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Narrative, vocal staging and masculinity in the ‘Outlaw’ country music of Waylon Jennings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 September 2013

Travis D. Stimeling
Travis D. Stimeling*
Affiliation:
School of Music, West Virginia University, College of Creative Arts, PO Box 6111, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA E-mail: Travis.Stimeling@mail.wvu.edu
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Abstract

Emerging in the early 1970s, the work of Outlaw country artists might be heard as exploring a crisis of masculinity resulting from developments in the women's liberation movement. Building on recent research in recorded sound studies, this essay explores how the vocal staging practices deployed in Outlaw country recordings offer a unique musical exploration of the duality of the outlaw's masculinity. Using case studies drawn from Waylon Jennings' Outlaw-era recordings, this article examines how Jennings, working with co-producers ‘Cowboy’ Jack Clement, Chips Moman and Willie Nelson, among others, deployed vocal staging practices in conjunction with other musical practices to construct narratives that reveal the ‘outlaw’ character's psychological turmoil and reflect the complicated state of working-class American masculinity in the age of women's liberation.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , October 2013 , pp. 343 - 358
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

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Discography

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