By Neely Tucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 18, 2006; C01
What is it with this Southern thing on "American Idol," anyway?
Here we go, a national singing competition. It's lousy with Juilliard proteges, Hollywood High sensations, right? Top-notch overachievers, best-that-money-can-buy training?
Um, no.
For five years, the most wildly popular talent contest on American television has been dominated -- thoroughly, totally and completely -- by kids from Southern Hicksville, USA. Seven of the eight top-two finishers in the first four years were from states that once formed the Confederacy, and five of the seven remaining finalists this season are, too.
Bubba!
Home towns of winners and runners-up: Burleson, Tex. Columbus and Snellville, Ga. Birmingham and Huntsville, Ala. Chapel Hill and High Point, N.C. The lone outsider in the top tier, last year's winner, Carrie Underwood, only emphasizes the point -- she hails from Checotah, Okla. (pop. 3,400). This is Merle Haggard, "Okie From Muskogee" territory. We say that in the good sense.
But how is this even possible? Can't anybody in Detroit sing anymore? Can no one in Gotham knock out a show tune better than Clay Aiken? Dialing L.A . . . Hello? Hello?
To emphasize Southern Idol, consider: Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina have less than 10 percent of the national population but have produced 75 percent of the top pairs. This season, those states have four of the seven finalists.
It is tempting to draw the cultural connection here. Southern kids grow up singing in churches and small-town festivals in a region that emphasizes the voice, whether in storytelling or song, and thus are possessors of raw cultural gifts.
Hmm.
It is true that so many American forms of music -- jazz, blues, country, gospel -- are Southern creations, born by or because of the long-time interactions between blacks and whites in rural isolation. Drive from Memphis to New Orleans on fabled Highway 61, toss in a side trip to the Grand Ole Opry, and you've essentially got the core of American musical history.
But let's not get carried away. "Idol" is just a quirky television show, and while we'll consider cultural influence in just a moment, there's no reason to get into some sort of moonlight-and-magnolias, barefoot Suthun kids picking the git-tar down by the riverbank mythology.
"People in, say, Georgia aren't sitting on the front porches singing anymore," says Charles Reagan Wilson, director for the Center of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. "They're inside in the air-conditioning, watching cable like everybody else."
The music critic at the Raleigh, N.C., News & Observer, David Menconi, who has seen Fantasia Barrino (winner), Aiken (runner-up) and four of this year's top 12 come from the state, doesn't think there's anything in the water.
"Two days [after the show], do you remember the songs performed? No, you remember the cutting remarks Simon made," Menconi says. "That's the real draw of the show, the drama of the moment.
"The people from here who have done well are just completely different; I can't see there being an identifiable sound or influence. I mean, Clay Aiken, a Broadway-style singer, and Fantasia, a real R&B belter? I don't see any connection. It's just a goofy, weird thing."
Bucky Covington, the country singer from Rockingham, N.C., who was voted off the show Tuesday night, was asked the Southern Question in a subsequent conference call last week. He didn't have a clue.
"I don't know if it's accents and attitudes that a lot of big cities aren't used to. . . . It's hard to put a finger on it," he said, before giving up. "It just seems to fall that way."
While it's falling, let's consider a few prosaic matters, such as math and demographics.
For one, as Menconi points out, "Idol" winners are picked from call-in votes, making it a popularity contest, not a talent show. Watch any week and you can be amazed, as we were last week, to see some talentless toad like Ace Young from Denver stay on the show, while the dearly beloved Mandisa (from Tennessee) is two weeks departed. Could Mandisa sing better than Ace? When she's gargling. Does it matter? Nope.
So who's casting all these Southern-based votes?
Let's look at the Nielsen numbers for some clues.
"Idol's" two episodes last week were the No. 1 shows in their time slots in every major market in America (save for San Antonio and Albuquerque), but lookit these shares down south! Greensboro-High Point, N.C.: 50 percent of all televisions turned on were watching "Idol"! Birmingham: 46 percent! Atlanta: 45! Charlotte: 37!
Well, no wonder, you say -- Southerners eat this show up like cornbread and buttermilk! They're packing the ballot box!
It's a really great theory, and it does count, but let's look at the raw numbers those shares translate into.
Greensboro-High Point: 218,000 households. Birmingham: 234,000. Atlanta: 642,000.
By comparison, "Idol" scored higher in 40 other markets before New York shows up. It pulled a 24 percent share in Gotham. But that translates into 1.1 million households -- and potential voters. In Los Angeles, the show rated even lower, at 21 percent, but that still meant 773,000 households.
So the show penetrates more deeply in the Southeast, but that still doesn't mean more voters. "Idol" does terribly in Knoxville, Houston and Nashville, the official home of country music.
Besides, there is the Split Vote Conundrum -- that many people voting for their hometown favorite would dilute the regional total. North Carolina has three people still in the running; how could that be a benefit compared with the lone California contestant?
So let's briefly consider the South as influence, both as a geographic entity and as an idea.
"Idol" kids grew up in the postmodern era, long after the throes of the civil rights movement, long after interstates and Wal-Marts had made small towns in north Alabama look a whole lot like small towns in Michigan. The old days are gone. Listen to two iconic Southern recordings: Hank Williams's (Alabama) "Your Cheating Heart" and Robert Johnson's (Mississippi) "32-20 Blues." The first is twangy beyond description and the second is almost incomprehensible.
People don't talk like that anymore. But a softer Southern accent persists, as does the cultural memory of things long gone. There is still an emphasis on church and family, both entities that, in the course of Southern life, heavily influence music, particularly among the working class.
"There's still an awful lot of old-school singers who got their starts in church, and many mainstream country musicians still do a gospel album," said John Reed Shelton, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of North Carolina and one of the region's most respected observers. "Everybody tends to go to church, and Southern evangelical Protestantism, both black and white, emphasizes and rewards musical performance."
Plus, as Wilson, the Mississippi scholar, points out, the only way a lot of kids stuck in one-horse towns know that they can find life-changing fame and fortune is on the stage.
B.B. King, Elvis, Tina Turner, Kenny Chesney, Faith Hill, Ray Charles, Leontyne Price, Johnny Cash -- pick a genre, and somebody from a smaller town than you with two fewer pairs of overalls than you has made it big time, some to the status of American icons (not idols).
So, too, has Kelly Clarkson, the first year's winner, gone on to a career that outlasted her 15 minutes. Few people doubt that Fantasia probably has more raw talent than anyone on the show so far.
Perhaps most intriguing, as the fifth season continues, is to consider how much more talent remains out there in the hill towns and dust buckets of the South, and will rarely be heard past the local 4-H show, halftime at the high school football game, or at Sunday church.
Perhaps that is sad, perhaps it is comforting. More likely, it is just the way it always has been.
