Deep South with Mike Sigalas

Talking Bunk

2017-01-18T16:06:00.000-08:00

The famous tourist town of Asheville, NC, also serves as the seat of Buncombe County, one of the few counties in the United States whose name has passed into the English language.

Here's how it happened: in February 1820, at the end of a rancorous debate over the admission of Missouri as a state, NC congressman Felix Walker, a Revolutionary War veteran, rose to give a particularly rambling, inconclusive speech completely unrelated to the issue at hand, and focused upon a topic only of any conceivable interest to a few folks back home in his home county. Pressed to explain his actions, Walker explained that he was not actually talking to the people in the room, but to the Congressional record--and the newspapers back home. "I shall not be speaking to the House," he explained, "but to Buncombe."

Thereafter, whenever a congressman's mouth ran ahead of his thoughts, he might well be asked if he, too, was "talking to Buncombe."

The term "talking bunkum" had become synonymous with empty rhetoric by the 1840s. As early as the start of the 20th century, the phrase had morphed into "talking bunk," and can be found in the public statements of such luminaries as Henry Ford.

Dizzy Gillespie of Cheraw, SC

2013-06-06T18:35:00.000-07:00

"I'm Dizzy Gillespie from Cheraw, South Carolina,"...so began many of Jazz music's best performances throughout the better part of the twentieth century.
Jazz icon John Birks Gillespie was born in 1917 in Cheraw, population ca. 3,500--a small cotton town less than ten miles south of the North Carolina border. When he finally left Cheraw--to attend college on a horn scholarship--he'd move just thirty miles north, to the all-black Laurinburg Institute in Laurinburg, North Carolina.
Shortly thereafter, his widowed mother moved up to Philadelphia to live with her sister, and John Birks headed there when he finished at the institute. In Philly, he got into a band, and the rest is Jazz history.

Cheraw Childhood
The youngest of nine children, Gillespie's career as a professional entertainer began years before his career as a musician--as a small boy, he'd dance for money upstairs in the ballroom at Cheraw's (otherwise) all-white Chiquola Club.

When Dizzy was 10, his father, James, died suddenly from asthma, and the Gillespies were plunged into severe poverty. His mother, Lottie, took on work as a maid and laundress, and each child tried to make whatever money he or she could. When he wasn't out dancing for money, Dizzy had taken to sneaking into the Lyric Theatre (now the Theatre on the Green) and watching cliffhangers. He got so good at it that the theater owner finally hired him to keep other kids from doing the same thing. As payment, Dizzy got to watch all the movies he wanted.

Cheraw High, site of Dizzy's first paying gig.

Around 1930, a next-door neighbor brought home a trumpet, and--upon hearing it, John Birks--who had already picked up the trombone and dabbled with the piano--decided that he'd found his true instrument.

Gillespie appeared in minstrel shows put on by Alice Wilson, his music teacher at the all-black Robert Smalls School on Front Street. He later played his first paid gig for the students at Cheraw's white high school.

    In 1933, Gillespie left Cheraw to attend the Laurinburg Institute on a band scholarship.

    Forty years later, an interviewer noted that Gillespie always specified that he was from Cheraw South Carolina, not North Carolina. Half jokingly, he asked Gillespie what difference it made which Carolina he was from. Was there even a difference?
Dizzy's response was telling. Even after decades of border-blurring world travel, the native Sandlapper became thoughtful and explained that the difference was actually quite distinct: "It's funny...right across the state line, they have their own ways. In different states, you find different mores of society."
   For the record, Gillespie didn't pick up his famed nickname until long after his days in Cheraw. Until his death, whenever he came back to visit, old friends and family in Cheraw continued to call him "John Birks."

Click here to hear Dizzy in 1947, playing "Salt Peanuts."

"Only in South Carolina": The DJ, the Crooner, and Folly Beach's $25 "Act of God"

2013-05-23T11:39:00.002-07:00

King of the Moondoggers: WTMA's Jack Gale

In the mid-1950s, Baltimore-born WTMA morning-man Jack Gale was the hottest disc jockey in Charleston. In market share, he was the top-rated radio personality in the entire American South.

Before coming to Charleston, Gale had worked in Cleveland, where he'd witnessed firsthand the popularity of Alan Freed's groundbreaking R&B-oriented Moon Dog Show. Not long after coming aboard to man the turntables in the WTMA studios (upstairs in the old Dock Street Theater), Gale introduced a new Saturday night show, Hound Dog Kingdom, with which he--as the raspy voiced "King of the Moondoggers"--introduced white Charlestonian bobbysoxers to the sounds of Ray Charles, the Orioles, and other R&B acts.

Jack Gale-Concert Promoter
Gale became such a local celebrity that he was able to open up his own record shop and produce a series of concerts at the Folly Beach Pier.

Sometimes these shows made Gale a lot of money; Fats Domino, for instance, drew around 4,000 fans.

But they weren't a sure thing; a young Connie Francis sold so few tickets that Gale's business partner jumped ship and left him to pay the singer's $500 fee by himself, which the DJ dutifully did--with a check that ended up bouncing.

The talented Bronxite was no match for God.

