Oxford American #72

The latest issue of Oxford American has just arrived, and shows the writer Barry Hannah (1942-2010), who died last March, on the cover.  It contains several pages of tributes, and an article on him by John Oliver Hodges. He was born in Meridian, Mississippi, and died in Oxford MS, where he had taught Creative Writing at Ole Miss for 28 years. Hodges took a drive around Tuscaloosa AL with Hannah a few years ago, and I'd already seen the 10-minute video of it, which is here.  An example of Hannah's writing is this short story 'The Spy of Loog Root', published in Oxford American in 1992. This is his obituary in The Guardian, although far more interesting is this article in The New York Observer.

Also in this season's issue is an article about someone unfamiliar to me: Judy Bonds, a coal miner's daughter from Whitesville, West Virginia who died in the New Year, and was a staunch campaigner against mountaintop removal.
Another thing that initially catches my eye (apart from a few pages of correspondence between Eudora Welty and William Maxwell)  is the editor Mark Smirnoff  saying 'the book and first movie handled the material with more wisdom and art' of the Coens' True Grit re-make. Maybe I was right not to go and see it then, although I'll no doubt catch it when it comes to DVD.  And while on the subject, this February Will Self wrote a revisionist take on the Coens.

Oxford American Southern State Annual Series

Oxford American: The Southern Magazine of Good Writing is published by the Oxford American Literary Project, inc. and The University of Central Arkansas in Conway. It is a quarterly publication  that owes its name to its original place of publication, Ole Miss (The University of Mississippi) in Oxford. For twelve years it has included a CD of Southern music every first quarter, which covers a number of decades and a wide variety of music. In 2010 it began its Southern State Annual Series with 27 songs from Arkansas.

This album contains the following:

1. Bobby Brown & the Curios - 'I Viborate' (c. 1959)

2. Maxine Brown - 'Take It out in Trade' (1969)

3. Frank Frost - 'Now What You gonna Do' (1962)

4. The Esquires - 'Sadie's Way (1965)

5. Kenni Huskey - 'Wild Man Tamer (c. 1966)

6. Sister Ernestine Washington - 'Holding On' (Part Two) (1954)

7. Larry Donn - 'I'll Never Forget You' (1963)

8. Johnny & Dolores - 'Sockin' Soul' (1968)

9. Wayne Raney - 'You Better Treat Your Man Right' (1951)

10. Little Beaver - 'Everybody Has Some Dues to Pay' (c. 1970)

11. Carolina Cotton - 'Three Miles South of Cash (in Arkansas)' (1946)

12. Sleepy LaBeef - 'Treat Me Like a Dog' (1996)

13. True Gospel Wymics - 'Oh Yes That's Right' (c. 1987)

14. Wayne Jackson - 'It Happened in Tennessee' (Part Two) (1973)

15. Linda Brannon - 'I'm Leavin'' (1958)

16. American Princes - 'Auditorium' (2008)

17. Andy Starr - 'Round and Round' (1956)

18. William Grant Still - 'Suite for Violin and Piano' (Third Movement) (1943)

19. Suga City - 'Savoir Faire' (2009)

20. Claudia Whitten - 'Bring Me All the Love You Got' (c. 1972)

21. Billy Lee Riley & the Little Green Men - 'Baby Please Don't Go' (1958)

22. The Gunbunnies - 'Water Tower' (1990)

23. Larry Davis - 'Down Home Funk' (Part One) ( c. 1974)

24. Oliver Lake Organ Trio - 'Gano' (2008)

25. Jim Mize - 'Release It to the Sky' (2007)

26. Amina Claudine Myers - 'Dirty No-Gooder's Blues' (1980)

27. Chris Denny - 'Vacation' (2007)

This year's CD is music from Alabama. Certainly to me the most interesting singer on it is the larger-than-life cartoonish Rev Fred Lane and his avant-garde band the Raudelunas from the 1970s and 80s, who were influenced by Dada, the Theatre of the Absurd, Surrealism and Alfred Jarry's 'pataphysics, and musically by the likes of John Cage, Stockhausen, and John Coltrane. They were a reaction against the dullness of Tuscaloosa and the failed hippy movement of the previous decade. The article in Oxford American - by Lee M. Shook, Jr - describes Lane as 'irreverent as Frank Zappa, as subversive as Captain Beefheart, and as playful as the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band'. Three albums with such titles as From the One That Cut You and Car Radio Jerome scarcely had any impact, with the record label owner that released them even stating that he'd not be at all surprised if the material had come out of a 1940s' insane asylum.

Addendum: A number of Fred Lane's songs are on YouTube! Some titles: 'I Talk to My Haircut', 'The Man with the Foldback Ears', 'Fun in the Fundus', 'The French Toast Man'.

