Memphian and funk-and-soul legend Isaac Hayes died early this morning here in town. Hayes was one of the driving forces behind Memphis’ own Stax Records and he remained a faithful and active citizen of our fair city for his entire life. Most people know Hayes as the voice behind South Park’s character of “Chef,” but…
Read More[If you got here through a Google search for “sad songs”, you should read this first.] A while back on this blog, there was a great discussion about sad songs in response to one of my posts entitled “Sad Songs Say So Much.” I’ve been thinking about that again recently for a couple of reasons….
Read MoreHere’s a little tune from The Man in Black to make you smile on a Friday. Nevermind that it’s an execution song. (Details, details.) As I’ve said before, I think God speaks to humanity through Johnny Cash. Maybe not in this song in particular… but I don’t pretend to know the mind of God.
Read MoreThere’s a very famous country song, made popular by David Allan Coe, called “You Never Even Called Me By My Name.” (NOTE: That link is to a YouTube rendering of the song, which might be one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen.) As Coe explains in the song, it was actually written by Steve…
Read MoreNow that the semester is over, I had the rare opportunity to actually see a movie in a movie theater last night. For the last year, I’ve been almost entirely reliant on Netflix, and I had forgotten the magic of the big-screen experience. My friend and I went to see The Visitor, a film about…
Read MoreThe thing is, I’m really sad that John Edwards dropped out of the Presidential race. As much as I might loathe the idea of rooting for the white guy when there is a woman and an African-American in the race, I think John Edwards was the most right-on about what’s wrong with America. But what’s…
Read MoreThen why aren’t you listening to my radio show? Go to the podcast home for “Americana the Beautiful” and download all the episodes. Come on, is there anything more purely noble than supporting college radio? I can’t think of anything off-hand, except for maybe rescuing abused puppies (cute ones) or helping one-legged children achieve their…
Read MoreFor those of you who don’t know, I host a radio show on Sunday nights from 7-8 pm (Central time) on Rhodes Radio. My show is called “Americana the Beautiful” and is ostensibly devoted to American “roots” music (country, blues, jazz, rock n’ roll), but I often just play whatever I like. Anyway, we’ve now…
Read MoreThis past Sunday, on my radio show “Americana the Beautiful” (which you can listen to Sundays from 7-8 Central Time on Rhodes Radio), I did a themed show featuring “answer” songs. Answer songs are, as the name suggests, songs written in response to a previously recorded song by another artist. They were popular in blues…
Read MoreApparently, the recent entry Sad Songs Say So Much struck a chord with many of you. So, I thought I would continue the theme for a bit more… One of the many, many reasons that I think sad songs say so much is that they don’t actually “say”… they sing. There are a whole mess…
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