Sing Me Back Home

The Story

The years from about 1950 to 1970 were the golden age of twang. Country music’s giants all strode the earth in those years: Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, George Jones and Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette. And many of the standards that still define country were recorded then: “Folsom Prison Blues,” “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “Mama Tried,” “Stand by Your Man,” and “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” In Sing Me Back Home, Dana Jennings pushes past the iconic voices and images to get at what classic country music truly means to us today. Yes, country tells the story of rural America in the twentieth century—but the obsessions of classic country were obsessions of America as a whole: drinking and cheating, class and the yearning for home, God and death. Jennings, who grew up in a town that had more cows than people when he was born, knows all of this firsthand. His people lived their lives by country music. His grandmothers were honky-tonk angels, his uncles men of constant sorrow, and his father a romping, stomping hell-raiser who lived for the music of Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and the other rockabilly hellions. Sing Me Back Home is about a vanished world in which the Depression never ended and the sixties never arrived. Jennings uses classic country songs to explain the lives of his people, and shows us how their lives are also ours—only twangier. Dana Jennings, a native of New Hampshire, is an editor with The New York Times. He lives in Montclair, New Jersey. The years from about 1950 to 1970 were the golden age of country music. Musicians that would become the legends of the genre all strode the earth in those years: Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, George Jones and Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette. Many of the standards that still define country were recorded then: “Folsom Prison Blues,” “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “Mama Tried,” “Stand by Your Man,” and “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” In Sing Me Back Home, Dana Jennings pushes past the iconic voices, lyrics and images to get at what classic country music truly means to listeners today. Country tells the stories of rural America in the twentieth century—but the obsessions of classic country were obsessions of America as a whole: drinking and cheating, class and the yearning for home, God and death.  He uses country music history to link ideas and issues that are widely recognized, if not always understood: the myth of classlessness in America; the interpretations of family values; the meaning of failure and success.Jennings grew up in a town that had more cows than people when he was born and where people lived their lives by country music. His grandmothers were honky-tonk angels, his uncles men of constant sorrow, and his father a romping, stomping hell-raiser who lived for the music of Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and the other rockabilly hellions. Sing Me Back Home is about a vanished world in which the Depression never ended and the sixties never arrived. Jennings uses classic country songs to explain the lives of his people, and shows how their lives are like the lives of all Americans. 'Boozing and brawling and country music might not be the first things that come to mind when you think of New Hampshire . . . But after reading Sing Me Back Home, you're likely to agree with Dana Jennings, a native of one of the rougher regions of that state, that the feel-bad songs of Hank Williams and George Jones and Loretta Lynn are the soundtrack for the lives we all live.'—David Kirby, The New York Times 'Boozing and brawling and country music might not be the first things that come to mind when you think of New Hampshire; presidential primary is more like it. But after reading Sing Me Back Home, you’re likely to agree with Dana Jennings, a native of one of the rougher regions of that state, that the feel-bad songs of Hank Williams and George Jones and Loretta Lynn are the soundtrack for the lives we all live . . . An editor at The New York Times, Jennings is not afraid to let