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Jacksonville and the Roots of Southern Rock
The Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd helped usher in a new kind of southern music from Jacksonville, Florida. Together, they and fellow bands like Blackfoot, 38 Special, and Molly Hatchett would reset the course of seventies rock. Michael FitzGerald tells the story of how the River City bred this generation of legendary musicians.
224 pages, Paperback
Published September 5, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 10, 2020
I was a fan of Southern rock bands but it was never my favorite. The radio hits for me, growing up in NJ. Now that I live in Jacksonville and can still see the reach of these bands... I'm a bigger fan. Being able to live in the same areas these musicians live (and still live, in some cases) is also a great connection.
The book has so much history, which is great. The worst part? The amount of interchangeable band members and the constant in and out of them! It's not a knock on the great writing, but it makes your head spin.
The book has so much history, which is great. The worst part? The amount of interchangeable band members and the constant in and out of them! It's not a knock on the great writing, but it makes your head spin.
May 23, 2024
Liked the material covered, but really disliked the telling. The audio was awful.
May 17, 2022
interesting read when it's all said and done. i had no idea how much influence the jacksonville greater area had on southern/country rock. quite a bit during the read, though, it felt like i was reading someone's homework assignment which really made for slow progress. i think the hardest part of the read was the fact that the author didn't feel like a fan of the music, he seemed more of a fan of history. ultimately, i'm glad i read it to know a little more about the area i live in and around.
November 5, 2020
A brilliant look at Jacksonville, Florida, the hot bed of early Southern Rock.
April 3, 2021
In Jacksonville and the Roots of Southern Rock, musician and media historian Michael Ray Fitzgerald offers a solid argument for why the Bold New City of the South is, if not the origin of Southern Rock, at least the cauldron where it most actively bubbled up.
After a brief introduction offering the author's bona fides as a Navy brat transplant and enthusiastic member of the local music scene, Fitzgerald turns to an examination of what precisely the term "Southern Rock" means (his take: it's primarily about the subject matter) and a brief look at Jacksonville's cultural and musical history. From there he launches into chapters dedicated to specific musicians/bands (including Gram Parson, The Bitter Ind/31st of February, the Allman Brothers Band, Cowboy, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Blackfoot, 38 Special, Molly Hatchet, and Derek Trucks), meticulously tracking not only their discography and ever-rotating membership but the crafting of their personas. He concludes with a look at the trope of the "redneck hippie."
While Fitzgerald's work is painstaking in its detail, it tends to assume a certain level of knowledge the reader may or may not possess about local geography or the music industry - for instance, though I'm a native Jaxson who grew up with many of the songs mentioned here playing as as a constant background on local radio, I would have had a hard time associating these bands with their individual hits, and a broader context for the popularity/impact of each act would have been welcome. Fitzgerald also doesn't bother devoting much time to the personalities of the band members - unless you count "likes to get high" or "sniffs glue" as personalities - which makes the somewhat-incestuous constant exchange and interchange of members between the various bands that much harder to keep track of for those not already familiar with the players. After a while it becomes a bit of a litany, a sort of rock 'n' roll begats.
It's worth mentioning that Fitzgerald does touch carefully on the the association between racism and Southern rock - or at least between the Confederate flag and Southern rock- though somehow what he does say feels like deliberately not commenting. I heard the carefully pitched "Some argue that, in this sense, the flag has become a free-floating symbol of defiance and rebellion" with a Waylon Jennings theme song playing in the background; personally, whether the incorporation of the flag into acts and album design was down to studio marketing or the band members, I have a difficult time believing that a group of blue collar white men in Jacksonville in the 1960s/70s were unaware of the cultural implications of the rebel flag.
While perhaps not terribly accessible to the casual music or history reader, Jacksonville and the Roots of Southern Rock offers a detailed look at the city's musical history in the 1960s-1980s that's guaranteed to delight fans of the genre. Now someone do the Blues.
After a brief introduction offering the author's bona fides as a Navy brat transplant and enthusiastic member of the local music scene, Fitzgerald turns to an examination of what precisely the term "Southern Rock" means (his take: it's primarily about the subject matter) and a brief look at Jacksonville's cultural and musical history. From there he launches into chapters dedicated to specific musicians/bands (including Gram Parson, The Bitter Ind/31st of February, the Allman Brothers Band, Cowboy, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Blackfoot, 38 Special, Molly Hatchet, and Derek Trucks), meticulously tracking not only their discography and ever-rotating membership but the crafting of their personas. He concludes with a look at the trope of the "redneck hippie."
