[quote]Like what happened to the Carters black music researcher or the black musician fired from The Grand Ol' Opry. I feel like I'm watching the story of music stolen and tweaked to fit a less tuneful blander people.
Since you are one of those people who thinks everything has to include a racial aspect. No one stole country music from African Americans. While there is undeniable African-American roots to country music, it is in no way larger or more important than the white Celtic roots, just like the African-American Country Blues. Both grew out of the mixture of African American and Scotch-Irish music, along with Gospel, both black and white. It was the music of the rural South, where there was much more mixing than many people think from a cursory reading of history. Jim Crow was in effect, but the country was not the city, it is much harder to enforce separation away from the centralized authorities. My poor white Southern ancestors were friends with many poor black people around them, because they were united in being poor. They were all sharecroppers, and they shared with each other to survive. My grandmother tells stories of dinners with the black and white families down the road, where they would pool their resources and have a feast, whereas if they hadn't each family would have had meager offerings. many of those gatherings, ended with all of them, black and white playing music and singing for hours, there was no black or white music, just music. Later, when they got a radio they would all get together to listen to the Opry on Saturday night. Also, country music largely grew out of the Appalachian region, which was the Unionist Anti-Slavery part of the South in the Civil War, so the racial aspects were more complicated.
Lesley Riddle was not the Carter's black music researcher, he was A.P. Carter's friend and collaborator. The two of them scoured the South for songs, with Riddle focusing on the music and Carter on the lyrics. Thanks to them being a bi-racial partnership they were able to tap into musical heritage of both races. At least thanks to Pete Seeger, Riddle got some attention and recognition before he died, whereas A.P. died largely forgotten and in obscurity. Only, regaining recognition after his death.
As for DeFord Bailey, the early Black Opry star, his recordings in the 1920s and 30s, were released on both "race" and "hillbilly" labels, which attests to his popularity with both white and black audiences. He often traveled with Opry road shows, which was difficult in the period of Jim Crow. His firing in 1941, had nothing to do with his race. It was the result of a licencing dispute between BMI and ASCAP, which left him unable to perform his best known works on radio. He then quit regularly performing, but was welcomed back to the Opry several times as a guest between the 1940s-60s, after the dispute was settled, and was later welcomed several times in the 1970s as the star of what became the annual Opry Old Timer's Day, making his last Opry appearance in 1982. The Opry never forgot him.
