Southern Bookman

Beatles vs. Stones just one of pop music rivalries

Pop music fans love to debate who recorded the best version of a song.

Beatles haters say the Isley Brothers' original recording of "Twist and Shout" excels the Fab Four's cover, one of the band's first hits.

The Rolling Stones' "Time Is On My Side" receives the same negative rating when compared with Irma Thomas' rendition.

While Aretha Franklin reached the top of the charts with "Respect," many swear by Otis Redding's recording of the song, which he wrote. I've never cared for the "sock it to me, sock it to me" chorus in Aretha's version.

Then there's the dueling covers of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," by Gladys Knight and the Pips and Marvin Gaye.

Rolling Stones and Beatles fans have engaged in the most heated rivalry over the years, like competing tribes. Certain personality traits have been identified with the followers of each group.

Such disputes aren't new. Some prefer Richard Rodgers' songs written with Lorenz Hart over those he composed with Oscar Hammerstein II. 

For years, I was in the Hart club, but I more and more appreciate Hammerstein's work with Rodgers in "Oklahoma" and other musicals. The late Stephen Sondheim, whom Hammerstein mentored, criticized Hart for his loose rhymes.

As aging fans mellow, many see that all music is wonderful, no matter who recorded it. 

My heart beats true, thanks to Piedmont Hospital's Marcus Center

Driving past Piedmont Hospital's Marcus Heart Center makes me thankful for its gift of life.

Next September will mark four years since I spent nine days in the hospital suffering from heart failure thanks to uncontrollable A-fib.

From my hospital room window, I watched construction workers in their yellow hard hats and orange vests mill about like busy bees completing the Marcus Center, endowed by Home Depot co-founder and Trump supporter Bernie Marcus.

Now the Marcus Center's gleaming steel and glass atrium rises majestically, a crown jewel on Peachtree Road, Atlanta's signature street.

During the height of covid, after several failed attempts to control my a-fib, I came to the recently finished Marcus Center to receive a high-tech "leedless" pacemaker. Implanted in my heart, the tiny device has tamed the raging beast of a-fib.

Tuesday morning, the wise cardiologist whom I met during my heat failure interlude at Piedmont said that my old ticker is looking good. My pacemaker's battery will keep working for a few more years.

Heading home down Peachtree, I sang to myself "You Gotta Have Heart," from the musical "Damn Yankees."

Passing landmarks from my years in Atlanta: Christ the King Cathedral, E. Rivers Elementary, the original Mo's, the McDonald's with its Buckhead mural, Buckhead Avenue, I was glad that my heart's humming along.

 

 

Farewell Chris Strachwitz, intrepid musicologist and Arhoolie Records founder

Reading about the career of Arhoolie Records founder Chris Strachwitz, I was surprised at how much he'd touched my life.

Strachwitz, who died May 12 at age 91 at an assisted living facility near San Francisco, recorded a number of previously little known black, Latino, Cajun and country artists who gained popularity among the rock generation.

A German immigrant, Strachwitz made stars of blues guitarists and singers Mance Lipscomb, Lightnin' Hopkins and Mississippi Fred McDowell, Cajun zydeco master Clifton Chenier and folk singer Country Joe McDonald.

Guitarist and musicologist Ry Cooder credits Strachwitz for awakening his love for folk traditions, which he's promoted through his long and brilliant career.

The success of Country Joe McDonald and the Fish's "I Feel Like I'm Fixing to Die Rag," a Vietnam war protest song that the band introduced to acclaim at Woodstock, allowed Arhoolie to keep recording obscure musicians.

Like Alan Lomax before him, Strachwitz preserved strands of American music that might have been lost. Following Strachwitiz's retirement, his Arhoolie recordings and archives were acquired by the Smithsonian Institution.

Reading about Strachwitz, I realized that he was one of the pioneering folklorists who awakened my appreciation for early American music.

Growing up, I was enamored with Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Roy Acuff and Johnny Cash. Later, I came to love the less refined music of the Carter Family, Jim and Jesse and the Louvin Brothers.

As with many others, I entered the world of Southern black blues through the portal of the British invasion.

The Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin, Eric Clapton, the Yardbirds and the Beatles' love for the blues led me to Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Howlin' Wolf, Bessie Smith and Mississippi John Hurt. 

