Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race, and New Beginnings in a New South

by Mark Kemp

Book Overview

Tracing the roots of Southern music, Dixie Lullaby is a brilliantly original look at how the unifying powers of rock music in the 1970s and 1980s helped Southerners to come to terms with their complex... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743237943
• ISBN13: 9780743237949
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 1.13 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

The South rises again.

"Civil rights freed the white southerner,particularly the young white southerner.It gave us grace,it gave us an opportunity to escape racism and politics of the Old South.We forget what a blessing Martin Luther King Jr. was to the south."..Phil Walden. This book gives an excellent insight into the south,and particularly North Carolina and the changes that influenced the music of America since the 1960's.What we wre talking about is the blending of country,folk,hard rock and southern blues. Kemp takes us from the days before the Civil Rights Movement when blacks and whites simply could not and did not play in bands together. With the murder of Dr.King came, not only intregation in all sectors of life, but also in music.Rock and Roll came out of the south in the fifties and spread all over the world.In the 60's Kemp shows how Hard Rock in all its forms was also born in the south and likewise spread worldwide. As you read through this book you are going to come across literally hundreds of musicians and bands and see how they are all intimately entwined. Although I am now 70,and have never been able to relate completely to Hard Rock,I was amazed how many of the musicians mentioned were familiar and favourites of mine.Just to name a few David Allen Coe,Charlie Daniels,Cash,Jerry Lee Lewis,Springsteen,Cher,Chuck Berry,Little Richard,Bo Diddley,Ronnie Hawkins,Jimmy Carter,Bill Clinton,George Bush,B.B.King,Ray Charles,Allmans,Jefferson Airplane,Buck Owens,Dwight Yokum,John Lennon.Bono and U2,Elvis and on and on are all part of the journey Mark Kemp takes us on through 40 years of change and growth in America. Among many other involvements Mark,greatest dream came to him when he became the music editor of Rolling Stone and vice president of music editorial MTV Networks.Who better to put this story together than someone who grew up with it ,knew virtually everyone involved and lived it for 40 years. Though I am not a musician,my music preferences are more traditional Country,Bluegrass,Folk,Pop,Easy Listning,Rock & Roll; I found this a fascinating,informative,well written book that held my interest from beginning to end.I can only imagine what a teriffic book this would be to anyone who loves Hard Rock.

People can you hear it? A song is in the Air!

This book by music writer Mark Kemp is hard to categorize. It is part memoir, part cultural and social history and partly a history of popular music. The author manages to tie the various threads together into a cohesive whole and has written a fascinating book. Kemp was born in South Carolina in 1960 and came to outside awareness just as the civil rights movement kicked into the highest gear and the old Jim Crow order of the South was breaking down. Kemp had the good fortune to be born to freethinking progressive parents who did not raise him in the atmosphere of invidious racism that characterized the life of so many other southerners of that time. The book really begins with the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968. Prior to that event, white musicians backed many of the great black soul and rhythm and blues singers. After King was killed, many blacks felt they could no longer work with either white musicians or white owned music companies. As Kemp points out, the book is not about the fascinating story of black music in the south but of white music. In the year 2005, it is difficult for one who did not live through it, to appreciate what the reputation of the South was in 1969. Even its own young considered the South backwards and indeed, "redneck". As for music, white southern music meant either hillbilly boogie or country western. Southerners did not perform rock music in an indigenous style and those from the South who desired to make it in popular music left for either California or New York and dropped their Southern roots, usually in embarrassment. This all changed when a man named Phil Walden, former manager for Otis Redding decided to start his own label, which became the fabled Capricorn Records. Rather than create a house band to back up studio owned singers, as with the Muscle Shoals studio, Walden decided to back a hot young guitarist from Florida named Duane Allman who had gained a reputation as a hot studio slide player and was looking to create his own band. Duane's band was originally supposed to be a power trio but ultimately consisted of six young men, one of them a black drummer, another his brother Gregg, a keyboardist and incredibly soulful blues singer. When Walden heard the debut of the "Allman Brothers Band" he knew he had found something special and backed the band out of his own pocket as they struggled to make it. After describing the creation of the Allman Brothers Band, Kemp shifts back to his own story. In 1970, the ten years old author was dedicated to the blues sound of the Rolling Stones, having no idea that the Stone's sound was native to his own home region. When he hears the Allman Brothers Band in his sister's car, he, like thousands of other young Southerners, is instantly smitten. The Allmans' style was a unique blending of all native American sounds, with plenty of blues, soul, pure improvisational jazz and driving rock thrown into the mix. Not rednecks at all, the Allmans w

Good Read.

Mark Kemp, editor of Creative Loafing-Charlotte, examines the interaction of southern culture and music as the South is transtioning out of Jim Crow. He uses his life as a lens through which to view these events.

A Peach of a Book!

Wow...I had withdrawal pangs after finishing this book! Kemp takes you on a sentimental tour of Southern rock music through scenery of the concurrent social and political events that affected the region and the nation. Just a small format change could have made it qualify as a music history textbook, yet somehow he has gracefully composed a harmony of history, memoir and good 'ole story tellin'. I learned things I never realized as a fan of many of the artists he discusses while I gained a deeper understanding of the events that rocked the country during my youth. The education was pure joy! His writing style is warm and inviting and keeps you fascinated with the stories as well as the chronology that could otherwise seem pedantic (I even read all the chapter notes!). Whether your youth lies in the 60's or 90's, you will find reading "Dixie Lullaby" a rich experience.

A NEW VIEW OF THE NEW SOUTH

Engrossing story of a sensitive Southern Rock fan who grew up in the South raised on the Allmans & Skynyrd, but troubled by the racist hypocrisy surrounding him, which led the author to become a Rock journalist, rejecting both his geographical & musical heritage, only to later reclaim both, which is the basis for this cathartic memoir. Enjoyable to finally read something about the Allmans and especially Skynyrd and Ronnie Van Zant, by someone whose life was changed by their music, instead of the usual dismissive Rolling Stone rock critic trash. A long overdue book that needed to be written.