Linthead. US dial., a worker in a cotton mill; (in contemptuous use) a person of whom one disapproves. [Oxford English Dictionary]
Linthead Stomp is the story of the creation and infancy of country music in the rural South, specifically in the Piedmont area of mainly North Carolina. It also marks the progress of the music and the recording of it, along with the musicians who played and recorded it. It’s a very well researched and written history of this segment of the musical development of the US in general, and the Piedmont South, in particular. The US Southeast Piedmont is the area which separates, more or less, the coastal regions and the inland mountains in the crescent-shaped swath of land covering the area between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic coastal plain which runs south from Richmond, Virginia, through the central Carolinas, into north Georgia, and ending at Birmingham, Alabama.
The title of this book comes from a 1946 bluegrass instrumental, “Lint Head Stomp,” recorded by the obscure mandolin virtuoso Phebel Wright. The illustration on the dust cover of the book is Charlie Poole, the man who was the subject of my very first review published on this very website, Blogcritics, a review of a Charlie Poole CD box set.
Although much has been written about textile workers, and even some about their music, “… few studies consider, in any substantive way, what workers did on their front porches, in YMCA community centers, dance halls, and church revivals.” This is the first book-length study of the musical culture of Southern millhands. It offers details about the people, their lives, and the impact that the various forces shaping them had on their lives and music. Additionally, Huber offers detailed insight into the many outside influences which shaped their music, including radio and records, fiddlers’ conventions, various industrial welfare programs, strikes, and many others which had a profound impact.
Linthead Stomp is the story of country music in the Piedmont’s textile mills. “No group contributed more to the commercialization of early country music than southern factory workers.” [Taken from the dust jacket on the book.]
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