Podcast Summary

New Books Network

Episode: Michael T. Bertrand, "Southern History Remixed: On Rock 'n' Roll and the Dilemma of Race" (UP Florida, 2024)
Host: Caroline Alt
Guest: Dr. Michael T. Bertrand
Date: October 17, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode explores Dr. Michael T. Bertrand’s book, Southern History Remixed: On Rock and Roll and the Dilemma of Race. Bertrand, a historian of the American South, discusses the complex, often overlooked role of popular music in the region’s social and racial history. The conversation intertwines scholarly analysis, personal narrative, and detailed accounts of music’s transformative force, especially during the emergence of rock and roll, the civil rights movement, and the rise of new generations.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Dr. Bertrand’s Background and Motivation

• Working-Class Roots and Early Fascination with Music
  • Bertrand grew up in a working-class southern household where music was central to daily life, arguably more important than politics.
  • "My family knew everything about Johnny Cash, Percy Sledge... never really heard politics discussed at the dinner table, but I heard music all the time." – Dr. Bertrand [04:45]
  • Noted the contrast between family members’ openness to helping others and latent racial/gender anxieties revealed when people "got out of their place."
• Academic Trajectory and the Challenge of Studying Popular Music
  • As a student, Bertrand was frustrated that music was not considered a valid form of historical study until graduate school, where he made it his professional focus.
  • "I've been on a quest my entire adult life, I guess, trying to bring music into historical studies." – Dr. Bertrand [06:49]

2. The Book’s Place in Southern Music Historiography

• From Elvis to Broader Southern Narratives
  • Previous works focused on Elvis Presley’s symbolic role; this new book steps back into the late 19th century and tracks the roots of southern musical hybridity.
  • "This book, Southern History Remixed, is somewhat of a prequel... trying to go back a little further into the late 19th century..." – Dr. Bertrand [08:34]
  • Elvis is reframed less as an innovator, more as a generational consumer immersed in a complex musical culture.

3. Music, Social Change, and Racial Tension

• W.E.B. Du Bois, John Sharpe Williams, and U.B. Phillips
  • Du Bois saw music as a means to recognize shared humanity and undermine white supremacy; Williams and Phillips epitomized the counter-effort to “deny that cultural interaction.”
  • "It's so tragic...they have worked together, but in many ways they never knew each other. And in some cases... never wanted to know." – Dr. Bertrand [12:18]
• Music as a “Silent Revolution” and Tension Engine
  • Popular music repeatedly emerged as a challenge to racial hierarchies, often “undermining” dominant narratives even as authorities sought to erase or mute black contributions.
  • "Music provided some sort of undermining sort of force that was always there, often not recognized. But still there." – Dr. Bertrand [16:50]
  • Quoted trade publications and black newspaper editors seeing music as a "silent revolution."

4. "Remixing the Master": Revisiting Southern History

• Metaphor of the Musical “Remix”
  • Borrowed from audio engineering, “remixing” history involves revisiting canonical (“mastered”) southern narratives to bring marginalized voices to the fore.
  • Despite excluding music from the index, U.B. Phillips’ histories are “full of references to music...he came of age at the same time that we see blackface minstrelsy..." – Dr. Bertrand [22:27]
• Context and Sound as Tools for Historical Analysis
  • Music is not just “background noise”—it’s critical context that shapes and reveals social relations.

5. Technology, Media, and Ambiguous Progress

• Adoption and Adaptation of Technology
  • The South has never been completely isolated; technology like radio and recordings arrived and were incorporated into prevailing cultures, sometimes reinforcing regressive racial norms.
• Sheet Music, Blackface, and the Creation of Stereotypes
  • Early mass-culture technologies (sheet music, radio) institutionalized racist caricatures through both lyrics and imagery, amplifying violence and exclusion.
  • "The sheet music, the lyrics are all talking about African American males as animal... it is the music that is popularizing that term." – Dr. Bertrand [29:04]
  • Blackface minstrelsy persisted in mass media like the Grand Ole Opry through the mid-20th century.

6. Consumerism, Integration, and Generational Shift

• Desegregation of the Charts and Crossover Appeal
  • Trade publications like Billboard document the breaking down of musical color lines at the same time as school desegregation, signaling broader undercurrents of change.
  • "The popular music industry is one of the most...segregated entities in American society. And so again...this is underground sort of upswelling..." – Dr. Bertrand [32:38]
• Music, Taste, and the Limits of Change
  • Older southern historians (e.g., C. Vann Woodward) recognized generational shifts, even if they disliked the new music; Nelson Mandela, in a later speech, acknowledges the significance of the “rock and roll generation.”
  • "Elvis Presley basically represented a generational change." – Dr. Bertrand, paraphrasing Mandela [33:51]
• Crossover Performances as Political Acts
  • Instances where white southern performers like Elvis and Carl Perkins appeared before black audiences demonstrated a new cultural permeability, sometimes received with fanfare, sometimes with anxiety.

