“For all that southerners have made barbecue our own, the fact remains that this symbol of the South, like kudzu, is an import.” What could be more southern than barbecue? Even when entrepreneurs have taken the dish to other parts of the world, the names of their establishments pay tribute to the origins of their »
“They stopped at a gas station in Andalusia, Alabama, and found a justice of the peace who had a Bible and the right forms to fill out and on top of that was sober.” Hiram “Hank” Williams was born on a tenant farm in Mt. Olive, Alabama, in 1923. His daddy Lon was a Great »
“‘Oh, wake up in the mornin’ ’bout the break of day.’” I think this is how the blues actually started. During slavery, they didn’t always think in terms of God freeing them because they were being sold and separated from their families. Many things of that sort were happening to them, and singing to God »
“I almost lost my life trying to save my guitar.” B.B. King’s name is synonymous with the blues. At the age of eighty-one, the blues patriarch maintains a rigorous schedule of performances throughout the nation and overseas that would exhaust a much younger artist. King’s performances and recordings have shaped the blues for more than »
“Now we were about to premiere, for an audience suspecting more anemic halftime show standards, the hottest jam of the Black Moses, Mr. Hot Buttered Soul himself.” Butterball Thompson’s the one forgot to pivot right that fateful night, wedging our lameass squad right up into the foursome of skinny flutists stopped in front of us »
“‘All decked out in tobacco leaves,’ the caption read, ‘she might be aptly termed Miss Venus.’” In August 1937 the tobacco warehouses in Wilson, North Carolina, opened their doors to area tobacco farmers, just as they had each year since 1895. But that summer there was a new attraction in town—the first ever Wilson Tobacco »
“‘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 »
“Not all ‘cool’ identities are equally cool. If the socially constructed identity of American Indian is cool, for most people it is cooler to have Indian ancestry than to be Indian.” Social scientists can go on and on about that most complicated of topics: race and ethnicity. But however varied our opinions about race and »
“A Buffalo Gal would not be bowled over by every little thing that came along.” In her thirteenth year, the year she almost became popular in America, Alice learned some new words, or she learned some words newly. The first was bitch and it was unthinkable. No case could be made for comparing a woman »
“Against the brutal backdrop of its own history Angola now poses itself as a progressive prison.” When I entered the grounds of Louisiana State Penitentiary, I saw a maze of rawhide belts and purses, paintings reminiscent of a back aisle thrift store, and elaborate wooden objects that evoked the country crafts of my southern childhood. »
“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 »
“‘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 »