How Country Music Became the Sound of U.S. Patriotism

Summary

Summary of "How Country Music Became the Sound of U.S. Patriotism" – On the Media

Released: July 2, 2025 | Hosts: Brooke Gladstone and Micah Loewinger | Guest: Joseph Thompson, Assistant Professor at Mississippi State University and Author of "Cold War Country"

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Introduction

In the episode titled "How Country Music Became the Sound of U.S. Patriotism," hosts Brooke Gladstone and Micah Loewinger explore the intricate relationship between country music and American patriotism. Featuring insights from Joseph Thompson, the episode delves into the historical evolution of country music's patriotic image, its utilization in military recruitment, and the genre's socio-political dynamics during pivotal moments in U.S. history.

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Historical Origins: Connie B. Gay and the Birth of Patriotic Country Music

Joseph Thompson introduces Connie B. Gay, a pivotal figure in the transformation of country music into a symbol of American patriotism. Originating from humble beginnings in Lizard Lick, North Carolina, Gay recognized the potential of "hillbilly music" (now known as country music) to convey powerful messages to struggling farmers during the Great Depression.

Notable Quote:

"He gradually becomes involved with the Farm Security Administration during the New Deal years... and that's a show that's used to promote the agency's farm improvement programs." – Joseph Thompson [01:03]

Gay's innovation was labeling this music as "folk music" to overcome the stigma associated with "hillbilly" connotations. In 1946, he launched "Town and Country Time," a radio show that became legendary for its role in popularizing country music among broader audiences, including booking concerts at prestigious venues like DC's Constitution Hall despite prevailing prejudices.

Notable Quote:

"It's Town and Country Time." – Connie B. Gay [03:06]

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Country Music and Military Recruitment

The collaboration between country music and the U.S. military became particularly pronounced during the Cold War. Gay's efforts extended to cultivating a fan base among U.S. troops stationed overseas, utilizing platforms like the Armed Forces Radio Circus to broadcast country music to military personnel and international civilians alike.

Notable Quote:

"This is the Armed Forces Radio Circus." – Connie B. Gay [06:41]

During the early 1950s, the military faced a recruitment crisis and turned to country music as a strategic tool. Shows like "Talent Patrol" and "Country Style USA," produced by renowned country music producer Owen Bradley, featured military personnel showcasing their talents, thereby generating goodwill and serving as soft recruitment messages.

Notable Quote:

"It's time for Country Style USA." – Connie B. Gay [12:07]

By the late 1950s, country music programming accounted for over one-third of the U.S. Army's televised recruitment campaigns, highlighting the genre's alignment with military objectives and patriotic messaging.

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Racial Dynamics in Country Music's Evolution

Thompson addresses the often-overlooked contributions of African American musicians in the development of country music. Despite their significant influence, the industry, particularly in Nashville, predominantly promoted white artists, sidelining talents like Cecil Gant.

Notable Quote:

"There's white supremacy baked into the country music industry really from its beginnings." – Joseph Thompson [14:36]

The segregation within the genre persisted until the late 1960s, with pioneers like Charley Pride emerging to challenge the racial barriers entrenched in country music's infrastructure.

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Shift During the Vietnam War and the Rise of Counterculture

The Vietnam War marked a turning point in country music's relationship with patriotism. As public sentiment towards the war grew increasingly negative, country music began to reflect more partisan and conservative viewpoints. Artists like Merle Haggard navigated this complex landscape by producing songs that, while ostensibly patriotic, also subtly critiqued the prevailing political narratives.

Notable Quote:

"We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee... we used to wave Old Glory down at the courthouse." – Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee" [21:26]

Thompson highlights how some country musicians straddled the line between supporting the military and critiquing the war, adding layers of complexity to the genre's patriotic facade.

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Modern Interpretations and Political Utilization

Moving into the late 20th and early 21st centuries, country music's patriotic image became increasingly symbolic. Artists like Lee Greenwood exemplified this shift with songs like "God Bless the USA," which, though initially written in anticipation of conflict, became an enduring anthem of American pride used by political figures across the spectrum.