7. The Nat King Cole Attack and the Role of Bystanders

• Concert Violence as a Pivotal Event
  • Detailed the 1956 Birmingham attack on Nat King Cole, which was orchestrated by segregationists aware that music was “destroying segregation from the inside out” by reaching white youth.
  • “They started a campaign... to ban Rhythm and Blues records... met no success at all. Kids would say, 'We just want the music.'” – Dr. Bertrand [41:51]
• James A. Wechsler, The New York Post, and the Complicity of Silence
  • Wechsler likened the passivity of white bystanders to the compliance that enabled atrocities elsewhere, prompting questions: “Why didn't they stop it?”
  • "There were 4,500 people, an all-white audience... The attack lasted several minutes... they just stood there or sat in their seats and did nothing." – Dr. Bertrand [45:05]
• Complexity of White Southern Response
  • By the 1950s, generational priorities had shifted; most young white southerners were neither active segregationists nor civil rights activists, but their reluctance to engage may itself be significant.
  • Howard Zinn’s insight: “If white Southerners had wanted to prevent the Civil Rights movement... they could have risen en masse... but they didn't.” [48:38]
  • Black radio programming and DJs played a transformative role in representing African Americans as full human beings to a broad audience.

8. Surprising Discoveries and Nuanced Histories

• Integration at the Micro-Level
  • Found examples of white students refusing to join anti-integration protests, possibly influenced by shared musical tastes and exposure to black-oriented media.
  • "It seemed like it was much more complicated than what we might see sometimes on footage. It was more complicated." – Dr. Bertrand [52:05]
• Civil Rights Leaders on Music’s Power
  • Andrew Young (to activists): "I think Elvis Presley and rock and roll music is just as important as the church in bringing about change." [54:28]
  • Martin Luther King (to DJs, 1967): "You did the work...that made our work so much easier..." [54:49]

9. New Directions in Research

• Continuing the Story after the 1960s
  • Bertrand is investigating how the “rock and roll generation” evolved politically and culturally into the later 20th century, questioning why so many southerners remained politically inactive despite musical engagement.
  • "If we're looking at politics as the engine that drives Southern history, but yet you have like 75%...who actually don't vote, what kind of engine could that be? What else do they do? They love the music, obviously. What else did they do?" – Dr. Bertrand [59:42]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the silent revolution of music: "Popular music as sort of silent...leading a silent revolution in race relations." – Dr. Bertrand [15:36]
• On remixing the historical narrative: "Remixing the master...enhance it and bring to the fore elements that basically have been lost..." – Dr. Bertrand [20:08]
• On youth resistance to racist pressure: "These kids are basically saying, 'Oh, you know, we're not going to go into the protest against desegregation.'" – Dr. Bertrand [52:02]
• On the lingering question of bystanders: "Why didn't they do what built them from doing something? So that's what I want to take this generation that I've been looking at for a while. I like to extend them to when they get, you know, 50, 60 years old. What happened to him?" – Dr. Bertrand [60:22]

Section Timestamps

• Opening/Introduction: [01:35–03:31]
• Bertrand’s Background: [03:36–07:25]
• Origins of Southern History Remixed: [07:25–10:09]
• W.E.B. Du Bois and Cultural Tension: [10:09–18:49]
• “Remixing the Master” & U.B. Phillips: [19:18–26:38]
• Technology and Race: [26:38–31:24]
• Consumerism, Radio, and Integration: [31:29–38:24]
• Nat King Cole, Bystanders, and Civil Rights: [38:24–55:46]
• Conclusions & Next Projects: [55:46–61:38]

Conclusion

Dr. Michael Bertrand’s Southern History Remixed offers a nuanced, layered study of the South’s racial dilemmas through the lens of popular music, arguing for the importance of contextualizing sound, consumption, and generational change in southern history. The episode reveals that the music of the South is not merely entertainment but a contested cultural battleground—one that shaped, subverted, and sometimes reinforced racial and generational boundaries.

Host: Caroline Alt
Guest: Dr. Michael T. Bertrand
Book: Southern History Remixed: On Rock and Roll and the Dilemma of Race (University Press of Florida, 2024)