Good Morning Kossacks and Welcome to Morning Open Thread (MOT)
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I'm working on a MOT on adolescent brain development but haven't had time to finish it for posting this morning. So, you get a day off from the weekly pontificating and babble-driven dissection of one of my myriad character flaws. I will warn you, however, that I hope to have it finished for next Friday. I suggest that if you have an abhorrent chore you've been putting off (cleaning out the septic tank, root canal, prostate exam, et al.), you may want to schedule it for then.
I have few hobbies, but one that is particularly odd is that I read United States Supreme Court opinions: all of them. For the last 29 years I have read every opinion issued by the Court. At one point in my life, it was to keep up with certain areas of the law as I worked at what is sometimes referred to as "human rights." But old habits die hard and I find reading judicial prose invigorating and instructive (and, admittedly, sometimes infuriating and depressing). This pension for self-abuse is mentioned only as an introduction to next week's MOT; the science of brain development has advanced greatly over the past couple of decades and the Court has had to confront this science in considering the punishment that may constitutionally be meted out in cases involving youthful mistakes.
At the expense of having you jump immediately down to the music, suffice it to say that the judgment exercised by young men and women can't be, and shouldn't be, measured with the same yardstick used for judging decisions made by adults. [Obviously I've been thinking about recent comments in this thread concerning adolescent judgment, which I have wisely avoided; but I promised you a day off and I will honor that promise.]
Bristol, Tennessee is a quaint town in the northeast corner of the state and actually lies directly across the state line from Bristol, Virginia. It's a nice town, and I have fond memories of visiting several times. In fact, I see there's a job opening there in the Department of Parks and Recreation for a Parks & Facilities Worker I; apparently it pays, no joke, $10.6130 an hour. Besides this, however, Bristol is also the birthplace of Country Music. The Carter Family and Jimmy Rodgers both first recorded there and thus was born what really is traditional, truly American music. The story of Sara, her husband A.P. Carter, and Sara's sister Maybelle (who eventually married A.P.'s brother) is well known and even more extensively documented. Jimmy Rodgers was a Mississippian that at one point worked as a brakeman on the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad.
The Bristol Sessions
The Carter Family (1927)
"The Victor Co. will have a recording machine in Bristol for 10 days beginning Monday to record records — inquire at our store."...
That did it. Starting at 9 o'clock on the morning of July 28, musicians by the score showed up at the Taylor-Christian Hat Company building on State Street — Virginia on its north side, Tennessee on the south side — and waited for their chance.
The first soon-to-be-famous name to step in front of the microphone was Blind Alfred Reed, a fiddler who would later record the classic "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live." But, aside from a train-wreck ballad, he recorded sacred material...."
Jimmy Rodgers (Date Unknown)
[J.P.] Nester and [Norman] Edmonds led off Aug. 1's sessions at 12:30 p.m., but five hours later, two women and a man stepped into the room, and everything changed.
A.P. Carter, his wife Sara and Sara's teenage sister Maybelle Addington were from the surrounding countryside, in Maces Springs, Va., and [Ralph] Peer knew he'd struck gold — especially when Maybelle and Sara came back the next morning and cut two duets. The Carter Family, as they called themselves, became one of the biggest acts in America, continuing on in this original form until 1942.
Three days later Jimmy Rodgers walked in and a second star was born. And, although "tuberculosis would kill Jimmie Rodgers five years later, [] he probably sold more records for Victor than any artist before Elvis Presley.
Our past is sometimes a rich bog in which to dig. Good morning and I hope you enjoy your day off.
And Van "The Man" with a shout out to Jimmy Rodgers.
Grab a cup of coffee and join us. What are you planning for next Friday?