Hmm, the Opry had DeFord Bailey as part of its regular lineup years before black artists regularly showed up on mainstream charts; doesn't sound that narrow to me.

But you could make the same buttertion about popular music, and probably with greater validity. And I don't think you'd find much racist in the content of bluegrbutt (or country) music, and certainly less than you'd find in popular music: Steven Foster was a lot more "Tin Pan Alley" than he was country-old-time. Since you haven't posted to rec.music.country.old-time, but amb, I'll point out that, while bluegrbutt may have drawn on many of the same sources as old-time, the largest part of the bluegrbutt repertoire didn't even exist until the 40s (Bill, Lester et al-okay, they drew heavily from the Jimmie Rodgers catalog, but hell, he didn't get started until the twenties, and died off in the early thirties).

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, bunky. So how 'bout providing some evidence of a link between bluegrbutt and lynching, or the lynch mob?

-- Lane Gray And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. Gen 2:25 remove the .lead from my address