5/16/2010

When I was a young man in the black community Country and Western music lovers were seen as working class white folks who were Ku Klux Klan sympathizers harboring great disdain for African Americans. It was black racial heresy to even be suggestive that you might like country music; therefore, we did not know what to do about African American Country Star Charley Pride.

I think we struggled to categorize Pride as a nonblack perhaps an OREO (black on the outside and white on the inside).  I believe we finally wrote off Pride as cavorting with the enemy in plain sight.  Charley Pride was an anomaly thus we could show no racial delight in his accomplishments. I guess we believed that our quasi-shunning of Charley Pride would somehow prevent other blacks from seeking this racial two-faced notoriety.  

We were disingenuous because we closed our eyes to the fact that Pride is an excellent musical artist whose talent transcends race well enough to be acknowledged by working class white Americans. If you close your eyes and listen to him sing, then you would never know that Charley Pride was African American.  

Yesterday, my wife wanted to go on an outing to a place called Kitchen Kettle Village in a town called Intercourse, Pennsylvania in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch Country. Our minds were enchanted by a simpler time as we saw the Amish in their horse drawn carriages. There appeared to be two groups of people: white senior citizens and young families of all nationalities with the wives pregnant.

In the middle of the Kitchen Kettle Village square, we heard delightful Country and Western music coming from three old chaps whose average age appeared to be 70. We committed the black culture mortal sin of enjoying this country music played by one black and two white chaps, thus my wife put a tip in the milk can they had setup in front of the band.

While we were eating lunch in a sit-down restaurant in came the black chap. My reporter instincts suggested I get this interview. My wife Gwynelle recognized in my eyes when a story needed to be gotten, so she decided to work on her crossword puzzles while I went to work. I wondered what nationality this black chap might be. I asked his name. He replied, “James La Rue.” He said he was from Leola, PA.  

I was wondering about his position in the band. He shared he was its leader. A black chap leading a Country and Western band was at best counterintuitive or at worse a contradiction. The band was made up of three people with La Rue floating between guitar and banjo, another guitar player, and one fellow on trombone.

I asked La Rue about race relations in his Pennsylvania area considering that he was dappling in a white music venue. He said that over his lifetime that there had not been any major crises between blacks and whites. Race relations got some stress when folks from down south moved in. I asked about his working relationship with the Amish. La Rue pointed out the window to an Amish chap who he said was a close friend.

Our discussion turned to music styles. I asked how La Rue came to play country music. La Rue said he grew up on country music. His upbringing ran counterpoised to my perception of my disdainful stereotype of country music.

My wife, Gwynelle, later shared that she also grew up on country music in Aliceville, Alabama in the 1940s and 1950s. Her parents allowed them to listen to country music while banding jazz and later rock and roll. The children were not permitted in the Saturday Night Fish Fry or entering honkytonks. Gwynelle says she knew the country songs as well as any white until she underwent a music metamorphosis in her senior year of high school in Fairmont, West Virginia where she learned about rock and roll.  

La Rue’s band plays both Country and Dixieland Jazz like Louis Armstrong – “Won’t you come home Bill Bailey” styles. La Rue abhors modern day Rap because he says it is full of sex and drugs.

La Rue’s puritanical position seemed odd in a town with the name Intercourse until you read some the local history. In 1966 Eros, pornographic publisher got shot down in their attempt to exploit the name Intercourse by getting a local mailing address. It is crystal that Intercourse town people will not stand for any exploitation of their town name.

La Rue was very adamant about never playing Rap, so I asked what types of songs he likes to sing. He replied, “Songs with meaning!”  I retorted, define meaning. He asked that I come out to listen to his next song.

La Rue sung a song about an aging father that touched my soul. He then asks that I come forth from the audience. I told him that I now understood what meaning meant.  

I was disquieted that La Rue is an excellent talent America is missing. I felt really bad that I did not have a good recording device to put this band on YouTube. La Rue might be an American country music version of Susan Boyle that Country Music Television (CMT) might want to make a star to reach that over sixty African Americans population. Today, the United States of America desperately needs bridge people who can circumvent the racial chasm between working class whites and the African American community that today’s race baiting juggernauts like Russ Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glen Beck readily exploit to foster their television ratings.  

Will CMT expose the La Rue band to American television and music audiences? Will La Rue’s rise to fame help in exorcising yesterday’s demonic imagery of the working class white in today’s African American community?