“Do they keep an eye out for the possible wayward soul (like, say, a middle-aged guy with scraggly graying hair who stays at the margins of the group and keeps scribbling in a little black book) and hope—no, pray—that the cheerful performance of their duties and the powerful unfolding of Billy Graham’s life and message »
“So, you get up and pilfer a cigarette from your lover’s pack, smoke it in blue moonlight pushing through the bare kitchen window. Someone is listening.” So, you lie awake beside a lover of many years,and the tabby cat kneads the blanket.You have only three days’ leave.
“‘In America they get away from race by saying ‘minority.’ But who the hell’s the best minority in the world? The hero! You know what I’m saying? That’s always a minority.’” It’s a short walk from the 125th Street subway station to the Harlem home of Albert Murray, Stanley Crouch’s literary father and the man »
“Stereotypes from Dixie crowd American fiction, film, music, and consciousness, and we all know people who seem to fit one of the molds.” If there are truly many Souths, there must be many kinds of southerners. To be various they must be individuals, but as recognizable southerners, they must also fit some generalizations. Stereotypes from »
“The regulars at the station had great fun with the press. The station was home to some of the greatest liars and bullshit artists in the history of the world, and tabloid reporters were nothing more than a light snack before lunch for them.” The building standing at 105 E. Church Street in Plains, Georgia, »
Interview
This article first appeared in vol. 16, no. 2 (Summer 2010) and is excerpted here. To access the full article, visit Project MUSE. Septima Poinsette Clark is a name that should be as familiar to us as Rosa Parks. Both women contributed significantly to the African American freedom struggle, and striking similarities exist in their »
“I learned how to sing from the radio. I didn’t care what kind of songs. I like music, period. Any kind, you know. Country-western or blues, I would jump on it.” Linton Avenue in downtown Natchez, Mississippi, is dotted with large Victorian homes, surrounded by luxuriant vegetation. In the early twentieth century it was home »
“Admiral Davison recommended that Captain Gehres abandon ship. The captain refused, fearing that there were sailors still alive below decks. Dowell was one of those soldiers.” “Boob boop dittum dattum wattum, choo/And they swam and they swam all over the dam.” Today, many recognize these lines from “Three Little Fishies” in the “itty bitty pool,” »
“Frank Proffitt learned most of his repertoire of songs, hymns, ballads and banjo tunes from his family and sang them in a hickory-smoked baritone that flowed subtly and poignantly through his ballads like a quiet mountain stream.” Folk singers is an ambiguous term. To folklorists it means those whose repertoires have been passed down orally »
“The Oak Ridge Boys—you’ve heard of them—came into town, and they said, ‘Willie, we’d like for you to play.’” Willie Lowery has led a dual musical life (with, of course, much overlap) as both a southern musician and an Indian musician. As a southern musician coming of age in the 1950s and ’60s, Willie engaged »
“In 1967, the Allman brothers headed to California, hoping to make it big in a band called Hour Glass. The band quickly became popular on the Los Angeles music circuit, playing at popular clubs like the Whiskey a Go Go and drawing the attention of rising rock stars like Neil Young and Janis Joplin.” It »
Poetry
“. . .coupling on the dance floor, two women, alone, dancing with babies on their hips, wearing in and through, stitching up the random piece-goods of the night.” We had travelled to that old coast,six hours to New Bern, the long ferryfrom Cedar Island to Ocracoke and thento Roanoke where Manteo, for loveof the glittering »