Roady
11-07-2007, 03:40 PM
I thought this article was interesting and it mentions Janis and other artists that seem to be well liked on this forum. Because of its length I'll have to break it into to posts.
Title: "MAN I FEEL LIKE A WOMAN!"
Author: Anderson-Minshall, Diane
Source: Curve, 11 (5): 22, August 2001. ISSN: 1087-867X
Publisher: Outspoken Enterprises
OW FEMINISM FOUND A FOOTHOLD IN THE HONKY-TONK HELLCATS AND LIBERATED LADIES OF COUNTRY
When I was 5 years old, my friends Susan and Juanita and I would spend every afternoon gathered around the Shwartz family stereo. Susan had a new copy of Lynn Anderson's 45 "Rose Garden" and we three girls memorized every single word. Just the opening refrain of the chorus, "I beg your pardon," used to send a gap-toothed grin to my face every time I heard it. Anderson was then called the "queen of country music" because her crossover hit topped the pop charts for five weeks, long before Garth Brooks did the same. After listening to "Rose Garden" at least 10 times, we'd turn on the radio and belt out whatever country runes were popular that week along with the crooners themselves.
And then the most remarkable thing happened: A 13-year-old girl named Tanya Tucker came on the radio belting out a remarkable manifesto of female liberation called "Delta Dawn." We didn't know Bette Midler first sang the song in the gay baths of New York. We didn't know Helen "I Am Woman" Reddy borrowed it from Bette. We didn't even know what "feminist" meant yet. But to the three of us working-class girls-- one Jewish, one Latina, and one mixed-race -- Tanya Tucker became our new icon. Within two years, the Seminole, Texas, girl with the smoky twang had a Grammy nomination, a greatest-hits album, and graced the cover of Rolling Stone. (And she was one of the first country artists to do so).
WOMEN'S LIB DOWN HOME
Mention feminism and country music in the same sentence today and you'll likely get met with blank stares or outright hostility. But, while country music may seem like an unlikely place to look for feminist ideals, it's always been populated with strong and fiercely independent female musicians. Women's studies professors, in fact, have known for years that that the ditties sung by country women usually express feminist perspectives rooted in white working-class culture.
"I'm not going to argue that all white working-class women are going to support the women's movement or define themselves as feminists," says Ithaca College women's studies coordinator Judith Barker. "In fact, many of them may not be comfortable with that word because for them it means middle-class, which is a different culture with different sets of attitudes, types of jobs, and, in most cases, income levels. But I do think feminist themes, or what might better be called themes that are 'women-friendly,' resonate in the lives of white working-class women, and that resonance can be heard in contemporary country music."
Barker spent several months studying the lyrics of popular country songs, from Lorrie Morgan demanding, "Ain't got time to rock no baby anymore" to Mary Chapin Carpenter's take on patriarchy: "She makes his coffee, she makes his bed. ... He thinks he'll keep her." From a feminist perspective, says Barker, these songs "talk about women's changing roles, being more critical about male and female relationships, and the importance of giving and taking. They present a view that female sexuality is active and passionate, and they talk about how relationships can disempower women and lead to a loss of identity."
Holly Gleason, owner of Joe's Garage, a media relations and artist development firm, has represented Patty Loveless, Emmylou Harris, and Lee Ann Womack. She argues that "feminism has always been a part of country music, because working-class women have to be strong, and sometimes have to pick up the load in times of hardship." Gleason argues that when women are economic partners in a relationship they become emboldened to stand up for themselves -- as in Loretta Lynn's "Don't Come Home A-Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind") or for reproductive freedom ("The Pill").
"Even Tammy Wynette fought fire with fire in [her songs]," says Gleason. "Her often misunderstood 'Stand by Your Man' is more marginalizing than doormat. [The lyrics] 'If you love him, you'll forgive him, because after all he's just a man is more acknowledging an inferior moral fiber than it is [advocating] taking what you're handed."
OLD-SCHOOL ATTITUDES
The musical genre that was, until 1949, derogatorily called "hillbilly music" has its origins in songs of the English, Scots, and Irish settlers of the Appalachians. As the mountain music sprouted into the twang of country, a great migration of Southern rural whites took the sound to the industrial cities during the Depression. One of the few truly indigenous American musical forms, the country genre borrowed heavily from many influences, including blues, gospel music, and black orchestras (the last resulting in Western swing).
Patsy Cline, the fiery troubadour whose career ended in an airplane crash in 1963, perhaps epitomized old-school independence among country women. Her song "I Fall to Pieces" topped the charts in 1962; she was the top female artist that year and the previous one; and her plaintive hit "Crazy" is the No. 1 jukebox record of all time. A cowgirl in spirit, Cline hit the music scene in the '50s -- a decade before Loretta Lynn, and nearly 20 years before Lynn Anderson. By the time Anderson was belting out "Rose Garden," cowboy crinolines had given way to go-go boots and big hair. Then came Dolly Parton -- the Tammy Faye Bakker of country music, both loved and derided for her big, big style.
