Uncle Empire

Submitted by Matthew Goldman




















I like American history. So much, in fact, that I left a career I had been pursuing for nearly six years as a professional musician – touring and recording music across the country – to return to school and further my understanding of it.

A lot of close friends were blown away at my seemingly abrupt decision. Some had witnessed my evolving musical tastes – when I could corner one of them, they would receive high-speed, probably jumbled, impromptu ramblings regarding the relationship between the music of early 20th century white and black rural musicians (Pre-War County and Blues) and the mid 1950s advent of Rock and Roll. I tried to enlist compatriots in my voyage back into the earliest depths of recorded American folk music – music by “folks” – but no one was willing to walk it with me. To them, the journey was simply uninteresting. Maybe I can get you to come along for a little stroll. Or maybe you already want to turn the page.

Country music has become so entirely corrupted by the Nashville brand, which claims its lineage, that I actually understand when people tell me that they hate country music. I hate that crap, too. It is simply another expression of the wholly vapid American pop-cultural wasteland.

In tarnishing and obscuring an era of American music, which stretches from the early years of the 20th century to the mid 1950s, modern day country music artists – and I use this phrase extremely liberally – perform a great disservice in muddying our comprehension and understanding of our nation’s music.

Pre-War Country and Blues music was essentially “the music of nobodies.” Many recorded artists of that period were simple laborers or farmers. White or black, it is fair to say that they were nearly equally impoverished. The now revered Mississippi John Hurt laid railroad tracks for a living; A.P. Carter sold fruit trees and was the laziest farmer a family could never hope for. For the most part, there were no national stars, and, if at all, recognition would not come till years after their deaths. In a nation whose nascent Northern industrial base was dependent upon the cheap acquisition of southern resources, deep pockets of impoverished rural communities developed throughout the South and Midwest to support it.

Music was simply a hobby – what you did when the work was done, for the enjoyment of friends and family. Whether it was in the African-American “barrel houses,” or in the emptied out living rooms of family cabins, sparsely located along the Appalachian Mountains, music was a sweet respite from the harsh realities of rural life. It was how you passed the time. To think of it as a profession during the first 25 years of the century was a laughable idea.

There is a purity of emotion found in many early country and blues records. Whether it is a religious hymn or a secular tune of sorrow or joy, the emotional potency is always high. After all, what is more pure than making music for music’s sake? No one was chasing fame or glory; there was no hype, and positively no bullshit. It was just the pure and unadulterated. Whether it was Robert Johnson holed up in a dingy motel room in 1935, or Blind Willie Johnson or the Carter Family recording in factories-turned-makeshift studios in the late ’20s, the performers were simply repeating inherited cultural behaviors, unique to their respective homelands. For a brief interval, they were largely unaware anyone was listening.

This concept of music is one we, 21st century consumers, almost cannot grasp. To us, music is a commodity: carefully crafted, produced, and marketed. Our popular artists perform acts of theater enhanced with the chicanery of the best smoke and lights shows money can buy. The early sounds of an emerging American nation are almost child-like in their commercial innocence. For someone, such as me, who became fed up and disillusioned with much modern music, these recordings serve as refreshing aural cocktails of endless satisfaction.

This decades-spanning collection of music uniquely catalogues the American experience of those left lagging behind our nation’s step into an industrialized and modern world. And its use as a historical tool is definitely one of the main reasons to embrace country music, which I feel compelled to express. It’s part of who we are, and no oversized belt buckle-wearin’, CMT-, Nashville Star-watching imposter can make me forget it.

All right, I can’t go on forever, but the catalog of pre-war, rural music thankfully does. So, next time you get the notion that modernity isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, and if some piece of this has piqued your interest, here’s what I want you do:




1. Download the short “Intro to Pre-War Rural Music” playlist I’ve compiled for you below.
2. Buy some whiskey and some beer.
3. Combine parts 1 and 2, then let your mind go wherever it wishes – enjoy.

A Little Sound Archeology: A Rural Pre-War Music Compilation
1 | Mississippi John Hurt - Frankie (1928 Version)
2 | Blind Willie Johnson - Trouble Will Soon Be Over
3 | Charlie Patton - I Shall Not Be Moved
4 | Blind Willie Johnson - Lord I Just Can't Keep From Crying
5 | Mississippi John Hurt - Blessed Be the Name
6 | The (Original) Carter Family - Little Log Cabin by the Sea
7 | Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers - Leaving Home
8 | The Carter Family - River of Jordan
9 | The (Original) Carter Family - Keep on the Sunny Side

Matthew Goldman studies American History at Boston University. He formerly played guitar in the band Steel Train. Now he plays baseball on the weekend.