The South African Life and Afterlife of Jim Reeves

Abstract

This article considers the overwhelming and lasting popularity of the country singer, Jim Reeves, in South Africa. Interpreting the press and radio coverage of his two tours to the country (1962 and 1963) and two recent biographies, it considers the ways in which this representative of the Nashville Sound was constructed to appeal to particular sectors of the South African community. Reeves’s habitus was constructed – despite all evidence and behavior to the contrary – as respectable, devout, and loyal to Afrikaner nationalist ideology. The argument considers the ways in which this conservative demeanor bridged the bucolic imaginary and aspirant modernism of apartheid South Africa.

Keywords:

• Jim Reeves
• country music
• South Africa
• consumption
• Nashville Sound
• apartheid

Notes

¹ Cited in Jordan, Jim Reeves, 406.

² It is revealing that The Star, The Daily Mail, The Sunday Times, and Die Burger did not cover the arrival of the Reeves Tour at all. Four days before the tour, The Star ‘s “Stoeptalk” (14 August 1962: 11) mentioned the difficulties facing Percy Tucker as the tour coordinator; on the 20 August 1962, The Star carried a “Happy Birthday to Jim Reeves” panel, which doubled as an advert for the Ellis Park concert that night; and, in its social pages on 23 August 1962, The Daily Mail published a photograph of Reeves flanked by two guests at a “coffee party” hosted in honor of the visitors by the “Mayor and Mayoress of Johannesburg, Mr and Mrs Keith Fleming, in the Mayor’s Palour” (14). Volksblad carried only short, descriptive pieces announcing Reeves’s plans to tour. What substantive reportage appeared seems to have been confined to the Sunday Express and popular magazines, such as Brandwag and Personality.

³ Tucker, Just the Ticket, 164.

⁴ Gibson, “Jim Reeves Maak Gou-Gou Vriende,” 13.

⁵ All translations from Afrikaans are my own. I have made it clear in situ when comments have been translated. I have retained the original Afrikaans because its register is revealing and evocative.

⁶ Tucker, Just the Ticket, 165–6.

⁷ Gibson, “Jim Reeves Maak Gou-Gou Vriende,” 13.

⁸ See “Stoeptalk,” The Star, 14 August 1962 and Tucker, Just the Ticket, 164.

⁹ Cited in Jordan, Jim Reeves, 406–22.

¹⁰ Personality, 19 September 1963.

¹¹ Gibson, interviewed in DVD Gentleman Jim Reeves.

¹² Jordan, Jim Reeves, 437.

¹³ Springbok Radio Archive recording “Jim Reeves interview 1962.”

¹⁴ Gibson, “Die Geheime Lewe,” 38.

¹⁵ Ibid., 38.

¹⁶ Ibid., 41.

¹⁷ Ibid., 41.

¹⁸ Jordan, Jim Reeves, 460.

¹⁹ A 27-page leaflet by Pansy Cook, The Saga of Jim Reeves: Country and Western Singer, was published by Crescent in 1977, fundamentally for distribution at the Jim Reeves Museum.

²⁰ Jordan, Jim Reeves, 1.

²¹ Malone, Country Music, 245.

²² DVD The Jim Reeves Anthology, 2009.

²³ For a remarkable report on the crash, see that uncovered and posted online by Larry Jordan at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g8boPGPndc

²⁴ Springbok Radio Sound Archives “Interviews with Mary Reeves,” undated.

²⁵ DVD Gentleman Jim Reeves.

²⁶ Tucker, Just the Ticket, 166.

²⁷ Jordan, Jim Reeves, 470.

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ DVD Gentleman Jim Reeves.

³⁰ Jensen, Nashville Sound, 84.

³¹ Ibid., 74.

³² Pecknold, Selling Sound, 7.

³³ Pells, Modernist America.

³⁴ See Goertzen’s study of country in Vienna, 1988; Cohen’s analysis of the country music subculture of Liverpool, 2005; Dent’s investigation into Brazilian commercial country, 2005; Zilberg’s anecdotal account of the popularity of Dolly Parton in Zimbabwe, 1995; Van Elteren’s study of Dutch country music, 1996; and, most impressive, Kristin Solli’s unpublished doctorate, which studies the history and politics of country music subculture in Norway, 2006.

³⁵ See Fox, Real Country, 2004.

³⁶ Solli, “North of Nashville,” 8.

³⁷ Of those few released during Reeves’s lifetime, two were gospel albums: God Be With You (1958) and We Thank Thee (1962). There was also a Christmas album, Twelve Songs of Christmas (1963), which—just anecdotally—is re-released every year in November in India and Sri Lanka.

³⁸ Jordan, Jim Reeves, 651–55.