Southern Bookman

Farewell, Billy Joe Shaver

We're losing musical legends at a distressing pace.

Soon after the death of Jerry Jeff Walker, supreme country songwriter and performer Billy Joe Shaver died Tuesday in Waco, Texas of a massive stroke at age 81.

Willie Nelson acknowledged Shaver as the best songwriter in Texas, and Shaver compositions like "Old Five and Dimers Like Me" go beyond country conventions to achieve poetry.

Shaver's wrote 10 of the 12 songs on Waylon Jennings' groundbreaking "outlaw country" album, "Honky Tonk Heroes."  The title song, written by Shaver, is one of Jennings' signature numbers.

While Shaver never made it big as a performer, his songs were recorded by an all-star cast including Nelson, Emmy Lou Harris and Elvis Presley.

Like Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Merle Haggard and Nelson, Shaver possessed the gift of expressing universal emotions in memorable lines. Fans at concerts sang along with his words, as if they had written them.

Shaver really lived on the edges, battling alcoholism, drug abuse and violent bar-room encounters.

His raffish personality masked a songwriter of rare sensitivity and subtle language. He also had a gift for simple but unforgettable melodies.

Jerry Jeff Walker and Billie Joe Shaver gone in one week. They survived a lot of good times and hard times, and left us beautiful music.

Looking for hope as election day looms

Halloween came early with Amy Coney Barrett's seizure of a Supreme Court seat.

I'm trying to raise my hopes that my worst fears won't be realized. But I'm finding it difficult.

Perhaps we can go to the moon - they've found water on sunlit areas there. But just molecules, not ice or liquid. Doesn't sound like much of a beach.

Joe Biden's lead in the presidential race is encouraging, but Barrett's presence increases my paranoia that Trump can steal the election through a Supreme Court-engineered coup.

I'm also optimistic about the Democrats taking control of the Senate, passing legislation to reverse the reactionary court's bad decisions. But I remain uneasy.

Those long lines in early voting boost my faith in American democracy.

I hope the republic prevails.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Farewell, Jerry Jeff Walker

Jerry Jeff Walker's "Viva Terlingua" remains fresh and vital after all these years.

The 1973 album brought a new sound to aspiring Southern hipsters like me, making Austin as cool as San Francisco and New York.

Recorded with the impromptu Lost Gonzo Band, Walker's insouciant album defied both the refined Nashville sound and progressive rock pretensions. The feeling of a bunch of guys jamming on a front porch derived from a deceptive artistry

With era-defining standards like "London Homesick Blues," "Up Against the Wall Redneck Mothers," "Desperadoes Waiting for a Train" and "Wheel," the album set the stage for Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Jimmy Buffett.

Walker, who followed the country tradition of career-destructive drinking, drug-use and not showing up for concerts, died Friday at age 78 of throat cancer. Long sober, he kept performing and recording, inspiring younger singer-songwriters striving for artistic independence.

His good-ole-boy persona hid the sensitive performer who wrote one of the era's most beloved songs, "Mr. Bojangles," a poignant portrait of an aging street performer Walker said he met in the New Orleans drunk tank.

Walker and the Gonzo Band's performance of Clark's "Desperadoes Waiting for a Train" shows artistic depths reached with little rehearsal.

The novelty "Up Against the Wall Redneck Mothers," hastily finished by Ray Wylie Hubbard for the album, consciously answers Merle Haggard's political anthem "Okie From Muscogee." As with Haggard's song, listeners interpreted "Redneck Mothers" on different levels, from satire to a perverse ironic pride.

"Viva Terlingua's" most masterful work, "London Homesick Blues" was written and sung by Gary P. Nunn, a member of the band.

Telling the story of a Texan in London feeling homesick for his native state, the song has the authority of a short story or film, evoking the essence of both places.

The band's rowdy honky-tonk performance, with Walker singing harmony, provides effective Texas-flavored counterpoint to the wistful, gloomy portrayal of London.

