Cold War Country

How Nashville's Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism

Joseph M. Thompson, Joseph M. Thompson IV

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781469678368, 9781469678351
• eBook ISBN: 9781469678375
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Country music maintains a special, decades-long relationship to American military life, but these ties didn’t just happen. This readable history reveals how country music’s Nashville-based business leaders on Music Row created partnerships with the Pentagon to sell their audiences on military service while selling the music to servicemembers. Beginning in the 1950s, the military flooded armed forces airwaves with the music, hosted tour dates at bases around the world, and drew on artists from Johnny Cash to Lee Greenwood to support recruitment programs. Over the last half of the twentieth century, the close connections between the Defense Department and Music Row gave an economic boost to the white-dominated sounds of country while marginalizing Black artists and fueling divisions over the meaning of patriotism.

This story is filled with familiar stars like Roy Acuff, Elvis Presley, and George Strait, as well as lesser-known figures: industry executives who worked the halls of Congress, country artists who dissented from the stereotypically patriotic trappings of the genre, and more. Joseph M. Thompson argues convincingly that the relationship between Music Row and the Pentagon helped shape not only the evolution of popular music but also race relations, partisanship, and images of the United States abroad.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• 1. Big Government Country: Connie B. Gay and the Roots of Country Music Militarization
• 2. A GI Bill for Country Music: How Country Music and Military Recruitment Merged in the 1950s
• 3. Singing in the Ranks: Memphis, Militarization, and the Country Roots of Rock and Roll
• 4. All-American Boy: Elvis Presley and the Cold War’s Musical and Military Integration
• 5. Best Liked World-Wide: Selling the Armed Forces and the World on Country Music
• 6. Tell Them What We’re Fighting For: The CMA, Country Artists, and the Politics of the Vietnam War
• 7. Proud to Be an American: Country Music Militarization and Patriotism after Vietnam
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index