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Proud to Be an Okie

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Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California
Listed in Kansas City Star's 100 Noteworthy Books of 2007
Buy the book here from Powell’s
or here from Amazon
or click on the image above to buy directly from the University of California Press .
What the critics are saying:
"Proud to Be an Okie is the most important volume of country music history to emerge in years." --David Cantwell, No Depression magazine (senior editor of No Depression, author of Heartaches By Number)"Proud to Be an Okie is cultural history at its finest." -- Urban History Association award committee (in awarding an Honorable Mention for the Kenneth Jackson Prize for Best Book in Urban History)"La Chapelle uses a wealth of resource material to make the case that Southern California, in particular the Los Angeles area was a societal cauldron with unique Okie inspired musical, political, and cultural ramifications. La Chapelle’s many observations are convincing and thought provoking. . . It is satisfying to discover that a detailed, scholarly work about this comprehensive subject can be so readable, because here is a work worth reading. I have to hand it to La Chapelle. He is adept at making passages full of information scan with great ease, and his book is highly recommended." --Roger Deitz, Sing Out! magazine (click for full review ) "thoroughly researched, insightful. . . a lively and fascinating portrait of migrant culture and its assimilation into the mainstream, with country music as its soundtrack."--Jeff Tamarkin, HARP Magazine"thoughtful, carefully researched, and well written. . . a superb piece of scholarship"--Howard A. DeWitt, Journal of American History"an excellent historical account. It will alter the balance of attention that tilts country music history towards Nashville and place southern California more firmly on the map of the genre’s development... an important contribution to 20th-century musical history."-- European Journal of Communicaion"La Chapelle (history, Nevada State College) has crafted a unique study of the politics of country music in Southern California from the 1930s onward. . . Highly Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers."--Ronald D. Cohen, Choice (professor emeritus, Indiana University Northwest, author of Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society and Routledge's Folk Music: The Basics)"La Chapelle's book belongs on every music lover's bookshelf, alongside Greil Marcus' Lipstick Traces and Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life." --Jarret Keene, Las Vegas CityLife (author of The Killers: Destiny is Calling Me and The Underground Guide to Las Vegas) "Proud to be an Okie is a fresh, well-researched, wonderfully insightful, and imaginative book. Throughout, La Chapelle's keen attention to shifting geographies and urban and suburban spaces is one of the work's real strengths. Another strength is the book's focus on dress, ethnicity, and the manufacturing of style. When all of these angles and insights are pulled together, La Chapelle delivers a fascinating rendering of Okie life and American culture." --Bryant Simon, author of Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America
"Proud to be an Okie is a fascinating book that details the history of Dust Bowl refugees migration to southern California. Unlike other books about this topic, this one intertwines history with the country music that the transplanted settlers brought to the region. La Chapelle does an excellent job of balancing both the migrants' history and that of the music history, giving a detailed description of both." --Michael Sudhalter, Country Standard Time
UC Press Blurb: Proud to Be an Okie brings to life the influential country music scene that flourished in and around Los Angeles from the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s to the early 1970s. The first work to fully illuminate the political and cultural aspects of this intriguing story, the book takes us from Woody Guthrie's radical hillbilly show on Depression-era radio to Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee" in the late 1960s. It explores how these migrant musicians and their audiences came to gain a sense of identity through music and mass media, to embrace the New Deal, and to celebrate African American and Mexican American musical influences before turning toward a more conservative outlook. What emerges is a clear picture of how important Southern California was to country music and how country music helped shape the politics and culture of Southern California and of the nation.

SaveDarfur.org has a post called " Generate Press Coverage " that's worth checking out...

Media coverage of the ongoing genocide in Darfur has been woefully inadequate. The Center for American Progress found that during June 2005, CNN, FOX News, NBC/MSNBC, ABC, and CBS ran 50 times as many stories about Michael Jackson and 12 times as many stories about Tom Cruise as they did about the…


Is Country Music Inherently Conservative?
http://hnn.us/articles/42602.html


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Urban History Association honors

Proud to Be an Okie receives honors from Urban History Association book award committeeYes, my book got an honorable mention for the Kenneth Jackson Award for Best Book in Urban History.  Here is thei...
Posted by on Sat, 07 Mar 2009 06:54:00 GMT

POSTPONED: Giving talk, playing really old Woody stuff at the GRAMMY Museum

SORRY:  POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICEWriting Woody @ the GRAMMY Museum     An evening of talk, music and exploration into Woody Guthrie's Los Angeles days  POSTPONED, DEBONED, DETHRONED, OZONED, UPSI...
Posted by on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:25:00 GMT

Pop Conference at the Experience Music Project

Hey, just wanted to invite you all to come see me talk at the Pop Conference at the Experience Music Project museum in Seattle Friday April 11 at 6 p.m.  I will be talking about country music pol...
Posted by on Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:42:00 GMT

Listed in Kansas City Stars Top 100 Books of the Year

 Come check out the latest news:  Proud to Be an Okie has been listed in the Kansas City Star's Top 100 Books of the Year. 
Posted by on Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:17:00 GMT

Chicago Tribune covers Proud to Be an Okie

The Chicago Tribune, that traditional paragon of aggressive big city journalism, today ran an article about some of the issues I raise in Proud to Be an Okie: Click here to read the Chicago...
Posted by on Mon, 19 Nov 2007 21:37:00 GMT

Induct Woody!

Just wanted to pass on this intro and link to my History News Network op-ed which argues that it is long overdue for the CMA to induct Woody Guthrie into the Country Music Hall of Fame:  ...
Posted by on Sun, 11 Nov 2007 23:25:00 GMT

Listen to Podcast of "Okie" Authors KNPR Interview

If you missed the interview, you can still catch a podcast of the KNPR interview from this permalink:Proud to Be an Okie author discusses Americana, country, and politics:Woody Guthrie, W. Lee "Pappy...
Posted by on Wed, 26 Sep 2007 22:13:00 GMT

Author appears on KNPR Sept. 26

Listen tomorrow as Proud to Be an Okie author Peter La Chapelle discusses his book on the Las Vegas NPR affiliate, KNPR.  Time: 10 a.m. PST, Wed. Sept. 26Frequency: 88.9 FMLive Stream outside of ...
Posted by on Tue, 25 Sep 2007 13:41:00 GMT

Reviews of the Book -- Las Vegas CityLife and Country Standard Time

Proud to Be an Okie just got reviewed by Jarret Keene in the alternative weekly Las Vegas CityLife. Keene is author of a insider's view book on the famed rock band the Killer...
Posted by on Tue, 03 Jul 2007 11:38:00 GMT

Merle Haggard's Politics (a link to my UC Press blog)

Just as my book Proud to Be an Okie was beginning to hit the store shelves, country music legend Merle Haggard, one of the central figures I write about, was making headlines with a new song titled "...
Posted by on Tue, 22 May 2007 18:37:00 GMT