Oysters Rubinstein: An Afterword

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Oysters Rubinstein: An Afterword

by Harry L. Watson
Southern Cultures, Vol. 5, No. 1: Spring 1999

"'If music is the food of love, play on.' No wonder oysters Rubinstein were so popular."

When Gavin Campbell first shared this vivid anecdote with us at Southern Cultures, it touched off a mixed response. Some of us saw it as a funny story in the vein of southwestern humor, popular from frontier days through Mark Twain and on down to Hollywood’s fling with Gomer Pyle and The Beverly Hillbillies. Nobody disagreed with that, and Campbell’s apt introduction makes clear that Jud’s ambivalence about classical music was not a private idiosyncrasy but a real historical experience for many southerners of his own and subsequent decades.

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