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This essay contends that much of the creativity driving the formation of popular folk music, such as blues, country, and early Rock n’ Roll, in the American South during the early twentieth century grew from the religious tension between concepts of “sacred” and “secular” rooted in evangelical Protestantism. This essay examines the rebellious impulse of Rock n’ Roll as, in the absence of religious boundaries, tensions, and influences, it grew beyond its Southern roots.

I f you are not from Mississippi and you have heard of Clarksdale, then it is probably because of blues music. Perhaps no other American city is as singularly linked to its music history as Clarksdale, and certainly no other city is so thoroughly connected to the blues. This is partially because Clarksdale, a gritty town of seventeen thousand people in the Mississippi Delta, has as rich a music history as any city in America, but also because no other city has so fully staked its current identity and economic future to its music. Memphis, Chicago, and St. Louis are all well known for their blues, but they are major metropolitan centers where the blues is an enjoyable diversion for a few. In true blues fashion, the much smaller Clarksdale is improvising with the main thing it has going for it. Clarksdale is not only the hometown of such seminal musicians as Muddy Waters, Ike Turner, and John Lee Hooker, but annually it attracts thousands of tourists and their badly needed dollars through numerous music festivals and live blues music seven nights a week. Many other cities have blues clubs or museums, but Clarksdale is a blues city. Although Clarksdale today declares itself—with more than a bit of marketing hyperbole—to be “Birthplace of the Blues” and “Home of the Crossroads”—the city’s embrace of its blues history and attendant tourism is largely a twenty-first century phenomenon. In fact, while Clarksdale played a key role in the development of popular American music for much of the twentieth century, it did so largely without the recognition or encouragement of its politically powerful, native white community, which variously ignored, denigrated, and opposed the blues and related African American music. However, following the lead of numerous (primarily white) transplant residents with a passion for the blues, Clarksdale’s (again, primarily white) business and political leaders have recently realized the value of music tourism, a process fraught with economic, cultural, and racial complexities. Clarksdale’s embrace of its own blues history is a story of the intertwined dynamics of race, memory, cultural commodification, and, oddly enough, country music star Conway Twitty.

Sylvester Stallone's Rocky, winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1976, not only began one of Hollywood's most lucrative and recognizable film \"franchises,\" it began a battle of interpretation over the film's meaning. Regardless of individual interpretations, critics of the film then and now agree that Rocky, for better or worse, somehow caught the zeitgeist--was a film for and of a precarious moment in American society that spoke passionately to a large segment of the population.

[...]the elements of the film often noted as critiquing traditional notions of Western manhood-such as Eastwood's portrayal of the aging killer-turned-unimpressive \"pig farmer\" William Munny-actually are the mechanics enabling the attainment of a manhood predicated on Slotkin's redemptive violence and manly aggression. [...]Unforgiven's mix of the mundane and the manly, the \"realistic\" and the fantastic, stepped into this cultural moment, assuring its male audience that when manhood is cornered, threatened, it is only an opportunity, a stage, for it to emerge triumphant.

An insightful and wide-ranging look at one of America’s most popular genres of music, Walking the Line: Country Music Lyricists and American Culture examines how country songwriters engage with their nation’s religion, literature, and politics. Country fans have long encountered the concept of walking the line, from Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line” to Waylon Jennings’s “Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line.” Walking the line requires following strict codes, respecting territories, and, sometimes, recognizing that only the slightest boundary separates conflicting allegiances. However, even as the term acknowledges control, it suggests rebellion, the consideration of what lies on the other side of the line, and perhaps the desire to violate that code. For lyricists, the line presents a moment of expression, an opportunity to relate an idea, image, or emotion. These lines represent boundaries of their kind as well, but as the chapters in this volume indicate, some of the more successful country lyricists have tested and expanded the boundaries as they have challenged musical, social, and political conventions, often reevaluating what “country” means in country music. From Jimmie Rodgers’s redefinitions of democracy, to revisions of Southern Christianity by Hank Williams and Willie Nelson, to feminist retellings by Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton to masculine reconstructions by Merle Haggard and Cindy Walker, to Steve Earle’s reworking of American ideologies, this collection examines how country lyricists walk the line. In weighing the influence of the lyricists’ accomplishments, the contributing authors walk the line in turn, exploring iconic country lyrics that have tested and expanded boundaries, challenged musical, social, and political conventions, and reevaluated what “country” means in country music.