People treat us so much more intellectually and so much heavier than what we ever believe for a moment we are, and we feel kind of foolish. I wish it was magic upon magic, but it's no big thing. There's no point in writing about it... . Let's just listen to it (Anonymous 1970:44).

Robbie Robertson of "The Band"

If in the world view of rock in the late 1960's the Beatles were the dreamweavers and the Rolling Stones the Satanic urge; if Joplin was the soul and Hendrix the genital thrust; if Blood, Sweat and Tears were the technicians and Dylan the tortured conscience, then The Band was the memory. This group has a sense of historical roots that yields nostalgia without sentimentality, humor without biting satire, and a diversity of styles without a superficiality of skill. They concern themselves with ideas, people, settings, and a view of time unlike almost anyone else in the rock field.

Country-western music, one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the United States, was, with the blues, part of the original inspiration of the first rock and roll of the 1950's. Elvis Presley was a country-western and blues singer long before he broke new ground with his rock songs. Innumerable rock performers have been influenced by country-western styles, but few have actually identified with or at least expressed a deep-felt respect for the people and subculture that produced this musical tradition. The Band, however, is an outstanding exception.

The Band's songs, usually in a loose narrative form, rarely concern urban experience. Instead the farmer, the cross-country trucker, the small town carnival or medicine show of years past are their most typical subjects. From album to album, their point of view about these topics has evolved. In The Band (1969) their approach is generally through the memory of various fictional narrators. Stage Fright followed after nearly a year of touring; it reveals the group's increasing feeling of confinement in the roles of performers. In the title song "Stage Fright" the entertainer seems almost lost in time because he is caught in a spotlight trap that functions like a treadmill. Then came Cahoots in which we hear the line "run away, run away, it's a restless age." John Landau sees this impulse not as an index of social irresponsibility but of future shock. Many of the songs in the album (and elsewhere in their repertoire) suggest a "tinge of extinction," a growing awareness of rapid, unwanted, unprepared for obsolescence of skilled men and values. The main theme of Cahoots is a dying carnival run entirely by performers. The tone is one of regret and sorrow rather than of fury or anger. "The Last of the Blacksmiths" treats the theme of extinction with the rhetorical question: "how can you replace human hands?" The negative answer is all too clear. The song also reveals the composer's own fears of passing out of use: "frozen fingers at the keyboard, could ths be the reward?" (Landau 1972:114-119).

Throughout all The Band's music there is an implied respect for tradition and a reverence for inherited experience. Most rock stars in the late 1960's created as part of their act an image of alienation from the urban, middle class mainstream. Their costumes tell the story: Hendrix the dandy, Joplin the sequined sex machine, Jagger the court jester in top hat and rooster tail, the Beatles in a whole wardrobe of put-on costumes. But not so with The Band. Their album jackets and song folios reveal five men in regular, undistinguished, plain colored shirts, perhaps a tweed sportcoat on one, an unadorned leather vest on another. Hair of moderate length, beards and moustaches trimmed and neat: nothing to offend, nothing to outrage. In fact on Music From Big Pink (their first album, 1968), they posed en masse among a crowd of family and neighbors and captioned the picture "next of kin."

Their record production techniques reflect essentially the same feeling about adornment and ornamentation. Big Pink was recorded in the basement of their rented house in Woodstock, N.Y. The Band was produced in a studio they built in a rented house in Hollywood. These settings say something significant about their music. It has a homemade quality that is noticeable in its simplicity. What most rock stars saw as new avenues for creativity (in sophisticated recording technology), The Band considered unnecessary. The group's main lyricist, Robbie Robertson, engineered The Band himself.l
 

Partial explanation for these attitudes and procedures lies in the group's accumulated experience of small town life, travel, work and family traditions. All but one of them are Canadian born. In 1959 Robertson left Toronto at age 16 and headed south for the places that blues and early rock lyrics talked about. Rick Danko, son of a tobacco farmer near Simcoe, Ontario, worked as a butcher's helper but left for the music road also. Garth Hudson's father was a farm inspector near London, Ontario and Richard Manuel's father a mechanic in nearby Stratford. Levon Helm of Marvell, Arkansas (pop. 1200) worked on a cotton farm when not in school and, like the others, saw music as a means of escape from sweaty drudgery. They joined together in the early 1960's; by now (1976) they have been together over a decade (Anonymous 1970:42-45).

