San Antonio transplant Bill Malone is not only the world’s leading scholar of country music, he was among its first.
“In academia, when I started, country music was outside the pale,” said Malone, who relocated to the Alamo City in 2020. “Not something you could work on or take seriously. Nothing of a serious scholarly nature.”
That’s changed, however, no small thanks to Malone himself. A former Tulane University history professor, Malone wrote Country Music USA, the 1968 University of Texas Press book that was a breakthrough for fans of the genre and eventually became the basis for Ken Burns’ 16-hour PBS documentary Country Music. Indeed, Malone is the only historian to appear onscreen in the much-praised series.
After a celebrated academic career, numerous book publications, work for the Smithsonian Institution, a Guggenheim fellowship and even two Grammy nominations, Malone retired to San Antonio. His wife and collaborator Bobbie is an Alamo City native.
Like so many San Antonio musical luminaries, Malone is hiding in plain sight. You’d never know he’s a groundbreaking scholar from his humble, low key demeanor. Even if he himself doesn’t announce his greatness, his work does that for him.
Working with Burns
Though revered among other scholars and country aficionados for most of his writing career, Malone broke through to a far wider audience with the 2019 release of Ken Burns’ Country Music.
“I was asked by Dayton Duncan, Ken Burns’ writer and producer,” Malone said of his involvement in the series. “I was interviewed at Ken Burns’ compound in New Hampshire for four hours. It was like taking a PhD exam: exhausting but exhilarating.”
After the initial interview, Malone served as a primary consultant on the doc, reading scripts and making suggestions as it came together. The resultant film stunned critics and fans with its depth and insight. Rolling Stone even called it “the most ambitious, culturally resonant music documentary ever made.”
Malone said he was thrilled to see Country Music legitimize the genre as an American art form. Of course, it didn’t hurt that it also legitimized his decades of scholarship in music many in academia refused to take seriously.
“Knowing that a lot of people didn’t care for [country music], looked down on it, knowing the music has struggled to survive over the decades, it’s heartwarming to see it getting this sort of recognition,” Malone said. “The documentary is a validation of my work, my life’s work, and the culture that’s represented.”
Other scholars in the field said they’re not surprised Burns pulled in Malone for the project. Country Music USA’s sheer magnitude makes it the Bible of country music studies, said Texas State University historian Jason D. Mellard.
“That Ken Burns only wanted one historian speaking among the artists and industry folks in his definitive documentary series, and that that historian was Bill Malone, makes perfect sense,” Mellard said.
Humble roots
Though he’s reached the pinnacle of his profession, Malone comes from humble beginnings, and perhaps that’s why he has such an innate feel for roots music. Born in the now-dead city of Galena, located about 20 miles east of Tyler, Malone grew up on a sharecropping cotton farm without electricity.
“Out on the farm we didn’t have a car,” Malone said. “We had to hitch a ride 20 miles into Tyler. We farmed cotton, the ‘money crop,’ laughably, because we didn’t make any money off of it. Daddy was a tenant farmer, which meant he turned part of his cotton over to the owner in exchange for working the land. Luckily I had two big brothers, eight and nine years older, and they bore the brunt of the hard work on the farm.”
Malone’s entire life changed in 1939, when his family purchased a battery-powered Philco radio.
“Battery-powered because we didn’t have electricity,” Malone explained. “It was a revolutionary event in my life. We’d hear local radio shows, shows out of Dallas, Tulsa, all of the hillbilly performers.”
One standout show was that of the Carter Family, who had relocated to San Antonio to broadcast from Dr. John Brinkley’s XERF, a “border blaster” radio station based in Villa Acuña, Mexico. Those sounds opened Malone’s world, as did traveling musical performers, including those throwing old-style tent shows.
“Bill Monroe came in with a tent show. They’d set up a tent, hold a couple hundred people, put on their show, take the tent down and move on to another place,” Malone said. “I also saw Hank Williams in the high school auditorium. The entire Lousiana Hayride came over. Hank was the headliner.”
With the outbreak of World War II, the Malone clan moved off the farm, further widening his prospects.
“We moved into town in ’43, ’44 for jobs in a factory making bomb parts,” he said. “After that, I went to junior college, then to Austin. It was liberating.”
