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Front Porch: Music 2007

by Harry L. Watson
“It’s hard to point to another region with so much musical variety and so much music with world-wide appeal.” Drumroll, please. This is Southern Cultures‘s second music issue, complete with another new CD full of ballads, blues, and bluegrass from great southern artists known and less known. While this is only our second version of »
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Pete Seeger, San Francisco, 1989

by Pete Seeger, Michael K. Honey, William R. Ferris
“I first started learning about the world, and there was a place called the South. It was a distant, romantic place, like the Far West or the islands of the Caribbean.” Pete Seeger has long been my hero. As an undergraduate at Davidson College in the early sixties, I listened to his records and learned »
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Elvis Presley and the Politics of Popular Memory

by Michael T. Bertrand
“‘A Lonely Life Ends on Elvis Presley Boulevard,’ blared the headline of a late-summer special edition of the Memphis Press-Scimitar. ‘The King is Dead.'” A Lonely Life Ends on Elvis Presley Boulevard,” blared the headline of a late-summer special edition of the Memphis Press-Scimitar. “The King is Dead.” Much like his explosive ascent nearly a »
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The Color of Music: Social Boundaries and Stereotypes in Southwest Louisiana French Music

by Sara Le Menestrel
“One Cajun woman who grew up in the 1960s was convinced that the AM/FM options on her radio referred to the distinction between American Music and French Music.” Until the 1960s, southwest Louisianans did not categorize their music as Cajun, Creole, or zydeco. Instead, they referred to it as musique française, or French music, without »
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Extra! Chicago Defender Race Records Ads Show South from Afar

by Mark K. Dolan
“Lavishly illustrated ads told of broken love affairs, loneliness, violence, and jail, in concert with travel to and from the South–by train and boat, on foot and in memory.” In January of 1926, a record advertisement for Bessie Smith’s “Florida Bound Blues” appeared in the Chicago Defender‘s entertainment section, showing the blues queen wrapped in »
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Living with Ballads: Sidna Allen

by Elizabeth Hadaway
“He mounted to the bar with a pistol in his hand and he sent Judge Massie to the Promised Land . . .” He mounted to the barwith a pistol in his handand he sent Judge Massieto the Promised Land
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The Million-Dollar Mandolin: Bluegrass Music’s Finest Relic Finally Finds a Home

by Randy Rudder
“Bill Monroe had seen a lot of troubles in his days, but nothing could have prepared him for this. Whe he entered his home, he found his 1923 Gibson F-5 mandolin, built by craftsman Lloyd Loar, smashed into several pieces, a fireplace poker lying nearby.” Bill Monroe had seen a lot of troubles in his »
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Alan Lomax: The Long Journey

by William R. Ferris
“Stories about Alan Lomax and his exploits are legendary. While doing research in the Library of Congress Music Division, Lomax was sitting at a table across from a student who was reading his classic Folksongs of North America. At one point the student looked across the table and asked, ‘Is Alan Lomax still alive?’ Lomax »
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In Memoriam: Doug Marlette

by John Shelton Reed
Southern Cultures was one of these beneficiaries. Doug was a friend and supporter from our earliest days. On July 10 Doug Marlette was killed when the pickup truck in which he was a passenger slid off the road in a rainstorm near Byhalia, Mississippi. He was on his way to Oxford to help some high »

A Place Called The South

by Josh Guthman
Music Issue Companion CD Track List 1| “A place called the South. . .” PETE SEEGER All Pete Seeger tracks are from William R. Ferris and Michael K. Honey’s 1989 San Francisco interview, courtesy of the William R. Ferris Collection #20367 in the Southern Folklife Collection, Wilson Library, UNC-CH 2| “Barbry Ellen” LEAVES FROM OFF »
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