The Band has had two remarkably different musical mentors. Canadian rock star Ronnie Hawkins, famous for his "rockabilly" style country-western and rock and roll), carried the group with him for several years, during which they were known as The Hawks. In 1965 Bob Dylan asked them to tour with him. Dylan was then at the turning point between an unamplified folk style and the electrically powered sound of folk-rock. He had also come to see that the social concerns of folk protest lyrics could be expressed through rock. The Hawks became Dylan's band and then "The Band" as they backed him through this phase of his career.

Four of the five men in the group sing well enough to take the lead. Together they play over fifteen instruments. Helm's experience as a drummer began in competition at county fairs. Danko and his brothers sang at Saturday night community musical events. Hudson studied organ at Western Ontario University and worked his way through the Bach chorales. Although Robertson is the group's main lyricist, they are all remarkably well balanced in musical talent and apparently uninterested in competing for the spotlight. Thus, they remain a tight, cooperative unit characterized by serious professionalism.

Robertson has said that their sense of roots is very loosely defined. They take past experience seriously, their own and what they know of history. They are voracious music listeners, and their composition process is often informally communal. Trying to classify their style satisfactorily is like flying a kite on a windless day: nothing specific catches hold and stays up very long. One hears everything from Anglican church hymns to Scottish reels, ragtime, and folk ballads. A1 Kooper, a founder of Blood, Sweat and Tears, said he hears The Beach Boys, Hank Williams, The Association, Dylan, The Beatles, and still other influences in The Band's songs -- in other words, further hybridization (Kooper 1971:467-470).

Dylan's contribution was significant in this way: his own determination to write songs of poetic intensity rather than the predictable banality found in many popular hits gave The Band a model of a self-respecting bard. Hawkins had played "rockabilly": country-western music ornamented with the harder beat and greater volume of basic 1950's rock.

Defining country-western music is an elusive task in itself. Country-western songs usually rely on a verse scheme of AABB or ABBA, but more emphasis is placed on fitting the lyrics to a ⁴₄ or ³₄ metrical structure. A song's title (often a clever punchline) emerges in a standard two- or four-line chorus after verse one. Verse two follows, then a bridge, then verse three and a final chorus. Another common form is a rambling narrative with an ironic final line. However, these are not the elements of country-western that have most influenced The Band. Their songs are more varied in form (although the verse/chorus combination is often retained) and are rarely dependent on witty titles or clever final lines.

The Band's basic instrumentation however is definitely country-western. Guitar (acoustic, electric and steel), mandolin, banjo, fiddle and bass are the core country-western instruments, and The Band uses most of them in country style, e.g., fast-moving square dance fiddle, bass like the old tub bass, moderately loud guitar providing basic rhythmic support. Sometimes a harmonica evokes feelings of sadness and nostalgia. A wide range of other instruments (such as brass, organ and piano) also creates a more complex texture than that of country-western music.

Equally important are the thematic concerns of the songs. Alan Lomax describes southern rural musical style (from which country-western is derived) as a product of "security patterns" in white society. The social function of the music is to give the listener a sense of security by symbolizing his birthplace, childhood, religion, community, courtship, and work. In dealing with these concerns, country-western plays an essentially conservative function by reflecting and preserving the vision of society held by its audience. Many of these conventional country-westem themes are also themes of The Band.

The vocal style of The Band seems to be a combination of inheritance and originality. Their voices often strain, nasally, towards the upper reaches of their ranges, yet they never exceed a comfortable level of volume. This pinched and at times incisive tone is characteristic of Anglo-American folk singing (Mellers 1972:398).2 Their harmony frequently contains a deliberate "space"; this is achieved by using combinations of a highly pitched voice (at times almost a falsetto) with a much lower alto or bass. This produces a stark, "incomplete" texture. Sometimes the voices are inaudible, suggesting that the instrumental lines are to take precedence. The most prominant aspect of their rhythmic characteristics is that the drums are on an equal footing with the voices and other instruments. Many of their songs "chug" or "rumble" along in a jagged, irregular fashion. While Garth Hudson fully exploits the sound capabilities of his electric keyboard instruments, the distortion and feedback techniques of acid rock are alien to the style of The Band. Except for the instrumental piece "Genetic Method" (in Rock of Ages) which features Hudson on organ and which involves Ivesian quotations from Anglican hymns and "Auld Lang Syne," they have avoided the improvisational experiments of avantgarde rock. Quiet, consistent, and exacting in their musicianship, The Band is stylistically conservative (Gillett 1 972: 307).
 

