WI: 'Southern Rock' in '70s United States more pro-solidarity and economic justice?

It's rebellious and against "The Man" and against elites and against high falutin people in general.

I don't know if it directly takes on the fact that Southern economic and political elites tried to focus the resentment of poor whites onto poor blacks, sometimes failed at this, but often succeeded.

For example, Southern Rock could have had several songs which were pro-labor unions. Instead, in the 1970s, I think it was viewed as supporting the easier narrative of being against the federal government and against bureaucrats and against "liberals" who try to tell us what to do. May have been an inaccurate perception, but I think it was often viewed as feeding into this narrative.

But what if it was different?
 
https://sites.google.com/site/southernrockcivilrights2/home/southern-rock-and-black-america

Southern Rock did not adhere to traditional southern views of Black Americans. Instead, Southern Rock actually celebrated Black American influence. Southern Rock actually used Black American blues music as one of its greatest influences. Southern Rock artists grew up in similar situations and could relate to the music sung in blues. They lived in low class southern society and endured many of the same troubles labeled white trash. Therefore many Southern Rock bands, especially the Allman Brothers, considered blue as its greatest influence. The Allman Brothers especially singled out jazz singer Miles Davis as a great influence. . .
I don't remember too many songs which celebrated the fact that African-American citizens were finally, belatedly, receiving recognition of having the same rights as everyone else.

And I like music and know a fair amount about music. If you know of such songs, please jump in and share with us.
 

The character's name is actually "Curtis Loew." Please notice the spelling.

Alright, this is pretty good. He's singing about a local black musician he liked as a boy.
 
There's an idea that if Janis Joplin had not had a drug overdose or survived it, she would've have eventually got involved with southern rock, owing to her East Texan roots. Joplin had a huge respect for black artists, so maybe she could help the genre to trend more openly friendly to minorities and women.
 
It's rebellious and against "The Man" and against elites and against high falutin people in general.

Yeah, I always wondered what "sysem" the Duke boys were supposed to be fighting, as per the lyrics of their theme song. One crooked, small-town businessman and a couple of cops he was paying off?
 
It may be a little obvious, but there's the Drive-By Truckers in the early 2000's:


Earlier stuff, I'm not as knowledgeable about outside of Skynyrd. That said, I do know a lot about country music, and despite its reputation, you often can find populist artists that focus on economic elites instead of uppity liberals. I can't imagine you'd have too different of a story in southern rock, it's just that the genre isn't as popular.
 
Steve Earle has been consistently left-wing in his lyrics and activism, though lamenting the loss of Emma Goldman(for example) is something that's probably gonna resonate more among the denizens of northern Arts faculties than at roadside diners in Alabama.

Christmas Time In Washington
 
Norma Rae opened in the United States on March 2, 1979. Sally Field won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her portrayal of a union activist in a southern textile mill.

Perhaps more importantly, the film did okay at the box office! The following gives figures for movies opening in each month in 1979.

http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/year/1979

Some movies are listed as $0, which I think means they don't have the numbers. Please help me find something more authoritative and solidly backed up if available.
 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...tal-lee/2618e802-e0dc-4cb9-b07b-7122a005e5d9/

Crystal Lee Sutton

After the movie was made, she hired a lawyer and got a settlement of $52,000 from 20th Century-Fox for the Norma Rae story. Taxes took half of it, she said. With some of what was left, she paid off loans and bought her husband a used Pontiac Trans-Am. "He helped me and supported me through all this, and he deserved something," she said.

"I told my wife I don't give a damn if we have to live in a car, I'm proud of what she done and what she stood for," Preston Sutton said. "You better damn well believe there's a lot of people that would like to have the guts to do what she did."
Heck, I think I might have bought my spouse a used Trans-Am, too. And no, Hollywood didn't do right by Crystal Lee Sutton. Just like it didn't do right by the fellow whose real life story was the inspiration of Rocky (whose name is Chuck Wepner).
 