As Gale himself tells the tale in his entertaining memoir, ...Same Time, Same Station, when Bronx-born Jerry Vale came down to play both nights of a weekend at the pier, it rained so hard on Friday night that the crooner drew only around a dozen fans. On Saturday, as it continued to rain--harder--Gale began to sweat...especially when Jerry Vale's manager pointed out that the singer was present and ready to perform, and thus, had fulfilled his part of the contract. The Bronx crooner had $1,600 coming his way, rain or shine.

The Miracle
But it was then--as Gale sat, dejectedly telling his tale of woe to his bartender, that the Lowcountry's famous Good-Old-Boy network kicked into gear. Gale explains,

My bartender said that he didn't like Yankees like Jerry Vale, and if I gave him five minutes, he had an idea that could save me a lot of money.

Desperate, the DJ told him to go ahead, and the barman stepped outside to make some arrangements.

That night, just as Vale's band prepared to begin the eight o'clock show, Folly Beach police chief Herbert Wynne ran onto the pier.

He grabbed the microphone and told everybody he was closing the pier due to lightning... He called it an "Act of God." We gave the few people who braved the weather their money back, and I paid Jerry Vale $800 for the first night. I explained to him that the pier was closed beyond my control.

Vale's manager saw what was happening, and he let Gale know it:

"Only in South Carolina," he fumed, "could you get away with this."

Nonetheless, Gale had saved $800, and he was grateful. And the next morning, when Chief Wynn stopped by to solicit donations for the Folly Beach Police Fund, Gale gladly handed over $25.


The Curse of Jerry Vale? In 1957, the Folly Pavilion would burn. In 1977, it would burn again. In 1989, Hurricane Hugo destroyed the pier. It has since been rebuilt...for now.

APOCALYPSE LOST: Cape Hatteras as Ground Zero

2012-09-03T19:36:00.002-07:00

"Cape Hatteras is a possible site for nuclear tests. It is relatively accessible by water, yet could be easily placed 'out of bounds' for security control."

-Findings of a Top Secret US Atomic Energy Commission report on stateside test sites, 1949.

Fortunately, the deserts of the Nevada were easier to acquire, and the Banks were saved.

Solitude and the Making of James Brown

2012-08-23T08:45:00.003-07:00

James Brown, the late Godfather of Soul, famously spent many of his formative years living in his aunt's brothel in Augusta, Georgia. His first memories, however, were made in Barnwell County, South Carolina, where he was born in 1933. Though his mother deserted his father (and James) for another man in 1935, the single father and his son would continue to live in the Barnwell/Elko area until 1940. In his 1986 autobiography, Godfather of Soul, Brown describes this experience and the effect it had in shaping him:

"It gave me my own mind." The young James Brown.

We lived in a series of shacks all around the Barnwell and Elko areas…The shacks were unpainted, didn't have windows except for shutters that you could pull together; and there was no electricity or indoor plumbing…

Being alone in the woods like that, spending nights in a cabin with nobody else there, not having anybody to talk to, worked a change in me that stayed with me from then on: It gave me my own mind. No matter what came my way after that—prison, personal problems, government harassment—I had the ability to fall back on myself.

The Chapel that Smokes Built

2012-06-18T09:21:00.000-07:00

Originally a Christian school, Duke University was still called Trinity College (after the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) when the Duke family dumped $6 million of cigarette money into its lap. Quicker than you could rip open a pack of Camels, Trinity came off and the Dukes' name went on.

But James Duke didn't feel fully at ease with the idea of knocking God's name off the marquee, and--perhaps to smooth things over with the Almighty--decided to build the campus a chapel.

In general, the university closely followed James Duke's specifications regarding the structure. It was, for instance, built upon the highest spot on campus. (Early plans to have stained-glass depictions of the disciples puffing away on their favorite American Tobacco Company products, however, were eventually shelved.)

The term "chapel," however, was a bit of an understatement. The neo-Gothic Duke University Chapel is patterned after Canterbury Cathedral, is hung with 50 bells, and contains more than 800 carved and painted figures (all non-smoking). James intended the structure to be the central building on campus, and sure enough, the chapel's 210-foot tower has become the best-known emblem of Duke University.

(From Moon Travel Handbooks: North Carolina, 2nd Edition, 2003.)

Crumpets of Freedom: The Edenton Tea Party

2012-03-27T07:30:00.000-07:00

Here’s the story: On October 25, 1774, Mrs. Penelope Barker led a tea party at Mrs. Elizabeth King's house in Edenton, North Carolina. There, the two women and their forty-nine female guests signed a decree vowing to support the resolutions of the colonies' First Provisional Congress, which had banned, among other things, the importation of British tea.

Penelope Barker

This tale has traditionally been accepted as fact in Edenton. A bronze teapot even marks the site of Mrs. King's house, now part of the beautiful town's Old Courthouse Green.

The downside of the tea party legend is that it probably never happened. While it's near-certain that fifty-one North Carolinian women signed their names to a protest document sent to England, many historians doubt whether they all ever sat down together at Mrs. King's house, or anywhere else. The best anyone can figure, it's unlikely that the women, most of them housebound with domestic responsibilities, and who hailed from at least five different counties and a variety of social classes, would or could have ever arranged a mass meeting. Nonetheless, in what is considered one of the earliest examples of political involvement by American women, the women did manage to sign the same piece of parchment, which likely was circulated petition style. In part, it declared:

The Provincial Deputies of North Carolina having resolved not to drink any more tea, nor wear any more British cloth & c., many ladies of this Province have determined to give a memorable proof of their patriotism, and have accordingly entered into the following honourable and spirited association. I sent it to you to shew you faire countrywomen, how zealously and faithfully American Ladies follow the laudable example of their husbands, and what opposition your Ministers may expect to receive from a people thus firmly united against them.