Folk revival
Once in Austin, Malone got swept up in the ’60s folk revival embraced by many of that generation’s college students. Like many others discovering roots music at the time, he seized on Harry Smith’s Anthology American of Folk Music, a 1952 three-album boxset that became a life-changing discovery.
“I stumbled onto it at the Austin Library, just browsing. Hadn’t heard of it,” Malone said. “I was bowled, because it included the Carter Family, who I’d grown up with.”
For Malone, the Anthology of American Folk Music legitimized the so-called “hillbilly music” on which he’d grown up. It was a validation Malone himself would later continue.
“Harry Smith was giving an endorsement, lending a respectability to something I’d grown up with all my life — ‘hillbilly music,’ although I don’t know if he called it that,” Malone said. “He included hillbilly tunes alongside blues, gospel and cajun. So, that was another milestone in my development.”
While working towards a masters and then a doctorate in history, Malone shifted from music fan to musician and became known locally as a singer of old-style folk and hillbilly tunes. He performed at legendary venue Threadgill’s alongside a young Janis Joplin and her band the Waller Creek Boys, which also included future 13th Floor Elevators songwriter Powell St. John.
“I remember the night Janis first came out,” Malone said. “She and the Waller Creek Boys became regulars. And we’d all play together in different configurations. Gospel, bluegrass, old-time country. She stood out from the very beginning. Really something special.”
Proprietor Kenneth Threadgill, himself an accomplished musician and yodeler, also helped Malone on his path, pulling him in for late-night sessions.
“Threadgill’s, that whole thing, was an apprenticeship for me,” Malone recalled.
Country Music USA
After gaining local notoriety as a compelling interpreter of old country songs, Malone’s graduate advisor, Joe Frantz, suggested he write his dissertation on the history of the Nashville music publishing industry. Nobody had ever undertaken such a study, and Malone leapt at the chance.
“I was delighted. I didn’t realize you could write about things you loved,” Malone said. “So, I got into it and branched out immediately. Got way beyond Nashville publishing, a history of the whole phenomenon.”
His 1965 dissertation was published three years later as Country Music USA, a book many still see as the foremost scholarly exploration of country music. Unlike other weighty history tomes, Malone’s remains an enjoyable read. It flows easily, the prose singing with clarity.
The book was also intensely personal, since the journey of the country music Malone documented mirrored the evolution going on in his own life, including his journey from an agrarian upbringing.
“It was well-received but not in academia,” Malone recalled of the book’s release.
Just the same, the book developed a following among musicians, including many high-profile ones inside the genre. The book has since received multiple reprints and updates with contributions from co-authors, each revision reflecting the ongoing evolution of country music. The latest edition even dissects the “bro country” phenomenon.
“I was at a meeting in Nashville and in walk [country legends] Ted Daffan and Floyd Tillman, and they knew who I was!” Malone said of one early indication that Country Music USA had found an audience. “You can imagine how flattered I was. They’d read the book and liked it. That meant more to me than a review in the Journal of American History.”
Lost roots, new recognition
After Country Music USA, Malone left his teaching job at Texas State University and ultimately landed at Tulane, where he remained for 25 years and wrote or co-wrote additional books, including Singing Cowboys and Musical Mountaineers: Southern Culture and the Roots of Country Music and Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’: Country Music and the Southern Working Class.
Malone continued his nuanced explorations of country music, including its themes and the social forces driving them. Of particular interest was the music’s separation from its working class roots as its listeners moved from agrarian to urban lifestyles.
Eventually, the academy began to recognize the seriousness of Malone’s work. Country music simply hadn’t been explored with such depth and rigor, and he was recognized for his scholarship. Not only did he receive a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, but the Smithsonian sought him out to helm a boxset not unlike the Harry Smith collection that had inspired him years prior.
Malone compiled the 143-track, eight-volume Smithsonian Collection of Classic Country Music and even penned a 56-page illustrated book that accompanied the set. The project earned him a 1981 Grammy Award nomination for Best Historical Album.