Notable Quote:

"Lee Greenwood wrote 'God Bless the USA,' a wartime song in search of a war." – Joseph Thompson [27:46]

The genre continued to intertwine with political narratives, with endorsements from figures like Donald Trump further cementing its role in contemporary patriotism.

Notable Quote:

"God bless you and God Bless the USA." – Connie B. Gay [30:23]

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Irony of Conservatism and Government Influence

Thompson underscores an inherent irony in country music's association with small government conservatism, considering the genre's historical roots in government-supported initiatives during the Cold War. He points out how big federal spending facilitated the industry's growth, even as the music became a vehicle for promoting conservative ideologies.

Notable Quote:

"The very industry that makes the music... was actually also built in a way by big government spending during the Cold War." – Joseph Thompson [32:20]

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Conclusion

The episode offers a comprehensive examination of how country music evolved into a bastion of American patriotism. From Connie B. Gay's pioneering efforts to the genre's strategic use in military recruitment and its complex socio-political dynamics, "How Country Music Became the Sound of U.S. Patriotism" provides a nuanced understanding of the interplay between music, politics, and national identity.

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About the Guest:

Joseph Thompson is an assistant professor at Mississippi State University and the author of "Cold War Country: How Nashville's Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism." His research explores the historical intersections of country music and governmental influences in shaping American cultural narratives.

Transcript

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[Michael Ohinger]

The Media Midweek podcast. I'm Michael Ohinger.

[Joseph Thompson]

God Bless the usa.

[Michael Ohinger]

That's one of Trump's most played songs at his rallies, his inauguration, and even at his June milit parade. And it's one you might hear at a July 4 barbecue this week, depending on your host's taste in music and their politics. Because today's country music industry is deeply associated with a certain jingoistic rally around the flag, support the troupe's spirit. In this week's podcast, we're re airing a conversation about that sound.

[Joseph Thompson]

We sort of take for granted that country music is a patriotic genre, and I think we've missed the story of how that happened.

[Michael Ohinger]

Jo Joseph Thompson is an assistant professor at Mississippi State University and author of the new book Cold War How Nashville's Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism. He begins the story in the 1940s with a man named Connie B. Gay. Dubbed by the Washington Post as country music's media magician, Gay got his start in the Farm Security Administration, a New Deal program.

[Joseph Thompson]

He starts from really humble roots. He's born on a dirt farm in a little town called Lizard Lick, North Carolina, during the Depression. He gets a job at a radio station in Raleigh, North Carolina, and there he begins kind of understanding the power of what was then called hillbilly music, what we would now call country music, and understands that matching that hillbilly music with the information that he needs to relay to North Carolina farmers who are suffering during the Great Depression, that that makes for a powerful pairing of message and music. He gradually becomes involved with the Farm Security Administration during the New Deal years in the early 1940s, moves to Washington, D.C. so the Department of Agriculture puts him to work writing and hosting something called the Farm and Home Hour radio show. And that's a show that's used to promote the agency's farm improvement programs. So while working for this show, Gay figures out that if the accompanying music has anything with what he calls a rural flavor, then he gets a lot more participation from the listeners, a lot more male than ever before. So he uses this observation to launch a country music radio show in the Washington, D.C. area after World War II. He begins in 1946 on Station Warl in Arlington, Virginia, and he actually offers to work as an announcer for the station, strictly on commission if they'll let him play whatever he wants to play.

[Connie B. Gay]

It's Town and Country Time.

[Michael Ohinger]

You're talking about his now legendary radio show and later TV show Town and Country Time.

[Joseph Thompson]

In 1946, he begins hosting this show.

[Connie B. Gay]

Hi neighbor, this is Connie B. Gay saying, pull up your nail keg and join us.

[Joseph Thompson]

In his recollection, he says, the phone started ringing and people were saying, lord have mercy, why hasn't somebody done this before? This was a typical barn dance radio show. There were these types of shows being broadcast all over the country. Of course, the most famous one that people will know of is the Grand Ole Opry. So it's sort of a variety show for different types of hillbilly music. So you might have a harmonica player, you might have some clog dancers watching.

[Connie B. Gay]

Buck Brian fiddling and the Echo end cloggers join the dance.

[Joseph Thompson]

Then you might have a bluegrass style band.

