New Book Argues L.A. Country Music Culture Not Always So Conservative

While country music and SoCal's "Okie culture" are often thought to have been forever aligned with racial and social conservatism, this has not always been so true according to author Peter La Chapelle in his new book, Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California.

The book finds a rich, though often forgotten, vein of progressive, leftist, antiwar, populist, and liberal politics among country/folk/Americana artists who lived or recorded in Southern California as it charts artists from Woody Guthrie, Merle Travis, Rose Maddox, and Spade Cooley to Jean Shepard, Gram Parsons, and Merle Haggard.