http://www.tennessean.com/entertainment/news/archives/04/09/58532413.shtml
For many, Southern rock conjures up images of beer drinkin', rabble
rousin'
and flapping Confederate flags.
In a new book, a former Rolling Stone editor and MTV executive casts the
music of such groups as The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd differently
-
as an art form born out of the civil rights era that defied stereotypes
and
gave voice to a generation of young, white Southerners uneasy with the
region's backward image and racist icons.
In Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race and New Beginnings in a New
South,
author Mark Kemp writes that Southern rock helped him and his peers ''heal
at a time when we had no white role models who spoke as eloquently as Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X.''
''Instead, we had racist politicians such as Alabama Gov. George Wallace
and
Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox,'' he writes. ''If we were to learn tolerance,
we
had to look elsewhere and many of us looked to rock stars like Greg Allman
and Ronnie Van Zant.''
Kemp, who grew up in Asheboro, N.C., has spent two decades covering music
and culture. His awards include a 1997 Grammy nomination for the liner
notes
of the album Farewells & Fantasies, a retrospective by protest singer Phil
Ochs. For his book, released this month by Simon & Schuster, he calls on
hundreds of interviews conducted over the years with musicians, producers
and everyday fans.
He traces the roots of Southern rock to one of the nation's cultural and
historical touchstones - the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr.
Soon after King was gunned down on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, black
recording artists such as Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett closed ranks,
working almost exclusively with other black musicians, managers and
producers. Left in the wake were droves of white, Southern musicians who
for
years had made their livings playing sessions with those black artists.
At places such as Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala., and Capricorn
Records
in Macon, Ga., a new musical style was born, blending rock with blues,
soul,
gospel, country and jazz.
In the process, those artists presented a new image of what it meant to be
Southern - to their fellow denizens of Dixie and to fans in other parts of
the country.
''All of these albums allowed people to start seeing Southerners in new
ways; new, very complex characters emerged,'' said Kemp, who now works as
entertainment editor for The Charlotte Observer. ''The only images people
would see on television for so long were just the dumb redneck or the
'golly
gee' nice guys.''
In retrospect, some of the messages Kemp chronicles were simple.
In The Allman Brothers, the presence of black percussionist Jai ''Jaimo''
Johanson - a former Otis Redding sideman - sent a clear signal at a time
when some Southern politicians promised ''segregation forever.''
''You think of it now and it seems absurd, but that was radical,'' Kemp
said. ''Just the image of The Allman Brothers, a mixed-race band from
Macon,
Ga., in 1969, was powerful.''
The Allmans, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Charlie Daniels campaigned and played
benefits for upstart presidential hopeful Jimmy Carter, who as Georgia's
governor in 1971 declared ''the time for racial discrimination is over.''
And on Sweet Home Alabama, Lynyrd Skynyrd defiantly fired back at rocker
Neil Young, whose songs Southern Man and Alabama depict Southerners in
general and Alabama specifically as racist.
Writers such as Young and folk singer Ochs ''tended to project a lot of
the
nation's guilt onto Southerners,'' Kemp said. ''(Skynyrd singer) Ronnie
Van
Zant just called that into question.''
The book's themes ring true for Patterson Hood, 40-year-old front man for
the Southern rock group Drive-By Truckers. On the group's works, such as
the
2001 double album Southern Rock Opera and last month's The Dirty South,
Hood's songwriting explores what he calls the ''duality of the Southern
thing.''
''The South wore its racial issues so much more out in the open,'' Hood
said. ''But many Southerners my age and younger felt the way I do - had
pretty liberal or tolerant views and couldn't fathom the racist views of
our
forefathers.''
Kemp interviewed both Hood and his father, Muscle Shoals session man David
Hood, for Dixie Lullaby. He said he discovered the band's Southern Rock
Opera when he was halfway through writing the book and was surprised to
find
someone else exploring many of the same ideas.
''It showed that a lot of us have been thinking about this stuff,'' said
Kemp, who started writing the book in New York but moved back to North
Carolina to be closer to his subject. ''Before, you couldn't talk about
the
kind of inner turmoil that young white children of that time period went
through because it just wasn't politically correct to talk about.''
Kemp said he hopes his book will help shine a light on not just Southern
music, but also on the complicated nuances of Southern culture in general.
''Music's what I do and I used music to talk about issues I thought were
important,'' he said. ''I do hope people outside the South will take time
to
read it to get maybe some insight they haven't had before about Southern
folk''
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