The Edenton Tea Party as imagined by English cartoonists.

This audacious show of feminine resolve shocked British sensibilities, confirming their notion of American men as half-savage rubes who couldn't control their women any better than they could manage their liquor. A London cartoonist imagined the female signers gathered for a decadent tea party complete with snifters and paramours. Apparently when the colonials heard about the alleged incident, they decided to go along with the idea that an actual party had taken place, and before long, the story of the Edenton Tea Party had settled into its present-day form.

The ironic thing, of course, is that the Edenton Tea Party story imagines the women sitting around drinking British tea—while the point of the resolution was that they vowed not to.

(Originally published in Moon Travel Handbooks: North Carolina)

Shoeless Joe Jackson: Baseball's Not-So-Tragic Figure

2012-03-26T06:46:00.000-07:00

Greenville baseball prodigy Shoeless Joe Jackson has become something of an icon over the years, the subject or a character in at least two motion pictures and a one-man play, all in the past 25 years.

In 1888, Joseph Jefferson Jackson was born in Pickens County, the oldest of George and Martha Jackson's eight children. When little Joe was five years old, his father took a job with the Brandon Textile Mill in West Greenville and moved the family down from the hills into one of the Brandon Mill textile villages. A year later, at the age of six, Joe Jackson began working in the textile mills himself.

By age 13, in 1901, Joe made the Brandon Mill baseball team. After five years in the mill leagues, Joe was signed to the semi-pro Greenville New Leaguers. Two years after that, he was hired by the Carolina Association team, the Greenville Spinners. He hit .346 and led the league in batting.

It was while playing for the Spinners at nearby Anderson that Joe got his famous nickname. He found that his new shoes had given him painful blisters on his feet, but because the team only carried 12 players to begin with, and a number were already hurt, his manager insisted that he play. Joe slipped out of his shoes and played the rest of the game--the only game in which he ever did this--in his stocking feet. When he rapped out a triple, an Anderson fan stood up and shouted, "You shoeless son of a gun, you!" The name stuck, though Jackson never did like it.

In 1908, Jackson married Katie Wynn. And later that summer, the Philadelphia Athletics signed him and brought him up to the major leagues.

Joe played the next two years in the minors, but in 1910 he was called up to the Cleveland Indians and hit .387 over the last 20 games of the season. In 1911, his first full season, he batted .408, the highest average ever by a rookie. Amazingly, he didn't even win the batting crown that year, since Ty Cobb picked that same year to hit .420.

Jackson dominated the league for the next seven years. In 1919, while playing for the White Sox, he roomed with a member of the team who conspired to throw the World Series. Though Jackson himself batted .375 and set a record for number of hits, and fielded a perfect 1.000 fielding average, he was named as a co-conspirator in the 1920 Black Sox trial and, though found innocent, was banished for life from organized baseball.

Though Joe did continue to play organized baseball under various aliases for a number of teams through the ‘20s and ‘30s, he never considered himself the tragic figure that the press—and, later, novelist Thomas Kinsella and filmmaker John Sayles--made him out to be.

I have read now and then that I am one of the most tragic figures in baseball. Well, maybe that's the way some people look at it, but I don't quite see it that way myself. I guess one of the reasons I never fought my suspension any harder than I did was that I thought I had spent a pretty full life in the big leagues. I was 32 years old at the time, and I had been in the majors 13 years; I had a lifetime batting average of .356; I held the all-time throwing record for distance; and I had made pretty good salaries for those days. There wasn't much left for me in the big leagues.

Joe Jackson with Greenville youngsters, 1944.

First of all, the conception of Shoeless Joe Jackson as a barefoot mill-town hayseed is way off. True, Jackson's education was limited; his signature is widely prized—partially because he only shakily signed his name a few times in his life—but many often ignore Joe's business success. Even before the scandal, Joe owned a successful valet business in Georgia. After the scandal, Joe and his wife moved to Augusta, and she ran the business while Joe played for the local ball club. After his mother died in 1935, the Jacksons returned to Greenville for the funeral—and stayed for the next 16 years, living at 119 E. Wilborn St. on the south side of Greenville, while Joe became successful owning a liquor store—though he didn't drink—and a dry-cleaning business.

Why did he allow folks to think he was dumb in his baseball days? Joe himself explained:

All the big sportswriters seemed to enjoy writing about me as an ignorant cotton-mill boy with nothing but lint where my brains ought to be. That was all right with me. I was able to fool a lot of pitchers and managers and club owners I wouldn't have been able to fool if they'd thought I was smarter.

When Jackson died of a massive heart attack in December 1951, he was buried in Woodlawn Memorial Park on Wade Hampton Blvd. in Greenville. You'll find his grave in Section V, plot 333. If you want to visit the site, stop by the office at Woodlawn and they'll be glad to give you directions.

In March 1996, the Shoeless Joe Jackson Memorial was dedicated at the old Brandon Mill baseball field. Later that year, the South Carolina legislature passed legislation to change the name of the road that runs near the Brandon Mill Baseball field to "The Shoeless Joe Jackson Memorial Highway."