Walker was one of those American originals who made a lasting influence. For me and others of my generation, "Viva Terlingua" will always bring back that time when our youth was almost gone and we didn't want the music to end.

 

 

 

 

Tony Kornheiser in the attic makes for memorable TV

Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon on Thursday marked the 19th anniversary of their ESPN gabfest, "Pardon the Interruption."

Covid-19 has brought a new dimension to the program: Kornheiser broadcasting from the attic of his home while Wilbon's stationed in the show's Washington studio, or his places in Chicago or Arizona.

A softer, more melancholy Kornheiser, with flashes of his old curmudgeonly wit, has become a cultural icon of America in quarantine.

Wearing a jaunty straw fedora in his closing "happy time" segment, and always immaculately dressed in coat and tie, Kornheiser expresses our work-at-home resilience.

Enjoying Kornheiser and Wilbon's odd-couple neo-vaudeville act through the years, along with exasperation at Wilbon's shameless name-dropping and homerism, I regret Kornheiser's loss to American print journalism.

While Kornheiser's a brilliant TV humorist/commentator, he was one of America's best newspaper columnists when he wrote for the Washington Post.

Along with producing two sports columns a week, he wrote a satiric piece for the Sunday Post's Style section. His barbs, one-liners and capsule commentaries sparkled and stung like those of San Francisco's Herb Caen.

I remember going up to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's library on dinner breaks to read Kornheiser's Sunday Style columns. While enjoying Kornheiser's TV performances, I also wish he would have progressed as a writer, with a career similar to that of novelist and Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen.

Fellow sportswriter Bob Ryan at the close of PTI spinoff "Around the Horn" Thursday saluted Kornheiser and Wilbon's achievement. But in calling PTI the progenitor of ESPN talk shows, Ryan neglected the pioneering "Sports Reporters."

For years, the Sunday morning panel show showcased sportswriters like Mitch Albom, Mike Lupica, John Feinstein and Bill Conlin.

First hosted by great writer and TV commentator Dick Schapp, and later by the urbane John Saunders, the show offered cerebral conversation rather than the faux contentiousness of "PTI" and "Around the Horn." Kornheiser and Ryan often appeared on "The Sports Reporters."

Broadcasting from home, the 72-year-old Kornheiser has given "PTI" a new resonance. While jousting with Wilbon with his old sarcasm, Kornheiser also displays the melancholy wisdom of a Jewish sage.

Kornheiser in the attic is vintage TV. I just hope he's spending his extra time at home writing his memoirs, a likely classic of American journalism.

 

 

Dolly Parton brings healing touch to wounded America

I nominate Dolly Parton for the Nobel Prize.

Watching the country star discuss her new book, "Storyteller: My Life in Lyrics" on "The Stephen Colbert Show," I realized that she's had a songwriting and singing career equal to that of Bob Dylan, who won the Nobel Literature Prize in 2016.

As the book's title reflects, Parton's songs tell stories of love, faith, humor and endurance. Many of her songs give voice to her mountain culture, struggling to hold on to its traditions in the contemporary world. Like Dylan, Parton has created great poetry.

Recalling her mother singing old folk songs to her when she was a child, Parton made Colbert cry with a spontaneous a cappella performance of the Carter Family classic "Bury Me Beneath the Willow." Parton's work shows the authenticity of those timeless folk songs.

Parton touched my heart by looking back on beginning her career on "The Porter Wagoner Show." When I was an adolescent boy, I had a crush on the shy young Dolly from watching Wagoner's show on Saturday afternoons. I liked old Porter, with his shellacked pompadour and wild Nudie suits, but Dolly's talent glowed on a higher level.

She's gone on from that modest start to fashion one of America's greatest musical careers. Her majestic achievements have been matched by Loretta Lynn, who rose to stardom from a similar childhood in the impoverished Appalachian Mountains. Like Parton, Lynn with "Coal Miner's Daughter" and other songs has achieved great literature.

