I think, though honestly I can’t prove it, that rap music began on the front porch of a small farmhouse in east Tennessee, probably early in the morning when the sun was comin’ up and some contemplative type with a guitar and a mind still a bit clouded from the night before (‘cuz he was drinking his corn from a jar) began to pick his guitar and think out loud to the beat of its rhythm.
The sun probably came up slowly, not wanting to interupt, but aching to hear more of the lament that was turning into a ballad, and would become a sort of oral history. The sun always is entertained by human observations of themselves, which are either too honest or nowhere near reality: people are too close to the ground to see anything objectively.
Soon, volumes of stories would emerge…stories of love and loss, of cars and land, of people, pets, and progress, such as it is. The best ones would strike a chord with the neighbors and become a hymnal of real life, its binding worn, but standing the test of time. Songs like “She Got the Gold Mine, I Got the Shaft“, “Coat of Many Colors“, “Rocky Top“, “Sixteen Tons“, “El Paso“, “Wichita Lineman“, and my favorite, Bobbie Gentry’s ”Ode to Billy Joe” would serve as working folks’ poetry, the people’s hymns set to simple rhythms and played on stringed instruments of all sorts, the sacred music of the common man.
These songs recorded the events of ordinary lives, connecting people who were often spread across wide spaces, isolated by circumstances and responsibilities. they are often poignant, irritating, campy, heart-breaking, funny and raw, like, uh…rap. That old music spoke for the people, like rap does today. Jimmy Dean’s “Big John” could very well be The First Rap. A white dude, a sausage salesman no less, laid down the first rhyme on wax in 1961.
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Rapper in Black
Johnny Cash was a genius at the grand-daddy of rap: the ballad. Listen to “Twenty-Five Minutes to Go“, “Folsum Prison Blues” and you’ll hear the origins of modern rap. Could we ever have had “My Hooptie” without first having “One Piece at a Time“? Think about it: Eminem might just be a direct decendent of “A Boy Named Sue“.
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Boy Named Sue?
I wonder if the Fresh Prince actually went to school in Harper Valley during the 80′s, and if Bobby Taylor, Shirley Thompson and the Widow Jones are the ones that convinced him that “Parents Just Don’t Understand”. I believe “Dueling Banjos” (actually, it’s called “Fuedin’ Banjos”, and it was born in 1955) was the original musical battle from which the rap battle descended.
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1986 Graduate of Harper Valley High
Everyone seemed stunned a few months back when Lil Jon and John Rich seemed to become such good friends on Celebrity Apprentice. It’s not that odd: both are story-tellers, telling their neighbor’s stories. they just work in different mediums. The fact is old school country boys are not so different from rappers.
On the musical family tree, the newer the growth is the more the new limbs will differ from the roots and the trunk from which they grew. The younger limbs are far more flexible than the older thicker ones, and will dance to breezes that blow from any direction. So understand, your grandma ain’t gonna be down with you puttin’ some Jay-Z on her I-Pod, but you might be shocked to find out that you actually enjoy her collection of Charlie Daniel’s greatest hits.