Many of us who grew up in the warm shadows of some of country music's greatest legends: Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash and George Jones, have all been wondering the same thing: What's happened to country music? Has the genre gone too far to the other side to ever be able to find its way back?  Has the voice of the common man now become the voice of an urbanized America?

With word of the recent firings of long time WSM staffers looming in the air, Eddie Stubbs ominously closed his show on January 7th with The Bailes Brothers 'We're Living In The Last Days Now. A not-so-subtle premonition of things to come?

Consider: Country music fans get their 'news' from a trade publication that is a mere kin to a national tabloid. The most watched country music video station has a corroboratory relationship with MTV and radio stations are more than kissing cousins to each other, whether you're looking at ownership or playlists.

Mainstream country music has been so glitzed and polished its origins are barely recognizable. We no longer have kings and queens but hunks and divas, and if you’re pretty enough there’s no limit as to what Pro Tools can accomplish.

Take Country Back recently had the pleasure of sitting down with noted country music historian Bill C. Malone to get his perspective on the state of country music, past and present. Bill is a well known author having penned Country Music USA in 1968 (which recently underwent a revision) and published a new book in 2002 titled: Don't Get Above Your Raisin'.

There's a fine line to walk between writing about country music as a way to make a living and being a country music fan. It's obvious Bill Malone has managed to make a career writing and talking about something close to his heart, something that has helped weave the fabric of his life. He's been writing about country music for over 30 years, but he was and remains, a fan first and has garnered much of his knowledge first hand. “I was a fan long before I ever became a writer." he shares "I was born into a country music family. We got our first Philco battery radio when I was five years old way back in 1939. From the very moment we got the radio we started to listening to local shows out of Dallas/Fort Worth and Tulsa and of course the Grand Ole Opry became a network show that same year. Almost every weeknight my older brother Wylie and I, would turn on XERF down on the Mexican border and listen to the Carter Family. I always identified country music with people like my own family. We were hard working farmers in Texas. My mother would sing at home, an old gospel song, or a sentimental tune like The Two Little Orphans. My brothers started playing guitars when they were teenagers so I just grew up with it and all my life I’ve identified the music with good hard working people. I think it’s always told their stories. I just regret the fact that the music has moved away from that. Now it tells the story of suburban people who just don’t have any memories like that anymore. There's nothing wrong with telling suburban stories. It's just that what we hear nowadays doesn't seem real or convincing."

Evolution: Music and Families

Indeed times have changed, and we all know that doesn't always mean it's been for the better.

There is more than a coincidental connection between the alterations in country music and the time-paralleled shifts of society. In as much as country music has changed, so have families. With employment and populations now largely centered around urban and suburban developments, the rural family and it's subsequent lifestyle and value systems of just a few decades ago have changed dramatically. Music that once used to be the center of a family's social activity has now become an individual form of recreation. Family record collections, black and white televisions with two fuzzy channels and radio stations that were truly local have been replaced with beige, conglomerate airwaves programmed from a corporate headquarter, personal MP3 players and disc-mans, video channels, DVD, VHS players, and the internet. Almost obsolete are kitchen and back-porch parties where multi-generations sang and played, as they passed music on first hand to the next generation. More often than not children are learning how to play instruments from strangers in music classes rather than Uncle Jim or Grandpa. As more homes are headed by a single parent or dual working parents, time has also played a factor in the way we pass down family heritage and traditions. The opportunities are less for the time-honored ways of sharing and passing down music, and the alternatives for accessing music outside of the family circle are abundant.

The variety of musical choices has also seen a steady increase with new sub-genres intermittently surfacing. "Back when I was a kid there weren’t all that many differences in generational tastes. My parents, my older brothers and I pretty much liked the same music. That doesn’t mean we didn’t listen and like certain types of pop music like Bing Crosby, The Ink Spots, that was good music too. We loved what we then called hillbilly music and I don’t remember there ever being any real fighting over the music. That didn’t really develop until the late 50’s. Now people don’t listen as a family enterprise anymore."

In as much as urbanization and technology has transformed music from a traditional family centered social opportunites to an individual recreational activity, Bill Malone also believes that it's technology that's kept country music from disappearing altogether. "It is really kind of an ironic thing -- music wouldn’t really exist if it weren’t for technology. Radio stations way back in the 1920’s started giving string bands, ballad singers and gospel singers the opportunity to perform for larger audiences. the phonograph business came along and made it possible to make records, so without that there just wouldn’t be any country music. It would have withered on the vine. I think it had to have that commercial interest in it." The only glitch in the plan: marketing formulas are dependent on bottom lines and demographic reach and with the focus today being more national, even global than regional the country music 'product' has been mutated to fit the accompanying bill rather than the roots of its art form. 

