The pride of Mexia, Texas, wrote country-and-western songs for Bob Wills, Bing Crosby, Eddie Arnold, Roy Orbison, Jim Reeves, Ricky Skaggs, Mickey Gilley, and many others.
Her most beloved song, "You Don't Know Me," was co-written with Arnold and recorded by him, Ray Charles, Mickey Gilley, Emmylou Harris, Elvis Presley, Lenny Welch and Jerry Vale. Here, Emmylou Harris sings "You Don't Know Me" with assistance from (right to left) Trisha Yearwood, Carlene Carter, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Shelby Lynne:
Eddie "The Tennessee Plowboy" Arnold recorded "You Don't Know Me" in 1955:
The Mexican Revolution: Its past, present, and future. A lengthy but interesting Marxist perspective the last hundred years of Mexican history. A good way for the United States to foment revolution in Mexico would be to round up and deport 11,000,000 undocumented workers and to seal our borders...
Texas Republicans Pete Session and John Cornyn perform a tap dance that makes Ben Vereen look like a double amputee. Somehow, Cornyn maintains a straight face when claiming that Republicans oppose legislation "based on an ideological approach as opposed to let's solve the problem." If you think I'm making this up, jump ahead to 4:52...
ON THE JUKEBOX FOR A DIME Peter Tibbles, who writes about music every Sunday on Time Goes By, and I discovered a mutual blathering infatuation with Emmylou Harris and have productively directed our energies into a fanblog called 365 Days of Emmylou Harris. The idea is to post something -- a video, a photo, cover art -- every day for a year. Check it out here...
Tears Go By Dept: Stu Sutcliffe and George Harrison in Hamburg, 1961...
Ever wanted to know the difference between a trolley, a tram, a street car, a cable car, a funicular, a cog, and an interurban? The Daily Postcard explains it all for you, via her usual wonderful assortment of antique postcards...
Ten years or so ago on a visit to Silver Platters (my local CD store -- I'm well-known there), the manager of the store waved a CD at me and said that I had to hear it. He handed me Handful of Earth, by the Scotch folk singer Dick Gaughan; I shrugged and took home what became one of my favorite albums, a disk I still listen to regularly. I listened with pleasure as Gaughan wrapped his burr around traditional Scottish ballads, songs written by Robert Burns, and his own songs of liberation and solidarity. Gaughan sang with commitment and passion, evoking myriad feelings with a generous emotional palette.
So, when the indispensable Mayo News noted that Gaughan would be performing last Friday at Aras Inis Gluaire (The Erris Arts Centre) in Belmullet, it presented a perfect opportunity to visit that beautiful and remote place (see yesterday's entry). We joined about 40-50 others in an intimate setting as Gaughan performed two sets of originals, trad songs, and covers like "The Games People Play" and "Waist Deep In The Big Muddy", a song as sadly pertinent today as it was when Pete Seeger wrote it back in the Sixties. He sang what he called his favorite song (Burns' lovely "Westlin Winds"). He displayed dazzling guitar technique during a couple of instrumental interludes of jigs and reels, his fingers dashing around the fret like a line of step dancers. Gaughan closed the show with a request from me called "Both Sides The Tweed," an old Scottish song that he rewrote. Although it concerns a particular incident in Scotch-English history, today it resonates as a warm embrace of the value and humanity of mutual respect across cultural divides.
But for both of us, the highlight of the evening came with a song whose name we didn't catch and whose words we couldn't understand. Gaughan introduced it by explaining that he grew up in a multilingual home speaking Irish, English, and two versions of Scots. He then related the subtle and not-so-subtle attempts to eradicate Scots by treating it and its speakers as inferior. This led to a beautiful Scotch-language ballad that moved Premium T. to tears and left the rest of us silent. The power of song is indeed a magical and sacred thing.
I'm pretty sure that we were the only Americans in attendance. As we walked into the gloaming of an Irish solstice evening at 11 p.m., I pondered the uniqueness of the experience: Out of a nation of 300 million people, we were the only two to hear these particular versions of these particular songs on this particular night. We felt blessed...
There's no transferable decent video of Gaughan performing "Both Sides The Tweed," but you can go here to see him sing it with Emmylou Harris. I've reproduced the lyrics below. In the meantime, here's a video of him performing "Wild Mountain Thyme" with Emmylou, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, and what looks like Rufus Wainwright:
Both Sides The Tweed What's the spring breathing jasmine and rose? What's the summer with all its gay train Or the splendour of autumn to those Who've bartered their freedom for gain?
Let the love of our land's sacred rights To the love of our people succeed Let friendship and honour unite And flourish on both sides the Tweed.
No sweetness the senses can cheer Which corruption and bribery bind No brightness that gloom can e'er clear For honour's the sum of the mind
Let virtue distinguish the brave Place riches in lowest degree Think them poorest who can be a slave Them richest who dare to be free
Read Dick Gaughan's notes on "Both Sides The Tweed" here.
Emmylou Harris, All That I Intended To Be Who do I love? I love Emmylou Harris, that's who I love. While she doesn't live on the high end of the soprano range any more, her voice has become richer and fuller. It's perfectly suited to this autumnal, elegiac set about the hard lessons gathered from loss, sacrifice, and roads not taken. Harris wryly savors the irony that this wisdom accumulates as we near the end, leaving us with only enough time to apply all of this hard-won learning to the past. As usual, she sings with great beauty and insight, often assisted movingly by the likes of Dolly Parton and Kate and Anna McGarrigle. Highly recommended...
Septuagenarian Bill Moyers punks an "O'Reilly Report" producer:
Outraged by the 74-year old Moyers' aggressive violation of the producer's physical space, Bill-o retaliates:
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