Southern Bookman

Childhood afternoons listening to Peter, Paul and Mary

My father’s record collection included Peter, Paul and Mary’s eponymous first album.

The 1962 recording’s cover photo showed the trio standing beside a brick wall outside New York City’s Bitter End nightclub, one of the folk revival hotspots that would introduce the world to Bob Dylan.

Long before I heard of Dylan, I listened over and over to Peter, Paul and Mary, my first foray into 1960s pop music.

Mary Travers’ pure contralto voice backed by Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey’s harmonies and guitar playing took me to new musical vistas.

The death of Yarrow this week brought back memories of those glorious afternoons hearing their spellbinding album of folk classics.

Yarrow, 86, died of bladder cancer at his home in New York City, following Travers’ death several years ago. Stookey’s the group’s lone survivor.

I played the trio’s landmark album on my father’s cabinet style hi-fi and radio, an imposing piece of sturdy wood furniture with two monaural speakers.

The record collection organized alphabetically in a wooden file cabinet built by my carpenter grandfather also encompassed albums by the Kingston Trio, Trini Lopez, Louis Prima and Keely  Smith and Hank Williams.

Peter, Paul and Mary with their ringing voices, historical vision and poetic lyrics stirred me more than those other albums.

Mary’s singing on “Lemon Tree,” “If I Had a Hammer,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” and especially “500 Miles” lifted me into a higher realm.

Yarrow and Stookey’s harmonies with her were as groundbreaking as those of the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holley’s Crickets, setting a standard for the Byrds, the Beatles, Buffalo Springfield, the Grateful Dead, the Mamas and the Papas and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

Following Yarrow’s death, I again listened to “500 Miles,” bringing back my childhood joy.

”If you miss the train l’m on, you will know that I am gone…You can hear the whistle blow 500 miles.”

I’ve never stopped listening to that whistle.

Forget it Jake, we boomers are fading out

After my latest medical procedure, I look like Jack Nicholson after Roman Polanski slices his nose in “Chinatown.”

My friendly longtime dermatologist removed some basil cells that had turned red with non-life-threatening cancer.

During the operation, songs played on the Sirius XM satellite radio ‘70s channel.

A young nurse asked who was singing “Slip Sliding Away,” and I helpfully replied “Paul Simon,” once again discovering the generational cultural divide.

Another young nurse said she’d never seen “Chinatown” when I mentioned my resemblance to Jack’s maimed detective Jake Geddes.

Driving home, I listened to the ‘70s channel. As Paul Simon would say, still crazy after all these years.

 

 

Trae Young’s buzzer beater an electric moment for Hawks fans

Trae Young’s game-winning thunderbolt Tuesday night boosted Hawks fans’ hopes for an unexpected magical season.

After the Utah Jazz tied the game with a few seconds remaining, Atlanta’s diminutive superstar guard dribbled downcourt to just behind the midcourt line and launched a 50-foot three-pointer that swished through the net as time expired.

The thrilling victory pushed the Hawks to just a game over .500, but they’ve shocked teams like the Knicks and Celtics and excited fans with soaring dunks, dramatic three-pointers, pinpoint passes and staunch defense.

Along with Young’s reaching a higher level as a playmaker - he had 20 assists as well as a team high 24 points against Utah, the Hawks have received all-star quality play from Jalen Johnson, Dyson Daniels and D’Andre Hunter.

The Hawks probably need a bit more firepower to contend for the NBA championship.

But after the disappointments of the Braves and Falcons, the Hawks keep brightening the winter for Atlanta sports fans.

Photographer Baldwin Lee shows resilience of poor black Southerners

Baldwin Lee’s photographs of poor blacks in the American South reveal intimate moments of love and perseverance.

The 74-year-old Chinese-American photographer found his subjects on extensive tours of the region from 1983-89, visiting homes and businesses in ragged neighborhoods.

I discovered Lee’s work through Wall Street Journal photography writer William Meyers’ appreciative review of Lee’s current exhibit at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans.

Meyers in his article in Tuesday’s WSJ noted that Lee’s work shows art’s power to bridge different cultures.

After graduating from MIT, Lee received his MFA from Yale, where he studied with Walker Evans, famed for his photos of poor Southern families along with urban vistas.

Lee began the photography program at the University of Tennessee, where he’s an emeritus professor. He launched his Southern tours soon after arriving in Knoxville.

Like black photographer Gordon Parks, Lee captures individual dignity, richness of personality, family love and community resilience.

