By Jim Berg
During the Depression, large numbers of migrants would gather in squatter camps on the outskirts of cities and towns throughout California. In the camps, the people found solace in each other’s company, and, being very poor, they would combine their meager resources for survival. One family might have some potatoes, another tomatoes, another some meat, and they would gather round an open fire and assemble a stew from the combined ingredients, finding sustenance for another day. After the meal, brother would produce a guitar, cousin a fiddle, and they would play forlorn songs that reminded them of their long deserted homes somewhere on the Great Plains—homes that turned to dust and blew away in the wind. Of the music played in these squatter camps, folksinger Woodie Guthrie said, “It cleared your head up, that’s what it done—caused you to fall back and let your draggy bones rest and your muscles go limber like a cat’s.”
These people and their music were viewed with great suspicion and scorn by the locals of the time. In 1936, the Los Angeles chief of police sent 136 officers to patrol the Oregon, Nevada and Arizona state borders to “keep undesirable persons out of Los Angeles.” An article in Los Angeles Times reported the following: “Indigents coming to California’s verdant valleys, Chief Davis said, have one or more of just three purposes: to beg, steal, or throw themselves upon already overburdened relief rolls. Local police records show they are responsible for 20 percent of local crime, he said.” Chief Davis’ bid to extend the L.A. city line to the borders of California was dubbed the “bum blockade” by the national media. Due to national ridicule and court action, he was forced to withdraw his officers after six weeks.
Over time, the squatter camps developed into more permanent communities and the music moved into what were called “Okie bars.” Most of the week these bars were not places that respectable folk could be found, but at least one night a week the Okie bars would host a dance featuring popular hillbilly bands. For this one night, church-going couples could overlook the iniquity of the locale and enjoy the music and dance.
As the Dust Bowl and Depression brought more Okies to California and Los Angeles, radio began to pick up on the popularity of the music they brought with them—music that was called “country.” However, in order for the music to find a mainstream audience, hillbilly music couldn’t be taken seriously. According to American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California, by James Gregory, “Stations used hillbilly performers as novelty acts and insisted on as much humor as music in the show. The state’s most famous early country-music group illustrates this expectation. The Beverly Hill Billies were the brainchild of the managers of Los Angeles station KMPC. In 1930 they hit upon a gimmick to boost ratings. The station would ‘discover’ a band of hill folk long lost to civilization in the recesses of posh Beverly Hills. A troupe of musicians, some with Hollywood and vaudeville experience, others brought in from Arkansas, were hired to play the parts, and the Beverly Hill Billies became an instant Los Angeles phenomenon. With their ever present cornpone routine, they also gave southern Californians an opportunity to indulge comic-page stereotypes of white Southerners.”
Today, we still indulge in “comic-page” stereotypes of white Southerners. In many ways we have made scapegoats of a class of people derisively labeled “white trash.” Upon these people we project our worst characteristics, such as ignorance and bigotry. Scapegoating is a process of transference by which we attempt to purge ourselves of qualities that we loathe. But scapegoating is a lie. It doesn’t purge us of our worst qualities, it merely covers our conscience so that we don’t have to undergo any real change in our own attitudes and beliefs. Meanwhile, a group of people get a whole lot of ridicule piled on them—a form of bigotry that is no more excusable than racism or homophobia.
Try this little experiment at your next gathering of friends. Survey the group for their opinion of country music, and you will likely find some people who hate it. If you query further, you may find that it’s not so much the music, but the people that the music represents that are loathed. If you find yourself in that category, as I once did, take a look at yourself and what you believe. You just might find that you’re not the tolerant person you imagined yourself to be. Then take another listen to country music and see what it can teach you about yourself. You might be surprised.