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https://proswrite.com/2012/10/21/guest-post-effective-leadership-in-norma-rae/

' . . . the company that owns the mill has posted a letter. It tells the white mill workers that black workers are going to run the union . . . '
It seems rather ham-handed and amateur hour for the early to mid '70s. But apparently, that's what the company did.
 
"Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynyrd Skynyrd

Big wheels keep on turning
Carry me home to see my kin
Singing songs about the Southland
I miss Alabamy once again
And I think its a sin, yes

Well I heard mister Young sing about her
Well, I heard ole Neil put her down
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
A Southern man don't need him around anyhow

Sweet home Alabama
Where the skies are so blue
Sweet Home Alabama
Lord, I'm coming home to you

In Birmingham they love the gov' nor (boo, boo, boo)
Now we all did what we could do
Now Watergate does not bother me
Does your conscience bother you?
Tell the truth

Sweet home Alabama
Where the skies are so blue
Sweet Home Alabama
Lord, I'm coming home to you
Here I come Alabama

Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers
And they've been known to pick a song or two
Lord they get me off so much
They pick me up when I'm feeling blue
Now how about you?

Sweet home Alabama
Where the skies are so blue
Sweet Home Alabama
Lord, I'm coming home to you

Sweet home Alabama
Oh sweet home baby
Where the skies are so blue
And the guv'nor's true
Sweet Home Alabama
Lordy
Lord, I'm coming home to you
Yea, yea Montgomery's got the answer
Just to be clear for record, other than maybe a couple guitar riffs, I think this is a pretty sorry song.

One measure of a good song is that the more you understand the lyrics, the better you like it. This one's kind of the opposite.
 
Yeah, some of the lyrical turns are kind of awkward...

Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
A Southern man don't need him around anyhow


NEIL: "Hmm, think I'll go hang out with some southern men. Oh yeah, that's right, I forgot. They don't need me around."

Lord they get me off so much

Pretty much speaks for itself, in terms of badness.

And it was never clear to me what "Watergate" was supposed to represent, as in "Watergate does not bother me." Was
 
And it was never clear to me what "Watergate" was supposed to represent, as in "Watergate does not bother me." Was

It was a big thing in 1973-74. There were defenders of Tricky Dick at the time.

In hindsight, 18 minutes of erased tape isn't all that bad, considering what others would do in the future.

For the song, go here
http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2014/04/15_things_we_have_to_explain_a.html

But really, most music lyrics are between odd and stupid.

Look at the ones from _Roundabout_
Most are just word salad
 
Yes, southern rock was influenced by negro spirituals, blues and jazz, but its roots go all the way back to ancient Scots-Irish musical traditions.

OTL At risk of over-simplification: the antebellum South had only 3 social classes: plantation owners, black slaves and white trash.
Plantation owners were among the first (non-native) settlers. Many came from wealthy European families that could afford to pay top dollar for the best farmland along rivers.
Planters soon imported millions of black slaves from Africa to work their fields, raising cash crops like: tobacco, cotton and sugar cane for European markets.
Meanwhile, late-arriving immigrants tended to be poor Scots-Irish farmers. By, Scots-Irish, I mean descended from the multiple waves of Scots who invaded Ireland to establish "plantations" and displace traditional Irish-Catholic nobility. In North America, those poor SI farmers were forced into subsitance farming up in narrow mountain valleys (hollows). Because the soil was so poor, Scots-Irish became hillbillies (an Irish term) while retaining their stringed instruments and penny-whistles. Because the industrial revolution largely by-passed hillbillies living in the Appalachian Mountains (Alambama, Georgia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas) that long-term poverty helped preserve old-time Scots-Irish music.

It is amazing how the ruling Southern planter elite were able to recruit so many hundreds of thousands of white-trash SI to defend planter values during the American Civil War. Recruitment included large numbers of Irish refugees - just off the boat - fleeing the Irish Potatoe Famines of the 1840s.

