# Peak "Americana"?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-americana/1000241
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Tags:** music
**Created:** [April 13, 2024, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-americana/1000241 "2024-04-13T20:12:37Z")
**Posts on this page:** 17
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Al128](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Al128)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2024, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-americana/1000241/1 "2024-04-13T20:12:37Z")
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 …
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### Author:  [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2024, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-americana/1000241/2 "2024-04-13T20:16:23Z")
> [@Al128](#):
>
> my peronal take: 2nd half of the 70ies, Bob Seeger
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.
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### Author:  [@Al128](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Al128)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2024, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-americana/1000241/3 "2024-04-13T20:35:55Z")
that’s a great point … I remember reading here about the red-white-blue painted everything … like fire-hydrants, etc…
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### Author:  [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2024, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-americana/1000241/4 "2024-04-13T20:49:28Z")
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
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### Author:  [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2024, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-americana/1000241/5 "2024-04-13T20:50:10Z")
> [@Al128](#):
>
> I remember reading here about the red-white-blue painted everything
In 1976, even the Dallas Cowboys got in on it, by making one of the stripes on their helmets red.
[ ](https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/73/2020/06/usatsi_5633018-e1593821949518.jpg?w=640)
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### Author:  [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2024, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-americana/1000241/6 "2024-04-13T21:54:01Z")
Captain America had a pretty stars & stripes themed chopper and helmet in Easy Rider (1969).
> **[Easy Rider: Peter Fonda as "Captain America" » BAMF Style](https://bamfstyle.com/2021/10/09/easy-rider-fonda/)**
>
> Fonda's freedom-loving biker embraced a Captain America persona as he cruised the country in a red, white, and blue-motif racer jacket, helmet, and Harley.
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### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2024, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-americana/1000241/7 "2024-04-14T01:20:57Z")
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!
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### Author:  [@Al128](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Al128)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2024, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-americana/1000241/8 "2024-04-14T01:27:44Z")
well, there is **always** the option of putting a small block into that bicentennial wheelchair to make it truely americana
😉
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### Author:  [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2024, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-americana/1000241/9 "2024-04-14T01:45:39Z")
> [@Al128](#):
>
> bicentennial wheelchair to make it truely americana
A Harley bicentennial wheelchair would make it Peak Americana.
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### Author:  [@Al128](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Al128)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2024, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-americana/1000241/10 "2024-04-14T02:02:34Z")
but only if hung with truck-nuts
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### Author:  [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2024, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-americana/1000241/11 "2024-04-14T10:53:22Z")
I found an old post of mine in a thread about the trashiest thing we’ve ever seen, but it works for Americana, too.
> [@The trashiest thing you have ever seen](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trashiest-thing-you-have-ever-seen/576038/10):
>
> In Reno, Nevada, in the midst of a huge biker rally was an outdoor concert stage; an elderly African-American man in suit and tie worked the crowd selling LEDs that would make your mouth light up from the inside while a band called the Saddle Tramps, including a size-14 blonde named Suzie Switchblade dancing on the stage in lingerie and cowboy boots, played a rousing rendition of “Cindy Brady Had My Baby”. I’m not expecting to ever top that.
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.
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### Author:  [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2024, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-americana/1000241/12 "2024-04-14T14:18:47Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2024, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-americana/1000241/13 "2024-04-14T14:20:31Z")
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.
> [@Al128](#):
>
> my peronal take: 2nd half of the 70ies, Bob Seeger
>
> IMHO it doesn’t get more americana than Seeger
[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!
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### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2024, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-americana/1000241/14 "2024-04-14T14:24:43Z")
> [@solost](#):
>
> > [@Al128](#):
> >
> > IMHO it doesn’t get more americana than Seeger
>
> [Nitpick] There’s Pete Seeger, 60s Folk singer, and Bob Seger, 70s / 80s Rock singer. [/Nitpick]
> [@Polls only: No discussion](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/polls-only-no-discussion/953642/4409):
>
> Who’s more American? [poll](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/polls-only-no-discussion/953642/4409)
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### Author:  [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2024, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-americana/1000241/15 "2024-04-14T14:28:59Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2024, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-americana/1000241/16 "2024-04-14T14:30:22Z")
> [@solost](#):
>
> I wasn’t arguing which of the two musicians is more American
Yeah, I didn’t think you were. You just reminded me of that poll.
> [@solost](#):
>
> just correcting the OP’s spelling
It bothered me too, but not _quite_ enough to say something.
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### Author:  [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2024, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-americana/1000241/17 "2024-04-14T14:36:05Z")
> [@solost](#):
>
> But when I think of stereotypical ‘peak Americana’ I think of the 1950s.
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.