It’s hard to believe, but one of the puzzles that early-twentieth-century folklorists spent time sorting out was whether John Henry and John Hardy were the same man. It’s hard to believe, but one of the puzzles that early-twentieth-century folklorists spent time sorting out was whether John Henry and John Hardy were the same man. John »
“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.” After O Brother, Where Art Thou? spurred a surge of interest in all things folk, I got calls »
“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.” No southern city—indeed, few cities »
“They lit out over the bad roads, and the family car broke down in the middle of a stream.” The Carters started small, singing in churches . . . Alvin Pleasant Carter, born in 1891, sang in a quartet with two uncles and a sister in churches around Clinch Mountain in southwest Virginia. People called »
“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.” Like many country songs, I suspect, “My Tears Spoiled My Aim” grew out of a title—in this case, one that came to me in a blinding flash of »
Music
“Songwriter and singer Dorsey Dixon was never supposed to live.” Carolina Piedmont singer and songwriter Dorsey Dixon was never supposed to live. At his birth in 1897, in Darlington, South Carolina, he was a puny, oxygen-starved baby weighing only three pounds. “I heard [my parents] tell friends and neighbors many times that I was a »
“He left the shop stunned and went back and wrote in his diary: ‘Robbed in a New York barbershop—$7.50!’” David Harrison Macon was born at Smart Station near McMinnville on the Highland Rim of Tennessee in 1870. As long as anyone could remember, he was “nuts about a banjo.” When Dave was thirteen, his father, »
South Polls
Southerners have every right to be proud of the music we have produced and bequeathed to the entire globe. American popular culture would be unimaginable without the music—blues and rock ‘n’ roll, jazz and country, gospel and bluegrass, salsa and zydeco—created by the South’s disfranchised, impoverished, and forgotten peoples, Black, Brown, and white. Toe-tapping, feet-shuffling, »
“The Blue Yodeler’s first royalty came out to $27.” James Charles Rodgers was born in Meridian, Mississippi, in 1897. His mother, Eliza, died when he was four years old. After that, he was off riding the rods with his father, a foreman on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad. By the time he reached fourteen, Jimmie »
“Presley faced criticism from ministers about his lewd performances.” In December 1956 Elvis Presley dropped in at Sun Studios in Memphis, just as a Carl Perkins recording session was ending. Presley was now a national star, having transcended earlier that year his previous status as a regional rockabilly performer. That special day became known as »
“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 »