"As a child," Parton once told reporters, "I was impressed with what they called the 'trash' in my hometown. I don't know how trashy these women were, but they were said to be trashy because they had blonde hair and wore nail polish and tight clothes. I thought they were beautiful."
Parton, who insisted on retaining the rights (and the profits) to the songs she wrote, was an oddity in an industry that began by keeping women out of the creative process and keeping them in rather conservative clothing. (The women of country's first super-group, the Carter family, epitomized minimalism.) And some women often misinterpreted Patton's high-femme drag as an antiquated, rather than feminist, approach. Some lesbians beg to differ.
"When I think of women who make country music, I immediately think of some of the older-school greats like Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, whose lyrics don't always conjure feminist images in my head," admits Amy Schroeder, editor of the women's music magazine Venus. "But most of those artists were making music at a time when there was no space for feminism in music or popular culture."
Not so, counters Gleason. "Dolly Parton does what she wants, she has fun with it [and] she's a savvy businesswoman. And she's not afraid to be sexy while making it happen. Any woman who doesn't blunt her sexiness as she's reaching for her dreams and knows how to put her seeming Achilles heel to work for her -- Dolly had a breakout hit with 'Dumb Blond' -- is taking Annie Lennox's notion of 'Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves' to a whole other place."
Of course, sisters in country music have been doing it for themselves for ages. From the fiddle tunes in the Southern Appalachians to Tennessee's influential (mostly female) Carter family in the late 1920s to Cline and her midcentury peers, women have demanded to be taken seriously in country music. Reba McEntire, a honkytonk artist patterned after Cline, was discovered singing the national anthem at a rodeo. Wynonna Judd -- long an icon to lesbian women for her rowdy independence and her Harley -- got her first gig by forcing her way into a record exec's office. She and her mother sang together as the Judds from the time Wynonna was a mere 15 until she was 27.
"Because women weren't the payload male sex symbols were, they were allowed to make their music their way," says Gleason. Because the sexualization of women didn't come into play until recently, Gleason insists, country music has offered a diversity that ranges from Mary Chapin Carpenter's intellectual folkie slices of life to Trisha Yearwood's smart, sophisticated songs to Patty Loveless' revvedup traditionalism to Tanya Tucker's old-school wild-child country to Lee Ann Womack's bluegrass-tinged, honky-tonk progressive country to Faith Hill and Shania Twain's outright pop-country with a healthy dose of beauty tossed in.
Not to mention, adds Schroeder, the scores of female artists who were influenced by country music -- lesbian favorites like Ani DiFranco, Tami Hart, Neko Case, Melissa Etheridge, k.d. lang, Bonnie Raitt, Danielle Howle, Indigo Girls and Retsin. Schroeder argues that while these women cross categories from pop to rockabilly to folk, they all have roots in country. And they all are pro-woman and profeminist, and have feminist messages in their music.
Of course, there's also a lesbian factor. Nashville-based lesbian singer Janis Ian is a folkie star with country credentials (her latest album, God and the FBI, features a duet with Willie Nelson) and, though she's never come out as such, fans have always wondered if the woman beneath the 10-gallon hat, country star Tern Clark, is a lesbian. Likewise, rumors have dogged Parton, who, though married, has had a close female companion for many years.
But, the truth is, it doesn't really matter if these women are gay. Just as the Dixie Chicks are avowedly het -- they are making babies with boys, after all -- the new women in country reflect both an awareness of lesbianism and an acknowledgment of country's dyke roots. At a recent concert in San Francisco, lead singer Natalie Maines told the audience that the Dixie Chicks drink a little tequila and a lot of beer when offstage, adding salaciously, "Now, it's sorta known that when the Dixie Chicks have a couple of shots, they like to wrestle." After she winks at bandmate Martie Seidel, Maines added, "I always kick Martie's ass. And Martie always kicks Emily's. Emily is always the loser." No doubt hundreds of lesbian fans -- and undeniably most of the men -- in the audience swooned at this pseudo catfight and its Sapphic undertones.
Between the winking, the innuendo, and the fact that black leather has never looked so good on women carrying fiddles and banjos -- these girls are attracting lesbian fans to country music in droves. Their 1998 debut, Wide Open Spaces, won multiple Grammys and sold millions. Their next album, Fly, went multiplatinum. In one of their most popular songs, "Goodbye Earl," the girls sing of killing an abusive spouse. (Look around at a Chicks concert and you'll see dozens of 14-year-old girls mouthing along to lyrics like, "It didn't take 'em long to decide that Earl had to die. Goodbye Earl!"). The same song has the two women -- lifelong friends -- later buying land, opening a roadside stand together, and picnicking on his watery grave. (Fried Green Tomatoes, anyone?)