Oh, the tracks:

1. Charlie Louvin* - Introduction

2. Ralph 'Soul' Jackson - 'Match Box' (1971)

3. Curley Money & His Ramblers - 'Stop Your Knockin'' (1957)

4. The K-Pers - 'The Red Invasion' (1968)

5. The Maddox Brothers & Rose - 'New Mule Skinner Blues ' (c. 1948)

6. Mary Gresham - 'Get on Back on the Right Track' (c. 1972)

7. Phosphorescent - 'It's Hard to Be Humble (When You're From Alabama)' (2010)

8. Odetta - 'The Times They Are A-Changin'' (1965)

9. Black Haze Express - 'Pretty Soon' (1971)

10. Hardrock Gunter & the Pebbles - 'Gonna Dance All Night' (1950)

11. Jim Bob & the Leisure Suits - 'Gangland Wars' (1982)

12. Dan Pickett - '99 ½ Won't Do' (1949)

13. Sammy Salvo - 'A Mushroom Cloud' (1961)

14. Judy Henske & Jerry Yester - 'Snowblind' (1969)

15. Lil Greenwood - 'I'm Crying' (1953)

16. Sam Dees - 'The World Don't Owe You Nothing' (1973)

17. The Gosdin Brothers - 'There Must Be a Someone (I Can Turn To)' (1968)

18. G-Side featuring Sound of Silence - 'Huntsville International' (2009)

19. Eddie Cole & His Gang - 'Abalabip' (1950)

20. Crazy Teens - 'Crazy Date' (1959)

21. Rev Fred Lane and Ron 'Pate's Debonairs - 'Rubber Room' (1983)

22. Baker Knight - 'My Memories of You' (1963)

23. Dinah Washington - 'Cold, Cold Heart' (1951)

24. Robert Brown & the Sons of the South - 'Nobody Knows' (1981)

25. Sex Clark Five - 'Red Shift' (1985)

26. King Britt featuring Sister Gertrude Morgan  - 'Precious Lord Lead Me On' (2005)

27. Various - 'Berlin Wall' (1965)

Wondrous stuff!

*Charlie Louvin, most famous for his part in the Louvin Brothers until 1963, in which he played with his wild brother Ira, died on 23 January this year at the age of 83.

New Albany, Mississippi: William Faulkner: Literary Landmarks of the Southern United States, #13

'William Faulkner. Here, September 25, 1897, was born the distinguished author, member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and recipient of the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature.'

Although Faulkner's birthplace no longer exists, a model of it is in the Union County Museum a few houses down from the street marker.

At the back of the museum, as a tribute to Mississippi's most distinguished literary son, is a literary garden, with a large number of plants mentioned in Faulkner's work, and markers showing the appropriate quotations.

Jimson Weed. 'Here. Here's you a jimson weed. He gave me the flower.' '...Ben squatting before a small mound of earth...at either end of it an empty bottle of blue glass that once contained poison was fixed in the ground. In one was a withered stalk of jimson weed...' William Faulkner, The Sound and the fury.

Bridal Wreath/Spirea. 'About this half-moon of lawn...were bridal wreath and crepe myrtle bushes as old as time and huge as age could make them'. William Faulkner, Sartoris.

'Drusilla faced Bayard, she was quite near; again the scent of verbena in her hair seemed to have increased a hundred times as she stood holding out to me, one in each hand, two dueling pistols.' William Faulkner, The Unvanquished.

Oxford, Mississippi: William Faulkner: Literary Landmarks of the Southern United States, #12

'The Falkner House. Built in 1931 as the home of Murry and Maud Falkner, the parents of Nobel Prize winning author William Faulkner. [William had added the "u" some years previously.] The house stands on land purchased in 1898 by J. W. T. Falkner, William Faulkner's grandfather.'

William Faulkner bought Rowan Oak, which had been empty for several years, in 1930, when it was then known as 'The Bailey Place'. It was built in the 1840s by Colonel Robert Sheegog, a planter from Tennessee. Faulkner moved in with his wife Estelle and his two step-children, Malcolm and Victoria. Their daughter Jill was born a few years later. Here, the Faulkners lived until Faulkner's death in 1962.

Three views of Rowan Oak.

Faulkner's bedroom. On the mantelpiece on the other side of the room is a prominent '64', an identifying number that Faulkner wore at a horse show.

Faulkner's office has the plot of his novel A Fable written on the wall. He sometimes took the typewriter and one of the Adirondack chairs outside to work.

The library. The painting of Faulkner is by his mother Maud Butler, and the sculpture in the foreground is by the Brazilian Marnarz, a student of Jean Arp's.

Estelle's bedroom, where she painted and bird watched. Faulkner thought air conditioning unnatural, and wouldn't allow any in the house, although Estelle had some installed immediately after his funeral.

Jill's bedroom. The painting of her is also by Maud Butler.

The servants' quarters, and once home of their much loved caretaker 'Mammy Callie'.

Original detached kitchen from the 1840s, adapted by Faulkner into a smokehouse for his hams.

The 1840s barn, which Faulkner used for storage, was later rebuilt from the original wood.

The paddock and stable, built by Faulkner for his horses in the late 1950s.

Memory House on 406 University Avenue, Oxford. This was the home of John Faulkner, William Faulkner's brother, who was also a novelist, and who wrote My Brother Bill: An Affectionate Reminiscence very shortly after his brother's death.