Way back when

They sure don’t make ‘em like they used to do – no kidding.

This thought came across my mind as I listened to W. Lee O’Daniel and his Lightcrust Doughboys teeter through the “Doughboys Theme Song,” recorded in 1934.

Actually, W. Lee O’Daniel didn’t play on the record, he was a politician that found out that music could be a good stumpin’ tool. He used this discovery to good measure, as he ascended to the governorship of Texas in 1938.

If there is something vaguely familiar about these facts, it might be that you saw “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” The “Pappy” O’Daniel character in that movie was based loosely upon the real O’Daniel. The group that O’Daniel fastens his political star onto in the movie, The Soggy Bottom Boys, is a great sight better than the real O’Daniel’s Doughboys.

Before the advent of electric solid body guitars, a wider variety of music permeated the airwaves and sold in the record stores. The sound coming out of the radios and phonographs that played the thick 78 rpm records wasn’t the high fidelity stereo we take for granted today.

The song I’m listening to right now, “Le Valse Des Yeux Bleu,” by the Cajun legends Breaux Freres, warbles as it plays from the spinning of the record it was recorded from. It’s sounds a sight better than the Charley Patton songs I have, which sound like they were recorded simultaneously with sizzling frying bacon.

The songs’ lyrical structures were much less complicated than those introduced by Bob Dylan in the mid-1960s. That’s strange, because Dylan copped a lot of his best lines from songs recorded in the 1920s and 30s.

I don’t blame him, who could resist lines like this one from “I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground,” by Bascom Lamar Lunsford? “A railroad man will kill you when he can and drink up your blood like wine.”

Dylan “borrowed” that line for his 1966 classic “Stuck Inside Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again.”

While music groups still take pride in their ability to pick a memorable name for their group, those old 78s carry some names that jump up at you. Examples: A’nt Idy Harper and The Coon Creek Girls; the South Georgia Highballers; Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers; Hoyt Ming and his Pep-Steppers; Miff Mole and his Little Molers and Miller’s Bullfrog Entertainers.

Of course my all-time favorite old-time band name is The Mississippi Shieks. The Shieks played a powerful brand of Delta string music that was quite influential – their classic “Sitting On Top of the World” has been covered by famous bluesmen like Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, not to mention white rock and rollers like Cream.

Anybody deeply interested in modern music should take a trip into the past and listen to the “old-timey” music that is the well-spring of today’s popular country, blues and rock and roll.

A good place to start is Harry Smith’s “Anthology of American Folk Music.” The three CD set is a reissue of the three record set that spawned the folk revival of the early 1960s. It can be picked up on-line or at “high-brow” stores like Barnes and Noble.

Columbia’s four-CD collection titled “Roots and Blues – The Retrospective (1925-1950)” is also excellent. It also is out there on-line and in places like Barnes and Noble.

Once you get hooked, you find yourself becoming acquainted with lots of lesser known record labels as you search for more music by the people in the compilation collections. Me, I got it bad, I try to find the 78 rpm records of those performers.

You go Molly!

Ms. Ivins speaks for me.