On May 5, 1998, state legislator J. Verne Smith proposed--and the South Carolina state legislature passed—legislation asking the commissioner of baseball to reinstate Joe Jackson as a member in "good standing" of professional baseball. This is one of the necessary steps that must be accomplished before Jackson can be considered for the Hall of Fame.

To celebrate the 110th anniversary of his birth, Greenville Mayor Knox White declared July 1998 "Shoeless Joe Jackson Month." Plans were made for a public display all month at City Hall of Jackson memorabilia.

For an excellent Web site on Joe Jackson, see www.blackbetsy.com, home of the Virtual Hall of Fame. To see Joe portrayed by D.B. Sweeney as an "ignorant cotton-mill boy," watch John Sayles's fine film Eight Men Out. To see him played with a New Jersey accent by Ray Liotta, watch Field of Dreams. [Originally published in Moon Travel Handbooks: South Carolina.]

The People of the Smokies

2011-07-28T16:16:00.000-07:00

Although people ostensibly come to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to see and experience the wilderness, unless visitors leap out of their cars and run straight into the woods, they will have contact with three groups of Southerners: locals, fellow vacationers, and, in places like Cades Cove, the people who formerly inhabited the Smokies.
The people who live here and work in restaurants, hotels, and all the other jobs-now called the "service industry"-are almost invariably much more polite than they need to be. They can't help it; that's how they were brought up to behave, even to people who don't deserve it. They don't have to be trained to say "sir and "ma'am"; they do it naturally.
As for fellow vacationers, many of them come from the South, and they are friendly as well. The people standing in line with you will talk to you. They will generally ask where their conversationalist is from, make some favorable comment about that place, and, if possible, ask if the speaker "knows so-and-so's brother there--no, he doesn't live there anymore, he got to thinking he was Elvis and they had to put him in a home." And on from there.
The final group of people that visitors may encounter are ghosts-the people who settled the Smokies, who lived their lives in the shadows of the mountains, and who were forced off land that their families, in some cases, had owned for generations so that the rest of us can enjoy pleasant vacations.
Looking at the engineering it took to construct the Mingus turbine mill on the North Carolina side of the park, or at the innovative design of the cantilever barns in Cades Cove, the thoughtful visitor comes to the realization that the people who lived in these mountains were not the stupid hillbillies so often trotted out in popular culture and by the hucksters in towns surrounding the park. The families who settled the Smokies were intelligent, resourceful people who created art in quilts and music, who read and believed the King James version of the Bible, and who lived lives that were in many ways superior to the frantic ones that the rest of us come here to escape.

by Mike Sigalas, from (Moon Handbooks: Smoky Mountains, cowritten with Jeff Bradley).

Nuclear Leakage Near the State Capital

2011-07-12T10:05:00.000-07:00

South Carolina's Heroes of the Alamo

2009-12-27T05:43:00.000-08:00

At one time a popular bumper sticker in the Saluda, South Carolina, area read, Texas Starts Here. Saluda County was, after all, birthplace and childhood home of two of the Alamo's greatest heroes, William Barret Travis and James Butler Bonham.

Travis was co-commander (along with famed frontiersman James Bowie) of the makeshift fortress when the Mexican army led by General Santa Anna arrived in San Antonio. A lawyer by trade, Travis was a fiery, handsome redhead with a restless spirit. Before coming to Texas in 1831, he had already tried Alabama, where both he and his cousin, James Bonham, practiced law.

Travis was a complicated sort. When he moved to Texas, he had professed to convert to Catholicism (a requirement of Mexican citizenship) and declared himself single, though he had left behind a son and pregnant wife in Alabama. Legend has it that Travis, convinced of his wife's infidelity, killed the man he suspected to be the father of her unborn child. His wife claimed desertion and was granted a divorce in early 1835. Meanwhile, Travis kept written documentation of his extramarital conquests and made plans to marry someone else.

And yet William Travis was considered a fair man, and well disciplined. Along with Bowie, he argued that the Alamo was the only thing keeping Santa Anna from invading the vulnerable settlements of East Texas. On February 24, 1836, Travis addressed the following letter, To the People of Texas and All Americans in the World:

Fellow citizens & compatriots –

I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna – I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man. The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken – I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls – I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism, & every thing dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch – The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country – Victory or Death

William Barret Travis
Lt. Col. Comdt.

His letter has been called "the most famous document in Texas history" and "one of the masterpieces of American patriotism."After news of the Alamo's fall became known, Travis' stirring words were reprinted by newspapers and pamphleteers around the world. You can see a copy of the letter in the Saluda County Museum.

Though not a leader at the Alamo, James Bonham is reckoned a heroic figure for having at least once (and perhaps twice) escaped through Mexican lines to seek help – returning to again pierce the lines and rejoin his doomed comrades within the garrison. Bonham pleaded for aid from Colonel James Fannin in nearby Goliad – but was rebuffed. Three days later, all but two of Alamo's defenders were dead.