Title: "MAN I FEEL LIKE A WOMAN!"
Author: Anderson-Minshall, Diane
Source: Curve, 11 (5): 22, August 2001. ISSN: 1087-867X
Publisher: Outspoken Enterprises
OW FEMINISM FOUND A FOOTHOLD IN THE HONKY-TONK HELLCATS AND LIBERATED LADIES OF COUNTRY
When I was 5 years old, my friends Susan and Juanita and I would spend every afternoon gathered around the Shwartz family stereo. Susan had a new copy of Lynn Anderson's 45 "Rose Garden" and we three girls memorized every single word. Just the opening refrain of the chorus, "I beg your pardon," used to send a gap-toothed grin to my face every time I heard it. Anderson was then called the "queen of country music" because her crossover hit topped the pop charts for five weeks, long before Garth Brooks did the same. After listening to "Rose Garden" at least 10 times, we'd turn on the radio and belt out whatever country runes were popular that week along with the crooners themselves.
And then the most remarkable thing happened: A 13-year-old girl named Tanya Tucker came on the radio belting out a remarkable manifesto of female liberation called "Delta Dawn." We didn't know Bette Midler first sang the song in the gay baths of New York. We didn't know Helen "I Am Woman" Reddy borrowed it from Bette. We didn't even know what "feminist" meant yet. But to the three of us working-class girls-- one Jewish, one Latina, and one mixed-race -- Tanya Tucker became our new icon. Within two years, the Seminole, Texas, girl with the smoky twang had a Grammy nomination, a greatest-hits album, and graced the cover of Rolling Stone. (And she was one of the first country artists to do so).
WOMEN'S LIB DOWN HOME
Mention feminism and country music in the same sentence today and you'll likely get met with blank stares or outright hostility. But, while country music may seem like an unlikely place to look for feminist ideals, it's always been populated with strong and fiercely independent female musicians. Women's studies professors, in fact, have known for years that that the ditties sung by country women usually express feminist perspectives rooted in white working-class culture.
"I'm not going to argue that all white working-class women are going to support the women's movement or define themselves as feminists," says Ithaca College women's studies coordinator Judith Barker. "In fact, many of them may not be comfortable with that word because for them it means middle-class, which is a different culture with different sets of attitudes, types of jobs, and, in most cases, income levels. But I do think feminist themes, or what might better be called themes that are 'women-friendly,' resonate in the lives of white working-class women, and that resonance can be heard in contemporary country music."
Barker spent several months studying the lyrics of popular country songs, from Lorrie Morgan demanding, "Ain't got time to rock no baby anymore" to Mary Chapin Carpenter's take on patriarchy: "She makes his coffee, she makes his bed. ... He thinks he'll keep her." From a feminist perspective, says Barker, these songs "talk about women's changing roles, being more critical about male and female relationships, and the importance of giving and taking. They present a view that female sexuality is active and passionate, and they talk about how relationships can disempower women and lead to a loss of identity."
Holly Gleason, owner of Joe's Garage, a media relations and artist development firm, has represented Patty Loveless, Emmylou Harris, and Lee Ann Womack. She argues that "feminism has always been a part of country music, because working-class women have to be strong, and sometimes have to pick up the load in times of hardship." Gleason argues that when women are economic partners in a relationship they become emboldened to stand up for themselves -- as in Loretta Lynn's "Don't Come Home A-Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind") or for reproductive freedom ("The Pill").
"Even Tammy Wynette fought fire with fire in [her songs]," says Gleason. "Her often misunderstood 'Stand by Your Man' is more marginalizing than doormat. [The lyrics] 'If you love him, you'll forgive him, because after all he's just a man is more acknowledging an inferior moral fiber than it is [advocating] taking what you're handed."
OLD-SCHOOL ATTITUDES
The musical genre that was, until 1949, derogatorily called "hillbilly music" has its origins in songs of the English, Scots, and Irish settlers of the Appalachians. As the mountain music sprouted into the twang of country, a great migration of Southern rural whites took the sound to the industrial cities during the Depression. One of the few truly indigenous American musical forms, the country genre borrowed heavily from many influences, including blues, gospel music, and black orchestras (the last resulting in Western swing).
Patsy Cline, the fiery troubadour whose career ended in an airplane crash in 1963, perhaps epitomized old-school independence among country women. Her song "I Fall to Pieces" topped the charts in 1962; she was the top female artist that year and the previous one; and her plaintive hit "Crazy" is the No. 1 jukebox record of all time. A cowgirl in spirit, Cline hit the music scene in the '50s -- a decade before Loretta Lynn, and nearly 20 years before Lynn Anderson. By the time Anderson was belting out "Rose Garden," cowboy crinolines had given way to go-go boots and big hair. Then came Dolly Parton -- the Tammy Faye Bakker of country music, both loved and derided for her big, big style.
