----- Original Message -----Reverse chron. order (because I'm lazy)From: Chris BartleTo: Thomas KeefeSent: Monday, February 21, 2011 11:26 AMSubject: Re: Possum & Buck
You are absolutely right – Gram didn't want to deal with the ugly and continuing reality of racism. He was insulated from it to a great extent – music was a weird exceptional world. There was a real enough threat against people like us, but optional – you could always go back to a safe zone somewhere or get your hair cut. He was hung up on the beauty of the expression – the raw cool of country music back then.
Your experiences are the real ones and they accurately predict what's happening now. It's really ugly underneath and the Republicans get away with a lot of shit – especially with angry idiots like that Allan whatever guy in Florida and the weirdo former CEO of Pizza Hut and, of course, Clarence Thomas providing cover.
And you are right about the South today. It takes more money from the Federal gov't than it gives back and takes for granted the depression and civil rights era policies that rescued the place from complete economic and moral collapse. It lives on a foolish dream of bullshit self-sufficiency and hypocritical morality that is reflected in its foolish music – despite the great talent there – and has completely lost its way. Or, more conspiratorially, the South has been completely captured by the plutocrats who offer a pick up truck and a macho posture in return for taking over everything everywhere. Not dissimilar from the Arab world, frankly (before the current revolutions).
--
Chris Bartle
917.414.9495
chbartle@ix.netcom.com
917.414.9495
chbartle@ix.netcom.com
From: "Thomas F. Keefe" <tom@keefeandwesner.com>
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2011 10:12:26 -0500
To: Chris Bartle <chbartle@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Possum & Buck
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2011 10:12:26 -0500
To: Chris Bartle <chbartle@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Possum & Buck
This song came out about 2 years after I went to Georgia and Mississippi to work for Dr. King in the civil rights movement in the summer of '66, where we saw some violence, and lived in a heightened state of fear and alertness; the song always struck me as a more forgiving portrait of the good ol' boy southern red-neck Klan-member than the real deal...it was a kind of tongue-in-cheek poking fun at them that deflated the seriousness of their threats. It was the only time I think I've ever been specifically targeted by a hate group ( they came by the SCLC house I was staying at in Atlanta within an hour of my arrival asking "Where's they guy with the Beatle haircut?"; when I asked an older staff member about the wire mesh over the windows he said it was meant to cause a thrown stick of dynamite or a molitov cocktail to bounce off and fall outside on the porch rather than coming into the house...!), and the only time I've ever been put in jail- for walking down the street in Macon with a black friend.
I relish the fact that Alabama won the DIv. 1 Football championship last year with a largely black team and black Heisman winner...but it's distressing that the Republicans endorse such thinly-disguised racism and rarely get called on it.
It is interesting that Merle has come over completely to the other side of where he was when Muscogee defined him, and stirred the polarization of the late '60s...do you remember getting hassled in a bar in Bristol, VT where we went to try to get a gig for our little band at Mudslide in 1971? That had the same kind of redneck vs. hippie dynamic, but up here in what was then a fast-changing VT. I agree that symbols like the stars and bars got co-opted, as of course the stars & stripes did, for theatrical purposes...there's some of that good ol' boy self-righteousness in the Tea Party and neo-con use of the flag and the military in cynical ways today. God help you if you criticize either....the south has changed a lot, but it's still the equivalent of a third-world country dragging the rest of the US backwards socially, politically and especially economically, by setting the agenda based on fundamental ( and, frankly, ignorant) religious and cultural grounds. They're also pumping out some of the most mediocre music - called 'country' but that's a mis-use of the term - that further confuses most innocent bystanders. We don't seem to have any Bob Dylans, or Gram Parsons, or McGuinn, Lennon, etc. to rally young listeners to something deeper than a facebook post or a twitter. Maybe I'm just getting old...
----- Original Message -----
From: Chris BartleTo: Thomas F. KeefeSent: Monday, February 21, 2011 8:09 AMSubject: Re: Possum & Buck
Remember "Truck Store Truck Drivin' Man" - "…he's the head of the Ku Klux Klan…and when summer rolls around, you'll be lucky if he's not in town"?