[Connie B. Gay]

I am always dreaming of my little home among the hills of Tennessee and.

[Joseph Thompson]

Then a honky tonk band.

[Michael Ohinger]

It was a big deal both for Carne B. Gay and for hillbilly music when he managed to book a concert at DC's Constitution hall in 1947. I grew up in DC. I've seen concerts there. It's a really nice venue. It was a big deal that he managed to get hillbilly performers at the venue because of the stigma surrounding that genre at the time.

[Joseph Thompson]

Hillbilly. Obviously it comes with this connotation of someone who is perhaps unlearned, someone who's from a rural area, maybe from the mountains, possibly uncouth in a lot of ways that would not be welcome in the polite confines of a space like Constitution Hall. In order to kind of overcome that stigma, Connie B. Gay labels his music as folk music rather than calling it hillbilly music.

[Michael Ohinger]

I read a Washington post article from 1983 in which he claimed to have coined the term country music.

[Joseph Thompson]

I'm not gonna give him that. In addition to being this media mogul, he was also great at self promotion.

[Michael Ohinger]

But he was actually a great talent scout. People like George Hamilton iv, Patsy Cline.

[Connie B. Gay]

Got a feeling cause the loo the Lord says my baby said goodby Roy.

[Michael Ohinger]

Clark, Johnny Cash, Now I talk to weeping willow how to cry Andy Griffith.

[Connie B. Gay]

You get a line and I'll get.

[Michael Ohinger]

A pole, honey all got career boosts from Gay. He discovered the accordion playing comedian Jimmy Dean in a Washington, D.C. beer joint.

[Connie B. Gay]

Howdy, howdy, howdy. Good people everywhere well, it's one for.

[Michael Ohinger]

The morning He Booked an up and coming rockabilly star named Elvis Presley. On Gaye's hillbilly cruise on the Potomac River. He took the yodeling banjo playing Lewis Marshall Grandpa Jones on a high profile tour of US military bases in Japan and Korea, where they visited the front lines all the way down in the country.

[Connie B. Gay]

There's an old Kentucky moon and an old sweetheart awaiting. I'm going to see her soon.

[Michael Ohinger]

And this was, I think, one of Connie B. Gaye's great country music innovations. As you write about in the book, he cultivated a new fan base among U.S. troops stationed overseas.

[Connie B. Gay]

This is the Armed Forces Radio Circus.

[Joseph Thompson]

This is during the Korean War. He books Grandpa Jones and his grandchildren, which was his backing band at the time. So when Grandpa Jones and his grandchildren go on tour, they're not only performing these concerts for service members, but these are being recorded as well. Those recordings are then pressed onto records. Those records are then shipped to DJs within the Far east network, the FEN, which is the Asian branch of the Armed Forces Radio Service at the time. And so then that goes into circulation on DJs playlist. There's a way in which the government and then these private promoters like Connie B. Gay and, and artists like Grandpa Jones are cultivating a real market and a real audience for country music amongst US Service members. And we should mention international civilian listening audiences who can hear the AFRs even though they're not part of the US military.

[Michael Ohinger]

In the early 1950s, the military was facing a personnel crisis. It needed more recruits. Tell me about Talent Patrol and the role it played in recruiting new soldiers.

[Joseph Thompson]

If you turned on the radio, the television or opened a magazine at the time, you were probably getting some kind of a pitch to join the US military. So part of that was this show that you mentioned called Talent Patrol. So imagine Star Search or American Idol. But it only features service members from the US Military as its contestants and.

[Connie B. Gay]

Accompanying us in our service stars. Tonight we have the renowned 9th Infantry Division band all the way from Fort Dix, New Jersey.

[Joseph Thompson]

So they would go on and showcase their diverse skills, their diverse talents, and then be awarded first, second, third place. It was meant to generate goodwill toward the US Military, but also serve as a kind of soft recruitment message.

[Michael Ohinger]

And who were some of the more memorable acts who participated in it?

[Joseph Thompson]

This is where a country singer named Farron Young launches his career as a country music army recruitment singer. Now, Farron Young would go on to become a Country Music hall of Fame inductee. He's maybe best known as the first singer of Hello, Walls, a song written by Willie Nelson.

