The 1970’s were an interesting time in the South. The 1970’s were the last time Southerners could be Southern without feeling the need to apologize for, or be ironic about, their Southern identity. In fact, in the 1970’s, it seemed to actually go a little beyond this. We shouldn’t push this too far, but in 1970’s America there seemed to be an acceptance of the South as a cultural asset to American life, something that added value to that classic 70’s notion of the ‘Great American Melting Pot.’ In America in the 1970’s, being Southern could be a good thing. It could even been cool to be Southern.
It’s not entirely clear when and why this happened, although it seems to have essentially come to an end by the time of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration in 1981. It’s remarkable, though, that it happened at all. What most defined the South in the minds of non-Southerners during the 1960’s was the Civil Rights movement; those indelible images of burned-out buses, Bull Conner, Birmingham, Selma and so forth. These images shocked Americans outside the South, but also did something else. During the early 60’s at least, it allowed those Americans to rest comfortably in the idea that racial tension and social unrest, while terrible to look at, was at least something confined to the South, that troublesome, benighted region, that odd place always out of step with the real America in which everyone else lived. This was a Southern problem because the South was itself a problem. It had always been a problem. It was an echo of Robert Penn Warren’s old ‘treasury of virtue.’
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And then something happened. That comfortable bubble of virtue popped. Kennedy was assassinated. The conspiracy theories started. All of a sudden something didn’t seem quite right in America, never mind the South. Meanwhile, Lyndon Johnson, a Southerner from Texas, pushed through the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act which seemed to win for the Civil Rights movement all it had aimed for. That movement turned its focus elsewhere, like the big cities of the North. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that he never encountered the same level of hostility in the South that he did in Chicago. There was the Vietnam War, the antiwar movement and the growing counterculture which looked askance at what it considered an arrogant and conformist American society, one which, maybe not so ironically, had looked down its nose at those backwards Southerners just a few years before. By 1968 the country was at a boiling point. King was assassinated by a petty criminal from Illinois. More conspiracy theories followed. Riots erupted in Detroit, Los Angeles and Washington. The Democratic convention in Chicago was a disaster for the party. RFK was assassinated in California. There were still more conspiracy theories. There was Tet, Nixon, Woodstock, the Summer of Love, Linebackers I & II, and finally Watergate. By the beginning of the 70’s, Americans might be forgiven for having thought that not all of their problems were confined to the South.
Perhaps what seemed now like an easing of racial tensions in the South, especially with the new awareness that social conflict was an American phenomenon, not just a Southern one, led to an openness to rethink what the South meant to America? If Southern history was a tragic history, then at the beginning of the 1970’s it seemed like all of America had passed through a tragic era. While something might have been gained, it felt like something had been lost too.
Or maybe this new found sympathy for the South came from hearing Senator Sam Ervin’s wonderful old North Carolina accent during the Watergate hearings in 1973? Ervin seemed like a voice of wisdom and integrity from the days of the Old Republic against the organization men of the Nixon administration. Or maybe it was going to the movies in 1973 and watching Joe Don Baker portray a Tennessee Sheriff named Bufford Pusser, walking tall, carrying a big stick, and taking on a different kind of corruption in McNairy County?
Positive depictions of the South and Southerners could be found all over the place in movies and on television in the 1970’s. Just watch Clint Eastwood in The Outlaw Jose Wales (1976), or Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit (1977), or even John Travolta in Urban Cowboy (1980). There was the Waltons, set in Depression era Virginia, (1972-1981) the most popular show on television and, of course, there was The Dukes of Hazzard (1979-1985). Burt Reynolds was the epitome of cool in the 70’s. Watch White Lighting (1973) and Gator (1976). Burt Reynolds proudly identified as and was recognized by everyone else as a Southerner. Network television even still occasionally showed Gone with the Wind and Disney’s Song of the South, all without feeling the need for a disclaimer or a content warning.
1976 seems to have been a watershed for the South’s place in American life during the decade. It was, of course, the Bicentennial year. This sparked a renewed interest in the Revolutionary Era and the Founding Fathers, reminding Americans that many of the most critically important Founders were, after all, Southerners. You don’t have a Bicentennial without the South, and we should recall how unabashedly celebratory was the tone of the Bicentennial. The South was an integral part of this glorious moment in American history and of its two hundredth anniversary as well.
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And of course, there was the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976. People sometimes think of Carter’s election as a fluke, coming after Watergate and the Nixon pardon, the taint of which Ford just couldn’t shake. Certainly, there’s some truth in that, but it’s worth noting that when pollsters asked Americans, in the Bicentennial year of 1976, what they most wanted in their next president it was honesty, integrity and decency. And who they chose was a previously unknown governor from Georgia over not just Gerald Ford of Michigan but several more prominent candidates for the Democratic nomination. Carter clearly benefit from a national perception of the South and Southerners as being more authentic, ‘real’ and ‘down to Earth.’