The group's most representative album is entitled The Band (Capitol, STAO 132, Nov. 1969); an examination of three of its songs will serve to illustrate the stylistic and thematic concerns which recur throughout their music.
 

"Rag Mama Rag -- by Robbie Robertson

"Rag Mama Rag" is a man's comic story about a woman whose coyness in the face of blatant attempts at seduction takes the form of a habitual tendency to "rag" (one meaning is to tease; another is to play this type of music) rather than cooperate. It is replete with verbal allusions to the country setting and working class milieu of the story. For example, the hyperbole involved in the joke about "letting the railroad scratch his back" is typical of the tall-tale tradition in American folk narratives. The hail stones beating on the roof (which we can easily imagine to be corrugated metal) and the 100 proof bourbon suggest the hills of Appalachia. There is also a sense of woodsy isolation, with no proximate neighbors -- "It's you and me and the telephone." The humor relies in part on good-natured deprecation, as when the singer tells her to bring her "skinny little body back home"; there is a clever use of nonsense to enhance the general feeling of confusion: "I ask about your turtle/and you ask about the weather/Well I can't jump a hurdle/and we can't get together."

Verse 1
Rag mama rag
I can't believe it's true
Rag mama rag
A-what did you do?
I crawled up to the railroad track
Let the four-nineteen scratch my back

V3
I ask about your turtle
and you ask about the weather
Well I can't jump a hurdle
and we can't get together

V4
We could be relaxin'
in my sleepin' bag
But all you wanna do for me mama
is a rag mama rag
There's nowhere to go
Rag mama rag
Come on resin up the bow

V5
Rag mama rag
Where do ya roam?
Rag mama rag
bring your skinny little body back home
It's dog eat dog and cat eat mouse
You can rag mama rag all over my house

V6
Hailstones beatin' on the roof
The bourbon is one hundred proof
It's you and me and the telephone
Our destiny is quite well known.
We don't need to sit and brag
All we gotta do is
Rag mama rag, mama rag

(V2 and V7 omitted)

The music provides a good illustration of The Band's instrumental versatility. Country style fiddle accompanies the vocalist on the melody; a modified form of ragtime piano appears which serves to create an analogue to Mama's ramblings around the shack. The latter is particularly evident at the very end of the song, when the piano plays alone. Here the ragtime rhythmic pattern emerges clearly; a ⁴₄ figure in the left hand is set against a syncopated, partially improvised figure in the right. This form is the basis for the entire song, with its "stop-and-go" feeling. The guitar and tuba or trombone assist the accompaniment figure of the left hand. Classic ragtime often uses a tight rondo-like form, but this does not appear here. Some verses flow easily into one another, while others feel somewhat disjointed. This interplay between feelings of arrival and non-arrival, anticipation and resolution appears in many of The Band's songs. By displacing accents they create a jerky, awkward feeling, in this song enhancing the confusion of the relationship described in the lyric. Other Band songs similar to "Rag..." are "Across the Great Divide" and their biggest commercial hit, "Up On Cripple Creek."
 

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" -- by Robbie Robertson

This is one of the key historically focused "memory" songs The Band has produced. Robertson's knack for compressed storytelling derives from his tendency to write cinematically, giving just enough vivid detail to facilitate visualization. He is interested in history not as a record of great accomplishments by famous people, but rather as a memory in the mind of the common, anonymous person whose life is rarely examined by historians. In this story, Robertson deals with the pain experienced by a man remembering the struggle of doing his own work and minding his own business, while at the same time finding his family, community and self caught up in the Civil War. His name is Virgil Caine. Though he vainly protests the injustice of the war's slaughter of "the very best" young men, he refrains from judgment. This is characteristic of Robertson's sense of history; he is far more concerned with mundane, noncomittal feelings than with taking sides in a moral debate. In the music of The Band there is none of the strident, angry self-righteousness that appears in other rock music. On the contrary, this song conveys an old idea, that of respect for tradition and hard work.

Verse 1
Virgil Caine is the name,
and I served on the Danville train,
'Ti1 Stoneman's Cavalry came
and tore up the tracks again.
In the winter of sixty-five,
we were hungry, just barely alive.
By May the tenth, Richmond had fell;
it's a time I remember, oh, so well.

