Slate writer Carl Wilson recently drew attention to I'd Fight the World: A Political History of Old-Time, Hillbilly, and Country Music as representing the kind of history that would have enriched Ken Burns' PBS Country Music documentary.
But then there are the histories Burns missed altogether, like the ones in historian Peter La Chapelle’s new book... You’d think it would be a Ken Burns question to ask how country and politics intersected in the progressive populist era of the early 20th century, or during the enactment of Jim Crow laws, or in the Cold War (aside from, as Burns does mention, distancing itself from Woody Guthrie). According to La Chapelle, contrary to Nashville’s boilerplate claims, in the 19th and 20th centuries country was the most politicized music of all, with artists “campaigning for more than a dozen major-party governors, several congressmen, at least seven U.S. senators, a Senate minority and a Senate majority leader, as well as major third-party candidates.” And not always on the side you might think. Couldn’t we have seen slow-motion pans across some of those old photographs?
