Miss Dolly and a Boy Named Sue

Still cool, light clouds. 

It was always on at my mother's parents house on weekend afternoons. Flatt and Scruggs sponsored by Martha White Flour followed by the Porter Waggoner Show, featuring Dolly Parton. That's where "Miss Dolly" (at best half the height of the lanky, spangle-suited Waggoner) first became known as a performer. Later, Dolly split with Waggoner and created the "crossover" persona most everyone in America knows. But when the O Brother, Where Art Thou? phenomenon took over popular American music, Dolly Parton returned to her roots and recorded at least two (I think) albums of mountain ballads, delivered with the clarity and candor she is known for.

We heard it all the way through at least once a month. One of the football coaches at my high school also supervised one of three gargantuan (for our town) study halls to accommodate our equally gargantuan freshman class (The high school was built to accommodate around 800 students total. Our freshman class alone had twice that many). To keep us entertained on Fridays, Coach G would bring a portable record player with a built-in speaker and play a Johnny Cash record. His favorite was Live at Folsom Prison. A classic country record, it contains Cash's recording of Shel Silverstein's "A Boy Named Sue." We kids roared with laughter every time, no matter how familiar the song was. I had it memorized. I had no choice. During the same O Brother ... phenom, Cash recorded his own set of Appalachian ballads. I forget the name of the CD, but I've heard it and it's good.

If you listen to these more traditional songs and ballads of Southern Appalachia, you may better see why bossa nova also grabbed me. The rhythms are many miles apart, but the down-to-earth lyrics and the apparently simple, yet infinitely subtle, guitar-based musics have much in common. And both have been clearly influenced by the music of slaves brought from Africa. In a deep and broad sense, the "blues" permeates both.

Don't believe that about "country" music? Get the CD by Darrell Scott titled Aloha From Nashville. Try the song "Banjo Clark." By the way, "Martha White" is an advertising creation, like "Betty Crocker." Scott's "The Ballad of Martha White" is a real "hoot," as we used to say. 

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*I've left Porter Wagoner's last name misspelled, just as it was in the original post.


LJ orig.: 01/11/07