“There are very few music historians — very few historians — whose work has been as impactful and enduring as Bill Malone’s,” Texas State historian Mellard said. “Every country music historian writing today is still doing so in conversation with and response to Country Music USA and its sequels. And this is what makes that work special, too — Bill has returned to expand and revise it every so often, taking into account new developments and interpretations, and bringing in co-authors Jocelyn Neal and Tracey Laird on the most recent editions.”
Bill and Bobbie
Along the way, Bill Malone met his wife, Bobbie, also a historian and scholar. Before their relocation to San Antonio, they ended up in Wisconsin, where Bobbie authored numerous books and worked at the Wisconsin Historical Society.
“I was an exotic in Madison, Wisconsin,” Malone said. “People were intrigued by my accent and that I took this music seriously.”
While in Wisconsin, Malone started his longstanding radio program on station WORT, Back to the Country, known nationwide for playing old-school country songs selected to fit a weekly theme.
“I’d take a sack of records and build shows around a theme: prisons, trucks, birds, states, cities,” he said. “That was a liberty that no traditional disc jockey had ever had. Only possible on a community radio station. I looked at it as another way to teach the history of music.”
After those years in Wisconsin while Bobbie pursued her career, the pair are happy to be back in Texas, where they’re thankful for the milder winters and the Tex-Mex breakfasts. The chilaquiles at Thousand Oaks Cafe are a particular favorite.
“This is my comfort food,” Malone said.
The reticent Bill and effusive Bobbie make a perfect match, not only in marriage but also creatively. Since landing in San Antonio, they have co-authored two books.
The collaboration began almost by accident. While attending screenings at Ken Burns’ compound, Bobbie figured out that a fellow attendee was Del Bryant, son of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, famed songwriters for the Everly Brothers.
“I told him, ‘I’d love to write an article about your mother for a journal for the Wisconsin Historical Society,’” Bobbie Malone said. “I told Bill what I just did, and he said, ‘Why don’t we just write a biography of both of them?’”
Since that collaboration, the Malones have published another book together, a biography of bluegrass musician Tim O’Brien.
Shape-shifting hybrid
For the next project, the pair is putting together a history of country music DJs, and San Antonio plays a pivotal role.
“San Antonio is really important. Who knew?” Bobbie Malone said. “It was a real hub, a cradle of disc jockeys.”
DJs including Joe Allison, Charlie Walker, Bill Mack and Biff Collie worked at country station KMAC, which would later change formats and, under the guidance of the late Joe Anthony, broke heavy metal bands including Judas Priest, Saxon and Budgie to a larger audience.
One key thread running through Malone’s work is the argument that, from the beginning, country music was a shape-shifting hybrid and that the notion of “authenticity” simply doesn’t apply to the genre.
“Country music comes from many walks of life. It’s not just one music, but many styles of music brought together, by many people,” Malone said. “It originally took shape as a composite rendering by African Americans and Anglo Americans, and over time, it’s taken in many more influences. And there was always a commercial element to it. That’s why the name changed from hillbilly, which was a pejorative term, to country. They always borrowed heavily from whatever they heard. Black music was hugely influential.”
To that point, the famous singing cowboys Gene Autry and Tex Ritter weren’t actual cowboys but hillbilly musicians who used the image to further their careers, according to Malone’s Country Music USA. Roy Acuff famously refused to wear the cowboy duds designated for him as star of the 1940 film Grand Ole Opry and insisted his lumberjack-style work clothes were a far more honest, authentic depiction of his origins.
In other words, cowboy cosplay is nothing new.
So what do the Malones think about Beyonce’s latest album, the country crossover Cowboy Carter?
“We haven’t heard it yet,” Bobbie Malone confessed.
“I think she herself admits it’s not country,” Bill Malone said. “But it uses country elements. One or two songs from that background.”
Much of the music that interests the Malones these days falls under the Americana tag. They cite Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Jason Isbell as a standout.
“Anything that used to be country, it’s now called Americana,” Malone said.
With a consequential national election looming and our country as divided as ever, Malone said he still believes in the power of country music to unite and heal.
“Without getting specific or too political, we all know what an anxious time this is in our history. Will we survive? What comes next? It’s wonderful to have something pulls us together.”
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This article appears in May 1-14, 2024.