Think about 1976. The election that year was razor thin, but remarkably placid and dignified when compared to more recent contests. This was a political world very different from ours, although it really wasn’t all that long ago. It was a far less partisan, less ideological time. This was a time before most Americans had cable television, before the internet, when making a long distance phone call was expensive and people didn’t do it much. People still wrote letters, by hand, to each other in 1976. All of these technologies we have today which were supposed bring us together, to make communication easier, make ideas flow more freely, certainly did some of that, but they also seem to have made us, ironically, more isolated, more distrustful, less willing to speak freely, more angry, and more rigidly ideological.
The South could also be heard very clearly on the radio, the turntable and the 8-track in the 1970’s. By the 1970’s country music had become mainstream American music. Its influence was everywhere in the culture in the 70’s. This was the era of Outlaw Country; Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings and when Austin City Limits seemed to have nothing but country artists on its show. Even in Rock music you could hear lots country influences. Just take a listen to the Eagles. This was a time when genre boundaries were not quite as rigid as they later became, and mainstream artists felt free to explore different influences. In fact, one could argue that the 1970’s was the most creative period in the history of post-World War II American popular music. An important part of all of this creativity was Southern Rock. The earliest Rock pioneers had been Southerners making Southern music, but for various reasons, by the early 1970’s, the connection between Rock music’ origins and the South had been forgotten. Whatever Rock was, it wasn’t Southern.
Then The Allman Brothers kicked the door open for Southern Rock musicians and bands identified with the South and the Southern Rock Movement. As a presidential candidate, Jimmy Carter embraced the movement and the movement embraced him. Southern Rockers, Lynyrd Skynyrd among them, played fund-raising concerts for Carter. The Marshall Tucker Band even played at Carters’ inauguration party, and Carter picked Charlie Daniel’s “The South’s Gonna Do it Again” as his campaign song. To get a sense of what this all meant read the first paragraph of an article from The New York Times published on July 24, 1977. It was written by respected music writer Robert Palmer. Admittedly, the cultural moment Palmer describes didn’t last very long, but it was real, and it’s been largely forgotten.
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“Confederate flags waved in Central Park last summer when the Marshall Tucker Band performed, and longhaired fans in overalls square danced. The Atlanta Rhythm Section, opening shows for Alice Cooper on his current tour, has been greeted by rebel yells in the most unlikely places. Clearly, Southern rock has a mystique all it’s own, one which transcends regional differences. In part, this is because white Southerners still seem exotic, and therefore fascinating, to many Americans-‐a Southern friend was recently asked in New York whether his people had really wanted to secede-‐and because our Southern president has popularized Southern chic. But the Southern rock band predated and perhaps helped create the climate for Jimmy Carter, and exotic or not, the music is distinctive enough to have created a nationwide audience strictly on its own merits.”
Confederate flags waving in Central Park! The South is chic! Southerners are exotic and interesting! Southern Rock music blazed the path for Jimmy Carter! These are fascinating images and notions, and they are important because Rock music mattered in the 1970’s. As it was later in the 1980’s and 1990’s, but perhaps less so today, young Americans defined themselves by the music they listened to. This was powerful stuff. For young Southerners, Southern Rock was a way to affirm and express their Southern identity in this new, confusing and crazy world of the 1970’s. And it was fun, upbeat and positive. It felt good to be Southern. The South was hip, culturally relevant and cool.
While the Allman Brothers Band was certainly important, the band that perhaps most represents the Southern Rock moment of the 1970’s is Jacksonville, Florida’s Lynyrd Skynyrd. To appreciate Skynyrd, you have to understand Ronnie Van Zant. If Southern Rock had a representative figure, the one person who most embodied the ethos of 70’s Southern Rock, it was Skynyrd’s lyricist and lead singer. Ronnie Van Zant was the heart, the soul and driving force of Lynyrd Skynyrd. He’s now a Rock icon, and I think we can add Southern icon to that too. Ronnie Van Zant is also one of the most unappreciated lyricists in Rock history. In his Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame induction speech for Skynyrd in 2006, Robert James Ritchie, a.k.a. Kid Rock, said that Ronnie Van Zant was a Southern poet. Kid Rock is right. Ronnie was a genuinely significant 20th century Southern voice who is due a proper recognition.
That it hasn’t been fully granted may be because the image of Ronnie and the band he led has loomed so large, and for so long, it has hid his songwriting. It won’t come as a revelation to anyone that the music scene of the 1970’s embodied the now well-worn phrase of “sex, drugs and rock and roll.” All you can say is, “It was the 70’s,” and that was the lifestyle for a large number of Rock musicians and fans. Hedonism, recklessness and self-indulgence defined the era, and it wasn’t just at Studio 54. It was everywhere. Lynyrd Skynyrd had a reputation, however, for not just keeping up with the Joneses, but of setting a standard for others to follow. There were hotel rooms trashed, T.V.s thrown out of windows, drunken rampages, drug use and lots of fights.
