Friends,

Amazon has reduced the price of the book by over $8. Great holiday gift for the blues lover in your family.

Allen

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Southern-Cross-Allen-Whitley/dp/1934572411

Another great passed on earlier this month. A friend of Antone’s for so many years, he will be missed. A couple links for perusal.

http://hubertsumlinblues.com/

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/hubert-sumlin-dead-at-80-20111204?link=mostpopular3

The other day my mom wouldn’t keep the door to her tiny waiting room closed after she was injected with some radioactive diagnostic fluid. Normal reasoning wasn’t working. She wasn’t concerned about needlessly exposing workers, her son, etc.  to the effects. I tossed out the orphan grandchildren argument and the ill effects to young people who were exposed every day in their work environment. When I tried to close the door, she complained that I hit her foot. Finally, in my exasperation, I dropped an expletive which also didn’t do any good except cause me to calm down since I try not to curse at my mother. Don’t most of us? My dad would have been horrified and probably popped me in the head.

After the test and the next day I knew she would never remember my slight. In fact, she probably forgot about it 2 minutes after I said it. Such is the mind which undergoes a regression in memory and logic.

But she’s getting the last laugh…my guilt lingers…usually composed and level headed I had veered off course due to lack of sleep, too many plane flights and rental cars, and knowing there is no one else but me. The last line of defense.

So be careful all you care givers, their memories might not remember the ill will in your voice or bad language, but you will.

Good luck!

The blues world lost two more of its sons recently. David “Honeyboy” Edwards (June 28, 1915 – August 29, 2011) from Shaw, MS and Willie “Big Eyes” Smith (January 19, 1936 – September 16, 2011) from Helena, AR both passed away within the last month. If you’ve been to a blues festival in the last few years I’m sure you had a chance to see and hear them. But while their passing will be missed from a musical perspective, what we’ve really lost is the same thing we’ve been losing with all of the bluesmen and women who came to their craft during Jim Crow, before Civil Rights. I touched on it in my tribute to Pinetop, but to reiterate, they are our bridge to a past that seems to grow more distant every day. The trials, tribulations, and privations they endured and that were the foundation for their music and lyrics no longer exist in the same form as they did in the early part of the 20^th century and will probably never be revisited.

Many still walk among us today, but their numbers are dwindling and our link to another era is growing weak.  When the last one is gone, we’ll still be able to hear their voices and music in what they’ve left behind, but a connection will be lost and that will certainly be cause for singing the blues.

A diversion from the blues…or maybe a reason to sing them…

While sitting in an Austin diner a few weeks ago, a friend recounted her parents’ social group and running buddies of the last 30 to 40 years. Eight couples, sixteen in all – they worked, partied, raised families, vacationed, and basically lived wonderful lives. But now there are just 4 remaining and they must bear the memories and pain with each passing member and what was and will never be again. I don’t believe any were married so all their spouses are gone. Imagine 12 of your best friends and spouses passing, one by one, slowly, from a variety of ailments. The only time any had lost as many friends was during WWII.

So as I considered my friend’s stories, and the fact my mother has some memory issues, I thought maybe having a little Alzheimer’s to ease the pain of losing so many loved ones may not be a bad thing. Yes, you will mourn them on their burial day, but as time passes the lingering thoughts and memories fade quicker and you can carry on without the sadness and burden of a past that was so enchanting yet unattainable again. Memories of the good times will also fade, but those are distant, and today must be lived here and now. Just thinking about something to take the edge off, however I may reconsider in a few years.

Growing old’s not for wimps, but what’s the alternative…

If you watched the final episode of Friday Night Lights, then you saw Coach Taylor find Vince’s dad in a somewhat (?) rough looking bar. Well, if you looked close you saw that it was none other than Austin’s own TC’s Lounge, the background for the author’s cover photo taken in the spring of 2010. Looks like we’re in good company. See Great Austin Dives for a quick review.

TC's

Author

Read Matt Marshall’s new book review here…

www.americanbluesscene.com

In 2011, with so much technology at our disposal, it seems close to incomprehensible that someone could be wrongly convicted of a crime they never committed. But that’s what happened in 1968 when Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt went to prison.

Although this article doesn’t indicate, Mr. Pratt was born in Morgan City, LA so he had heard the blues a few times. And it’s  the blues that accompanied him all those years like it has so many…

Source:  Erica Henry, CNN

Former Black Panther Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt, who was wrongly imprisoned for 27 years on a murder conviction, died Thursday in Tanzania, his former lawyer said. He was 63.

Stuart Hanlon, a San Francisco-based lawyer who helped overturn Pratt’s murder conviction, said he did not know the exact cause of death. Pratt died in a small village in Tanzania where he lived with his wife and child, Hanlon said. Hanlon called Pratt a “true American,” saying that he was an Army veteran who served two tours in Vietnam before joining the Black Panther Party.

