In the modern day of music, it seems like we are limited to about five genres of music and we have to shoehorn all songs now into one of those categories (you know so the Grammys won’t last for seven hours, I guess). Growing up in Spartanburg though, there is one genre of music that is very important to our history but for some reason has seemed to disappear from the music world. The disappearance of a whole genre has left me worried and left me asking one important question: whatever happened to southern rock?
Southern rock by definition is a subgenre of rock music and a genre of Americana, it was developed in the southern United States from rock and roll, country music, blues, and is focused generally on electric guitar and vocals. That definition alone is what bothers me about the shoehorning of music into general genres now days. Instead of having a genre like southern rock, a lot of these musicians are either placed in rock n’ roll or more frequently they’re placed in the country music genre. It seems now days that because of the lack of the southern rock genre existing we now have a lot of people that would normally be classified as southern rock playing “country music” and in turn forcing the disappearance of the genre that I’ve always known as country music. Now to be honest I love both genres, I just don’t want to see the lack of one kill off the other and take its place. Being from Spartanburg I grew up listening to both genres, from listening to Hank Williams sing “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” to Spartanburg’s very own Marshall Tucker Band singing “Can’t You See”. I love listening to both but they’re both two different genres of music. Some country music artists that I hear now days that I believe are more southern rock are: Travis Tritt, The Zac Brown Band (who recently sang at the Grammys with one of the greatest southern rock singers of all-time Greg Allman) and Jason Aldean. I also believe some groups over the years that have had to fight their way through the rock genre over the years that should have been classified as southern rock were: Hootie and the Blowfish, Collective Soul, and Kings of Leon. By allowing a whole genre of music to disappear I believe that we are letting a lot of great music go along with it. There are a lot of great southern rock songs that will never make the list of 100 greatest rock songs or the 100 greatest country songs of all-time lists that are done by some of these music publications and because of that some of these songs and bands will start to be lost with time. The thoughts of people not knowing the songs of The Allman Brothers, Marshall Tucker Band, Pure Prairie League, and the Charlie Daniels Band would be a huge tragedy for all of music. There are enough artist left out there now that are still doing the southern rock sound that it could still be a viable genre and I think it’s time for that genre to find its way back again. If I had one thing to say to the southern rock genre wherever it is currently, I would have to paraphrase some lyrics from a Marshall Tucker Band song, “Take the highway, Lord knows you’ve been gone too long.” Want to read more about the Southern Rock genre? Read the book "Rebel Yell" by Michael Buffalo Smith
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JamesBoiling Springs native, lover of sports and food. 15x SC Press Association Award Winner. I do some sports writing and radio every now and then. Archives
April 2020
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