and managed to record not only songs commissioned to put products in public view but also a number of songs that are still remembered today. There's some mocking of social norms, and he sometimes got censored by his studios, but to maintain wide public approval he may also have maintained some ambiguity of message. His recording of Casey Jones, made when it was a brand new song, has an interesting style, but towards the end I can't tell whether he's acknowledging black influences on his music or playing into racist stereotypes: he may be doing both, in an era when the KKK was increasingly powerful in many states, including the north. He apparently started in vaudeville and had done minstrel acts.
So he probably won't be regarded as progressive by modern standards; and I really don't know what would have been regarded as progressive at the time, since standards were so different. An older fellow once told me that a picture of his mother seated on his standing father's shoulders had been regarded as too modern and perhaps even slightly shocking by the older generation in the nineteen-teens -- though it's hard to know whether that's true since young folk always like to tweak their elders, and their elders sometimes enjoy letting the youngsters think the oldsters haven't been there and done that
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