Later, I came upon Elvie Thomas and Geeshie Wiley's haunting "Last Kind World Blues," released in 1930.

The Allman Brothers' rise also inspired me to search out black musicians from the 1920s and 1930s whose recordings were re-released in the 1960s to huge popularity.

I'd heard about Arhoolie Records, but didn't know anything about Strachwitz until reading obituaries about him in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

Thanks to him, I received the gift of two memorable concerts: Clifton Chenier at the LSU Union and Lightnin' Hopkins at the long closed Lakeshore Lounge.

 

 

Farewell Vida Blue, Oakland A's dazzling pitching comet

Vida Blue came out of North Louisiana with a lightning bolt arm.

The region's shabby small towns produce a disproportionate share of NFL quarterbacks and major league pitchers.

Like another North Louisiana native, the Houston Astros' J.R. Richard, Blue dazzled baseball for a few brief seasons with a nearly unhittable fast ball.

Blue, who died May 6 at age 73, burst upon the major leagues with the Oakland Athletics' great team that won three straight World Series championships from 1972-74. He pitched for 17 years in the major leagues, winning 209 games, yet his career seems less than it might have been.

The year before the A's began their championship run, Blue registered an astounding season, winning the Cy Young and Most Valuable Player Awards, with a 24-9 record, 1.82 era and 24 complete games.

Yet the Oakland's despicable owner Charlie Finley refused to give Blue a new contract, limiting him to a 6-12 record in the 1972 championship season. He pitched from the bullpen during the World Series.

Blue, who had made about $20,000 in his breakthrough season, wanted $93,000. He eventually signed for about $60,000. Today's pitchers who find it difficult to complete six innings make millions.

As Washington Post columnist Candace Buckner related in a poignant tribute to Blue, he like Richard was a victim of white exploitation. Like another shooting star who burned out, the Mets' Dwight "Doc" Gooden, Blue was plagued by cocaine and alcohol addiction.

One of the many black men unfairly punished by the country's "drug war," Blue was incarcerated late in his career, serving three months in prison for attempting to buy the seductive white powder. 

Blue had two more seasons winning 20 games during the A's championship run. The penurious Finley broke up his magnificent team, shipping out Reggie Jackson, Blue Moon Odom, Catfish Hunter and Blue, who traveled across the bay to pitch for the San Francisco Giants. He had several all-star seasons, but never came close to the astounding heights of his 1971 season.

Richard, who died in 2021, was accused by white sportswriters of malingering after he suffered a career-ending stroke. Following his meteoric baseball career, Richard descended into homelessness, eventually recovering to do community outreach work.

Blue like Richard and Gooden will be remembered for an amazing career that still fell short of his magical talent.  

Iranian Pulitzer-winning playwright Sanaz Toossi discusses immigrant experience, why she turned to TV

Sanaz Toossi, who won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize this week for her play "English," can't make a living as a playwright despite a burst of success in the theater.

The 31-year-old Iranian-American writer said in a New York Times interview Thursday that she supports herself by writing for television, which allowed her to buy health insurance.

Toossi's now on strike along with other members of the Hollywood writers' union seeking increased pay and benefits from TV streaming. But media landscape changes threaten the abundant era for TV writers that has prevailed for more than a decade.

As cable TV channels and streaming services like Netflix expanded, successful playwrights turned to TV writing to earn lucrative livelihoods.

Yet changes in media technology and audience fragmentation brought reduced compensation for writers in recent years, culminating in the walkout. As the strike continues, TV production has ground to a halt.

Playwright and TV screenwriter Alena Smith in a revealing article for the Los Angeles Review of Books mourns the lack of sustaining theater income for American playwrights.

But TV opportunities for writers have also eroded, as the strike exposes. Smith in a sobering assessment of the future says that the Internet and decline of cable will disrupt the TV landscape.

Smith, a Yale Drama School MFA graduate, said she earned only $13,000 as a playwright over six years, including a federal grant. She supplemented her income with odd jobs before heading to Hollywood, where she created the popular Apple TV+ series "Dickinson."

Broadway and the New York theater once sustained American playwrights like Eugene O'Neil, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams.