[Connie B. Gay]

Hello, walls hello, hello My things go.

[Joseph Thompson]

For you today in the early 50s, he was this kind of struggling singer from a dairy farm in Shreveport, Louisiana. He had started his music career in 1951 on a local barn dance show called Louisiana Hayride.

[Connie B. Gay]

You're headed down a lonely road that someday you'll regret.

[Joseph Thompson]

But by 1952, his career was on the uptick. He had signed a recording contract with Capitol Records. He had made his debut on the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. And then in November 1952, he gets his draft notice.

[Michael Ohinger]

He tries to get out of service, right?

[Joseph Thompson]

Yes. He tried to convince a doctor that he had heart trouble, but the doctor reportedly said, yes, son, I can hear it breaking. That's so good. And you can imagine, I mean, this is a 20, 21 year old kid essentially, who thinks he's got the world on a string, and all of a sudden it all comes crashing down because of military service. Or at least that's the way he saw it at the beginning. Yeah.

[Michael Ohinger]

Little did he know, this might have been the best thing that ever happened to him.

[Joseph Thompson]

Absolutely. His luck really begins to turn around in January 1953. At that point, he's still serving in basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. But his song called Going Steady, which he recorded before he entered the service, breaks onto the Billboard charts at Rockets. Dude number two. The army brass there at Fort Jackson realized that they have this potential resource on their hand to promote military service, and they put him to use. So that spring, they send him off to compete on talent patrol, and lo and behold, he wins. And that launches him on this career as someone who's tasked with both entertaining soldiers and then also being the voice of recruitment to lure others into the ranks.

[Connie B. Gay]

You're going steady with me.

[Michael Ohinger]

And he was among a rotating cast of MCs on a show called Country Style USA.

[Joseph Thompson]

That's right. The Defense Department and U.S. army and Air Force Recruiting Service was casting this wide net for potential volunteer enlistees. That was very important to them. They wanted more volunteers rather than draftees. One of the ways that they're doing that is through a show that begins on radio and then transitions to a television version called Country Style usa.

[Connie B. Gay]

It's time for Country Style usa.

[Michael Ohinger]

Stay all night Stay a little longer Now.

[Joseph Thompson]

Both the radio and television versions of this show were recorded by a Nashville country music legendary producer named Owen Bradley, the architect of the Nashville sound. He's also the producer behind people like Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson. Just to Name a few. The US army and Air Force Recruiting Service links up with Owen Bradley and they began producing this show called Country Style usa.

[Connie B. Gay]

Hi there, neighbors. My name is Charlie Applewhite and welcome once again to countrystyle usa.

[Michael Ohinger]

I feel better all over.

[Joseph Thompson]

And what Country Style did was present 15 minutes of country music with some of the top names in the genre at the time, along with a message about the career opportunities available through the armed forces.

[Connie B. Gay]

Congratulations, chum. You got your high school diploma and now you're really ready to step out. These days it takes specialized training to get a really good job. But did you know that you can get that valuable training you need in the US Army? And you'll be paid while learning.

[Joseph Thompson]

So by the late 1950s, country music programming is really booming for the US Army. It actually accounts for more than one third of the US Army's televised recruitment campaigns.

[Michael Ohinger]

Why country music? Why do you think the military found it so attractive as a recruitment tool, but also as a kind of cultural force in the military's hearts and minds? Fight against communism.

[Joseph Thompson]

I think country music serves a couple of purposes this way. One is a demographic purpose. The recruiting service noticed this kind of pipeline of young white recruits coming from the South. They assumed that those white Southerners would enjoy country music. There was some evidence to back that up. Based on the success of people like Grandpa Jones and Connie B. Gay in the mid-1950s, you have the country music industry beginning to really coalesce in Nashville. These songwriters, publishers, recording studios like Owen Bradley's, many of them on 16th Avenue south, which we now call Music Row, but also country music, particularly after its reputation has been burnished a bit and we're moving away from that kind of style of country music and the reputation it had as hillbilly music. That begins to read as a particularly down home, safe, patriotic sort of message that fits really well with the political climate of the Cold War consensus.

