As a posse of spoof country and western acts rides towards the Fringe, Allan Radcliffe asks why songs about rednecks, guns and erections make for sublime comedy
ountry and western can lay claim to the
dubious honour of being simultaneously
the best loved and most disparaged of popular music forms. While the genre retains a huge and fanatical following in its native US and internationally, critics deride the tradition for its trite sentimentality, pouring scorn on its exponents for endlessly whining about poverty, marital strife and liberals in Washington trying to wrest the guns out of their hands.
Indeed, ever since country music ventured down from the Appalachian Mountains, there has been an equally dynamic parallel movement of performers mining the genre’s rich comic potential. As early as the 1930s, country comedian Benjamin Francis ‘Whitey’ Ford (aka the Duke of Paducah) was entertaining listeners to NBC’s Plantation Party with his catchphrase ‘I’m goin’ back to the wagon, boys, these shoes are killin’ me!’ Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon’s stage alter ego, Minnie Pearl, known for wearing an oversized Stetson with the price tag still hanging from it, became a household favourite in the 60s and 70s thanks to her appearances on the popular US variety show, Hee Haw. Fast-forward to the noughties and there‘s a web page called ‘the famous country & western song machine‘, where bored office workers can spend hours generating random lyrics for country songs.
The Minnie Pearl de nos jours (albeit via the medium of cross dressing and with a shade more profanity thrown in) is Tina C, nine-times Grammy Award-winning country music idol from Open Throat Holler, Tennessee and purveyor of such genre classics as ‘No Dick‘s as Hard as My Life’. As Christopher Green, the performing virtuoso behind everyone’s favourite Rhinestone Cowgirl, points out, a genre that can spawn lines such as ‘Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed’ could never be accused of lacking a sense of humour. ‘Country music has always had humour built into it. That’s why any act has to celebrate country music and not run it down. I also think — whether it’s conscious or not — everyone likes to flirt with the fine line between sentimentality and comedy. and country easily slides between the two.’
That said, the spoof C&W performer is not just an elaborate means of mocking an already much-derided genre of music. Like most character comedians, performers like Green use the cover of their larger-than-Iife other self to make insightful social and political points. Indeed, Tina’s latest album, Tick My Box, is being used to promote her campaign for the 2008 US presidential elections, and features the hit singles, ‘I’m Gonna Scrub Your Neck Til It‘s Red’ and ‘Barack Rhymes With Iraq/McCain‘s Not Able’.
14 TH! LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 31 Jul—7 Aug 2008
Perhaps the least subtle example of this practice is Rich Hall as Otis Lee Crenshaw. curling his raspy inflection around the couplet ‘Let’s all get together/And kill George Bush‘. When asked how American audiences respond to his not only lampooning their cherished musical heritage but also savaging their head of state, Hall has said he believes comedy audiences are generally aware of what to
‘AMERICANS SOMETIMES REACT WITH PROJECT ILES AND CUSS WORDS'
w, /
From top clockwise: Otis Lee Crenshaw, Tine C and Wilson Dixon prepare to get their spurs on