As Parton discussed with Colbert a new Christmas album that features a guest appearance by another major star, Willie Nelson, I hoped that Parton would record again with Lynn. They put out an album several years ago with the late Tammy Wynette. A new Lynn-Parton endeavor would be a wonderful gift to America and the world.

 

 

 

Thomas Friedman pushes another dubious corporate utopia

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman took a break from presidential politics Wednesday to fashion one of his fantasies about the brave new economic world.

Friedman once again served as the mouthpiece for one of his favorite corporate pals, Infosys President Ravi Kumar, who gave Friedman his "world is flat" theme.

Infosys, founded in India but now based in covid-19-staggered New York City, is one of those new age consulting companies that help other corporations squeeze out profits more efficiently by ramping up "worker productivity."

Kumar filled Friedman's mind with visions of the post-pandemic world, in which workers will need constant refurbishing of unnamed skills so that they can toil at home carrying out some kind of corporate "modular" projects. The column didn't say what kind of tasks would be done by these happy domestic workers.

Sounded like corporate feudalism. In other words, an expansion of the contract worker model, without corporate benefits. Presumably, government health care would replace private insurance plans.

Friedman quoted Kumar as saying that unidentified technical skills are now more valued than university degrees, and that Infosys and other companies are investing in their own education programs, bypassing colleges.

Sure, Infosys still hires plenty of university-trained engineers, but the company also likes some kind of self-taught savants. All you need is to push a button on the robot assembly line, I suppose. Those rosy scenarios were sweetened by vintage Friedman chestnuts like "adaptive coalitions."

After this endorsement of technical education, Friedman made the contradictory assertion that corporations still will need workers who possess the kind of creative thinking traditionally developed by college liberal arts educations.

Perhaps old-fashioned degrees will have a place after all. Left unsaid was what kind of role public education will play.

Nor did the column say anything about the future of artificial intelligence, one of Infosys' main consulting areas. With robots doing more and more jobs, what will humans do in their cozy home workplaces?

Also missing was any mention of climate change, a curious omission since that's become a major Friedman theme.

Friedman's acclamation of Kumar's corporate utopia left huge gaps. The vision of workers constantly learning new skills to carry out the corporate agenda sounded more oppressive than liberating.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New books by DeLillo, Amis show writers in decline

I'm tempted to read new books by Don DeLillo and Martin Amis, although my infatuation with both writers died several years ago.

For years, the arrival of a new DeLillo book exhilarated me. But the horrible 2003 novel "Cosmopolis" shattered DeLillo 's spell. His novels ever since, including the Sept. 11 book "Falling Man," read like DeLillo parodying himself.

Amis' memoir, "Experience," is high on my list of all-time favorite books, and his early novels merit the critical acclaim they've received.

But "Yellow Dog" in 2003 and "The Pregnant Widow" in 2010 were two of the worst novels ever published. If written by an unknown author, they would have been rejected.

I did like the verbal energy of the 2012 book "Lionel Asbo, State of England," which many critics panned. But Amis lost control of his narrative.

Now, DeLillo has come out with the 117-page "Silence," which sounds like DeLillo light. An excerpt published in Harper's magazine had dialogue that resembled a bad Saturday Night Live sketch.

While the book was disparaged in the first wave of reviews, DeLillo has recently made some interesting comments in several interviews, including one in Sunday's New York Times magazine. The interviews raised my interest level a bit, but not enough to try to read the book.

Amis' "Inside Story; How to Write" awkwardly blends memoir and fiction, according to the critical consensus so far.

I'm somewhat intrigued by the book because it revisits material from "Experience" such as Amis' friendship with the late Christopher Hitchens, Saul Bellow and Philip Larkin, the close friend of Amis' father, Kingsley Amis.

The book also looks back his youthful affair with an older woman, who might be based on noted biographer Clair Tomalin, who reputedly had a relationship with Amis when they both worked at the New Statesman.

But the mixture of fiction, memoir and writing advice sounds like another self-indulgent exercise by Amis. As with DeLillo, Amis appears a declining writer seeking to cash in on his fame.