[Michael Ohinger]

And that's interesting because black musicians played a significant role in creating the sound of country music. Right. And yet they weren't as featured in these military recruitment campaigns.

[Joseph Thompson]

Yeah, we should acknowledge that there's white supremacy baked into the country music industry really from its beginnings. There's a concerted effort on the part of record labels going back to the 1920s and 30s to create hillbilly music as essentially an all white genre. Now that is overlooking the influence and the pioneering music of African Americans who played hillbilly or country music for sure. And particularly by the 1950s, that is definitely the case, at least when we're Talking about the industry and the artists that are being promoted through this professional infrastructure of Nashville. It's all white. And that's not gonna change until the late 1960s with Charley Pride.

[Michael Ohinger]

If you were a black folk or blues singer, you would literally be marketed as making race music.

[Joseph Thompson]

That's correct. At least through the 1920s and 30s. That begins to change in the late 1940s when the label R and B comes around. Now, this is not to say that country music did not benefit from the labor and talent of black musicians. In fact, one of the stories that I tell in the book is about Cecil Gant, a black R B, blues pianist, singer, songwriter from Tennessee who actually played on a lot of country music sessions back in the 1940s, but didn't get the credit that he really deserves. I think Cecil Gant actually billed himself in 1944, 45 as Private Cecil Gantt. He had a huge hit with a song called I Wonder, I Wonder.

[Connie B. Gay]

My Little Darling.

[Joseph Thompson]

But he could not translate that wartime success and the labeling of himself as a military service member into a kind of post war success because I think a lot of the kind of racism that was baked into the record industry in Nashville where he was cutting records. One of the biggest stars of the Grand Ole opry in the 1920s and 30s was D. Ford Bailey, an African American harmonica singer. But by the 1940s he's actually fired from the grand or Opry. And so when we're talking about this kind of cold war era of country music in the 1950s and early 60s, it's an all white genre for sure.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Coming up, the relationship between the military and country music hits a bump in the road in the 19th century 1970s with the Anti war movement.

[Michael Ohinger]

This is on the media.

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[Brett Baer]

This week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, veteran Fox News anchor Brett Baer on his relationship with President Trump. Does President Trump call you on the phone a lot?

[Donald Trump]

He calls me.

[Brett Baer]

Do you call him?

[Donald Trump]

I have called him. He wants to be front and center in every story and he is front and center in every story.

[Brett Baer]

Brett Baer joins me on the New Yorker Radio Hour from WNYC Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[Joseph Thompson]

This.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Is ON THE media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

[Michael Ohinger]

And I'm Michael Oinger, picking up on my conversation with Joseph Thompson, author of Cold War Country. In it, Thompson explains how country stars, some of whom got their start in the armed forces, lent their sound and fame to US Milit military recruitment efforts in turn. As the Cold War kicked off in the 1940s and 50s, the Department of Defense became a major importer of country records and provided the country music industry with a captive audience abroad. By the 1960s and 70s, that dynamic was complicated by the war in Vietnam and the birth of a counterculture peace movement.

[Joseph Thompson]

Because of depictions of service members in country fighting in Vietnam in both fictional films and documentaries, there's a kind of baby boomer sort of understanding of what that music was. And it was Credence Clearwater. It was Jimi Hendrix. It was rock and roll songs.

[Michael Ohinger]

Thompson says that most soldiers were probably listening to country music. That was what was being pushed at the time to the vast majority of US Service members around the world who were working menial jobs and not stationed in Vietnam. The war in Vietnam also marked a turning point when country music went from being patriotic to being partisan. As the war became less and less popular among Americans, if you still supported.

[Joseph Thompson]

The military, you were seen as going along with this partisan agenda. And there's a sort of capturing of this idea of patriotism very narrowly defined as supporting the troops no matter what. Bipartisan actors and Richard Nixon and the Republican Party at the time were definitely part of that.

[Michael Ohinger]

But even as country embraced conservative pro war messaging, for many country artists, it was way more complicated than that. In fact, some of the musicians who helped create that image of country music were fighting against it at the same time. Like Merle Haggard, known for his two backlash anthems, Fight Inside of Me and especially Okie from Muskogee.