Refrain 1
The night they drove old Dixie down,
And the bells were ringing,
The night they drove old Dixie down
And the people were singing.
They went,
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la

V2
Back with my wife in Tennessee
When one day she called to me
"Virgil,quick, come see:
There goes Robert E. Lee!"
Now, I don't mind choppin' wood
And I don't care if the money's no good,
Ya take what ya need and ya leave the rest
But they should never have taken
The very best.

R2 same as R1

V3
Like my father before me
I will work the land.
And like my brother above me
Who took a rebel stand.
He was just eighteen,
proud and brave,
But a Yankee laid him in his grave.
I swear by the mud below my feet,
You can't raise a Caine back up
When he's in defeat.

R3 same as R1
R4 same as R1

The lead singer's voice is strained and nasal throughout, as though to suggest the sound of weeping. The refrain displays harmony typical of The Band; voices strain toward the upper reaches of the singers' ranges, entering and leaving the texture at surprising places. Their characteristic stratification between high-and low-pitched voices is also evident. The slow tempo suggests a feeling of worn-out, plodding fatigue which relates logically to the mental and physical strain exposed in the lyrics. The distant, solitary harmonica used in the second and third verses is an appropriate sound for a song of memory and lament. Even the faint trumpet entering with the final chorus evokes its own pathetic irony. Reminiscent of martial calls to action and regal in tone, it reminds the listener of the honor and pride at stake in Dixie's futile stand.
 

King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" -- by Robbie Robertson

Songs like "Rockin Chair" and "When You Awake" reveal The Band's empathy for the aged and a respect for their special perspective on life as opposed to many rock groups. Similarly, people who labor at menial and undramatic tasks are given sympathetic, even honorific treatment by The Band. A case in point is "King Harvest."

Ralph Gleason has said that the songs in The Band strike him as a sound track for James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Gleason 1971:472). In "King Harvest," the music is deliberately sparse and narrow in its range of power and volume, reinforcing the images of static, stagnant life in poverty on a southern dirt farm. A second version with a bolstered horn section and louder dynamic levels appeared in Rock of Ages. This more aggressive treatment musically reinforces the strong feelings of frustration and hope expressed in the words. In either version, it is one of The Band's most skillful compositions; its texture is delicately varied while its lyric tells an all too credible story, evoking poignant emotions.

Verse 1
Corn in the fields,
Listen to the rice when the wind blows 'cross the water.
King Harvest has surely come.
I work for the union
'cause she's so good to me,
And I'm bound to come out on top,
that's where she said I should be.
I will hear every word the boss may say,
For he's the one who hands me down my pay.
Looks like this time I'm gonna get to stay,
I'm a union man, now, all the way.

V2
The smell of the leaves,
From the magnclia trees in the meadow.
King Harvest has surely come.
Dry summer, then comes fall
which I depend on most of all.
Hey, rainmaker, can't you hear the call?
Please let these crops grow tall.
Long enough I've been up on Skid Row,
And it's plain to see I've nothin to show.
I'm glad to pay those union dues,
Just don't judge me by my shoes.

V3
Scarecrow and a yellow moon,
Pretty soon a carnival on the edge of town.
King Harvest has surely come.
Last year, this time, wasn't no joke,
My whole barn went up in smoke.
My horse, Jethro, well, he went mad,
And I can't ever remember things bein' that bad.
Then here come a man with a paper and pen
Tellin' us our hard times are about to end.
And then, if they don't give us what we like,
He said, "Men, that's when you gotta go on strike."

Corn in the fields,
Listen to the rice when the wind blows 'cross the water.
King Harvest has surely come.

The problem described here in a tightly compressed narrative, with the cinematic quality so characteristic of Robertson's writing, could have taken place any time within the last forty years. Despite its southern setting, its thematic concerns are relevant to Blacks, Whites, Chicanos, and others who have worked the land anywhere as migrants or sharecroppers. At the same time, it is a song for those on the outside of this agrarian world. If ever The Band waxes didactic, it is in choosing the textual content. In singing of this farmer's plight they direct a call for sympathetic understanding to their predominately urban, affluent audience. There is food for thought in the lyric: the farmer's dream of success after long travail; the depth of his sensitivity to nature; the focused energy of his self-respect; the possible naiveté of his trust in the union that advertises itself as a panacea.

