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by Harry L. Watson
“Whatever feeling you are looking to explore or express—misery, elation, spiritual ecstasy, or low-down lust—chances are that some southern musician has done it already.” Southern music is special. Everybody says so. The South is the home of blues, jazz, Cajun, zydeco, bluegrass, country, spirituals, gospel, and rock. A few other musical traditions that originated elsewhere—fife »
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by William R. Ferris
“You can’t always go by what them preachers say, because right now some of them drink more whiskey than me.” Leland was my gateway to the world of Mississippi Delta blues. It was here during the summer of 1968 that I first met James “Son Ford” Thomas, a gifted musician, storyteller, and sculptor. We became »
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by Charles Joyner
“John Coltrane played his hyperactive ‘sheets-of-sound’ with a scorching intensity, faster than most jazz fans could listen.” Selecting the top ten southern jazz musicians proved to be a more difficult task than I expected. Some of the choices are obvious, others perhaps less so. Had I used other criteria, some selections might well have been »
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by Burgin Matthews
“‘I like to boogie-woogie,’ Madonna proclaimed. ‘It’s like riding on the wind and it never goes away.'” I like to boogie-woogie,” Madonna proclaimed in the title track of her 2000 release, Music: “it’s like riding on the wind and it never goes away.” The boogie-woogie—or justboogie for short—born one hundred years before Madonna sang its »
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by John W. Troutman
“Pura Fé has developed a highly unusual style of weaving a fast-paced and complex, sinewy web of notes to follow and accent her extraordinarily dynamic vocal range . . . a unique and engagingly melodic tour de force.” This late April 2007 day marked the nicest that New Yorkers had yet experienced in the year. »
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by Jocelyn R. Neal
“Patsy Cline had a great big barrel of a voice that cut straight into the heart of everyone who heard her sing.” Tradition runs deep in country music. One of the hallmarks of the genre is that new generations of singers pay tribute to their predecessors by building on their legacies and adhering to the »
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by Joanna Welborn
“A round of ‘chicken,’ or moonshine, was ordered, and Macavine and Whistlin’ Britches were one-upping each other with insults and dirty jokes. Captain Luke played it cool in the corner, sipping a can of Natural Light and smoking a cigar.” Captain Luke, Macavine Hayes, Whistlin’ Britches, and I settled down to a table in the »
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by Patrick Huber
“Ella May Wiggins, the ‘poet laureate’ of the Gastonia Textile Strike of 1929, was silenced by a mill thug’s bullet on September 14, 1929.” Woody Guthrie considered her one of our nation’s best songwriters. Alan Lomax published her stark union ballads in his acclaimed collections of American folksongs. Pete Seeger recorded a version of her »
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by William R. Ferris
“The true ‘Hootchie Kootchie Man,’ Muddy Waters summons all the powers of the voodoo doctor in his guttural, deep blues voice.” For over a century the blues has served as the musical anchor of American music. Muddy Waters aptly titled one of his songs “The Blues Had a Baby, and They Named it Rock and »
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by Philp C. Kolin
“Dylan linked Till’s innocent blood to a Mississippi downpour–so much blood shed from the brutal beatings; Till’s killers ‘rolled his body down a gulf of bloody red rain.'” The murder of Emmett Till has haunted the American imagination. Though Chicago born and bred, he will be forever linked to Mississippi and the South. While visiting »
Music
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by Al Maginnes
Because I know her name fromrock and roll biographiesand the legendary deathof her first husband, becauseI grew up hearing her voiceon my father’s folk records,because I love the mythsthat accompany musicalmost as much as I lovemusic, I should have goneto see her when she was bookedintro the coffeehouse runby a church whose articlesof faith have »
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by Josh Guthman
“Let’s be honest: Southern rock is a critically despised genre, a redneck sound draped in the Confederate flag and fueled by an oh-so-’70s mix of Jack Daniels and Quaaludes.” Let’s be honest: Southern rock is a critically despised genre, a redneck sound draped in the Confederate flag and fueled by an oh-so-’70s mix of Jack »
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by Joshua Guthman
Music Issue Companion CD Track List 1| “Georgia Blues” CECIL BARFIELD 5:12 Art of Field Recording Volume II: 50 Years of Traditional American Music Documented by Art Rosenbaum, Dust-to-Digital, dust-digital.com 2| “Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down II” MURRY HAMMOND 3:46 I Don’t Know Where I’m Going But I’m On My Way, Hummin’bird Records, myspace.com/murryhammond 3| “Must »
