Ellington

Sept. 23, 2004

"Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race, and New Beginnings in a New South." You can tell by the title of this book what it's going to be about, right? Not exactly. What we have in Mark Kemp's new book (Free Press, 2004, $26) is much more than what it appears to be on the surface—it's a cathartic treatise on the author's life in and with the music of his formative and adult years and the musicians who brought it to him. It's a story much like that of other Southerners who were born in 1960, whether they're guys or gals. That's because for some Southerners, questioning the status quo of race and the acceptability of the changes in music after the British invasion and with the rise of Southern rock came naturally, much to the chagrin of their families, much to the confusion of themselves at times. Kemp wasn't satisfied to float through life; he looked for anchors to hold him and platforms from which to make the jump to the next step. For him, music was both.

On page 19, Kemp quotes Phil Walden from Macon, Ga., a white man who managed black artists in the early '60s, including Otis Redding. When he visited him in 2002, Kemp and Walden discussed the changes wrought on the music business by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968. Walden: "Civil rights freed the white southerner, particularly the young white southerner. It gave us grace, it gave us opportunity to escape the racism and politics of the Old South. We forget what a blessing Martin Luther King Jr. was to the South."

Have you ever thought that, even once? I don't mean the part about what a blessing King was because hopefully you've thought that for many years now. I mean the part about civil rights freeing whites. I was hooked from that moment on, even though I'm merely an enjoyer of music, not a delver into the back story.
No longer did black artists want a white man to manage them, no longer did they need Walden, but this change of affairs brought about the formation of Capricorn Records and the signing of the Allman Brothers, a "multiracial outfit of hippies and rednecks" who, Kemp says, "created a soundtrack that relieved young southerners of the weightiness of their guilt, fear and economic insecurities: the family legacies of racism, the drudgeries of a rural, working-class existence. … For restless young people all across the South, this music communicated stuff that couldn't be learned from books or from teachers, parents, or clergymen. This music went straight to the intuitive part of the human soul."

Kemp chronicles the years 1968-1992 and the rise, fall and return of Southern rock; the idolization of the Allman Brothers and Lynard Skynyrd, the Rolling Stones and others; the advent and demise or evolution of disco, punk and hip-hop; the acceptance and use of Southern rock by politicians aspiring to be president; the political statements of U2, and more—all tied to what's going on in the non-music world.
During his career as a writer and editor of music magazines, including Rolling Stone, and as an executive with MTV Networks, Kemp had access to the insiders, many of whom are still living. He interviewed them as he and his dad made a cross-country tour, people like Charlie Daniels and Richard Young of the Kentucky Headhunters, along with former classmates who identified as Kemp did with the Allmans and Skynyrd, and people like Michael Stipe of R. E. M., another maker of life's music for Southerner Kemp.

At the back of the book, there's the usual—Bibliography, Acknowledgments and Index. What's extra—and beneficial for those fact-gathereers who show up at Pub Quiz on Tuesday's—is Kemp's notes on sources.

And Kemp states straight-forwardly that the book has been "a work of love—love of music, of modern history and politics, and of the cultural smorgasbord that America has always been."

For anyone who digs the music but never gave the politics a fleeting thought, this book is a must. It will open your eyes and your mind, whether you're white or black, a Southerner or a recent immigrant to this land of paradoxes.

Mark Kemp signs "Dixie Lullaby" at 5 p.m. and reads at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 29 at the LemuriaBooks.com building next to Banner Hall. Come have a beer and munchies for this Literary Brew.