Bonham was related to the important Butler Family of what is today Saluda County, and his brother, Milledge Luke Bonham, grew up to be governor. According to recent research, James Bonham was Travis' second cousin, and the two spent their early boyhoods attending Red Bank Baptist Church together. Though he was expelled after leading a student protest his senior year at South Carolina College, (now the University of South Carolina), Bonham went on to practice law in Pendleton. There, in one notable incident, he caned an opposing attorney for insulting his female client, and was then arrested after "threatening to tweak the nose" of the judge who attempted to intervene. By 1835, Bonham had set up shop in the Old Southwest, opening a law practice in Montgomery, Alabama, where two of his brothers lived. Before the year was out, however, both of Bonham's brothers had died, and he decided to join Travis in Texas.

Five other South Carolinians perished at the Alamo, but the roles of Travis and Bonham are legendary. On March 5, the day before the Mexicans' final siege, Travis is said to have drawn a line in the sand with his sword, telling the men inside the fortress that whoever was ready to fight to the death should step across and join him on the other side. All but one man did. (Over 150 years later, another emigrant to Texas – President George H.W. Bush – would allude to this bold gesture when he spoke of "drawing a line in the sand" during the Gulf War.)

Today, numerous place-names throughout Texas honor William B. Travis, including Travis County, home of the state capital of Austin, and nearby Lake Travis. But the colonel's legacy reaches further still. Though he lived in Texas for just over four years, the name of this native South Carolinian has become synonymous with the American West in general and Texas in particular. Countless Texan boys are given the rugged first name of "Travis" each year, and Western films regularly use the name "Travis" for their protagonists. (In Executive Decision, Steven Seagal took no chances: his character was named Colonel Austin Travis.) Actors from Lawrence Harvey to Alec Baldwin have portrayed Travis on both big and small screens; in 1991, the bioflick Travis traced his entire life, from South Carolina onward.

Though James Butler Bonham hasn't exactly become a household name, head north of Fort Worth, Texas not far south of the Red River and the Oklahoma border, and you find yourself in the mid-sized city of Bonham, named in honor of the Saluda County native. Home to legendary US Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, Bonham ironically serves as the seat of Fannin County, named for the man who declined to save the Alamo. In the John Wayne film, The Alamo the Duke reserved the choice role of Bonham for his own son, Patrick.

In South Carolina today, you'll find a monument to Travis and Bonham on the lawn in front of the Saluda County Courthouse. The Red Bank Baptist Church, attended by the Travis and Bonham families, still stands today. Bonham's birthplace, now called Bonham House, also stands. To get there, take US 178 east 3.5 miles to SC Secondary Road 328. Take 328 north 0.7 miles to SC 329, and follow this road east for 0.2 mile until you see the old house on the left side of the road. Continue a bit further along SC Secondary Road 329 and you'll reach the Smith-Bonham Cemetery on Richland Creek. James Bonham is not there, of course – his body was burned by Santa Anna's men after the battle, along with those of Travis and all but one of the other Alamo defenders.

You can also find a fine Alamo display at the Saluda County History Museum, including a painstakingly accurate 1/64th scale model of the garrison. Out on SC 121, you'll see a Travis monument erected jointly by Saluda County and the ever-grateful people of Texas.

John Coltrane of High Point, NC: Jazz Music’s Patron Saint

2009-12-13T18:06:00.000-08:00

John Coltrane was born in 1927 in Hamlet, North Carolina, but his family moved to High Point when he was still an infant, and he was raised there. His grandfather, William Blair, served as presiding elder in the A.M.E. Zion Church; his father worked as a tailor and played music at night. By the time John was 12, however, his father and both grandparents were dead. That same year he joined a local band and began playing clarinet and E-flat alto horn. His mother moved north at the start of World War II, and he joined her in Philadelphia in 1943, after graduating high school.

By the time he got to Philadelphia, Coltrane was playing alto sax, but eventually he switched to tenor sax, and later in his career, to soprano. He recorded his first side with a quartet while in the Navy, and later went on to play with Cheraw, S.C.-born Dizzy Gillespie, and later with trumpeter Miles Davis, who fired Coltrane in 1956 because of his heroin addiction, hired him back, and fired him again in 1957.

In 1957, Coltrane experienced what he later described as a spiritual awakening, of which he later wrote:

I do perceive and have been duly re-informed of His OMNIPOTENCE.

Though he’d have some setbacks, Coltrane successfully kicked heroin and signed as a solo recording artist for the first time. His music, always creative, became more radical—“anti-jazz,” Down Beat called it. Now traveling with the Thelonious Monk Quartet, Coltrane experimented with sounding several notes simultaneously. He recorded with Miles Davis on the landmark Kind of Blue, and in 1961 scored a pop hit record with his version of “My Favorite Things,” which became his signature song. This was Coltrane’s most prolific period; he wrote most of his own material, and every year brought several recordings. Perhaps 1965 was his watershed year; he finally reached a happy medium between his experimental leanings and the traditional style with his deeply spiritual album, A Love Supreme, which earned two Grammy nominations. The music was divided into four parts entitled "Acknowledgment", "Resolution", "Pursuance", and "Psalm." It was his best-selling record of all time.

Coltrane died unexpectedly of liver cancer in July, 1967, but he has lived on in the release of his previously unrecorded works—for which he posthumously won a Grammy.