The music has several very affecting qualities. In the refrain, the harmony is closer than usual and in a lower tessitura. The high wailing nasal strain is replaced by a deep throated, chesty sound. Extra-musical images (i.e. the delicate scent of magnolia trees) are conveyed by such devices as a reduction of the singers' volume. The lead singer obviously feels no need to shout to express the farmer's integrity and determination. Striking use of textural contrast can be found between the first two lines of each verse and the last few lines, with subsequent bridge, of the preceding verse. The final lines of the verses employ heavy, distinct accents on the beats; this metric emphasis is maintained in the bridge, with the addition of the wa-wa pedal of the electric organ. The rhythmic support is abruptly terminated when the following verse begins; the contrast is most effective.

The stylistic devices manifest in "King Harvest" summarize the essence of the music of The Band -- each musical or textural element is clear enough to be appreciated on its own, yet all work together coherently to produce an overwhelming aesthetic effect.
 

Why has The Band's focus on rural and small town working class life been of interest to its predominantly urban and suburban student audience? And why, while so much of rock is intensely present-minded or dreamily speculative about the future, has The Band's backward look in time had such great appeal? One theory that produces some substantial answers td these questions relies on a distinction made by Leo Marx between two kinds of pastoralism (Marx 1967:5-11).

Marx's argument derives from abundant evidence that there is a yearning among urbanized, industrialized Americans to escape from the city's maze and into the rural wilds. This craving for escape pervades our whole culture -- from cigarette and beer ads to legislative biases in favor of the farm bloc, and is manifest even in our classic literature. Therefore, it is no wonder that it should appear in our popular songs. In some forms, grouped under the rubric of "sentimental pastoralism," this yearning celebrates a happy, uncritical embrace of all things natural, wild and "countrified." These qualities are perceived as manifestations of mother nature's benign simplicity, as opposed to the sticky web of problems in the urban context.

Marx relies heavily on Freud's analysis of this desire for escape. Freud concludes that the "pastoral instinct" reflects a psychic need for freedom. Unable to find release from constraints upon instinctual energies imposed by urban business and industry, people fantasize their escape from repressive conditions. Opposed to this sentimental view is a more sophisticated, "complex" one, expressed most effectively by our best writers -- among them Cooper, Thoreau, Melville, Faulkner, Frost, and Hemingway. Their reactions to this "pastoral urge" differ from those of the masses in several important ways. It is not sufficient for them merely to escape, in fantasy, to a happy time in the country. Rather, they emphasize the threat posed to nature when the "machine-mentality" characteristic of industrialization is turned loose on the rural wilds. To them, uncontrolled technology is the "demon in the works," raping the land. In addition to this defense of nature's vulnerable beauty, they explore the violence and loneliness of the wilderness and country; they qualify the sentimentalists' benign view of nature and country life by pointing out the limitations of that idealized vision. Thus, their focus is upon the tenuous relationship "civilized" man must have with "untamed" nature. Their concern is to maintain a delicate balance between use and misuse while they examine minds negotiating between these two visions, neither of them idealized.

The music of The Band appeals to some people simply because of its "country" flavor; thus some of their fans are among the sentimentalists Marx describes. If, however, we consider The Band's background and examine their lyrics, we see a clearly unidealized pastoral past. There is plenty of good humor in the ill-fated romances they recount; yet they also treat the pain, suffering, loneliness and hard work inherent in rural life. They recognize the complexities of country life in the same manner as do those who view the city as a labyrinth of frustration. In view of their attention to the dark side of rural life, their references to the salving beauties of nature become all the more poignant, as in "King Harvest's" line: "Listen to the rice as the wind blows 'cross the water."

The Band's music is not at all pro-revolutionary as were Marxist labor songs in the 1930's, nor is it directly critical of mainstream mores. The Band is never deliberately outrageous as are the Rolling Stones. The Beatles' satire and the philosophical queries of Bob Dylan are also outside their style. Their songs do argue implicitly, however, the case for straight-forward, sincere compassion and empathy. Taken seriously, they suggest a necessity for the urban listener, unfamiliar with country life, to retool his machinery of fantasy and conscious thought. A change in perspective is necessary if he is to realize that the pastoral, hillbilly, hoedown, ragtime life is not always good times around the still. Authentic country-western music, like the rural blues, reflects the troubles of country people as well as celebrates their moments of contentment.3 The Band's music is consistent with these traditions, yet its significance is different because its impact is directed to a different segment of the urban popular music audience.