From 1920 to 1940, 130 new plays were produced on Broadway each year, Smith discloses. From 1980 to 2014, the number of new productions plummeted to 14 a year, and will fall even lower as revivals, musicals and juke-box confections vie for declining audiences.

Smith foresees a similar bleak ice age for writers as the TV landscape fragments.

Toossi, the single child of Iranian immigrants, has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the theater, capped by the Pulitzer.

"English," in which four Iranians take English lessons at a storefront school outside of Tehran in order to pass a language proficiency exam, premiered in 2022 at the off-Broadway Atlantic Theater Co.  Before capturing the Pulitzer, Toossi won the Lucille Lortel Award for outstanding Off-Broadway drama.

The play is frequently produced around the country, and Toossi has received commissions from several local theater companies. Her second play, "Wish You Were Here," a comedy about Iranian women's travails in America, was produced in 2022 by the off-Broadway Playwrights Horizon Theater.

But like other playwrights whose first love is the theater, she's turned to TV to survive.

Now that sanctuary is closing too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Al.com, Mississippi Today win Pulitzer Prizes, showing death of local news greatly exaggerated

Digital technology is killing local reporting. But not in Alabama and Mississippi.

Al.Com, owned by Alabama Media Group, received two Pulitzer Prizes this week. The digital site Mississippi Today was also honored with the prestigious award.

Kyle Whitmire of Al.com won the commentary Pulitzer for "measured and persuasive columns that document how Alabama's Confederate heritage still colors the present with racism and exclusion," according to his Pulitzer citation.

Mississippi Today reporter Anna Wolfe was a co-winner in the local reporting category for her investigative articles disclosing that former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant diverted state welfare funds to wealthy political donors, most prominently pro football great Bret Favre.

Wolfe's found that Favre received money for a volleyball arena at the University of Southern Mississippi. Favre's daughter played on the school's volleyball team.

Al.com's investigative team of Ashley Remkus, Challen Stephens, John Archibald and his son, Ramsey Archibald, shared the local reporting honor for "exposing how the police force of the town of Brookside (Ala.)preyed on residents to inflate revenue."

Founded in 2016 to report state capitol news, Mississippi Today now covers a variety of beats, including sports. The nonprofit digital site. which depends on reader subscriptions and donations, "is now one of the biggest newsrooms in Mississippi," according to its web site.

Al.com recently announced that it would switch to an online-only operation, no longer printing its newspapers the Birmingham News, Mobile Press Register and Huntsville Times, all of which have a long history.

The Alabama news site, which also won a Pulitizer in 2018,  runs a digital newsroom of 110 journalists, an impressive number as news staffs shrink or disappear elsewhere.

Amid all the gloom about the future of local news, Al.com and Mississippi Today cover their states like the dew.

 

Remembering Earl K. Long, "the Earl of Louisiana"

Four years after Huey Long's assassination, the Louisiana strongman's younger brother Earl gained the state's governorship for the first time.

In one of those strange intrigues that mark Louisiana politics, Earl as lieutenant governor replaced Gov. Richard Leche, convicted in the political scandals that decimated Huey's machine following "the Kingfish's" death in 1935 at age 42.

Estranged from his nationally prominent older brother, Earl escaped the wave of investigations that led to the imprisonment of Leche, LSU President J. Monroe Smith and dozens of other state and university officials.

Taking over as governor in June 1939, Earl sought to separate Huey from the scandals, casting his slain brother as a paragon of good government and public service betrayed after his death by his cronies.

His political ambitions discouraged by Huey, Earl is a minor character in Robert Mann's "Kingfish U," reviewed by Southern Bookman Monday. In his definitive study of Long's largesse toward LSU and his political exploitation of the school, Mann briefly mentions Earl. Earl, who lost the 1932 governor's race to Huey's buddy O.K. Allen, appears as an unlikely reformer.

Earl went on to a colorful and combative political career, changing the state as much if not more than his dictatorial brother. Losing his re-election bid to reformer Sam Jones in 1940 after 11 months as Leche's replacement, Earl served as governor from 1948-1952 and 1956-60.

Known as "Uncle Earl" following the rise of Huey's son Russell to the U.S. Senate, Long carried out his brother's progressive policies, building roads, schools and hospitals. He never followed Huey's antics with the LSU band, football team and students, but he gave the school ample resources while building up other state universities.