This new wave of Scots-Irish immigrants displaced blacks at the lowest level of the Southern economy by becoming day-labourers who did the most dangerous work like draining snake-infested swamps or breaking horses to the saddle.
Come the industrial revolution, wealthy elites invented new ways to exploit poor whites by forcing them to work for low wages in cramped, dangerous factories or deep in coal mines.

During Prohibition (1920s) hillbillies found lucrative outlets for their traditional, home-brewed, moonshine whiskey in thirsty towns across America. Hillbilly music was as popular in (illicit) saloons as black blues and jazz. In many respects, Prohibition was a racist/xenophobic attempt at suppressing hillbilly moonshine, German-American beer gardens, etc.

How moonshining differs from modern, dirt-poor Afghan farmers growing marijuana or hashish or opium poppies is a mystery to me?????

Fast forward to the Vietnam War, traditional army recruitment policies returned to the Deep South. Steve Earl sang about "volunteered for the army on my birthday, they take the white trash first round here anyways ...."
Meanwhile Bruce Springsteen lamented about the miserable treatment of returning veterans in his song "Born in the USA."
Disgruntlement about the huge numbers of white trash dying in Vietnam motivated folk musicians, Southern Rockers, etc. to write protest songs about the VN War. Many of those songs were written about poor whites being used and abused to fulfill "planter" ambitions.
 

Jasen777

Donor
And it was never clear to me what "Watergate" was supposed to represent, as in "Watergate does not bother me." Was

The band has said that it was to point out how Neil Young (and society at large presumably) had been stereotyping the South - the whole south got blamed for George Wallace but no one blamed all northerners for Nixon. Even if true, not a particularly impressive defense.
 
The band has said that it was to point out how Neil Young (and society at large presumably) had been stereotyping the South - the whole south got blamed for George Wallace but no one blamed all northerners for Nixon. Even if true, not a particularly impressive defense.

That's the main interpretation I've heard. But, as I said in my aborted post above, if "Watergate" is being posited as a "northern" thing, that's complicated by the pretty strong support that Nixon had in the south. If a southern conservative said "Watergate does not bother me", the meaning was probably not "Hey, if you northereners wanna commit political break-ins and cover-ups, I'm not gonna criticize you, so don't criticize us over our sins", but rather "Of course Watergate doesn't bother me! Nixon rocks!!"

For the point the song was trying to get across, Chappaquiddick would probably have been a better choice for a regionally representative scandal, since Ted Kennedy, unlike Nixon, was never viewed as culturally or politically "southern". To say the least.
 
For the point the song was trying to get across, Chappaquiddick would probably have been a better choice for a regionally representative scandal, since Ted Kennedy, unlike Nixon, was never viewed as culturally or politically "southern". To say the least.

Tricky Dick wasn't seen as a Southerner, at all, the 'Southern Strategy' did start with him. At the time, he was another Western Republican who really didn't get along that well with the Eastern branch of the Party
 
Tricky Dick wasn't seen as a Southerner, at all, the 'Southern Strategy' did start with him. At the time, he was another Western Republican who really didn't get along that well with the Eastern branch of the Party

Yes, I might have overstated the case there. My point was, he was someone who had a lot of support in the south, which would make it difficult to characterize his misdeeds are representative of the type of things that northerners do, as per the standard interpretation of those lyrics. Another way of phrasing the point would be to say that, if a northern liberal were to hear the line, he'd probably reply with "Why are you saying Watergate is a northern thing? We hate Nixon even more than you do."

That said, according to the wiki articles, Nixon lost quite a few southern states to Wallace in '68, and while he did sweep the south in '72, he also swept the rest of the country that year as well. I'd still guess, though, that by '72, he was polling better among conservative southerners than among the kind of northerners who made animosity toward George Wallace into a regional past-time.
 
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