Cold War Country is an interesting look at how the Pentagon used country music to boost their image and recruitment. While dry at times, I did learn a lot about how their relationship started, how it was maintained, and the benefits both sides received. As someone who was always interested in why post-9/11 country music felt like a cash grab, this book was an eye opener.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher University of North Carolina Press for an advance copy of this book about the strange relationship between country music, the industry that grew from it and the American military.

As a person who has loved music of all kinds country music is the one genre I never really got into. Well country music after 1982 the mainstream country. I love Willie and Waylon, Dolly and Patsy and Loretta too. Bill Monroe, bluegrass, banjo and washboard music I really like. Steve Earle and Mojo Nixon and other alt-country music have always been on my rotation. It's the mainstream stuff, the stuff played at farm stands and carnivals that I never got into. It seemed like late Billy Joel without the soul. As such as I noticed that a lot of country musicians would sing about the flag, and America coming at our enemies, I never noticed how the military machine was using country music in its own way. Nor the money that was being made in this kind of relationship. Cold War Country:How Nashville's Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism by Joseph M. Thompson is a look at the history of country and how the industry and the military worked together for patriotism, propaganda, and of course good old profit.

Military service has had an effect on musicians of all genres. Jazz players meet each other and learned their skills in military bands. A bored serviceman might pick up a guitar and find they had a skill they didn't know they had. Being posted overseas people were exposed to music they might never have heard. For the untalented servicemen and women, those who couldn't play guitar, or sing, they still wanted to be entertained. And that is where country music and certain players in the industry came in. Country acts players USO tours and army bases, which in turn caused military stores to carry a lot of and sell a lot of country music. Racism had much to do with this, even as the military was being desegregated, white southerners would continue to play and listen to the music they liked, and ignored what they didn't. As county music made money, artists would help with recruitment, especially after the draft was ended, singing songs of flags, and America, especially in the days following 9/11.

A fascinating look at a genre of music that I don't think I have seen before. And I am sure one that many people will not enjoy reading. I found this book very interesting and as I am writing this just days after Beyoncé has come out with a country album, and seems to have stirred up a hornet's nest quite topical. The book has quite a lot to say about the racism inside both the military and the music industry. Joseph Thompson is a very good writer, able to talk knowledgeably about history, music, the music industry, and the culture of the times. The book is very well-written and well-researched and in places hard to put down. I have read a lot of music history books but this one kept surprising me with facts and even more the tying in many things in music and history that I had never noticed.

Recommended for music fans, and people who enjoy reading books on history that look at the world through a different view. A book that surprised and taught me quite a bit, and one I enjoyed a lot.

This was an informative and interesting analysis of the origins of country music and its connections to the military from the Cold War on.

I found Cold War Country to be an interesting, thorough exploration of the connections between the country music industry and the Cold War US military. The book covers the very beginnings of the mutually constructed, mutually beneficial relationship with Connie B. Gay’s radio shows and artist tours of bases and the front lines, and continues through the post-Cold-War and War on Terror era. The book lays out the ways that the relationship began, how it was maintained, and the incentives and benefits that both sides received from it very solidly, providing a lot of information while remaining quite readable. I found the discussion of how the military courted the country music audience for its demographics (generally white, southern, and working class) interesting.

I'm not sure how much of this work I agree with, but the author does present some remarkably interesting theories. A well-written book.