When, where and by whom did Americana peak?
my peronal take: 2nd half of the 70ies, Bob Seeger
IMHO it doesn’t get more americana than Seeger … Bruce is a distant 2nd …
The Bicentennial was in 1976, as well. It’s hard to overstate just how much Americana permeated the culture in '76, and the year or two leading up to it.
that’s a great point … I remember reading here about the red-white-blue painted everything … like fire-hydrants, etc…
My eldest sister had a used Chevy Nova that had the bicentennial paint package. It was kinda ugly.
She had it painted over.
Wish I had the original now. Alas. Scrap yard.
Americana got big again after 9/11
In 1976, even the Dallas Cowboys got in on it, by making one of the stripes on their helmets red.
Captain America had a pretty stars & stripes themed chopper and helmet in Easy Rider (1969).
When I was working in radio in 1976, a client who sold home medical equipment wanted us to advertise his new Bicentennial wheelchairs.
You just don’t get more Americana than that!
well, there is always the option of putting a small block into that bicentennial wheelchair to make it truely americana
A Harley bicentennial wheelchair would make it Peak Americana.
but only if hung with truck-nuts
I found an old post of mine in a thread about the trashiest thing we’ve ever seen, but it works for Americana, too.
In a close second was the time I was at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and a man was teaching his kids how to play poker using M&M’s for chips.
I’m not sure the 1970’s was so much a peak in Americana as much as an overcorrection to 1960s counterculture. I’d put it’s peak between Disneyland’s Main Street USA (1955) and the film version of The Music Man (1962). After November 22, 1963, Americana was never embraced unironically by a majority of the public the way it was in the 1950s.
I’d say the peak of ‘Americana’ was the 50s; we had won the last ‘good’ war and become the world’s greatest superpower; there was a general feeling of optimism for the future and that America was the greatest, safest, richest, most morally sound country in the world. We hadn’t yet lost our national innocence from the Vietnam War and the general generational strife of the 60s.
Of course the real reality was far from perfect; the Cold War and the resulting specter of possible nuclear war had begun; if you were non-white or suspected of being a Communist, things were decidedly less rosy for you.
But when I think of stereotypical ‘peak Americana’ I think of the 1950s.
[Nitpick] There’s Pete Seeger, 60s Folk singer, and Bob Seger, 70s / 80s Rock singer. [/Nitpick]
ETA: Somewhat ninja’d by @Elmer_J.Fudd , I see, but I’m going to consider my post a companion piece to theirs rather than a dupe. Great minds think alike!
I wasn’t arguing which of the two musicians is more American; just correcting the OP’s spelling.
That said, I voted for Bob Seger for no other reason than he lives in my neighborhood.
Yeah, I didn’t think you were. You just reminded me of that poll.
It bothered me too, but not quite enough to say something.
I guess I think of a stereotypical American cowboy — and, at that, of a Native American — as well as the kind of construction worker who builds skyscrapers, and, indeed, the cops and soldiers who’d defend a whole village of people.