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Vol. 15, No. 3: Music

  //  fall 2009

Our experts have compiled Top Ten lists of country, blues, jazz, and rock greats. This issue also bringsfor the first time anywherethe amazing “Son” Thomas Interviews and travel into the heart of the Delta with a remarkable bluesman. In “A Brief History of the Boogie,” we’ll reveal just what the pop megastar Madonna thinks about the brand of music that influenced so many others. We’ll journey inside the wide-ranging artistry of Pura Fé in “Blues Power in the Tuscarora Homeland,” discover the “Mill Mother’s Lament,” and explore Emmett Till in southern songs.

Table of Contents
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Front Porch: Music Vol. 15

by Harry L. Watson
“Whatever feeling you are looking to explore or express—misery, elation, spiritual ecstasy, or low-down lust—chances are that some southern musician has done it already.” Southern music is special. Everybody says so. The South is the home of blues, jazz, Cajun, zydeco, bluegrass, country, spirituals, gospel, and rock. A few other musical traditions that originated elsewhere—fife »
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The Devil and his Blues: James “Son Ford” Thomas

by William R. Ferris
“You can’t always go by what them preachers say, because right now some of them drink more whiskey than me.” Leland was my gateway to the world of Mississippi Delta blues. It was here during the summer of 1968 that I first met James “Son Ford” Thomas, a gifted musician, storyteller, and sculptor. We became »
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Southern Jazz Musicians

by Charles Joyner
“John Coltrane played his hyperactive ‘sheets-of-sound’ with a scorching intensity, faster than most jazz fans could listen.” Selecting the top ten southern jazz musicians proved to be a more difficult task than I expected. Some of the choices are obvious, others perhaps less so. Had I used other criteria, some selections might well have been »
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“When I Say Get It”: A Brief History of the Boogie

by Burgin Matthews
“‘I like to boogie-woogie,’ Madonna proclaimed. ‘It’s like riding on the wind and it never goes away.'” I like to boogie-woogie,” Madonna proclaimed in the title track of her 2000 release, Music: “it’s like riding on the wind and it never goes away.” The boogie-woogie—or justboogie for short—born one hundred years before Madonna sang its »
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Blues Power in the Tuscarora Homeland: The Music of Pura Fé

by John W. Troutman
“Pura Fé has developed a highly unusual style of weaving a fast-paced and complex, sinewy web of notes to follow and accent her extraordinarily dynamic vocal range . . . a unique and engagingly melodic tour de force.” This late April 2007 day marked the nicest that New Yorkers had yet experienced in the year. »
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Country Music Stars

by Jocelyn R. Neal
“Patsy Cline had a great big barrel of a voice that cut straight into the heart of everyone who heard her sing.” Tradition runs deep in country music. One of the hallmarks of the genre is that new generations of singers pay tribute to their predecessors by building on their legacies and adhering to the »
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Winston-Salem Blues: Captain Luke, Macavine Hayes, and Whistlin’ Britches

by Joanna Welborn
“A round of ‘chicken,’ or moonshine, was ordered, and Macavine and Whistlin’ Britches were one-upping each other with insults and dirty jokes. Captain Luke played it cool in the corner, sipping a can of Natural Light and smoking a cigar.” Captain Luke, Macavine Hayes, Whistlin’ Britches, and I settled down to a table in the »
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Mill Mother’s Lament: Ella May Wiggins and the Gastonia Textile Strike of 1929

by Patrick Huber
“Ella May Wiggins, the ‘poet laureate’ of the Gastonia Textile Strike of 1929, was silenced by a mill thug’s bullet on September 14, 1929.” Woody Guthrie considered her one of our nation’s best songwriters. Alan Lomax published her stark union ballads in his acclaimed collections of American folksongs. Pete Seeger recorded a version of her »
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Blues Greats

by William R. Ferris
“The true ‘Hootchie Kootchie Man,’ Muddy Waters summons all the powers of the voodoo doctor in his guttural, deep blues voice.” For over a century the blues has served as the musical anchor of American music. Muddy Waters aptly titled one of his songs “The Blues Had a Baby, and They Named it Rock and »
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Haunting America: Emmett Till in Music and Song

by Philp C. Kolin
“Dylan linked Till’s innocent blood to a Mississippi downpour–so much blood shed from the brutal beatings; Till’s killers ‘rolled his body down a gulf of bloody red rain.'” The murder of Emmett Till has haunted the American imagination. Though Chicago born and bred, he will be forever linked to Mississippi and the South. While visiting »
Music

Legend

by Al Maginnes
Because I know her name fromrock and roll biographiesand the legendary deathof her first husband, becauseI grew up hearing her voiceon my father’s folk records,because I love the mythsthat accompany musicalmost as much as I lovemusic, I should have goneto see her when she was bookedintro the coffeehouse runby a church whose articlesof faith have »
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Southern Rockers

by Josh Guthman
“Let’s be honest: Southern rock is a critically despised genre, a redneck sound draped in the Confederate flag and fueled by an oh-so-’70s mix of Jack Daniels and Quaaludes.” Let’s be honest: Southern rock is a critically despised genre, a redneck sound draped in the Confederate flag and fueled by an oh-so-’70s mix of Jack »

Cool-Water Music

by Joshua Guthman
Music Issue Companion CD Track List 1| “Georgia Blues” CECIL BARFIELD 5:12 Art of Field Recording Volume II: 50 Years of Traditional American Music Documented by Art Rosenbaum, Dust-to-Digital, dust-digital.com 2| “Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down II” MURRY HAMMOND 3:46 I Don’t Know Where I’m Going But I’m On My Way, Hummin’bird Records, myspace.com/murryhammond 3| “Must »
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