[Joseph Thompson]

That was the kind of character study of what Merle Haggard and his co writer thought that a small town person would think about the peace movement and the anti war movement. If people know the song, it's, we don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee. We don't take our trips on lsd, we used to wave Old Glory down at the courthouse, et cetera. But he supposedly said that Muskogee, Oklahoma was the only place he didn't smoke marijuana in 1969. Of course, that kind of nuance is lost on not only country fans, but is lost on politicians like Richard Nixon, who thought, oh, I have a. Essentially a spokesperson for my politics in which he wanted to, you know, beat up hippies and kill the peace movement. Richard Nixon invites Merle Haggard to the White House to perform, and Merle Haggard describes that experience as one of the worst in his life. The people that he was performing for, including the president, didn't know his music, didn't like country music. And the only song that they responded to was Okie from Muskokee and Fight Inside of Me. The other backlash ant.

[Michael Ohinger]

As you've observed, there were musicians who kind of tried to straddle the line with more complicated songs that in one way or another kind of subverted the government's Cold War messaging.

[Joseph Thompson]

That's right. The person I really home in on is a country music songwriter named Tom T. Hall. He himself was an army veteran, had served in Germany back in the 1950s, then launched a country music songwriting career. He wrote songs that we now hear as a jingoistic anthem like hello Vietnam, Goodbye, my sweetheart.

[Connie B. Gay]

Hello Vietnam.

[Joseph Thompson]

Or what we're fighting for.

[Connie B. Gay]

There's not a soldier in this foreign land who likes this war. Oh, motherfucker, tell them what we're fighting for.

[Joseph Thompson]

Then in 1971, Thompsy hall releases his song Mama Bake a pie, Daddy, kill a Chicken. It's a story about a wheelchair bound Vietnam veteran who's coming home from the war. He starts out by saying, the people are staring at me as they wheel me down the ramp toward my plane. The war is over for me. I've forgotten everything except. Except the pain. In the chorus, you hear he's making a request for his homecoming meal. Mama bake a pie, Daddy kill a chicken. Your son is coming home 11:35 Wednesday night.

[Donald Trump]

Your son is coming home 11:35, Wednesday night.

[Joseph Thompson]

Throughout this song, we hear the voice of this soldier and his interactions with his family. And his acquaintances, people are learning that he's disabled. His drunk uncle makes this terrible suggestion about getting wooden legs. His former girlfriend who had been waiting for him is now no longer interested in staying with him, that he is disabled. So he is self medicating with alcohol that he keeps under the blanket over his wheelchair. I argue that hall is using this to sort of cut through the debates about the Vietnam War, the debates about what is patriotism. He's making people listen really to the consequences of war.

[Michael Ohinger]

This phenomenon you're describing reminds me of Toby Keith's 2002 anthem, courtesy of the Red, White and Blue, the angry American.

[Donald Trump]

My daddy served in the army where he lost his right eye but he flew a flag out in our yard Till the day that he died he wanted my money.

[Michael Ohinger]

Keith later felt pigeonholed. He told Billboard that he didn't want to seem like this Captain America right wing lunatic. And I didn't know this, but he was actually a registered Democrat at the time that he wrote the song.

[Joseph Thompson]

He did come to regret that, although it's obvious why he was pigeonholed as this Captain America, because courtesy of the Red, White and Blue, the Angry America, you know, released in the wake of 9 11, it's we're going to get revenge. We're going to put a boot up your ass is the American way.

[Michael Ohinger]

No subtlety whatsoever.

[Joseph Thompson]

Zero subtlety. It comes across as this ballistic anthem about let's just go kill a bunch of people in revenge. He wrote that as a sort of character study of the way he thought his father, who was a veteran, would react to the 911 attacks. But we often confuse the singer for the song, particularly in country music, where ideas about authenticity are so highly valued. We could also acknowledge that Toby Keith wrote a song called the Ballad of Ballad, which is about a recruiter who essentially suckers a high school dropout into joining the military. And then before he knows it, he's off fighting a war that he doesn't even understand what's going on.

[Donald Trump]

I met an army recruiter down at the Wind Dixie he said, son, you've no future Pack up and go with me the first place we landed was a base car.

