Music (part II)
More music essays and features, available online through Project Muse. (Part I is available here.)
"Tiger Tiger": Miccosukee Rock 'n' Roll
by Patsy West
with Lee Tiger's "The Life of the Tiger Brothers"
"During this time we played with Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Procol Harum, Cream, and Jefferson Airplane, and we even backed Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry."
Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 4, Winter 2008: First Peoples
Pete Seeger, San Francisco, 1989
with William R. Ferris and Michael K. Honey
"I first started learning about the world, and there was a place called the South. It was a distant, romantic place, like the Far West or the islands of the Caribbean."
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 3, Fall 2007: Music II
The First Century of Blues: One Hundred Years of Hearing and Interpreting the Music and the Musicians
by R. A. Lawson
"In 1961 Bob Koester, a producer with Chicago-based Delmark Records, made an amazing discovery. Sleepy John Estes, a bluesman who had achieved fame on the race record labels during the interwar years, was found to be still alive and residing on the outskirts of the small western Tennessee town of Brownsville."
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 3, Fall 2007: Music II
Elvis Presley and the Politics of Popular Memory
by Michael T. Bertrand
"'A Lonely Life Ends on Elvis Presley Boulevard,' blared the headline of a late-summer special edition of the Memphis Press-Scimitar. 'The King is Dead.'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 3, Fall 2007: Music II
The Color of Music: Social Boundaries and Stereotypes in Southwest Louisiana French Music
by Sara Le Menestrel
"One Cajun woman who grew up in the 1960s was convinced that the AM/FM options on her radio referred to the distinction between American Music and French Music."
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 3, Fall 2007: Music II
Extra! Chicago Defender Race Records Ads Show South from Afar
by Mark Dolan
"Lavishly illustrated ads told of broken love affairs, loneliness, violence, and jail, in concert with travel to and from the South—by train and boat, on foot and in memory."
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 3, Fall 2007: Music II
Living with Ballads: Sidna Allen
poetry by Elizabeth Hadaway
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 3, Fall 2007: Music II
The Million-Dollar Mandolin: Bluegrass Music’s Finest Relic Finally Finds a Home
by Randy Rudder
"Bill Monroe had seen a lot of troubles in his days, but nothing could have prepared him for this. When he entered his home, he found his 1923 Gibson F-5 mandolin, built by craftsman Lloyd Loar, smashed into several pieces, a fireplace poker lying nearby."
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 3, Fall 2007: Music II
Alan Lomax: The Long Journey
by William R. Ferris
"Stories about Alan Lomax and his exploits are legendary. While doing research in the Library of Congress Music Division, Lomax was sitting at a table across from a student who was reading his classic Folksongs of North America. At one point the student looked across the table asked, 'Is Alan Lomax still alive?' Lomax replied, 'Just barely.'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 3, Fall 2007: Music II
"Everything leads me back to the feeling of the blues.": B. B. King, 1974
by William R. Ferris
"I almost lost my life trying to save my guitar."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 4, Winter 2006: Music I
King of the Hillbillies: Hank Williams
by Bland Simpson
"They stopped at a gas station in Andalusia, Alabama, and found a justice of the peace who had a Bible and the right forms to fill out and on top of that was sober."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 4, Winter 2006: Music I
"Where Is the Love?": Racial Violence, Racial Healing, and Blues Communities
by Adam Gussow
"Does love have the power to heal our blues?"
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 4, Winter 2006: Music I
"The South Got Something to Say": Atlanta’s Dirty South and the Southernization of Hip-Hop America
by Darren E. Grem
"We got the feel of the blues, the togetherness of funk music, the conviction of gospel music, the energy of rock, and the improvisation of jazz."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 4, Winter 2006: Music I
"Just a Little Talk with Jesus": Elvis Presley, Religious Music, and Southern Spirituality
by Charles Reagan Wilson
"Presley faced criticism from ministers about his lewd performances."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 4, Winter 2006: Music I
Blue Yodeler: Jimmie Rodgers
by Bland Simpson
"The Blue Yodeler’s first royalty came out to $27."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 4, Winter 2006: Music I
Doc Watson on the Cicada Concert
poetry by R. T. Smith
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 4, Winter 2006: Music I
Give Me That Old-Time Music . . . or Not
by Larry J. Griffin
"American popular culture would be unimaginable without the music created by the South's disfranchised, impoverished, and forgotten peoples."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 4, Winter 2006: Music I
Dixie Dewdrop: Uncle Dave Macon
by Bland Simpson
"He left the shop stunned and went back and wrote in his diary: ‘Robbed in a New York barbershop—$7.50!’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 4, Winter 2006: Music I
"A Blessing to People": Dorsey Dixon and His Sacred Mission of Song
by Patrick Huber
"Songwriter and singer Dorsey Dixon was never supposed to live."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 4, Winter 2006: Music I
Aiming for Fame and Riches
by John Shelton Reed
