Hey, you're listening to the On the Media Midweek podcast. I'm Michael Lohinger.

God bless the USA.

That's one of Trump's most played songs at his rallies, his inauguration, and even at his June

military parade. And it's one you might hear at a July 4th barbecue this week,

depending on your host's taste in music and their politics.

Because today's country music industry is deeply associated with a certain jingoistic

rally around the flag, support the troops spirit.

In this week's podcast, we're re-airing a conversation about that sound.

We sort of take for granted that country music is a patriotic genre, and I think we've

missed the story of how that happened.

Joseph Thompson is an assistant professor at Mississippi State University and author of the new book

Cold War Country, How Nashville's Music Row and the Pentagon created the sound of American patriotism.

He begins the story in the 1940s with a man named Connie B. Gay, dubbed by The Washington Post as country music's media magician.

Gay got his start in the Farm Security Administration, a New Deal program.

He starts from really humble roots. He's born on a dirt farm and a little town called

Lizard Lake, North Carolina. During the Depression, he gets a job at a radio station in a little town called Lizard Lake, North Carolina.

During the Depression, he gets a job at a radio station in Raleigh, North Carolina.

And there he begins kind of understanding the power of what was then called hillbilly music, what we would now call country music, and understands that matching that

hillbilly music with the information that he needs to relay to

North Carolina farmers who are suffering during the Great Depression, that that makes for a powerful

pairing of message and music. He gradually becomes involved with the Farm Security Administration

during the New Deal years in the early 1940s moves to Washington, D.C.

...