[Joseph Thompson]

President Nixon ended the draft in 1973. That signals the beginning of a shift in country music's relationship to the military. By the 1980s, there's less of a need for the country music industry to sell its products to soldiers service members, and they're using the military more to sell the idea of country music as a particularly patriotic genre to civilians. To me, this is when the relationship between country music and the military becomes a bit more symbolic. And I think that that's what really carries on into our current day. For artists nowadays, if they want to garner more listeners, if they want to really tap into country music's culture, then they play to that sort of version of patriotism that was defined way back in the Cold War days. Lee Greenwood is kind of the perfect example of that.

[Michael Ohinger]

Lee Greenwood wrote God Bless the USA Proud to Be an American as a sort of wartime song in search of a war.

[Joseph Thompson]

That's right. In September 1983, a Korean airliner was shot down by the Soviet Union. It contained US Citizens and Lee Greenwood assumed we were about to go to war. And so he wrote this song out of this kind of impulse to write a song that would express his trepidation, but also his support for the troops with this impending war on the horizon, or so he thought. But then nothing happens. So he's stuck with this wartime song, this wartime anthem, and no conflict to support it, but he releases it anyway in 1984. And so it then becomes about just sort of a general patriotism that supports the military in a very traditional way that harkens back to Cold War consensus days of the 50s and 60s, a kind of pre Vietnam patriotism. And that is ripe for the picking for Republican politicians. People like Ronald Reagan adopt Lee Greenwood's song as his anthem. He begins to inject the lyrics into his speeches. And then George H.W. bush actually does deliver the war, Operation Desert Storm. Of course, that is a very short lived conflict, but Lee Greenwood nevertheless capitalizes on that and becomes surrogate for the Bush administration and for the U.S. armed forces overall with that song during the early 1990s. He's going to reprise that after 9 11. But the first Iraq war is the one that really gives him the war that he was in search of back in 1983.

[Michael Ohinger]

And in a way, former President Donald Trump has also capitalized on Lee Greenwood's legacy.

[Joseph Thompson]

Yes. So the God Bless the USA Bible is a Bible that Lee Greenwood is selling. It contains the lyrics to the song. It contains copies of our founding documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights and then a King James version of the Bible. Then, yeah, back in March of this year, people started sending me the commercials for God Bless the USA Bible with Lee Greenwood and Donald Trump lending his endorsement, partnering with my good friend Lee Greenwood.

[Connie B. Gay]

I encourage you to get this God blessed USA Bible. Let's make America pray again.

[Joseph Thompson]

God bless you and God Bless the USA to Talk about this move from a kind of utilitarian use of country music in recruitment campaigns to this more political and symbolic connection. I think that's a prime example of what I'm talking about.

[Michael Ohinger]

I noticed in your book there's this tension between a kind of anti big government ideology that many of us might associate with country music and the role that the big federal government played in helping popularize the genre. Do you think that's an important part of the story of country music?

[Joseph Thompson]

I do. I grew up in a small town in north Alabama in the 1980s and 90s at a time when that kind of small government conservatism was sweeping the South. This idea that government was the problem big government needed to get out of their lives. And at the same time, I was looking around and seeing people who drove an hour every day to work at Redstone Arsenal or to work at one of these engineering firms in Huntsville, Alabama. They were essentially government employees by another name. That federal money was just being filtered through a private contractor, even though they were building weaponry and software and this kind of thing for the defense state. And so I think there's a kind of irony in that country music, so associated with conservatism, rightly or wrongly, so associated with the white south, rightly or wrongly gets affiliated with that sort of small government politics and people's imaginations. And what I hope to show is that the very industry that makes the music that so many people latch onto from those communities was actually also built in a way by big government spending during the Cold War.

[Michael Ohinger]

Joseph Thompson is a history professor at Mississippi State University and author of the new book Cold War Country. Joseph, thank you very much.

[Joseph Thompson]

Thank you, Micah.

[Michael Ohinger]

Thanks for listening to the on the Media midweek podcast. Tune into the big show on Friday to hear about what's at stake if public radio stations lose their federal funding. Hi, I'm Michael Olinger.

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