While Fitzgerald's work is painstaking in its detail, it tends to assume a certain level of knowledge the reader may or may not possess about local geography or the music industry - for instance, though I'm a native Jaxson who grew up with many of the songs mentioned here playing as as a constant background on local radio, I would have had a hard time associating these bands with their individual hits, and a broader context for the popularity/impact of each act would have been welcome. Fitzgerald also doesn't bother devoting much time to the personalities of the band members - unless you count "likes to get high" or "sniffs glue" as personalities - which makes the somewhat-incestuous constant exchange and interchange of members between the various bands that much harder to keep track of for those not already familiar with the players. After a while it becomes a bit of a litany, a sort of rock 'n' roll begats.
It's worth mentioning that Fitzgerald does touch carefully on the the association between racism and Southern rock - or at least between the Confederate flag and Southern rock- though somehow what he does say feels like deliberately not commenting. I heard the carefully pitched "Some argue that, in this sense, the flag has become a free-floating symbol of defiance and rebellion" with a Waylon Jennings theme song playing in the background; personally, whether the incorporation of the flag into acts and album design was down to studio marketing or the band members, I have a difficult time believing that a group of blue collar white men in Jacksonville in the 1960s/70s were unaware of the cultural implications of the rebel flag.
While perhaps not terribly accessible to the casual music or history reader, Jacksonville and the Roots of Southern Rock offers a detailed look at the city's musical history in the 1960s-1980s that's guaranteed to delight fans of the genre. Now someone do the Blues.
January 25, 2022
If you are a fan of Southern rock music and its relatives (so-called Mainstream Rock, Country Rock, Pop Rock, etc.) and really want to know how several of the best known classic southern rock bands came to be, you will enjoy this book. The book is very well researched which is a feat in itself as young, still unknown, musicians are not followed and documented like budding politicians might be. To give an idea of the depth of the research, the book contains a bibliography that runs almost 14 pages and additionally has over 20 pages of footnotes. As the inclusion of a lengthy bibliography and footnotes might suggest, this book does not read like a novel. To me, this is scholarly work that traces the many participants, prior bands and interrelationships that resulted in these bands that became internationally known and household names. The interrelationships was one thing I found remarkable. As I read, I kept thinking of some giant white board where every person and every band would be given a little bubble and a line drawn between the people and the bands. The sheer number of people mentioned and tracked by the author is amazing. Not only did every band have numerous predecessor bands with changing personnel, many people played for multiple bands over the years. For example, over its life, the band Lynyrd Skynyrd had over three dozen members and the band Molly Hatchet ended up performing shows with none of the members who actually wrote and performed the songs that made them famous. For a geek of music, like me, this book was an opportunity to delve into the details in depth. My interest in this book was also heightened by being a Florida resident, having lived for a short period in Jacksonville, and knowing the basic geography of the city. As a result, I spent longer reading this short book than any book read for pleasure that I can ever recall. The slow pace was the result of the many side trips I found my self on, stopping to listen to songs or watching YouTube videos of events mentioned in the book. On other occasions, I found myself sidetracked on Google looking for old maps of various places to see where various venues, music stores, recording studios or homes were located. Someone who is only a casual fan of the music may find the level of detail tedious but, for me, the book was a wonderful journey and I am grateful to the author for what must have been an amazing amount of work over a lengthy period of time.
January 24, 2021
A very enjoyable read for anyone interested in the evolution of American popular music. This is a fascinating history about the young men who pioneered what came to known as "Southern Rock" -- the Allman Brothers, 38 Special, Lynard Skynard, Molly Hatchet, Derek Trucks, et. al.
As the author acknowledges, the term "Southern Rock" was always problematic, and owed as much to the cynical marketing of the bad boy image of the musicians as anything inherent in the music. But the hard-living image was deserved. As Fitzgerald notes, alcoholism, drug addiction, and general hard-living defined the lives of many of these musicians. In the end, it extracted a terrible toll, including ill health, broken marriages, early deaths and suicide. What is particularly poignant are stories of musicians who nearly – but not quite – make it in the cut-throat world of rock music.
