Exactly. And I agree that finding a balanced portrayal is, for a variety of reasons, a challenging job.

Eric: I agree that “The Chitlin’ Circuit” is a great book, but it was published in 2011, so I left it off this list. Since the paperback did come out this year, I could have included it with “other notable books,” so I thank you for mentioning it.

Bob: Your book is terrific, and you’ll know that from my review of it in Bookpage, from which review my little blurb is taken. Jon wasn’t criticizing your book, I don’t believe, but chiding me for my mistake of fact in my last sentence. As my review makes clear, your book is not hagiography and works very hard not mythologize Parsons, which has been done endlessly.

Jon: I thank you for setting me straight; Hillman is the one who introduced Parsons to McGuinn and others. What I would have better off saying would have been something to the effect that Parsons had heard some strains of a music–country–that he wanted to introduce to the folk circles and rock circles in which he was playing at the time. Since this is the early 1960s, he was playing in the Shilohs, and he wanted to move beyond the music he was playing with them, and over the next five years he began to run into folks like Leadon–whose music I still admire very much and in my mind is undersung; the Eagles were never the same after he left, in my mind–and Hillman who took Parsons under their wing, so to speak, and the rest is history. However, I never meant to say, or to imply, that Parsons was the only dude who brought an interest in country music into rock circles; I don’t believe that myself, for I am aware that the you can go back much earlier to find the powerful influence of various styles one upon the other, and Parsons certainly doesn’t stand at the fount.
I’d agree that the Parsons myth is powerful, though, I suppose because here’s a doe-eyed, handsome young dude, singing some, but not all, songs wistfully–whether they’re wistful songs or not–inserting himself into what comes to be called country-rock in its early years and then dying mysteriously in a remote location that Parsons’ adorers turned into a religious shrine. The Eagles even sang his eulogy in “My Man” in 1974. Does all this justify the myth-making? Of course not. The great thing about Bob’s book is that he presents Parsons as a person who never really found his way in life; Bob’s portrait of Parsons is not a pretty one, and certainly doesn’t romanticize Parsons.

Thanks, Jon, for your words. By the way, very nice piece on Roland White in the Bluegrass Station.

On the other hand, the notion – embodied in the statement to which I objected – that Parsons was the only, or the most important, or the best, or whatever dude to bring an interest in, appreciation for and knowledge of country music into rock circles is so monstrously wrong as a matter of plain, objective fact that it serves as the quintessential instance of mythologizing run amok, and therefore as something that needs to be clearly addressed and disposed of each time it rears its ugly head.

I also take issue with your contention that country music is either fun, hell-raising, or wistful. That’s like saying that can have blue, green, or grey eyes. People certainly have those colors of eyes, and country music certainly contains those themes. But it contains a lot more: songs of religious devotion, love songs, songs of social comment, songs that are mostly meant to get you up dancing, etc., etc. I think you need to broaden your study a little.

Oh, and “I Can’t Dance” was written by Tom T. Hall. You can’t get much more country than that.