When University of Memphis English Professor Barbara Ching would tell people that she was a devout country music fan, some would often react with a look of surprise.
“That wasn’t what English faculty were supposed to be listening to,” Ching said.
It was other people questioning her love for country music that led Ching to think deeply about what she liked about country music, and what it really was.
This was the research that eventually led to the publishing of her first book Wrong’s What I Do Best: Hard Country Music and Contemporary Culture, published in August.
Since its publication, the book has received a lot of positive publicity.
She has done several book signings and interviews, and through these has found numerous country music fans eager to talk about their love for the genre.
“A lot of people have seemed to come out of the closet on this,” Ching said.
Articles about her book have appeared in the New Yorker and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
During her preliminary research, Ching found most of the writing about country music was either too general or too condescending.
“It struck me that one of the reasons we don’t really understand what country music is, is because we approach it like it’s one huge thing, when it’ s not,” Ching said.
Hard country, Ching’s favorite, is the most extreme version of country music and is characterized by steel guitar, fiddle, non-standard English and a heavy Southern accent.
The most well known hard country musicians include George Jones, Hank Williams Jr. and Sr., Merle Haggard, Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam.
In the book, Ching analyzes the lyrics and characters found in hard country music from a literary standpoint, similar to how one would analyze a play or book. She also talks about how the music contributes to the feelings of a hard country song.
Ching spent about two years researching the book, one summer of which she spent in the Country Music Foundation Library in Nashville. She looked at fan magazines, folders of fan club material, song lyrics and fan letters to find out where the term “hard country” originated.
Through this research she found that people began using the term around 1968 to 1970.
“It seems to have started slipping into fan magazine articles and interviewers’ questions, so all of a sudden people thought it existed and knew what it was,” Ching said.
She also did biographical research on the hard country artists, and went to Bakersfield, California to meet and interview Buck Owens.
In interviewing Owens, probably best known for hosting Hee-Haw, Ching learned that he was frustrated that his identity was inextricably tied to his Hee-Haw character.
“A lot of people think of Buck Owens as this extremely corny, dumb, country bumpkin, which he seems to have done in order to kind of dare people to think that’s what he was,” Ching said.
She added, “I looked for differences between the way we perceive these artists and the way they perceive themselves; this is what the biographical research allowed me to do.”
Ching also dispelled some of the myths about country music.
“One of the ways people put country music down is by saying, ‘Oh yeah, these guys are drunks and criminals’,” Ching said. “You don’t say that about other kinds of artists because you recognize that they created these characters and aren’t necessarily living the lives that their characters live.”
Because many people confuse the character with the artist, they may not get the joke that this exaggerated character expresses, Ching said. But Ching understands these musicians’ creations, and it is these characters who have intrigued and drawn her to the hard country genre her whole life.
“I think it’s very witty, clever and well done, the way they create these characters who engage the listener in a kind of dialogue,” Ching said.
She added, “They definitely play with that perception we have of what’s good and what’s bad, what’s art and what’s trash, and they generate a lot of the tension in their songs by playing with the ideas we have.”
Ching gave the example of the Hank Williams Jr. song “Country Boy Can Survive”, which goes ‘We say grace, we say mam’ , if you ain’t into that, we don’t give a damn”.
“They are very good at drawing their listeners into this situation they create where someone’s putting them down,” Ching said.
The title of her book Wrong’s What I Do Best was chosen because these artists have come to be extremely successful and well known, yet are not mainstream.
“They (hard country musicians) are not performing country music in the way that country music institutions like the Grand Ole Opry or Nashville-based record companies want it performed,” Ching said.
Their success lies in their character’s wrongness.
