The Crusader on DIP

The Crusader

18839 – Wake Up, My People
18840 – We Need Wallace For President

   DIP

P.O. Box 96

Beech Grove, Indiana

1967

George Wallace, Conservative governor of Alabama, ran for President in the 1968 election as the American Independent Party candidate,

"George Wallace forged an alliance with many country singers, such as Autry Inman, Hank Snow, and the Wilburn Brothers, who participated often in his campaigns for the Alabama governorship and for the presidency.  Racism was certainly one factor which contributed to Wallace's popularity, but his southern rural/populist roots also made him appealing to many of the "good old boys and girls" who picked guitars and sang.  Wallace identified with country music, but he also spoke the same language, ate the same food, and responded to the same cultural traditions (both good and bad) that most country musicians understood.  He linked his southerness with their own, while also tapping vaguely understood, but often legitimate, feelings of alienation that many Americans everywhere felt.

The George Wallace-country music alliance was a major factor which contributed to the music's rediscovery by the media - the belief that at worst the music represented reactionary and racist politics, or that at best it spoke for alienated American working people."

 From "The Reinvigoration of Modern Country Music", in Country Music U.SA., by Bill C. Malone


Credit : Label and sound file are from "Here Comes Rock And Roll"  Collector CLCD4522.