Not as power hungry as Huey, Earl still engaged in cut-throat politics against his rivals. A genius at invective and old-fashioned stump speaking, Earl rivaled Huey as a political showman.

The rough-hewn Long's battles against sophisticated New Orleans Mayor "Chep" Morrison riveted the state, although Earl returned local control to the Crescent City, which had been wrested away by Huey. 

Unlike most Southern governors, Earl was a racial moderate who expanded economic opportunities and voting rights for blacks, although he supported segregation. But he didn't oppose the integration of LSU-New Orleans.

Long suffered a mental breakdown on the floor of the Louisiana Legislature while railing against arch-segregationist Willie Rainich, an act of political courage ennobled by New Yorker writer A.J. Leibling in "The Earl of Louisiana." Long's political ally Margaret Dixon, managing editor of The Baton Rouge Morning Advocate, led away the incapacitated governor.

In an extended saga of political theater, Long through efforts by his estranged wife Blanche and nephew Russell was committed to a mental institution in Texas. Then Earl outwitted his foes by arranging a transfer to a state facility, using his power as governor to gain his release.

Despite his age and decline in health, Long was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1960, but died before he could take office at the hopeful start of John F. Kennedy's presidency.

Long received a burst of celebrity when Hollywood star Paul Newman portrayed him in the 1989 comedy "Blaze," based on Long's autumnal relationship with New Orleans stripper Blaze Starr.

Connoissieurs of Louisiana politics revere "Uncle Earl" more than Huey, repeating his witticisms and nuggets of political wisdom.

Earl Long held many of the white supremacist attitudes of his generation. Yet unlike other Southern politicians of his era, he made an admirable  stand for civil rights.

 

 

LSU historian Robert Mann's "Kingfish U" tells engrossing story of Huey Long's crushing love for LSU

LSU's band, football team and academic prestige rose under Huey Long's autocratic control of Louisiana during the dark years of the Depression.

After Long's assassination in 1935, the "Ole War Skule's" golden era crashed in scandal, leading to the imprisonment of LSU President James Monroe Smith and other university officials for a range of fraudulent schemes.

The wide-ranging federal and state investigations also led to the conviction of Gov. Richard Leche, for whom the university's law school had been named. His name was abruptly removed from the school's monumental building.

Long as governor and U.S. senator who still controlled the state embraced LSU like a smothering sugar daddy. He lavished money on school buildings, launched a medical school, and outrageously championed the school's band and football team.

LSU professor and noted historian Robert Mann entertainingly tells the story of Long and his proudest achievement in "Kingfish U: Huey Long and LSU," published by LSU Press.

An outlandish political showman, Long took trainloads of LSU students to football games in Nashville and Houston, leading the band on parades through the cities' downtowns. He also enjoyed giving pep talks to the football team, although Coach Biff Jones banned "the Kingfish" from the locker room before Long fired the former Army officer.

Rapidly increasing its student body and constructing new buildings after a move from downtown Baton Rouge to a bucolic new campus that had once been a plantation on the Mississippi River, LSU attracted nationally recognized professors, most prominently Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks, editors of the university's prestigious and ground=breaking Southern Review.

As Mann relates, Long generally kept his hands off academic matters. But he brought his beloved university national comdemnation for attempting to censor the Daily Reveille, the school's student newspaper, after it published a letter criticizing his iron-fisted control of the LSU Board of Supervisors.

Smith's expulsion of seven Reveille journalists brought an investigation by the Southern Association of  Colleges and Secondary Schools. The organization placed LSU on probation, then dropped its investigation when the school affirmed its commitment to academic independence following Long's death.

But Long's meddling with the LSU Law School led to censure by the Association of American Law Schools, a minor part of a ballooning scandal that engulfed the university and Long's machine following his assassination in a hallway of his soaring state Capitol in downtown Baton Rouge.

Mann gives a complete account of the scandals, especially the involvement of Leche, Smith and a number of LSU officials who used LSU material and state funds for personal projects.

Smith, who led the university's flourishing during the Depression and originated the Southern Review, ended up serving six years in the state penitentiary at Angola.

Long, one of the most divisive leaders in American history, gave his poverty-stricken state modern roads, schools and hospitals and propelled a small state university to national prominence.

