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Louisiana Hayride: Radio and Roots Music along the Red River. By Tracey E. W. Laird. American Musicspheres. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. xii, 208. $29.95, ISBN 0-19-516751-1.)
The radio program Louisiana Hayride is known to country music scholars and fans alike as the upstart barn dance on Shreveport, Louisiana's KWKH where newcomer Hank Williams yodeled "Lovesick Blues" and a young Elvis Presley sang "Blue Moon of Kentucky." A study of the radio show that looks beyond those well-known events is overdue, and this book is a welcome addition to the discourse on country music. Tracey E. W. Laird's research proposes that the character and lasting impact of that show were unique manifestations of Shreveport's regional identity. Laird reexamines issues of genre identity, business practices, geographic location, and race as they pertain to the heyday of honky-tonk...