“He could’ve been a great leader. He was very charismatic,” Hanlon said. “His legacy is that he never gave up. He never got despondent or angry.”

Pratt’s conviction became a rallying cry for rights groups that said he had been framed for his strident activism during the turbulent civil rights era.

Pratt was convicted for the 1968 murder of Caroline Olsen on a Santa Monica tennis court. He spent 27 years in prison before the conviction was overturned in 1997 after a judge ruled that prosecutors had concealed evidence. The victim’s husband, wounded during the robbery attempt, originally identified another man as the killer. But the jury was not informed of that, the judge said.

Famed attorney Johnnie Cochran also helped in the legal battle to get Pratt released from prison. Pratt spoke at Cochran’s funeral in 2005.

After his release, Pratt told CNN that he held no bitterness about the many years he spent behind bars. “I don’t think bitterness has a place. I’m more understanding,” Pratt said in a 1999 interview. “Understanding doesn’t leave any room for bitterness or anger.”

Of the 27 years he spent in prison, Pratt said eight was in solitary confinement. He said his spirituality and love of music helped him through that period.

“My mantra was the blues. It would go through my head when I was going through my meditations,” Pratt said.

Last year Anna Gordon and her mother wandered into the Little Professor in Birmingham, and I was lucky enough to meet them. Noticing the patch on Anna’s chest, they told me of the leukemia that was in remission. We were all happy about the future. But as we connected on Facebook, I began to see the updates of a relapse. And two months ago as they entered the hospital, we became witness to the carnage a fatal illness can leave. Pam allowed us the privilege of fighting with her, and her strength is mightier than a thousand suns, but Anna did not win her battle. She passed earlier last week.

Later in the week and hundreds of miles away in Austin, TX, I began to receive text messages from my daughter. A classmate had fallen while skateboarding and was on life support. Heath Eiland, while someone I had not met, was someone my daughter knew and the updates were heart-wrenching. Unbearable decisions were made, mitigated little by Heath’s incredible health and the opportunity to bring life to others through organ donation.

What happens to one child affects all parents collectively through a shared parental bond. Maybe not with the same intensity, but we are all reflective and saddened nonetheless as empathy and emotion draw us close.

Anna and Heath, you are like setting suns. Although you have slipped beyond the horizon, you still radiate warmth on those who love you. Watch over your families, they will need your care.

Last year, as I was being consoled by Reed’s Emily Gatlin due to the lack of customers lined up to purchase the next great novel, she mentioned someone I should contact. Someone who she thought I would get along with, and who I had something in common besides middle age and gray hair. She sent his contact information, but I never followed up unable to devise a clever way to make an online introduction.

Skip forward several months and deep in the heart of Jefferson, TX, near the home of Scott Joplin, Don Henley, and T Bone Walker, at a place called Aunty Skinner’s, my wife and I were quaffing red wine and spirits with someone whose name rang a bell. We got along, shared stories, had a couple more than we should have, and I soon realized Emily was right. Neil White’s story, the book based on it, and the aftermath is a tale that had to be told. And Neil, I’m sure much to his chagrin on most days, was given a gift that took years to unwrap  – the gift, as Eudora Welty would say, a sense of place.

While I read a bit, waffling between nonfiction which helps me keep my day job and fiction which entertains and amuses me, I normally save writing for my own selfish pursuits. But in this case, I can’t restrain my appreciation for Neil’s honesty and his recognition there was a greater glory in revering the lives and history of those special people he grew to love.

In the SANCTUARY of OUTCASTS is a memoir based on Neil White’s unimaginable professional and personal free fall. His account poignantly uncovers the real story that had been buried by time and apathy and is reminiscent of Sea Biscuit, similar in its hidden greatness but distinctly different in its discovery. While literary archeologist Hillenbrand meticulously brushed back the sands of time to reveal a gem, Neil descended uncontrolled down an abandoned and lonely mineshaft landing in the bosom of a long forgotten land.

I offer no spoilers of this Southern story with relevance to all our lives, but as I read, fascinated by Neil’s day-to-day life and wincing at his confessions, some too familiar, my subconscious began to formulate the stages of a breach of covenant as my theology teacher used to say. Not unlike the stages of grief, they are simple, direct. First, the sin, some greater than others; second, the crucifixion, punishment for the misdeeds; third, contrition, healing cannot begin without it; fourth, absolution, the gift from others, that all wrongs can be righted, but not always in this life; and finally, enlightenment, clarity in the new day. These are human experiences, exclusive to no one, shared by all.

Thanks Neil, for the openness with which you have let others into your life. We should endeavor to read, learn, and assimilate.

Head to the bookstore, get online, go buy it. You’ll think about the people, their plight, and their lives long after you’ve turned the final page.