"As a child," Parton once told reporters, "I was impressed with what they called the 'trash' in my hometown. I don't know how trashy these women were, but they were said to be trashy because they had blonde hair and wore nail polish and tight clothes. I thought they were beautiful."
Parton, who insisted on retaining the rights (and the profits) to the songs she wrote, was an oddity in an industry that began by keeping women out of the creative process and keeping them in rather conservative clothing. (The women of country's first super-group, the Carter family, epitomized minimalism.) And some women often misinterpreted Patton's high-femme drag as an antiquated, rather than feminist, approach. Some lesbians beg to differ.
"When I think of women who make country music, I immediately think of some of the older-school greats like Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, whose lyrics don't always conjure feminist images in my head," admits Amy Schroeder, editor of the women's music magazine Venus. "But most of those artists were making music at a time when there was no space for feminism in music or popular culture."
Not so, counters Gleason. "Dolly Parton does what she wants, she has fun with it [and] she's a savvy businesswoman. And she's not afraid to be sexy while making it happen. Any woman who doesn't blunt her sexiness as she's reaching for her dreams and knows how to put her seeming Achilles heel to work for her -- Dolly had a breakout hit with 'Dumb Blond' -- is taking Annie Lennox's notion of 'Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves' to a whole other place."
Of course, sisters in country music have been doing it for themselves for ages. From the fiddle tunes in the Southern Appalachians to Tennessee's influential (mostly female) Carter family in the late 1920s to Cline and her midcentury peers, women have demanded to be taken seriously in country music. Reba McEntire, a honkytonk artist patterned after Cline, was discovered singing the national anthem at a rodeo. Wynonna Judd -- long an icon to lesbian women for her rowdy independence and her Harley -- got her first gig by forcing her way into a record exec's office. She and her mother sang together as the Judds from the time Wynonna was a mere 15 until she was 27.
"Because women weren't the payload male sex symbols were, they were allowed to make their music their way," says Gleason. Because the sexualization of women didn't come into play until recently, Gleason insists, country music has offered a diversity that ranges from Mary Chapin Carpenter's intellectual folkie slices of life to Trisha Yearwood's smart, sophisticated songs to Patty Loveless' revvedup traditionalism to Tanya Tucker's old-school wild-child country to Lee Ann Womack's bluegrass-tinged, honky-tonk progressive country to Faith Hill and Shania Twain's outright pop-country with a healthy dose of beauty tossed in.
Not to mention, adds Schroeder, the scores of female artists who were influenced by country music -- lesbian favorites like Ani DiFranco, Tami Hart, Neko Case, Melissa Etheridge, k.d. lang, Bonnie Raitt, Danielle Howle, Indigo Girls and Retsin. Schroeder argues that while these women cross categories from pop to rockabilly to folk, they all have roots in country. And they all are pro-woman and profeminist, and have feminist messages in their music.
Of course, there's also a lesbian factor. Nashville-based lesbian singer Janis Ian is a folkie star with country credentials (her latest album, God and the FBI, features a duet with Willie Nelson) and, though she's never come out as such, fans have always wondered if the woman beneath the 10-gallon hat, country star Tern Clark, is a lesbian. Likewise, rumors have dogged Parton, who, though married, has had a close female companion for many years.
But, the truth is, it doesn't really matter if these women are gay. Just as the Dixie Chicks are avowedly het -- they are making babies with boys, after all -- the new women in country reflect both an awareness of lesbianism and an acknowledgment of country's dyke roots. At a recent concert in San Francisco, lead singer Natalie Maines told the audience that the Dixie Chicks drink a little tequila and a lot of beer when offstage, adding salaciously, "Now, it's sorta known that when the Dixie Chicks have a couple of shots, they like to wrestle." After she winks at bandmate Martie Seidel, Maines added, "I always kick Martie's ass. And Martie always kicks Emily's. Emily is always the loser." No doubt hundreds of lesbian fans -- and undeniably most of the men -- in the audience swooned at this pseudo catfight and its Sapphic undertones.
Between the winking, the innuendo, and the fact that black leather has never looked so good on women carrying fiddles and banjos -- these girls are attracting lesbian fans to country music in droves. Their 1998 debut, Wide Open Spaces, won multiple Grammys and sold millions. Their next album, Fly, went multiplatinum. In one of their most popular songs, "Goodbye Earl," the girls sing of killing an abusive spouse. (Look around at a Chicks concert and you'll see dozens of 14-year-old girls mouthing along to lyrics like, "It didn't take 'em long to decide that Earl had to die. Goodbye Earl!"). The same song has the two women -- lifelong friends -- later buying land, opening a roadside stand together, and picnicking on his watery grave. (Fried Green Tomatoes, anyone?)