Besides, reading books seems more and more futile as American democracy hurtles toward an irrevocable crisis.

 

 

New York Times drama critic Ben Brantley says goodbye

When a major production opened on Broadway, I couldn't wait to read Ben Brantley's review in The New York Times.

I almost felt like I was a character in "All About Eve," devouring the newspaper in Sardi's.

Brantley connected me to the excitement of New York City's theater world. Along with rendering his judgment on well-publicized plays and musicals, Brantley gave attention to emerging playwrights and off-Broadway productions.

With New York's theaters darkened by Covid-19, Brantley left the Times last week after 24 years as its chief drama critic. Co-chief critic Jesse Green remains to write about whatever theater news comes along with the theaters shuttered.

In a farewell interview with Green in Sunday's New York Times, Brantley looked back on his career and his immense power over a production's success and failure. He recalled memorable performances, feuds with famous actors and the magic of the theater.

Despite the rise in touristy jukebox musicals and Hollywood-star vehicles, Brantley noted an increase in artistically ambitious Broadway productions before the pandemic. Brantley's work played a significant role in raising the level of quality.

Brantley in departing expressed hope that a vibrant New York theater will return. His career is a testament to what we've lost.

 

 

Barrett hearing reflects degradation of political language

The Amy Coney Barrett hearings showed that political speech no longer bears any relation to the truth.

That a law professor from the leading Catholic university could spread such a web of evasions and falsehoods before a U.S. Senate committee is sickening.

With the GOP railroading Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court, the degradation of the U.S. Senate and the judiciary is complete. The Democratic members of the committee shamefully capitulated to Lindsay Graham and the other Republican apparatchiks.

"Here is the shadow of truth, for only the shadow is true," Robert Penn Warren said in the opening line of his poem "A Way to Love God."

In the Barrett hearing, the shadow spread further across the American republic.

 

 

Covid-19 making gains on SEC football season

SEC football is increasingly a Covid-19 super-spreader.

The players already risk serious injury from playing the game. Now, their health is more and more threatened by the coronavirus.

When news broke Wednesday afternoon that Alabama coach Nick Saban and athletic director Greg Byrne had tested positive for covid-19, the conference had already canceled two games because of the disease.

For now, the Saturday night showdown between No. 2 Alabama and No. 3 Georgia remains on, although Saban will be absent.

No Alabama players or other coaches have tested positive for the disease, so far.

Although Saban's been conducting practices and meeting with coaches, perhaps the Crimson Tide will escape further cases of the virus.

But No. 10 Florida had to postpone its game with LSU when 21 Gators players tested positive for the disease. The game is expected to be played on Dec. 12.

Before scrubbing the game, Gators coach Dan Mullen had called for the lifting of social distancing regulations so that fans could pack Florida's stadium, known as the Swamp.

The SEC has allowed a limited number of fans to attend games this season. The spectators are often shown on TV clustered together without masks, raising the possibility of widespread outbreaks.

Earlier in the season, LSU coach Ed Orgeron reported that every member of his team had been infected with the disease.

The coach of the defending national champions shrugged off any worries about long-term health threats to his players.

So far during the Tigers' disappointing season, no more Covid-19 cases have been reported.

LSU's last two opponents, Vanderbilt and Missouri, had to postpone their game this weekend,because a Covid-19 outbreak left Vanderbilt with too few scholarship players to field a team. Several Missouri players missed last week's LSU game because of the virus.

Saban's positive test drew increased attention to Covid-19's dangers to players and coaches.

In a press conference from his home, the quarantined coach said he has no symptoms of the disease, and endorsed social distancing, washing hands and wearing masks. During the Ole Miss-Alabama game last Saturday night, Saban never removed his mask. How he might have been exposed to the disease was not reported.

Even if no Alabama players test positive for the disease before Saturday night's game, they could still be infected and at risk of infecting others. The Crimson Tide players will crash against Georgia's team, and interact with referees.

But the game will go on, broadcast to the nation by CBS.