The author is a media historian as well as a musician who has been involved in the Jacksonville music scene since the late 1960s. He was personally acquainted with many of the musicians he writes about here. I found striking his portrayal of the early Jacksonville club/bar scene, and the social milieu from which these bands emerged. Curiously, for many of these bands, along with the hard-living image was an unrelenting Protestant work ethic -- strange bedfellows to say the least. But as the author notes, for most of these young men, the music industry was the only way to fortune and fame.
In uncovering the roots of Southern Rock, Fitzgerald has – not so incidentally -- evoked a world now long vanished. This is a book that holds the reader's attention from start to finish. (The author also provides a comprehensive bibliography and index.) This will be the standard history of Southern Rock for years to come. Highly recommended.
As the author acknowledges, the term "Southern Rock" was always problematic, and owed as much to the cynical marketing of the bad boy image of the musicians as anything inherent in the music. But the hard-living image was deserved. As Fitzgerald notes, alcoholism, drug addiction, and general hard-living defined the lives of many of these musicians. In the end, it extracted a terrible toll, including ill health, broken marriages, early deaths and suicide. What is particularly poignant are stories of musicians who nearly – but not quite – make it in the cut-throat world of rock music.
The author is a media historian as well as a musician who has been involved in the Jacksonville music scene since the late 1960s. He was personally acquainted with many of the musicians he writes about here. I found striking his portrayal of the early Jacksonville club/bar scene, and the social milieu from which these bands emerged. Curiously, for many of these bands, along with the hard-living image was an unrelenting Protestant work ethic -- strange bedfellows to say the least. But as the author notes, for most of these young men, the music industry was the only way to fortune and fame.
In uncovering the roots of Southern Rock, Fitzgerald has – not so incidentally -- evoked a world now long vanished. This is a book that holds the reader's attention from start to finish. (The author also provides a comprehensive bibliography and index.) This will be the standard history of Southern Rock for years to come. Highly recommended.
December 17, 2021
An excellent accounting for diehard fans of the Southern Rock music genre, this little book is packed with detailed accountings of who came and who went in, out, and between the many bands on the scene at the time.
Unfortunately, for someone only mildly interested in the topic (we read this in my book club), it was just too much detail (some of the bands had as many as 30 or 40 musicians come and go during their tenure) and stories quickly became redundant (musicians coming and going, lots of drugs, and shady dealings.) I had trouble keeping it all straight because the detail felt impersonal and the stories interchangeable. I'd have liked to have gotten to know the characters more.
But I'll bet that people who love the topic will love the book. Knowing something about the individuals the author writes about, before reading the book, will provide a framework for all the details.
Unfortunately, for someone only mildly interested in the topic (we read this in my book club), it was just too much detail (some of the bands had as many as 30 or 40 musicians come and go during their tenure) and stories quickly became redundant (musicians coming and going, lots of drugs, and shady dealings.) I had trouble keeping it all straight because the detail felt impersonal and the stories interchangeable. I'd have liked to have gotten to know the characters more.
But I'll bet that people who love the topic will love the book. Knowing something about the individuals the author writes about, before reading the book, will provide a framework for all the details.
January 29, 2025
Hard to follow the multiple changes in band members as currently written. Also reads as individual essays that can feel like reading Wikipedia pages and often repeats facts from chapter to chapter. I was hoping it would hone in on specific lyrics inspired by the community. Good overview of the Jax rock artists otherwise.
June 20, 2026
Very good
April 4, 2021
As a lover of both Florida and music history, I wish there was a better understanding out there of Florida's contributions to popular music. This book should go a ways to repair one of the more obvious oversights. Most people couldn't tell you that the majority of successful "southern rock" bands all came from one town, Jacksonville. While the merits of even existence of a genre called southern rock is still in dispute (my favorite part of this book was discussing what southern rock even is), there's no doubt most of the bands who make up the scene were from the North Florida/South Georgia area. There are profiles on all the major artists connected to the scene, with detailed excursions into smaller acts that eventually led to the major-label ones. If I have any criticism of this book it's that the bands all start to sound the same because many bands shared the same members, background, and image. That's no fault of the author though, just the reality of the scene. I'm glad I read this and feel I understand the environment that created these multi-platinum selling groups.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews