Research Catalog

Title

Proud to be an Okie : cultural politics, country music, and migration to Southern California / Peter La Chapelle.

Author

La Chapelle, Peter

Publication

Berkeley : University of California Press, c2007.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiv, 350 p. : ill., maps; 24 cm.

Summary

Proud to Be an Okie brings to life the influential country music scene that flourished in and around Los Angeles from the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s to the early 1970s. The first work to fully illuminate the political and cultural aspects of this intriguing story, the book takes us from Woody Guthrie's radical hillbilly show on Depression-era radio to Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee" in the late 1960s. It explores how these migrant musicians and their audiences came to gain a sense of identity through music and mass media, to embrace the New Deal, and to celebrate African American and Mexican American musical influences before turning toward a more conservative outlook. What emerges is a clear picture of how important Southern California was to country music and how country music helped shape the politics and culture of Southern California and of the nation [Publisher description].

Series Statement

American crossroads ; 22

Uniform Title

• Project Muse UPCC books
• American crossroads 22.

Subjects

• 1900-1999
• Geschichte 1900-2000
• History
• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• Popular culture > California, Southern > History > 20th century
• Music > Political aspects
• Country music > California > History and criticism

Genre/Form

• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• History

Note

• "Roth Family Foundation music in America imprint."
• Chapters 1 and 5 are revised versions of essays previously published in the collected volumes Moving Stories: Migration and the American West, 1850/2000, edited by Scott E. Casper and Lucinda Long (Nevada Humanities Committee, 2001), and A Boy Named Sue: Gender and Country Music, edited by Kristine M. McCusker and Diane Pecknold (University Press of Mississippi, 2004). A portion of Chapter 4 appeared in Dress: The Annual Journal of the Costume Society of America 28 (2001): pp. 3/12.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 313-328) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Big city ways. At the crossroads of whiteness : antimigrant activism, eugenics, and popular culture ; Refugees : Woody Guthrie, "Lost Angeles," and the radicalization of migrant identity ; Rhythm kings and riveter queens : race, gender, and the eclectic populism of wartime western swing -- Rhinstones and ranch homes. Ballads for the crabgrass frontier : suburbanization, whiteness and the unmaking of Okie musical ethnicity ; Playing second fiddle no more? : country music, domesticity, and the women's movement ; Fightin' sides : "Okie from Muskogee," conservative-populism, and the uses of migrant identity.

ISBN

• 9780520248885 (cloth : alk. paper)
• 0520248880 (cloth : alk. paper)
• 9780520248892 (pbk. : alk. paper)
• 0520248899 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2006019222

OCLC

• 70063045
• SCSB-10123899

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library