“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.” By the summer of 1995, the Atlanta-based rap group OutKast had watched their first album, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, achieve platinum sales of over one million. This feat earned them an award »
“Does love have the power to heal our blues?” Where is the Love?” is the title of a memorably wistful duet recorded in the early seventies by Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway; a lament for the way in which Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of redemptive interracial brotherhood or “beloved community,” which animated the Civil »
“For all that southerners have made barbecue our own, the fact remains that this symbol of the South, like kudzu, is an import.” What could be more southern than barbecue? Even when entrepreneurs have taken the dish to other parts of the world, the names of their establishments pay tribute to the origins of their »
“No other country has become home to so many immigrants, and to so many different kinds of immigrants.” As the essays in this issue of Southern Cultures confirm, it is now old news to point to the changing demographic face of the South. We all know that immigration is transforming the region, that newcomers—new southerners, to be »
“Among the grass tufts / Along a fence: cattle bones. . .” Near Bluffton Mill1 The old house ruinsShine with dust; late day coolnessFrom the pine forest
“We can’t lead this world for long by making people afraid. It simply is impossible to succeed while being afraid.” Business leaders and change has been an enduring theme since the proclaimed origin of the New South, now well over a century ago. Perhaps the global part is new, though the folks who work at »
“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.” Hiram “Hank” Williams was born on a tenant farm in Mt. Olive, Alabama, in 1923. His daddy Lon was a Great »
In Memoriam Sidney A. Seidenberg, a prominent manager in the music business for many years, passed away on May 3, 2006, after a long illness. He was eighty-one. He began as a music business accountant, and, during a career that spanned thirty-five years, he managed the careers of B.B. King, Gladys Knight and the Pips, »
“‘Oh, wake up in the mornin’ ’bout the break of day.’” I think this is how the blues actually started. During slavery, they didn’t always think in terms of God freeing them because they were being sold and separated from their families. Many things of that sort were happening to them, and singing to God »
University of Nevada Press, 2004 Pondering his nation’s recent defeat at the hands of its German neighbors, the French religious scholar Ernest Renan wrote in 1882: “Where national memories are concerned, griefs are of more value than triumphs, for they impose duties, and require a common effort.” Renan’s famous essay “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?”was a remarkably »
“I almost lost my life trying to save my guitar.” B.B. King’s name is synonymous with the blues. At the age of eighty-one, the blues patriarch maintains a rigorous schedule of performances throughout the nation and overseas that would exhaust a much younger artist. King’s performances and recordings have shaped the blues for more than »
University of North Carolina Press, 2005 Pondering his nation’s recent defeat at the hands of its German neighbors, the French religious scholar Ernest Renan wrote in 1882: “Where national memories are concerned, griefs are of more value than triumphs, for they impose duties, and require a common effort.” Renan’s famous essay “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?”was a »