Cold War Country: How Nashville’s Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism

Mississippi State University professor Joseph M. Thompson joins the CPH to discuss his new book Cold War Country: How Nashville’s Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism. In his book, Thompson illuminates the connections between country music and the military during the Cold War.

This readable history reveals how country music’s Nashville-based business leaders on Music Row created partnerships with the Pentagon to sell their audiences on military service while selling the music to servicemembers. Beginning in the 1950s, the military flooded armed forces airwaves with the music, hosted tour dates at bases around the world, and drew on artists from Johnny Cash to Lee Greenwood to support recruitment programs. Over the last half of the twentieth century, the close connections between the Defense Department and Music Row gave an economic boost to the white-dominated sounds of country while marginalizing Black artists and fueling divisions over the meaning of patriotism.

Joseph M. Thompson argues convincingly that the relationship between Music Row and the Pentagon helped shape not only the evolution of popular music but also race relations, partisanship, and images of the United States abroad.