Excellence in country music journalism was recognized on Friday, May 22 at the 32nd International Country Music Conference. The conference, held each year at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, gathers together preeminent country music scholars from across the world to share their research.Image may be NSFW.
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A Friday luncheon showcased the 2015 Belmont Country Music Book of the Year Award and the Rolling Stone Chet Flippo Excellence in Country Music Journalism Award.
This year marks the first for the RS Chet Flippo award given in honor of the late music journalist Chet Flippo. Jewly Hight, a Nashville-based freelance writer who routinely publishes with the Nashville Scene, NPR, Billboard, and Rolling Stone Country.
Jewly had this to say about the honor:
“Whenever I want to read an intelligent, in-depth interview with a country artist of ‘70s vintage, Chet Flippo’s work is one of the first places I turn, as the dog-eared Flippo anthology on my bookshelf attests. Here was a rock critic, writing at a time when rock criticism meant paying attention to music shrouded in countercultural cool, taking country artists seriously as interview subjects. That was no small thing. Nor is it a small thing to me to be associated with Flippo’s journalistic legacy. Now that there is such a thing as the Rolling Stone Chet Flippo Award for Excellence in Country Music Journalism, I’m deeply honored to be its first recipient—honored that my work was deemed worthy of that title by country scholars and journalists I respect. It makes me want to redouble my efforts to write about music that I feel matters, and to try to speak across the divides of aesthetic preferences and cultural assumptions in the process.”
Also recognized at the luncheon was author Barry Mazor who was awarded the 2015 Belmont Country Music Book of the Year for his book Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music. Mazor also won the award in 2009 for his book Meeting Jimmie Rodgers.
Barry says:
“I was honored to have won the Belmont Award for Meeting Jimmie Rodgers for 2009; I’m honored and surprised, given some strong competition in books on country this past year and the cross-genre nature of the Ralph Peer story, to receive it this second time. I’d recommend people pick up on Michael Jarrett’s Producing Country, Nadine Hubbs’ Rednecks, Queers & Country Music, and Huber, Goodson and Anderson’s The Hank Williams Reader–though I wouldn’t object if they got to Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music first–hardbound or as that enhanced eBook with the music included!”
Music Tomes would like to congratulate Jewly and Barry on their award! [Next week Barry will be a guest on the Music Tomes podcast if you’d like to hear more from him.]
