What region does the Country music accent represent?

[Mister_Rik]

@NDP

[OT]I can’t recall if she lived around Bellingham or Wenatchee. In any case, it wasn’t long enough for her to lose her Tennessee accent.

Custer

[Bridget_Burke]

@BigT

You might want to reread that, as you’re missing the most important word in his quote. Bakersfield is not a part of coastal California. And that’s the whole point of him mentioning all the states: just because the state is on the West Coast doesn’t mean the city is. Would you say Amarillo was on the Gulf Coast?

And, yes, deciding where to draw the line between coastal and not coastal is… an opinion. You may consider 100 miles away from the coast to still be “West Coast,” but Gary T obviously does not, at least for the purposes of country music.

And, really, it’s more like saying that Florida is not a part of The South, which is a declaration, not of geography, but of culture. Just because we use geographic terms doesn’t mean we’re referring to geography.

Here’s the full post I was answering:

Originally Posted by Doug Bowe
*West Coast might be the “Bakersfield Sound.” *

While in a general sense California, Oregon, and Washington could be considered West Coast, I don’t think of Bakersfield as being coastal California the way San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego are.

No, I don’t think Bakersfield is really “coastal California.” Too dry–& too working class. But the original post used West Coast–which includes whole states. California’s greatest contribution to country music** is** The Bakersfield Sound. That’s Buck Owens & Merle Haggard.

Another poster offered:

Doesn’t Bakersfield have a large Okie population, though, almost to the point where it’s Tulsa West?

Yes, it was settled by “Okies”–the generic term used for Depression Era Refugees from Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas & other states to the East. It was an ethnic slur in the days when John Steinbeck (& Woody Guthrie) gave us the saga of Tom Joad. Do the elite still use that term to describe Californians several generations removed from the Dust Bowl?

California’s other contribution to country music is the Country Rock that came out of Los Angeles in the 60’s & 70’s. I’ve got a soft spot for lots of that stuff, even though the hard-edged Bakersfield Sound makes it seem a tad wimpy. Especially after Gram Parsons OD’d & left the field to The Eagles.

Sorry. This faux naïveté of the OP put me in a grouchy mood. Why, yes, quite a few country singers use one of the several accents of the Southern USA. That is, in fact, where the music was born. Even though it’s traveled quite a bit since then.

So?

[not_alice]

@Gary_T

While in a general sense California, Oregon, and Washington could be considered West Coast, I don’t think of Bakersfield as being coastal California the way San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego are.

Not only that, but the musicians of that time in Bakersfield were only closely removed from the Dust Bowl emigration form Oklahoma and other country music havens. In maybe ways the population was indistinguishable between the two places.

[not_alice]

@Bridget_Burke

Yes, it was settled by “Okies”–the generic term used for Depression Era Refugees from Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas & other states to the East. It was an ethnic slur in the days when John Steinbeck (& Woody Guthrie) gave us the saga of Tom Joad. Do the elite still use that term to describe Californians several generations removed from the Dust Bowl?

Since I am outside Bakersfield, and well within Dust Bowl refugee-land, and a recent transplant here from the Bay Area, I will take that one please

No, the descendants of the original refugees, and the ones that are still alive, use that term among themselves sometimes.

Now, those same people treat the “Mexicans”, who may or may not actually be from Mexico, but who work the same shit jobs the “Okies” had when they arrived, the same way their ancestors were treated on arrival. And worse.

Serious, you could drive around large swaths of the Central Valley and it still looks eerily like those WPA photos from the 1930s.

[Ponch8]

One must remember that some people like BOTH kinds of music–country AND western. Obviously western music accents come from the west.

[JohnT]

@MitzeKatze

It is what I refer to probably very un-politically-correctly as the “red-neck accent”. It can be heard across the country and seems to represent a mentality and lifestyle more than a region. The heaviest “red neck accent” speakers I know hail from vastly different areas.

Or, as I say, “Trailer is a universal dialect”.