Southern History Remixed

On Rock ’n’ Roll and the Dilemma of Race

Michael T. Bertrand

• Publisher: University Press of Florida
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9780813081366, 9780813069890
• eBook ISBN: 9780813073101
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

How popular music reveals deep histories of racial tensions in southern culture

Southern History Remixed spotlights the key role of popular music in the shaping of the United States South from the late nineteenth century to the era of rock ’n’ roll in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s. While musical activities are often sidelined in historical narratives of the region, Michael Bertrand shows that they can reveal much about social history and culture change as he connects the rise of rock ’n’ roll to the civil rights movement for racial equality.

In this book, Bertrand traces a long-term culture war in which white southerners struggled over the region’s cultural complexion with music serving as an engine that both sustained and challenged white supremacy. He shows how rock ’n’ roll emerged as a working-class genre with biracial sources that stoked white racial anxieties and engaged the region’s color and culture lines. This book discusses the conflict over southern identity that played out in responses to jazz, barn dance radio, Pentecostal and gospel music, Black radio programming, and rhythm and blues, concluding with a close look at the popularity of Elvis Presley within a racially segregated society.

Southern History Remixed suggests that both Black and white southerners have used music as a tool to resist or negotiate a rigid regional hierarchy. Urging readers and scholars to take the study of popular music seriously, Bertrand argues that what occurs in the music world affects and reflects what happens in politics and history.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface: Another Cause Lost—The South, the Gift of Black Music, and the Myth of the “White Man’s Country”
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Mr. Cole Don’t Rock ’n’ Roll: The Pivotal Moment in Microcosm
• 2. The Search for the Southern Past: A Musical Odyssey
• 3. Remixing the Master, Restoring the Music: The Central Theme of Southern History Reconsidered
• 4. Country Music Goes to War: Southern Identity and the Problem of the Color/Culture Line
• Interlude: “Strange Things Happening Every Day”
• 5. “Everybody’s Station”: Black Radio, the White South, and the Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll
• 6. “This Ain’t No Vaudeville!” On the Shared Stage of Rock ’n’ Roll and Civil Rights in the Postwar South
• Afterword: Implications and Possibilities—Rock ’n’ Roll as Southern History
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author