Part of that image is Ronnie Van Zant as a mean, tough, Florida redneck who liked to drink and fight with equal gusto. Well, there is as much truth as myth here. It’s not the whole story, but it is a part. Early in Skynyrd’s rise, manager Allan Walden took the band to New York to do some interviews. Asked by one journalist if it was true what he had heard, that he and the Skynyrd boys were just a bunch of rednecks, Ronnie looked him in the eye, sneered, and said, “Hell Yea. Damn right. Where’s your daughter?” Was this playing to type, or a straightforward and honest declaration? Maybe a little of both? Ronnie Van Zant was a very savvy guy.
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Ronald Wayne Van Zant was born in 1948 and grew up in the Westside area of Jacksonville in a modest house at the corner of Mull Street and Woodcrest Road. It’s now a Florida State Historic Site, compete with a sign. His father Lacy was a long haul trucker working the East Coast and his mother Marion Virginia “Sister” Hicks worked in a donut shop at the time he was born. She would have an enormous influence in shaping his character since his father was often on the road. At the time, the Westside was a large, sprawling, semi-rural, blue-collar neighborhood that was more or less the transition zone from rural North Florida to downtown Jacksonville. Many there worked for the railroad or the port in Jacksonville. Some of the roads were paved. Others were dirt. In 1968 Jacksonville and Duval County consolidated making Jacksonville the largest city in the world by land area. The Jacksonville and Northeast Florida that Ronnie grew up in was still culturally very Southern. It was often called ‘South Georgia south.’
Fully grown, Ronnie would stand a stocky 5’7, and his own mother recognized that he was one of the toughest boys around. Ronnie liked to fight, especially when a point of personal honor was at stake, but sometimes because, well, because it was fun. Lots of other Westside boys like to fight too. Ronnie won his share, but apparently didn’t win every time either. Ronnie wasn’t just a fighter though. He is remembered by an early girlfriend as sweet, romantic and gentlemanly, a kind of dirt road knight errant; a fighter and a lover. More than fighting, Ronnie loved the outdoors. He and his childhood friend Gene Odom would go fishing in nearby Cedar Creek and other local fishing holes. Gene claims that Ronnie loved fishing even more than music. They would sometimes catch huge sacks of mullet from the creek and give them all away to various people in the neighborhood. If not fishing, the two would go squirrel hunting or just wander the woods which were thick in the surrounding area.
There was also the nearby Speedway Park, famed as the fasted half-mile dirt track in the U.S. and once part of the NASCAR circuit. Ronnie and Gene would climb trees tall enough for them to watch for free. Richard Petty, Junior Johnson, Fireball Roberts, the Allison brothers, and Wendell Scott all raced there. In fact, Lee Roy Yarbrough, winner of the 1969 Daytona 500, lived in the Westside neighborhood and Ronnie and Gene would spend hours hanging out with him as he worked on his cars. Ronnie did some drag-racing himself and once owned a red 1965 Ford Mustang with the 289 cubic inch engine with the three speed stick shift. He considered being a professional racer car driver for a while but crashing the Mustang put an end to it. He later worked at an auto parts store where he knew every part and its location by memory.
Ronnie was a good baseball player too, enough to have aspirations of being a professional, and since he was good with his fists, he thought about boxing too. Ronnie loved Muhamad Ali but came to like Ali’s words more than his punches, his ‘fly like a butterfly, sting like a bee’ style of pithy poetry. Ronnie was a budding poet of sorts himself, secretly, and quietly, keeping a little journal under his bed with jokes, sayings, stories, and strands of lyrics. He attended Robert E. Lee High School, and did well enough, but dropped out his senior year. By then Ronnie had already decided what he wanted to do.
The world in which Ronnie Van Zant grew up certainly wasn’t the Old South. It was a New South, but one still connected to old rural ways. He and his companions in Jacksonville’s Westside were just a generation or two removed from the farms and fields. These were the same sort of people who, if this had been the Southern Piedmont instead of North Florida, would have been working in the cotton mills. Instead, they worked for the railroad, at the port, joined the navy or the army, or drove stock cars. Ronnie’s father Lacy was a teller of tall tales, and clearly that love of storytelling rubbed off on Ronnie. Lacy also loved old time country music, and from an early age Ronnie loved it too. One of his favorites was Merle Haggard, but he was saturated in the stuff and would have heard all the great country crooners of the 50’s and 60’s. These influences would be essential for Ronnie. (Ed King would later say that Lynyrd Skynyrd was a rock band fronted by a great country singer.)
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Like everyone else, Ronnie listened to the popular music of the early and mid-60’s, but he had a special fondness for the offbeat stuff like Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs who had hits with “Wooly Bully” and “Little Red Riding Hood.” He also liked the Beach Boys when they came out, interesting since Ronnie and Skynyrd sound nothing like the Beach Boys.
In 1965, at the age of seven, Ronnie and friend Bill Ferris saw The Rolling Stones perform live in Jacksonville. This was at the peak of Beatlemania, and the Stones weren’t yet a top draw. But the experience made an impression on Ronnie. Skynyrd would sound more like the Stones than the Beatles. Ronnie was a lifelong Stones fan, as all the guys in Skynyrd would be. In 1976 the Stones headlined a massive concert in Knebworth Park in Hertfordshire, England. Several bands were on offer, among them Skynyrd who by all accounts put on a better performance than the headliners.