Also, maybe I didn't get it quite right below – symbols like the American flag and even the Confederate flag were appropriated by the hippies partly to show that, hey we can own them, too. Maybe the thought was something like – we don't accept your interpretation of their meaning, we get the power of the symbol and we like the colors/design.
As with Merle Haggard and Lynard Skynard, the Confederacy that Gram was celebrating (if at all) was the confederacy of the poor white moonshiners, banjo pickers and hill country dissenters, not the country club descendants of Jeff Davis & Co. I note that Merle has gone over to our side almost completely, at this point – he was always with the working man, primarily, anyway. Given that there is no "downtrodden" south today, I don't think Gram would side with the Haley Barbour types and, if written today, Lynard Skynard's "Sweet Home Alabama" lyrics would be a lot different. At least I hope so.
--
Chris Bartle
917.414.9495
chbartle@ix.netcom.com
From: Chris Bartle <chbartle@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2011 10:09:39 -0500
To: "Thomas F. Keefe" <tom@keefeandwesner.com>
Subject: Re: Possum & Buck
Yeah – I have been stuck on the Louvins for the past couple of weeks. That Ira...the sensibility behind the lyrics is simultaneously antique and universal. Only guys from that rural religious very poor background could walk so confidently across that paradox of deep belief and extreme honky tonk romanticism – and sound like they meant it. Only guys from that background can sing like that unselfconsciously, too –- their singing takes on this nerdy/operatic tinge that more ironic artists can’'t access, except through people like the Louvins and BIll Monroe (whom the Louvins owe a lot to). Boy oh boy, America had some amazing artistry lurking in the woods in those days.
As to Gram – I always think of him as the first great ironist of country music. He spanned the paradox of the hippie truck driver – hell, he damn near invented it. But he came from the hippie side, definitively. Racist was the last thing he was – I don’t think repugnance to black people would have even occurred to him – he was looking to tweak the northerners in a period when inclusion was more assumed and the threat to black people seemed less in the wake of MLK’s assassination/rise of the Black Panthers, etc. Nowadays – he would stay away from it, I think, because the confederate flag has lost the innocence it regained for a brief moment in the post-Woodstock world. --
Chris Bartle
917.414.9495
chbartle@ix.netcom.com
From: "Thomas F. Keefe" <tom@keefeandwesner.com>
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2011 09:37:22 -0500
To: Chris Bartle <chbartle@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Possum & Buck
Amazing! I didn't think RLH was over the top...I like Rhonda's crucifix in the cleavage, great mixed message! It's incredible how the Louvins songs are endlessly open to great interpretations...
Was reading liner notes on Grevious Angel/GP double album CD last night and they said GP kept a confederate flag on stage with him in his late concerts--wonder what's up with that; even ( maybe especially) in the early '70s that was a racist symbol...
----- Original Message -----
From: Chris Bartle <mailto:chbartle@ix.netcom.com>
To: Thomas F. Keefe <mailto:tom@keefeandwesner.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2011 7:21 PM
Subject: Re: Possum & Buck
Outstanding!!! For a new-veau take on the Louvin Brothers, check out these Nashvillians http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnZ376vcUSs ˆ pretty darn good - and the completely over-the-top Rebecca Lynn Howard contribution on this one - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1AU1KMi44Y&feature=related. Great voice but, whoa ˆ - runaway train! Great music sung by great artists who usually sing disposable crapola.--
Chris Bartle
917.414.9495
chbartle@ix.netcom.com
From: "Thomas F. Keefe" <tom@keefeandwesner.com>
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2011 14:11:02 -0500
To: Chris Bartle <chbartle@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Possum & Buck
Was listening to this, and thought you oughta hear it...ain't much that's better than this!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nry2u-NQSQ&NR=1&feature=fvwp
Thomas F. Keefe, Architect
Keefe & Wesner Architects, P.C.
PO Box 142 135 S. Pleasant St.
Middlebury, Vt. 05753
(802) 388-6210
tom@keefeandwesner.com
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