what it wants to be. On the one hand, Kemp tells the story of his own experience of racism in the South and the ways that Southern rock bands helped him move beyond Southern racial attitudes. On the other hand, he regales the reader with sparkling tales of the evolution of Southern rock from 1968 to 1992. Born in Asheboro, N.C., Kemp, a white Southerner, struggled to understand the mysterious ways of segregation. After Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, he observes, a number of Southern rock bands emerged—among them the Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd—that challenged the racial views of the South. Drawing on interviews with several musicians and producers, including Phil Walden, Mac Rebennack (Dr. John), Warren Haynes and Jimmy Johnson, Kemp expertly examines the early years of Southern rock (1968–1973), the evolution of redneck rock (1974–1981) and the reconstruction of Southern rock (1982–1992) in bands like R.E.M., Jason and the Scorchers, Gov't Mule and Steve Earle. Kemp's anecdotal and affectionate remembrance of Southern rock provides a solid panoramic view of an important chapter in the history of rock and roll.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
In considering the role of his native South in rock-and-roll history, Kemp presents the ways black and white influences intertwined to spawn rock, which then affected how the South subsequently developed. With his bent toward atmospheric description, Kemp seems to aspire to a niche in the Greil Marcus-Dave Marsh sector of Rock-Crit Valhalla as he makes the case that his southern generation felt alienated from parents' traditional values and views of racial segregation. While Kemp's observations on the twin developments of southern rock as played by the likes of the Allman Brothers and Marshall Tucker bands and ostensibly nonracist, Christian Right-linked political conservatism are interesting, his take on rock history rather resembles the same old rock-crit bloviation piled higher and deeper. Behind the hyperbole lurks a may-be-significant look at the confluence of rock music and contemporary American reality. Coming from a guy who, as a youth, was suitably impressed with Funkadelic's classic album Maggot Brain, it couldn't be worthless, could it? Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (August 24, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743237943
• ISBN-13: 978-0743237949
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #909,588 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Peach of a Book!, March 5, 2005

By	B. Grier (Statesville, NC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Wow...I had withdrawal pangs after finishing this book! Kemp takes you on a sentimental tour of Southern rock music through scenery of the concurrent social and political events that affected the region and the nation. Just a small format change could have made it qualify as a music history textbook, yet somehow he has gracefully composed a harmony of history, memoir and good 'ole story tellin'. I learned things I never realized as a fan of many of the artists he discusses while I gained a deeper understanding of the events that rocked the country during my youth. The education was pure joy! His writing style is warm and inviting and keeps you fascinated with the stories as well as the chronology that could otherwise seem pedantic (I even read all the chapter notes!). Whether your youth lies in the 60's or 90's, you will find reading "Dixie Lullaby" a rich experience.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars People can you hear it? A song is in the Air!, September 13, 2005

By	dougrhon "dougrhon" - See all my reviews

This book by music writer Mark Kemp is hard to categorize. It is part memoir, part cultural and social history and partly a history of popular music. The author manages to tie the various threads together into a cohesive whole and has written a fascinating book.

Kemp was born in South Carolina in 1960 and came to outside awareness just as the civil rights movement kicked into the highest gear and the old Jim Crow order of the South was breaking down. Kemp had the good fortune to be born to freethinking progressive parents who did not raise him in the atmosphere of invidious racism that characterized the life of so many other southerners of that time. The book really begins with the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968. Prior to that event, white musicians backed many of the great black soul and rhythm and blues singers. After King was killed, many blacks felt they could no longer work with either white musicians or white owned music companies. As Kemp points out, the book is not about the fascinating story of black music in the south but of white music. In the year 2005, it is difficult for one who did not live through it, to appreciate what the reputation of the South was in 1969. Even its own young considered the South backwards and indeed, "redneck". As for music, white southern music meant either hillbilly boogie or country western. Southerners did not perform rock music in an indigenous style and those from the South who desired to make it in popular music left for either California or New York and dropped their Southern roots, usually in embarrassment.

This all changed when a man named Phil Walden, former manager for Otis Redding decided to start his own label, which became the fabled Capricorn Records. Rather than create a house band to back up studio owned singers, as with the Muscle Shoals studio, Walden decided to back a hot young guitarist from Florida named Duane Allman who had gained a reputation as a hot studio slide player and was looking to create his own band. Duane's band was originally supposed to be a power trio but ultimately consisted of six young men, one of them a black drummer, another his brother Gregg, a keyboardist and incredibly soulful blues singer. When Walden heard the debut of the "Allman Brothers Band" he knew he had found something special and backed the band out of his own pocket as they struggled to make it.

After describing the creation of the Allman Brothers Band, Kemp shifts back to his own story. In 1970, the ten years old author was dedicated to the blues sound of the Rolling Stones, having no idea that the Stone's sound was native to his own home region. When he hears the Allman Brothers Band in his sister's car, he, like thousands of other young Southerners, is instantly smitten. The Allmans' style was a unique blending of all native American sounds, with plenty of blues, soul, pure improvisational jazz and driving rock thrown into the mix. Not rednecks at all, the Allmans were more like southern hippies, singing "People Can you feel it? Love is everywhere!" Kemp claims that Gregg Allman sang with the sadness of the South. But Lynyrd Skynyrd rocked with righteous anger and extreme Southern pride. After the decline of the Allman's post-1973, came the rise of Southern "redneck rock" rockers, like Skynyrd and Molly Hatchett who made no apolgies for who they were or where they were from and who played a crunching brand of boogie rock, very different from that of the Allman Brothers Band. As the book continues, Kemp varies between a history of the music of the South and his own personal story in which he grows up, becomes a "head" in high school, rejects Southern music, moves north, develops a drug problem lands and loses his dream job at Rolling Stone and becomes ashamed of his Southern heritage. All the while he parallels this story with that of the musicians and the individuals he interviewed for this book including Charlie Daniels, Warren Haynes of the Allman Brothers Band and Gov't Mule and so many others. The book really covers a large period of cultural history, more than thirty years, and a lot about Kemp's own life in a relatively few pages. And yet the book holds together surprisingly well. It really is a great read and anyone reading it will learn a little about what it was like to grow up a rock and roll fan in the new South of the 1970's. I highly recommend it.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Personal Fable of the Reconstruction, December 7, 2005

By	Todd and In Charge (Miami, FL) - See all my reviews

Like Mark, I grew up in the south in the 70s and agree with many of his observations regarding the music scene, racism, and with the heart and soul of a "southern man." I also found his personal story engaging, as he traveled back to meet old girlfriends and go on a road trip through the South with his Dad.

Where I think the book could have been stronger is the somewhat conflicted message Mark leaves regarding the South and its legacy. It's unclear that the author has fully come to terms with his past, and perhaps that is too tall an order for one book anyway. But Mark at times is all over the map, sometimes adopting the rock snob critic persona when in two pages he provides the CW on such unfairly maligned records as the Stone's Black and Blue, The Who By Numbers, The Allmans' Win Lose or Draw, or Gregg Allman's marriage and relationship with Cher. Other times he goes against the CW, turning in a strong and thoughtful defense of Tom Petty's Southern Accents. His testy 1992 interview with Chris Robinson is also a hoot!

So in all I found the book engaging and a great idea, though at times I thought the execution could have been a bit stronger. I look forward to more from this author as he continues to mine and refine his thoughts on this subject.