Mocked by national writers for his clownish behavior and accumulation of power, Long before his death gained a national following for his "share our wealth" programs, which still appear radical.

Mann gives a balanced picture of a politician beloved by Louisiana's long-exploited poor. As Mann details, blacks gained little from his programs.

The book contains wonderful vintage photographs of Long, decked out in three-piece suits and fedoras, acting as chief cheerleader. He's shown with the band and students, or huddling with cronies. One picture shows Smith with several cows; rural students during the Depression could pay for their tuition with livestock or crops.

While Mann praises Long's accomplishments, he presents a disturbing picture of Long's schemes to acquire more power.

Long's flamboyant career was in the end tragic, as Robert Penn Warren mined in his classic novel"All the King's Men."

Warren found in Baton Rouge "a world of a sick yearning for elegance."

Louisiana's dreams of greatness come mixed with corruption and buffoonery.

 

 

 

 

New York Times' Joe Drape ready for another Kentucky Derby run for the roses

New York Times horse-racing reporter Joe Drape keeps alive a newspaper tradition.

"I’m saying this bittersweetly: I’m one of the last ones to stand,” the Times' "turf writer" told colleague Terence McGinley in a "Times Insider"  interview Friday.

Once newspaper columnists like the Herald Tribune and Times' Red Smith religiously covered horse racing, a sport that has declined in popularity, although the Kentucky Derby and other "Triple Crown" races still attract fans for at least a day.

Drape, who succeeded Times reporters Steve Cady and Joe Druoso on the horse racing beat, has been covering the Derby since 1998, only missing the run for the roses in Louisville for his son's first communion.

In the "Times Insider" column, Drape recalls going to horse races as a child with his family, and the intellectual pleasures of reading the racing form, which gives fans at the race track detailed information on each horse running that day.

Each year, I love reading Drape's Derby coverage. On Saturday morning of the race, I can't wait to peruse his "tout sheet" of the Derby field, listing the odds for each horse and its chances of making the winner's circle. Times editor Melissa Hoppert also comments on each ccontender.

Along with the "Times Insider" interview, Drape wrote an expansive front-page article about how championship horses make millions as breeders, cutting short their racing careers.

Drape, while loving the romance of horse racing, has covered the sport's doping scandals and horse deaths. This year, four horses have died at Churchill Downs before the race.

Along with horse racing, Drape covers football, e-sports and the gambling industry for the Times. He has also written several well-received books on horse racing, high school football and Catholicism.

On a personal note, I fondly remember Joe from when he was one of my colleagues at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Joe was always an encouraging presence in the newsroom, quick with a smile and a word of praise.

I've enjoyed following Joe's career at the Times. On Saturday morning, I'll again drink my coffee and read which horses he and Hoppert think "can do."

Mass shooting in Midtown Atlanta continues epidemic of American violence

People are murdered every day in the city too busy to hate.

Most of those slaughtered in Atlanta receive little notice, perhaps a brief news story with a small headline.

The mass shooting in Midtown Atlanta Wednesday was different, shocking the city and drawing national attention.

In another American outbreak of gun violence, a disgruntled Coast Guard veteran killed a lovely young woman while she sat in a doctors' waiting room. Amy St. Pierre, 38, worked as a maternity and pediatric specialist for the Centers for Disease Control, one of Atlanta's major employers.

Upset over waiting too long for an appointment, the gunman identified as 24-year-old Deion Patterson wounded four other women, three seriously, on the 11th floor of the Northside Midtown Medical Center at the corner of West Peachtree and 12th streets. The shootings shut down one of Atlanta's most vibrant neighborhoods.

The gunman escaped into the afternoon, stealing a car whose engine had been left running. After what was described as a chaotic hours-long manhunt, Patterson was arrested at an apartment complex in Cobb County near Truist Park and the Battery. Thankfully, the Braves were out of town.

Patterson's mother, who accompanied him to the medical center and cooperated with police, said he was angry at the Veterans' Administration for not giving him the drug he wanted to allay anxiety and depression. She said he was suffering "mental instability" from the medicine he had received.

The shootings disrupted a normal Wednesday. Surgeons carried out operations. Doctors saw patients. Restaurants were busy; sidewalks crowded.

A beautiful spring day in Atlanta shattered by an angry man with a gun.