Is There American Schlager Music?

While most readers of the Chicago Schlager Music Review arrive here after searching for their favorite schlager stars such as Helene Fischer or Francine Jordi, from our analytics we have noticed that a surprising
number are arriving after searching for the words "American schlager" or "Is there American schlager?"

Well the answer to that question is NO and MAYBE.

Schlager is a decidedly Germanic phenomenon with distinctive musical rhythms and usually performed in the native German language or in the cases of the peripheral countries, Dutch or Slovenian.

But as we noted when we launched this site, schlager has often been compared to American Country and Western music.

In many ways they are quite similar in lyrical content, in that they both emphasize country life, the traditional roles of men and women, sentimental love and a longing for home or heimat.

American country music stresses the simple life and often seems to relish its lower class origins. Its lyrics often sentimentally expound on the problems of the lower classes -- drunkenness, divorce, prison, loss of job.

In fact the famous Chicago satirist and folk musician, Steve Goodman, co-wrote a spoof of C&W music which began with the lines:

"Well I was drunk
The day my mom
got out of prison..."

American Country and Western music is the only popular American musical genre entirely uninfluenced by the music of the American negro. Its antecedents can be found in the Celtic folk music of the early Scots-Irish settlers to America and was later reinforced by the Celtic musical influences of the Irish immigrants from the Catholic South of Ireland.

Subgenres of C&W were influenced by the Cajun French who, being dissatisfied with life under the British Crown, relocated from Canada to the French colony of Louisiana, which in 1803 was sold to the American Republic by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, to finance his European wars (at 3 cents per acre for 829,000 square miles of prime American land it was probably the greatest real estate bargain in world history.)

American Country music moved Westward with the American settlers who conquered the Great Plains during the 19th century. In the isolation of the Wild West, it took on a number of distinct refinements, most notably a heavy reliance on the easily transportable guitar.

Today American Country and Western performers still often sport distinctive Western attire -- 10 gallon hats, Texas string ties and and cowboy boots -- although more than a few of them have likely never been astride a horse in their lives.

Compare this to the similar propensity of many Germanic schlager stars to perform wearing the traditional lederhosen and dirndl.

The similarities between Germanic schlager and American C&W are such that a formidable schlager subgenre  has sprung up in the German speaking world which embraces and imitates the American music form. It is celebrated by an organized Country and Western Music Association -Deutsch and has been notably represented by such popular German schlager stars as Tom Astor and Linda Feller.

We were surprised to see that a popular Austrian radio station, Radio Alpenstar devotes its entire programming to "Schlager, Volksmuzik and Country Music."

So if anyone asks you if there is American schlager music, just tell them -- maybe-- and point them in the direction of American C&W.

Following are some representative samples of American Country and Western music.

Here Waylon Jennings performs his big 1978 hit, Luckenbach, Texas, a wistful song about returning to the simplicity of country life -- to one's heimat (appearing on stage here with Jennings are fellow Country & Western legends, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson who from 1985 to 1995 all performed together as the C&W supergroup, the Highwaymen)



Here is Mary Chapin Carpenter with an example of the Louisiana French Cajun subgenre of C&W performing her hit "Down At the Twist and Shout." (In the video as they pan the audience, you will see President Ronald Reagan's vice-President, (and later President) George H.W. Bush. Being from Texas, Bush was a big C&W fan. This writer met Mary Chapin Carpenter in Washington, D.C. Despite becoming a big C&W star, she was no backwoods country girl, having been the daughter of a prominent Washington lobbyist and having attended an elite Washington D.C. Prep school):



Here the Kendall's perform their spritely 1977 hit "Heaven's Just a Sin Away," before a German audience:



And here is the legendary, late Johnny Cash, the C&W personification of the strong, independent American man, singing his classic, "I Walk The Line":