Mixing commerce and art has always been precarious. With money involved decision making processes often set aside creativity and heritage to focus on bottom lines and yearly fiscal reports. Traditional definitions and manifestations instead are back-burnered in favor of beige tinged music of mass appeal. In theory, writing a country song is best done with a pencil and a heart rather than the pen and hand that balances the check book, however, commerce and country music have become inseparable over the years and it's that paradoxical connection that's also been it's saving grace.

Citing Fan Fair as a modern day example, Malone identifies economics centered around the creation of relationships between the artist and the listener as the one continuity that country music has maintained over the years, regardless of its shifts in style. "We heard the radio hillbillies and we thought of them as part of our own family. When we heard the songs we thought they were singing about their own lives. When Ernest Tubb sang about losing his girlfriend we thought that it was exactly happening in that life. And they cultivated that sense of family, people were really loyal to their music and the products that they advertised. They sounded like we did. They voiced sentiments we agreed with. We thought if we tried hard enough we might even be able to do what they did. If we got a guitar we might even get on stage with them."

Pop-Country Then and Now --

In his most recent revision to Country Music, USA Malone has added a new chapter that focuses on the most recent happenings on the country music scene. Although as a historian he feels it necessary to examine and include all variations of the genre that doesn't mean he personally applauds the changes he's seen happen.

This isn't the first time Malone has felt unsettled, in fact when Country Music, USA first went to print in 1968 he was uneasy about the shift the country music industry was making towards the more uptown polished sound of countrypolitan. "In those days I looked towards Ray Price as a great savior of what I thought was real country music when he came along with City Lights, Crazy Arms all that great shuffle beat in the music that he had. He did a lot to bring the music back to reality, to encourage other people to do that and just as he did he switched to countrypolitan. He did well at that too but I just never liked it as much as liked that hard country."

As much as he was displeased with the turn towards countrypolitan in the late 60's, the sub genre wasn't completely without merit compared to most of today's mainstream fare. "I could listen to music made in the countrypolitan days and still enjoy it, find something worthwhile in it. It’s really hard to find that in Top 40 country."

"A lot of the stuff that’s on the Top 40, I think it’s well done, well performed, and probably it means something to people, it just doesn’t mean something to me. So much of what we hear today sounds like pop/rock, and not very good pop/rock at that. I’m willing to give the Top 40 people their due, I think there are good musicians but the songs they perform say nothing, it just doesn’t grab me."

What do we call it? Americana/Alt-Country/Country

Whether music is country or pop isn't the only question facing country music today. Artists, industry and fans alike find themselves faced with the confusion with the creation of the alt-country and Americana genres. Their definitions are as numerous as they are distinct. “The easiest definition is to say that Alt and Americana are just forms of music that don’t get much of a hearing on the mainstream media. It can be everything from Ralph Stanley’s old time music to Dale Watson’s honky tonk to Whiskeytown’s country-rock." Malone offers, "Stylistically those forms of music have nothing in common, and I think the audience is probably different in all of them. If you talked to someone else they would give you a different definition of alt country. They may define it as country music with a rock attitude. They are just new labels."

There are those who take to the new labels, more than content to sit on the fringe, gladly shaking off any association with today's country music. They find pride in their uniqueness and creative freedom in the elasticized borders. There are also those who have been labeled as alt-country that resent having to change genres in order to differentiate their deeply implanted country roots from today's shallow ones. "I think that’s why someone like Dale Watson rejects terms like alt or Americana. He’s not alternative anything. You’ll find that kind of feeling in bluegrass too. There are some people in that field who reject any kind of country identification and others like me who think that bluegrass came out of and is a part of country."

Malone believes that somewhere between real country and alt-country artists have lost the ability and/or willingness to wear their hearts on their sleeves with pride. "Most of the alternative acts, even those that like to sing in honky tonks, are simply reluctant to go the whole way and be emotional about all the basic things that country music does. The can sing about getting drunk, and about cheating and not having a good time but its hard for them to sing sentimental songs about Mama or the family which is just as much a part of country as these other things are. Hank Williams certainly wasn’t reluctant to tell people what he was really feeling, as in a song like "I Just Told Mama Goodbye." You are just not going to find that kind of sentiment expressed by any of these alt people. I can't imagine them doing a song like George Jones' Flowers for Mama, or "He Stopped Loving Her Today" for example.  I think it’s because it’s hard for them to feel those emotions or maybe they think that their audience, which in many cases are recent converts from rock music, will laugh at that stuff. It's probably a product of rock culture but, but they all have to keep the music as 'ironic' and as 'kick ass' as is possible. I guess we've all watched David Letterman too much."