I feel sympathetic connections between songs of The Band and books such as Harrington's The Other America (on unrecognized poverty) and de Beauvoir's The Coming of Age (on neglect of the elderly). In concentrating on human frailty and the passing away of living things, The Band is the Andrew Wyeth of rock. It is his genius to capture the process of aging and weathering, to disclose the ironic beauty of decay. Values associated with a sensibility like this one seem fundamentally necessary and healthy to a more humane society.

Two other aspects of The Band's style set it off from the mainstream of American culture and much of rock subculture. The first is the group's intense concentration on professionalism, on the pursuit of perfection in its craft. Even in Rock of Ages, recorded live at a concert, the music does not require "touching-up" by engineers; the performance is tight and disciplined. The music is highly rationalized, rejecting the Dionysian chaos of acid rock. Most impressive, though, is the way its professionalism slaps at the worst aspects of popular culture. Incompetence, planned obsolescence and bland mediocrity abound in production decisions and consumer tastes. The pursuit of easy, unfulfilling pleasure accompanies the tendency to scorn exacting work. Through all of this, The Band represents a clear vindication of devoted craftsmanship.

A final question: What is implied by the fact that this group is so uncharismatic, so unconcerned with a self-serving, marketable mythology or with a shocking display of anti-bourgeois behavior? A possible answer is that the music itself is attraction enough for a large part of the rock audience. To The Band, the deliberate theatricality of much rock is like the icing on the cake -- an enrichment, but not the staple food. The function of rock frequently has been to supply a pantheon of heroes who quench thirsts unrecognized by other institutions; its pluralism of style has apparently created a niche for the unadorned humility of The Band.
 

1. It is true, however, that their album, Rock of Ages (1972), is a far more complex experiment, since it is a recording of live concert performances with a supplementary horn section. This gives their music a much brighter and louder sound than the five Band members alone produce. Several of the songs from The Band are also in Rock of Ages, and it is well worth listening to both albums. The concert album also involved a more complex mixing process, as the acoustics of the concert hall were not as easily controlled as those of a good studio.

2. Mellers (1972) cites the singing of Sarah Ogden Gunning, from the Kentucky mining region, as an example. The influence of this style also extends into bluegrass music and is evident, for example, in the album Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys: 16 All Time Greatest Hits, Columbia, CS 1065.

3. A reading of Oliver (1960) and Malone (1968) has given me this impression. They provide many illustrations of these complementary thematic concerns.

1. Music From Big Pink, Capitol, SKAO 2955, Aug. 1968.
2. The Band, Capital STAO 132, Nov. 1969.
3. Stage Fright, Capital SW 425. 4. Cahoots, Capital SMAS 651.
4. Moondog Matinee, Capital SW 11214.
5. Rock of Ages, Capital SABB 11045 (two records).
   Lyrics: The Band and Music From Big Pink (Dwarf Music, 1969).

Anonymous

1970

"Music: Down to Old Dixie and Back," Time. Jan. 12, 1970, 44.

Gillett, Charlie

1972

The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll. New York: Dell, 307.

Gleason, Ralph

1971

"Review: The Band," in Rolling Stone Record Review. New York: Pocket Books, 472.

Grissim, John

1971

Country Music: White Man's Blues. New York: Paperback Library, 4.

Kooper, A1

1971

"Review: Music From Big Pink," in Rolling Stone Record Review. New York: Pocket Books, 467470.

Landau, Jon

1972

"The Band: 'It's a Restless Age'," in It's Too Late to Stop Now: A Rock and Roll Journal, Jon Landau. San Francisco: Straight Arrow, 114-119.

Lomax, Alan

1959

"Folk Song Style," American Anthropologist, Vol. LXI, Dec. 1959, 927-955.

Malone, Bill

1968

Country Music USA: A Fifty Year History. Austin: University of Texas Press, 11.

Marx, Leo

1967

The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 5-11.

Mellers, Wired

1972

"Bob Dylan: Freedom and Responsibility," in Bob Dylan: A Restrospective, Craig McGregor, ed. New York: Morrow, 398.

Oliver, Paul

1960

The Meaning of the Blues. New York: Collier.