Marketing the Sound: Fashioning the Blues Musician and the Country Music Cowboy

Jules Eckelkamp
Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice

About this Item

Title
Marketing the Sound: Fashioning the Blues Musician and the Country Music Cowboy
Contributor Names
Eckelkamp, Jules (Author)
Abrego, Sonya (Thesis advisor)
Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York. Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice (Degree granting institution)
Date
2023
Degree Information
M.A. Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, 2023
Department: Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice
Advisors: Abrego, Sonya
Committee members: Davidson, Hilary; Matheson, Rebecca
Abstract
Focusing on the period between the country music’s recognition as a distinct category of music in the 1920s and its evolution into a polished and solidified genre in the 1950s, I will discuss the segregation of Black and white singers into the categories of hillbilly and race music and the resulting changes to the artists’ wardrobe. I will look at the dress of the rural Mississippi Delta and Appalachian regions where both genres emerged from. I will consider the influence of record labels, touring shows, and the artists themselves on the musician’s visual branding. A particular focus will be placed on the leading artists in the country and blues genres during this time and the representations of gender within these artists' wardrobe and the subtext of these style choices. I will then discuss how country musician’s initial dress shifted into a more distinct country costume due to blues and pop sounds encroaching on the country music genre in the 1940s and 1950s and how the blues genre and the typical blues musician has become romanticized due to white scholarship of the genre.
Subject
Textile research
Fashion
Music
History
Blues musicians
Country music
Cowboy
Gender expression
Musicians
Twentieth century
Keyword
Blues music
Country music
Cowboy fashion
Gender history
Musician fashion
Twentieth century
Rights
In Copyright
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Identifier
FIT Repository ID: etd_000950
ISBN: 9798379899592
pqdiss: 30522947
Related Materials
Also available from ProQuest
Type
Text
Thesis
Language
English
Publisher
Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Citation

Eckelkamp, J. (2023). Marketing the Sound: Fashioning the Blues Musician and the Country Music Cowboy [Master's thesis, Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York]. FIT Institutional Repository. https://institutionalrepository.fitnyc.edu/item/120858
Eckelkamp, Jules. Marketing the Sound: Fashioning the Blues Musician and the Country Music Cowboy. 2023. Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, Master's thesis. FIT Digital Repository, https://institutionalrepository.fitnyc.edu/item/120858
Eckelkamp, Jules. "Marketing the Sound: Fashioning the Blues Musician and the Country Music Cowboy." Master's thesis, Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, 2023. https://institutionalrepository.fitnyc.edu/item/120858