 

 

AJC columnist Maureen Downey’s farewell a serious loss for Georgia education

Essential education columnist Maureen Downey has said goodbye to her 42-year career at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, another cut to the newspaper’s expertise and institutional memory.

In her farewell column, Downey gives a last valiant cry against the GOP-dominated Georgia Legislature’s assault on public education.

Downey as she has so often champions teachers and students.

With her clear voice of reason and factual knowledge, she castigates politicians for their grandstanding and refusal to pass effective gun laws after killings at schools.

Downey is one of several deeply knowledgeable AJC writers who’ve left in the latest round of buyouts at the newspaper.

The end of her column is a serious loss for AJC readers and educational excellence in Georgia.

 

 

 

 

New Orleans will overcome terrorist attack

New Orleans’ famed joie de vivre co-exists with a sense of doom.

The old wounded city’s wild revelry defies its vulnerability to natural disasters, poverty and crime.

Ever since its founding on a bend of the Mississippi River near the Gulf of Mexico, New Orleans has laughed in the shadow of destruction. 

Instead of a hurricane or flood, New Orleans has been staggered by a terrorist’s attack just hours into the new year.

The terrorist, an American citizen and Army veteran, sped a pickup truck into a crowd of early morning revelers on Bourbon Street, the entertainment heart of the French Quarter, killing 15 and injuring more than 30 who had come to celebrate the holiday and the Sugar Bowl.

A product of American technology and capitalism was turned into a weapon against participants in an ancient ritual in one of the famed streets where the city began as a French colony.

The city recovered from Hurricane Katrina and other deadly natural disasters. 

Now New Orleans enters the Mardi Gras carnival season vowing to heal from an unexpected, man-made attack.

Terrorism looms as an insidious threat to a city known for civic disfunction.

Yet the national treasure that’s survived hurricanes and floods will always let the good times roll along with its “magnolia melancholy.”*

*Leigh Harris, “My Darlin’ New Orleans,” Li’l Queenie and the Percolators

Farewell Mark Bradley, Chip Towers and other favorite writers

This has been a season of farewells.

New Year’s Eve dawned with the goodbye columns of former AJC colleagues Chip Towers and Mark Bradley.

Chip covered UGA sports, especially the Dawgs’ championship football teams, with knowledge and flair. 

Along with insightful news stories and features on games and players, Chip didn’t flinch from writing hard-hitting news stories about aTyler’s involved in unlawful behavior. A proud grad of UGA’s Grady School of Journalism, Chip always played it straight while conveying the Dawgs’ special spirit.

Bradley in 40 years at the AJC covered the full gamut of Atlanta sports, chronicling the ups and downs of the Braves, Hawks, Falcons, Dawgs, Yellow Jackets and Panthers.

A Kentucky grad, he had an affinity for SEC sports, especially basketball. Some of his best work came from writing about the Braves.

Through the years, he kept growing as a columnist, drawing upon his deep well of sports knowledge and perfecting an easygoing, witty style that gave the impression that he was your next-door neighbor giving you an insider view.

Mark joins Furman Bisher, Lewis Grizzard and Steve Hummer as AJC legends.

Other recent departures include New Work Times columnist Paul Krugman, Times science reporter Dennis Overbye, Garden and Gun columnist Roy Blount and New Orleans Times-Picayune and Gambit political writer Clancy Dubos.

When I drink my cup of kindness tonight, I’ll remember these favorite writers for their reporting, entertainment and love for the language.

 

Austin Butler’s Elvis and Timothee Chalamet’s Dylan

Austin Butler’s Elvis and Timothee Chalamet’s Bob Dylan would make an instructive double feature.

Both young actors delivered impressive performances as world-changing musical superstars.

Butler in the 2002 film “Elvis” portrayed a more complex character than Chalamet’s Dylan in the recently released “A Complete Unknown.”

Elvis was a tragic figure destroyed by fame while Dylan during his long career has found success by shifting to new directions.

In his Academy Award-nominated performance, Butler portrays Elvis from his rise to stardom to his sad last years embalmed in Las Vegas.

Chalamet depicts Dylan at the start of his career, rising to repeated triumphs rather than finding tragedy. A few boos and heckling at Newport lacks the pathos of Elvis’ long decline.

Yet Chalamet also deserves Academy Awards recognition for capturing Dylan’s moody, self-absorbed, wounded and poetic personality.

Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan displayed the kaleidoscope of American fame.

Both paid homage to the black blues musicians of the Mississippi Delta. Presley and Dylan were hailed as voices of their respective generations.