But perhaps his greatest impact has been on another level: Coltrane’s music has been cited by many listeners for its spiritual power—for its ability to convey spiritual truths through sound. The saxophone player named a saint by the African-Orthodox Church, which sees his music as a conduit to the Divine—a sort of aural icon, akin to the traditional painted icon. Coltrane’s image is itself the subject of several such icons to be found clear across the country from High Point, in San Francisco, where the small congregation of St. John the Divine worships each week, using the Tar Heel saxophonists’ music as a sonic liturgy.

Vicksburg: Charleston's Counterpoint to the East

2009-03-20T13:29:00.001-07:00

I spent last week in Vicksburg, MS with my son, researching for an upcoming title for Globe-Pequot Books. Bill Serrat of the Vicksburg Chamber Visitors' Bureau graciously showed me around town and appointed veteran Battlefield Expert Harry McMillan to show me around the National Military Park.

I have often written that the two most Southern places on earth are The Citadel Military College and Beauvoir, Jefferson Davis' final home in Biloxi Mississippi. I must now add to this a third location: Vicksburg's Old Courthouse Museum. More on that, and the reasons for this designation, in a later post. For now, I want to give some overall impressions of what Union and Confederate troops came to call "The Gilbraltar of the South."

Vicksburg sits high above the bluffs above the Yazoo River today. In 1862-1863 when US Grant was trying everything he could think of to take the fortress city, the river was the Mississippi. Built on the inside curve of a hairpin turn, Vicksburg gave its occupants the chance to see boats coming and going for miles. During a portion of these miles, Vicksburg could see the boats traveling quite slowly as they backpaddled to a snail's pace to navigate said turn. Hence, as long as Confederates held Vicksburg, they could keep Union boats from traveling south from the Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico. (To be continued...)

Plantation Life Demographics

2009-01-23T13:36:00.000-08:00

It's easy to romanticize the lives of the privileged few living inside a plantation's Big House, but the vast, vast majority of people who lived, worked, and died on a plantation never even crossed the threshold of the Big House door. On some Lowcountry sea islands, slaves outnumbered slaveowners by 1000 to 1.

Trying to understand life on a pre-War plantation by focusing on its owners is like trying to understand the reality of life in Folsom Prison by studying the daily life of its Administrative Staff.

The Ghost Of Alice Flagg

2009-01-22T05:56:00.000-08:00

One favorite South Carolina legend says that 15-year-old Alice Flagg, buried at All Saints Episcopal Church, Pawleys Island, haunts the area, still looking for an engagement ring her brother hurled into the salt marsh to show his disapproval of her lumberjack beau. Why Alice still wants the engagement ring when her fiancé is long dead is a mystery--apparently ghosts have limited access to the obituaries. And, for that matter, limited access to each other--otherwise, why doesn't she hook up with the lumberjack's spirit now, instead of looking for the ring?

Anyway, not only do some insist that Alice is still among us, but they suggest that she haunts on an on-call basis: to make Alice appear, walk backwards around her grave (marked simply, ALICE) thirteen times and call her name twice. Others recommend starting at the letter "A" on her stone and walking clockwise six times and then counter-clockwise six times.

It is also common for visitors to leave a ring on the huge granite slab atop her grave. Most of these rings are plastic, and groundskeepers remove them lest the local birds choke to death on them. A lovesick ghost teenager is one thing, but nobody wants choking ghost seagulls fluttering around.

Why Hard Rock Park Tanked

2008-11-16T19:06:00.000-08:00

Well, Myrtle Beach's new $400 million Hard Rock Park, just opened in Spring, is for sale--minimum bid, $35 million. It may fetch a higher price, but I doubt it'll be much higher, given the economy, and given how poorly HRP did. After all, when a park's value drops $365 million over one summer, it's likely that the changes it requires will be more than cosmetic.

So what happened? Some will point to the poor economy, but plenty of people spent scads of money on the Grand Strand this year--just not at Hard Rock Park.

Others will point to the park's out-of-the-way location on the way to Conway; this didn't help, but you'd best believe that people would have made the drive for a Disney property, or even a Six Flags. So why not for Hard Rock?

Because Hard Rock Park is about rock and roll, and rock and roll--by definition--is not family friendly. You can put KISS outfits over teddy bears all day long, but even if the kids don't get it, every adult over 20 is waiting for the Gene Simmons bear's tongue to spring out and down somebody's throat.

Walt Disney famously said that Disneyland was born of his desire to create a place where parents and children could share adventures together. Rock and roll is all about leaving the old folks and squares behind and enjoying adventures (music/sex/drugs) that they could never understand--even if we told them about it when we got home.

Oh, don't get me wrong. Hard Rock Park was as friendly as a Rock and Roll-themed park could be...but that's not very friendly.

"The Magic Mushroom Garden?" Nothing like naming an attraction after a hallucinogenic to bring in the grandparents and kiddies!

"Nights in White Satin: The Trip." Get it? Trip...like LSD trip! Ha!

A ride themed after the Eagles' "Life in the Fast Lane"--you remember, that hummable little ditty about the crashing and burning cocaine addicts?

How about the cute shop: The Kitchen Down Below--with the funny Satanic imagery?

The fact is, Hard Rock Park tried to mix two things that don't go together well: hipness and inclusiveness. Rock and roll has always sold itself on being exclusive. You listen to Elvis because your dad and mom hate him. You listen to the Stones because your dad still listens to Elvis. You listen to KISS because they kick the Stones' *ss. Or you listen to Metallica because KISS are a bunch of ***gots. And so on, and on, up to today's Top 40.