"I proudly sent the lyrics off to a friend with connections in the country-music business, asking him if he didn't agree that it was a natural-born hit."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 4, Winter 2006: Music I
Wildwood Flowers: The Carter Family
by Bland Simpson
"They lit out over the bad roads, and the family car broke down in the middle of a stream."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 4, Winter 2006: Music I
I'm Talking about Shaft
by Michael Parker
"Now we were about to premiere, for an audience suspecting more anemic halftime show standards, the hottest jam of the Black Moses, Mr. Hot Buttered Soul himself."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 3, Fall 2006
The Grand Ole Opry and Big Tobacco
by Louis M. Kyriakoudes
"'It's Grand Ole Opry Time—Another big Prince Albert show with Ernest Tubb.'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 2, Summer 2006: Tobacco
Jazz Funeral: A Living Tradition
by Angelo P. Coclanis and Peter A. Coclanis
“On a sweaty Saturday morning in late October 2004, a jazz funeral was held in New Orleans. Lloyd Washington had performed off and on in the postwar period in one of the many groups known as the Ink Spots that grew out of the original 1930s group of that name.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 11, Number 2, Summer 2005
O Brother, What Next?:
Making Sense of the Folk Fad
by Benjamin Filene
“Think of the tale of Bob Dylan going electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival and an enraged Alan Lomax trying to pin Dylan’s manager to the ground while Pete Seeger hunted for an ax to cut the cables.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 2, Summer 2004
The Grand Ole Opry and the Urban South
by Louis M. Kyriakoudes
“‘Lord, Lord, you ought to take a ride, get in a Ford with a donnie by your side.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 2004
James R. Goff Jr.
Close Harmony: A History of Southern Gospel (review)
reviewed by James Parrish
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 2004
“Lord, Have Mercy on my Soul”: Sin, Salvation, and Southern Rock
by J. Michael Butler
“The band delighted in sharing their bottle of Jack Daniels with a chimpanzee.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 4, Winter 2003
To the Land I Am Bound
: A Journey into Sacred Harp
by David Carlton
“As I found myself climbing over clay and gravel, negotiating switchbacks and sudden steep upgrades, I found myself thanking God for the weather and myself for my brand new transmission."
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 2, Summer 2003
Bill C. Malone
Don't Get Above Your Raisin': Country Music and the Southern Working Class
reviewed by Patrick Huber
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 2, Summer 2003
Audubon Drive, Memphis
poetry by Jim Seay
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 1, Spring 2003
Graveyard Blues
by Rob Golan
“The soundtrack for my Revelation was a simple three-cord ditty.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 4: Ghosts
Racial Violence, "Primitive" Music, and the Blues Entrepreneur: W. C. Handy's Mississippi Problem
by Adam Gussow
“‘My idea of what constitutes music was changed by the sight of that silver money cascading around the splay feet of a Mississippi string band.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 3, Fall 2002: Biography
Charline Arthur: The Unmaking of a Honky-Tonk Star
by Emiliy Neely
“Charline’s use of sexual innuendo clearly confused the country music media.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 3, Fall 2002: Biography
by Stephen. J. Whitfield
“‘Won’t-cha come with me to Alabammy,
Back to the arms of my dear ol’ Mammy,
Her cookin’s lousy and her hands are clammy,
by Jerome L. Rodnitzky
by Gavin James Campbell
“The controversial stage outfits, she reassured us, ‘were the kind of clothes we used to wear in Kentwood. It can be scorching during the summer, so the barer the better!’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 7, Number 4, Winter 2001
Alan Jackson
When Somebody Loves You (review)
reviewed by Gavin James Campbell
“In a world where Faith Hill is considered country, it’s nice to have Alan Jackson around to remind us of just why we began listening to country in the first place.”
Doyle Lawson
Just Over in Heaven, and: Nickel Creek (review)
reviewed by Gavin James Campbell
Southern Cultures, Volume 7, Number 3, Fall 2001: Environment
Loud, Fast & Out of Control (review)
reviewed by John Shelton Reed
“One reason baby-boomers are despised by their elders is that they think they’re the first generation to have experienced everything.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 7, Number 1, Spring 2001
Pete Daniel
Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s (review)
reviewed by Fred C. Hobson
“In Ellis Auditorium in Memphis in 1955, twenty-year-old Elvis Presley, one year removed from obscurity, stands with his arm around bluesman B. B. King.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 4, Winter 2000
Love Songs, and: Music From the Zydeco Kingdom, and: Let's Go!, and: Sam's Big Rooster (review)
reviewed by Gavin James Campbell
“This cd is a delightful complement to any romantic evening.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 4, Winter 2000
From Memphis to Nashville: The Odyssey of Jerry Lee Lewis
by Mark Royden Winchell
“‘This old boy wanted to kill me a while back because I married his daughter, but we’re friends again now.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 4, Winter 2000
Southern Roots and Branches: Forty Years of the New Lost City Ramblers
by Philip F. Gura
“Mike Seeger, a conscientious objector during the Korean War, was fulfilling his alternative national service as a dishwasher in a tuberculosis hospital.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 4, Winter 2000
More at MUSIC (part I).