Daily Blues & Views

When he died 42 years ago this month, Elvis Presley was hardly himself.  He wasn't even beside himself.  It was more like he became a parody of himself.  That he was only 42, seems to escape us now.  Especially as we watch 75-year-olds like Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan muster the strength and endurance to keep going and doing so as good as ever. Elvis was plagued by everything from bad diet to high blood pressure, liver disease and lots of gastro-intestinal issues.  No wonder he was found dead ingloriously on the toilet.  But for many of his legion of fans, there is no young or old Elvis, no fat or thin Elvis, there is only one Elvis, the undisputed King of Rock and Roll. Elvis, you might remember was the kid from Tupelo, Mississippi who could "move like a black man," in the words of Sam Phillips, ergo "a million dollars."  In reality, many millions of dollars. I saw Elvis in concert once, under interesting circumstances, and it proved to be more compl...

     Guess I'm bound to have this condition for the duration. It never seems to go away. The strength never dissipates either.  I shouldn't be surprised.  It is part of my identity I can't seem to shake.      So what is this cosmic force? The pull to go back to school which is always preceded by going to a stationery store for new supplies.  It's been 13 years this September since I opened a school year and readied a classroom, yet the pull remains.  I think it has something to do with the emotions connected to one of the best parts of a teaching career.  The phenomena of beginning again is at play here.  It's all the "this year I'm going to..." stuff, .and the realization that last year's classes do not exist as entities in the universe any longer. It really is a fascinating condition and so short-lived that it's best to be experienced in full. True career professionals in education find pure joy in opening a school year....

Life in a divided country today is remarkably different than it was during the last era of division.  Computers, and specifically social media, account for that. Fifty years ago, as this nation fought an unpopular war, it wasn’t as easy as it is today to determine the politics of your friends, family, and neighbors. People didn’t post daily. They didn’t discuss their political leanings as readily, and they certainly didn’t articulate their differences the way they do today. They did show up (or not) to political demonstrations during a time that the role of the media was quite different. Historians and social scientists of all stripes agree that the images broadcast during some of those demonstrations had a powerful impact on helping to bridge the divide(s) that encompassed the anti-war movement as well as the civil rights movement. Who could easily forget fire hoses turned on people who wanted nothing more than the right to vote and the guarantees of liberty and justice for all....

"Old Town Road," the popular country/rap crossover is a fascinating phenomena.  Guess it was bound to happen that a gay Black man sitting on a horse rappin" about riding that horse down the old town road would hit the pop charts.  Music in America has always been a place of cultural blending and, as such, it is something this culture can be righteously proud of.  Like food, dance, and a few other select things, music has been the vehicle to showcase our best multi-cultural efforts. Still, the genres, despite their bleeding and bending have remained fairly stable.  Blues is blues, rock is rock, and country is country. Each style has its own characteristics.  The roots remain intact even though the base has often provided the foundation for all sorts of collaborations. Speaking of country music, the great U Utah Phillips (the golden voice of the great southwest) used to say that there was a way that anyone could write a country song.  Phillips was for ...