Granted, Hard Rock boiled things way down to make them more family friendly, but even then, the whole thing seemed like a show put-on for squares (Dude! I bet they don't even catch the sexual reference for the Wham Bam Chicken! )

Maybe the kids didn't. Maybe our parents didn't. But *we* did get the joke. And while for some this might make the park more attractive, I think most of us felt something incongruous afoot. While Hard Rock Park attempted to sell itself as fun for the whole family, all its double-entendres, in-jokes, and winks and nods belied a cynicism that was a lot more attractive to us at sixteen than it is in our own child-rearing years. By keeping us "in-the-know," Hard Rock Park kept its adult visitors from being able to let down their own guards and release the pre-cynical children within themselves.

That's one of the great selling points of Disney's parks--they allow guests of all ages to act and feel like children again.

I suppose that, with a bigger financial base, Hard Rock Park might have worked as an adults-only, Friday Night Out kind of park--an outdoor House of Blues, with rides--but it would never be the place I'd want to take my kids and mom on a Saturday morning.

A Great Summer Ends, And We Fall Back

2008-11-03T14:44:00.000-08:00

Had a great summer this year--hope you did, too. Spent a couple of weeks at the beach and a couple in the mountains, all in South Carolina. I love this state.

Just got back, last weekend, from a long weekend at Table Rock State Park, near Pickens. The picture at left is just a minor falls along the Carrick Creek Trail.

I'm interested in your own explorations in the American South this year--or heck, anywhere! Drop a line to the address on this page!

The Deep South vs The Sunbelt

2008-07-14T13:41:00.000-07:00

Since I first started writing about the Carolinas in the second half of the 1990s, the the population of South Carolina has swollen like a snakebitten ankle.

The best of the new arrivals hereabouts realize that in moving to South Carolina, they are moving to one of the most unique states in the Union. As many in our culture cry for us all to "celebrate diversity," these people are moving to South Carolina from other (usually northern, sometimes western) climes to do just that--enjoy the unique culture of South Carolina, on South Carolina's own terms. These people I call the Deep Southers. They accept and perhaps enjoy the fact that in moving to South Carolina, they are moving to The South, a part of America unlike any other. Even more, they realize that they are moving to the Deep South, to a part of the South quite different in its history, identity, and affinities than, say, West Virginia or Kentucky—which, in their northernmost reaches and larger cities, might as well be Pennsylvania or Ohio.

The sharpest of the Deep Southers realize that they are also moving to The Old South, the part of the South originally settled by the British in the 1600s, long before the soils wore out and plantation owners moved their homes and slaves (in the early 1800s) to the “New South” or “Old Southwest”—states like Alabama, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Missouri, and Texas. Ever wonder why every famous Tennessean President was originally born in the Carolinas? Ever wonder why so many native South Carolinians (including commanding officer William Barrett Travis, and heroic messenger John Bonham) died at the Alamo? Now you know.

And any good Deep Souther knows that in moving to South Carolina, they are moving to the intellectual and cultural heart of the antebellum South. Charleston was the Southern Boston, though most good Charlestonians might see that as an insult. And Columbia and Charleston were the hotbeds of the secession movement, the spots where—respectively—where the Secession was born, and later, where the War Between the States began. This was no happenstance. Had California seceded from America in 1969 and the first shots had been fired in San Francisco Harbor, it would have happened there—and not in, say, Newport Beach, or Santa Barbara. Columbia was a special target of Sherman in his march across Carolina, and for a reason.

The Sunbelters

The Sunbelters move to South Carolina principally because 1) the weather's warmer, 2) they can usually move up, housewise, 3) their own hometown has become too crime-ridden to retire in, and 4) their parents' generation has already ruined Florida.
Some of these people are very nice, but they accomplish the unique feat of acting the part of The Ugly American right here in America. They rail against Blue Laws and laugh at the natives' accents, dress, politics, and courtesies. They make no effort to learn how South Carolina views itself and its history...the worst of them, rather, feel that it is their job to enlighten the natives on How Things Really Are.
People can do what they want, obviously. There are people who would colonize the Moon and immediately complain about the lack of cable TV. But the homogenization of South Carolina into "mainstream American culture" is a mixed blessing, at best. Yes, it's nice to see racism and chainsmoking disappearing from the scene. It's good to see land conservation and mixed-use developments on the rise--especially as they help protect some of South Carolina's most notable traits--its wildlife and abundance of natural environments, and its strong sense of community (something that has been largely lost by many of the Northern-style mega-developments with their senselessly winding, sidewalkless streets--or Courts, Vistas, Lanes--and crowded with the sound of rider mowers, leaf blowers, and the groan of electric garage doors lifting to swallow yet another minivan.

Wow. This is leaning towards a rant. Forgive me. What was I saying? Oh yes--many non-Carolinians are bringing in some good ideas, and some much needed perspective on the preciousness of open space and community. But if you're moving to Mexico, learn Spanish. Learn the Feast Days. Study some Mexican history. Anyone who didn't do this would be considered a dolt.