Elvis was primarily a performer, while Dylan was also acclaimed as a poet and songwriter, winning the Noble Prize for literature.

Butler and Chalamet reveal the inner depths of Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan, and how they expressed the spirit of their times.

Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and Beatles shared same roots

I’m riding a time capsule back to the 1960s and the era’s cosmic explosion of rock and roll,

Along with viewing the captivating Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown,” I’m reading Christmas presents “1964: Eyes of the Storm” and “Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley.”

Paul McCartney’s “1964: Eyes of the Storm” is a collection of McCartney’s photos from the Beatles’ tours to London, Paris, New York City and Miami during the heady rise of Beatlemania.

The young Liverpool singer, bass player and songwriter known as the cute Beatle snapped the pictures from hotel rooms, trains, airplanes and cars, capturing screaming teenage girls, city streets, policemen, airplane mechanics, railway workers, other entertainers and bandmates John, George and Ringo, manager Brian Epstein and various assistants, wives and girlfriends.

It’s still shocking to rediscover that the Beatles’ first burst of popularity came a few weeks before John F. Kennedy’s assassination and they made their first trip to the United States a month after the president’s slaying.

The Beatles gave a burst of light to the still grieving nation. Seeing America as the beacon of freedom, artistic creativity and prosperity, the Liverpool kids thrust into global stardom were dismayed at the persistence of segregation and the sight of police armed with guns.

McCartney’s photo album corresponds to the same time as “A Complete Unknown,” in which Timothy Chalamet brilliantly portrays the young Bob Dylan, whose rise to fame matched the Beatles’. 

The film depicts Dylan’s progress from folk prophet to rock star, with a fictionalized account of Dylan scandalizing folk purists by performing rock songs with electronic instruments at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. I’ll give a more in-depth review of the film in a future edition of Southern Bookman.

Barely touched upon in the movie is the Beatles’ influence over Dylan’s evolution.

Not shown in the film, Dylan was amazed at the Beatles’ musicality when he first heard “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” The recording, with its vibrant harmonies and infectious chord changes, galvanized Dylan to move from folk anthems to raucous rock.

Peter Guralnick’s “Last Train to Memphis” traces Elvis Presley’s ascent from obscure poverty to stardom, a prototype for Dylan and the Beatles.

Presley glowed as a superhero for McCartney and John Lennon. As poignantly portrayed in “A Complete Unknown,” Woody Guthrie served the same role for Dylan.

The film slights Presley’s influence over Dylan, but cites Little Richard, Hank Williams and Leadbelly.

Guralnick records black artists’ tremendous influence over Presley, along with white country stars like Williams and Red Foley.

Like their hero Elvis, the Beatles sought to match the authenticity of black bluesmen. They also echoed the neo-country sounds of the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holley and the Crickets.

”A Complete Unknown,” “Eyes of the Storm” and “Last Train to Memphis” are chapters of the same story.

The holy trinity transformed American blues, jazz, country and rockabilly into new, world-changing music.

 

 

Judy Garland’s classic performance of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”

Judy Garland’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” melted American hearts in 1944, offering a nostalgic morale booster for the World War II-weary nation.

Like Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas,” Garland’s wistful performance raised the spirits of American soldiers and the home front.

Garland sings the song to fellow MGM child star Margaret O’Brien in the movie “Meet Me in St. Louis.”

Then 22, Garland portrays the vivacious Esther Smith. O’Brien is her much younger sister, Tootie, nearly the same age as Garland’s Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz.”  

The movie’s set in St. Louis during the 1904 World’s Fair. Esther and her sister are despondent over the family’s impending move from their beloved St. Louis to New York City for their father’s new job.

Garland’s performance blends melancholy with hope for the future, expressing the national mood as the war stretched on.

The song originally had a much more pessimistic message, as detailed in a New York Times article Sunday.

At Garland’s insistence, lyricist Hugh Martin changed the words to “from now on our troubles will be out of sight” instead of “this Christmas may be our last.”

Later, Frank Sinatra asked for another rewrite before recording “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”

At Sinatra’s request, Martin changed “we’ll muddle through somehow” to “hang a shining star on the highest bough.”

That expressed the country’s 1960s optimism, when Christmas turned increasingly materialistic and the baby boom generation found a bounty of toys beneath garishly decorated trees.

In contrast, the nation during World War II coped with product shortages and the rising death toll.

Garland’s rendition reflected the mounting sacrifices at the end of the war and the desire to bring the soldiers home.