http://www.alternet.org/story/23223/

The first thing I ever learned about politics was never to let anyone else define what you believe, or what you are for or against.
I think for myself.
I am not "you liberals" or "you people on the left who always..." My name is Molly Ivins, and I can speak for myself, thank you.
I don't need Rush Limbaugh or Karl Rove to tell me what I believe.
Setting up a straw man, calling it liberal and then knocking it down has become a favorite form of "argument" for those on the right. Make some ridiculous claim about what "liberals" think, and then demonstrate how silly it is.
Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and many other right-wing ravers never seem to get tired of this old game. If I had a nickel for every idiotic thing I've ever heard those on the right claim "liberals" believe, I'd be richer than Bill Gates.
The latest and most idiotic statement yet comes from Karl Rove, who is not, actually, an objective observer. He is George Bush's hatchet man.
Last week, Rove, in an address to the Conservative Party of New York, made the following claim: "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9-11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9-11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers."
This seemed to the editorial writers at the San Diego Union-Tribune such a reasonable summary of the liberal position they couldn't figure out why Democrats were "hyperventilating" and getting "bent out of shape."
"What is harder to understand is how Democrats can think they can have it both ways," they wrote. "Even as they beat their chests and profess support for military action, they can't help but criticize the military and do everything they can to undermine the war effort."
What a deep mystery. Let's see if we can help the San Diego thinkers solve it.
On Sept. 14, 2001, Congress approved a resolution authorizing the president to take military action. The vote in the Senate was 98 to zero; the vote in the House was 420 to one. The lone dissenter was Democrat Barbara Lee of California, who expressed qualms about an open-ended war without a clear target. Find me the offer for therapy and understanding in that vote. Anyone remember what actually happened after 9-11? Unprecedented unity, support across the board, joint statements by Democratic and Republican political leaders. The whole world was with us. The most important newspaper in France headlined, "We Are All Americans Now," and all our allies sent troops and money to help.
That is what George Bush has pissed away with his war in Iraq.
The vote on invading Iraq was 77 to 23 in the Senate and 296 to 133 in the House. By that time, some liberals did question the wisdom of invasion because: A) Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 and B) it looked increasingly unlikely that Iraq actually had great stores of weapons of mass destruction, since the United Nations inspectors, who were on the ground, couldn't find any sign of them -- even though Donald Rumsfeld claimed we knew exactly where they were.
Since my name is Molly Ivins and I speak for myself, I'll tell you exactly why I opposed invading Iraq: because I thought it would be bad for this country, our country, my country. I opposed the invasion out of patriotism, and that is the reason I continue to oppose it today -- I think it is bad for us. I think it has done nothing but harm to the United States of America. I think we have created more terrorists than we faced to start with and that our good name has been sullied all over the world. I think we have alienated our allies and have killed more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein ever did.
I did not oppose the war because I like Saddam Hussein. I have been active in human rights work for 30 years, and I told you he was a miserable s.o.b. back in the '80s, when our government was sending him arms.
I did not oppose the war because I am soft on terrorists or didn't want to get Osama bin Laden. To the contrary, I thought it would be much more useful to get bin Laden than to invade Iraq -- which, once again, had nothing to do with 9-11. I believe the case now stands proved that this administration used 9-11 as a handy excuse to invade Iraq, which it already wanted to do for other reasons.
It is one thing for a political knife-fighter like Karl Rove to impugn the patriotism of people who disagree with him: We have seen this same crappy tactic before, just as we have seen administration officials use 9-11 for political purposes again and again. But how many times are the media going to let them get away with it?
The first furious assault on the patriotism of Democrats came right after the 9-11 commission learned President Bush had received a clear warning in August 2001 that Osama bin Laden was planning a hijacking.
Batten down the hatches: This is the beginning of an administration push to jack up public support for the war in Iraq by attacking anyone with enough sense to raise questions about how it's going.

Molly Ivins writes about politics, Texas and other bizarre happenings.

Dos Passos Dream

I had a dream I was Dos Passos and the flappers were sucking on my toes, the vermouth was garnished with cabbage leaves and
the Hittites were brandishing exotic weapons of Croat manufacture. This other writer came up to me and offered a story about
quirky butchers but I had to refuse it because you don't eat meat and I aim to be inoffensive to those that appreciate me.
The band was playing Patsy Cline but they couldn't figure out what key “I Fall to Pieces” was played in because she hadn't been invented yet. The bandleader just smiled a gap-toothed smile and asked if anybody could play the pedal steel guitar. Red Grange stepped forward and said he'd give it a shot before suddenly tucking the clunky device under his arm and galloping off between two marble pillars.
I winked at the woman with ruby-red lips and she mistook it for a coy dismissal, throwing her drink on me and abruptly exiting the soiree. "Good bye," I said, "Don't expect to be in my next book."
I told my banker I'd had enough to drink and needed to pound out a few more chapters about wobblies and doughboys. He reached into my pocket and borrowed two bits.
As I was walking out the door, I met Woodrow Wilson, who grabbed me by the knee and said, "Dos Passos, remember to tip your
hat to the ladies and please don't call me Woody."

Very novel

I'm a character in an online book...

http://www.templestark.com/novel/entire02.html

Part 3 -- Impact, Day 18... there I am -- the real me impersonating the fictional me... I know Temple from his reporting days, so it wasn't just a coincidence...

Deep Throat

I'm not sure where people that try to make out Mark Felt as some sort of vow-breaking slime ball get off...

The paramount thing he swore to as a agent of the federal gov't was to uphold and PROTECT the Constitution of the United States of America -- not the United Paranoia of Richard Nixon or the FBI code of conduct...

Few federal servants (military folks excluded) have so directly done such service to their oath.