So let's give South Carolina the same respect. This isn't just another part of the U.S., this is South Carolina, founded 1670, with a proud history and strong sense of itself and a STATE (think Austria, Switzerland), not just one of "the states." Anyone who has lived here six months and doesn't know the difference between Beach Music and the Beach Boys, and can't roughly sketch out Sherman's path through Carolina in '65 should be summarily deported to Ohio. (Which is probably where they came from, anyway.)

Love, Mercy and Sweet Tea
Mike

At Last: Yanks Break Free from Pierre Pressure!

2008-07-07T05:40:00.001-07:00

A Time article, published today here, suggests that culturally sensitive Americans can blush a bit lighter--we're no longer the worst of the worst.

Better yet--the French are the worst!

How have we at long last bested the Frogs? We're less obnoxious when we travel!

I'll write more on this, but here's the link to the article.

Of Mustard and Myrtle Beach

2008-06-03T00:57:00.000-07:00

My crack research staff and I enjoyed a memorable Memorial Weekend. Our hotel was one of the Strand's newest, the Grey Poupon-colored Anderson Ocean Resort.

With its Spanish-styled color scheme, the Anderson stands out like...well, like a gourmet-mustard-colored thumb amongst the predictable aquas and grays of Ocean Boulevard's skyline So does its matching multi-story parking garage. The garage stands a full block away on Oak Street (valet parking available), but thanks to the spicy brown color-coding, you'll have no difficulty figuring out which parking garage belongs to the resort.
As with so many other gourmet items that have become common in our society, gourmet mustard, when it first became popular in the 1970s, struck many of us pragmatists (I was a very young pragmatist back then) as...well...off the mark. I remember the first time a friend's mom (I'm thinking it was Buddy Theilen's mom, but I could be wrong) slipped some Gulden's on me. My reaction was, "Wow! That's sure unique. Now can you hand me the real mustard?"
But like good mustard, as with $4.00 coffees and bottled water, when the product is not just gimmicky, but a true re-imagining of the original item, given time, a great new version of a product ends up changing the definition of the product itslf. What at first seems ridiculously extravagant gradually comes to seem not a reasonable variant, but the standard for the product itself. Such is the Anderson's class and impressive service that by the time we left the Resort on Monday morning, it seemed as though it was the rest of Myrtle Beach that needed a paint job. If mustardy paint brings this sort of quality to Ocean Drive, then bring on the Gulden's!

Many thanks to the ever-helpful and gracious Kimberly Miles at the Myrtle Beach Chamber and Visitors Bureau.

Dang-It Dolls on the Front

2008-05-12T06:45:00.000-07:00

Here's a neat AP article on a Cayce grandmother who makes and has sent thousands of stress-relieving dolls to America's military fronts.

2008-05-12T06:31:00.000-07:00

Pisgah National Forest

2008-04-25T08:33:00.000-07:00

Right now I'm taking a break from writing by...writing. Hmmm. Well, I'm writing today about Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina, south of the Smokies. In the book I co-wrote with Jeff Bradley, Moon Handbooks: Smoky Mountains, I emphasize that most of what a lot of folks come to the Smokies for can be found in several of the much-less-crowded National Forest Lands, including Nantahala and Pisgah.

Did you know that Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the busiest National Park in the system. The reason? Mainly because it's located within a day's drive of over half of the American population.

Here's another scary fact: of all those millions of visitors each year, only a relative handful ever venture more than 50 yards from their car. Even those that camp usually camp right beside their SUVs.

Which brings me to my point--and this can be true of other national forest land near, say, Mount Lassen or Yellowstone or even Yosemite. For many visitors, the Smokies is really just "the mountains." They're coming (and this is no criticism) to set up the tents or trailer, cook over a propane stove and roast marshmallows around the fire. And that's totally fine, particularly if you're traveling with very small, aged, or disabled folks who can't really make it up to the top of Half Dome anyway. But if that's what you're coming for, then you don't need to go to an overcrowded National Park.... The facilities at the state parks are usually no more spartan than the Nationals, and sometimes they even have hot showers. And then you can always hop in the car and daytrip to see the famous sites inside the National Park...and, I suppose, just to be able to say you've been.

My Poor Kids

2008-04-22T16:29:00.000-07:00

Does anybody else sit at the kitchen table, entertaining his/her kids by reading them the colorful history of New Bern, NC? I did that today, although my oldest liked it, or at least, the first 20 minutes of it.

South Carolina Handbook, compared to other Travel Handbooks

2008-04-21T06:57:00.000-07:00

These stats come courtesy of Amazon.com. I was very happy to see I used shorter words than most. (That's how I get my word counts up....) However, I think--if I read the last section correctly--I use longer sentences than some, which is something I want to improve upon, as it is confusing for readers when they have to try to follow along with the logic of a single--though greatly qualified--thought, no matter how many single-syllable words I use.

Complexity
Complex Words: 28% have fewer, 72% have more
Syllables per Word: 24% have fewer, 76% have more
Words per Sentence: 56% have fewer, 44% have more

Number of Characters
Characters 75% fewer, 25% more (hey, I’m trying to be comprehensive)
Words 75% fewer, 25% more
Sentences 70% fewer, 30% more

My average sentence is 17.6 words, and my average word is 1.6 syllables.

Again, the comparisons above are versus other travel guidebooks. Versus all books carried on Amazon.com, only 6% of them have more words.

Wow. No wonder it took a year to write the first edition.