Friday Video: The Winding Stream: The Carters, the Cashes, and the Course of Country Music.

The Carter Family. From the Winding Stream.

The Winding Stream: The Carters, the Cashes and the Course of Country Music, a film by Beth Harrington, is now in post production!

It’s impossible to overestimate the influence the Carter family had, and continues to have, on country, roots, and traditional music. Mother Maybelle’s guitar playing revolutionized the instrument and she popularized the auto-harp, as well. Their songs have been covered by countless musicians off all genres and all of their recordings are still in print today.

There’s been much written about the Carters and the Cashes, but this is the first film to trace and explore all aspects of their continual influence in the world of music. Here’s a short synopsis from the film’s webpage:

Starting with the seminal Original Carter Family, A.P., Sara and Maybelle; this film-in-progress traces the ebb and flow of their influence, the transformation of that act into the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle, the marital alliance between June Carter and music legend Johnny Cash, and the efforts of the present-day family to keep this legacy alive.

The film features interviews with Johnny Cash (who granted an interview shortly before his death), Roseanne Cash and the living Carter family members, as well as performances by roots musicians like the Be Good Tanyas and Jay Farrar.

Beth Harrington is also the producer of the film Welcome to the Club: Women in Rockabilly, which received a Grammy nomination in 2003.

To complete post production they’ve turned to Kickstarter to help raise some funds.  Check out a few of the previews below.  And, if you feel so inclined, help them out with their project. This is such an important story! To visit their Kickstarter page click here.   And if you’re a Twitter user, you can subscribe to the film’s tweets, which tell the story of the Carters in one tweet a day!  Check it out there.

And here are a few of the clips available via The Winding Stream’s webpage.

The North Carolina Chocolate Drops:

And here’s a pieced-together song circle featuring several musicians singing “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

Friday Video: Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story.

From PBS.

While in Memphis for the Folklorists in the South retreat we visited the amazing Stax Museum and heard a little bit about working behind the scenes at the museum from Levon Williams, curator of collections.  The visit to Stax was inspiring, and an excellent example of the power of music to work toward change.  So this week’s Friday Video is a trailer from PBS’s 2007 Great Performances presentation, Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story. 

Stax was amazing for many reasons, especially its integrated approach to music in the same town where sanitation workers were paid less-than-human wages, leading to the Sanitation Worker’s Strike which was linked to MLK’s Poor People’s Campaign.   In addition to the genre-altering and community-building music, they also produced documentaries like the Wattstax concert and documentary in Los Angeles,  a film, according to PBS POV, that “captures a heady moment in mid-1970s, “black-is-beautiful” African-American culture, when Los Angeles’s black community came together just seven years after the Watts riots to celebrate its survival and a renewed hope in its future.” To enable everyone a chance to attend, tickets were sold for only a dollar each.  On many levels Stax was a movement a gave birth to a new form of music, soul music,  a raw and transcendent blend of gospel, blues, country, and jazz.

Here’s what PBS says about Stax and this film:

The legacy of Stax Records is a unique one that spans more than half a century. Stax Records is critical in American music history as it’s one of the most popular soul music record labels of all time – second only to Motown in sales and influence, but first in gritty, raw, stripped-down soul music. In 15 years, Stax placed more than 167 hit songs in the Top 100 on the pop charts, and a staggering 243 hits in the Top 100 R&B charts. It launched the careers of such legendary artists as Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Sam & Dave, Rufus & Carla Thomas, Booker T, & the MGs, and numerous others. Among the many artists who recorded on the various Stax Records labels were the Staple Singers, Luther Ingram, Wilson Pickett, Albert King, Big Star, Jesse Jackson, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, the Rance Allen Group, and Moms Mabley.

But Stax Records was more than just a label. It was a culture. While segregation was fervently supported in the South during Stax’s formative years in the 1960s, Stax was one of the most successfully integrated companies in the country – from top management and administration to its artists. With more than 200 employees, it was the fifth-largest African-American owned business in the United States during its time.

Teachers should take note that this film comes with a lesson plan including assignments that help students to both identify genres of music and the role Stax played in the community.  Check out the lesson plans by clicking here. 

For more information on the film and viewing options click here.  

Friday Video: Where Do They All Go?

Today’s Friday Video is a preview of the upcoming film, Where Do They All Go? by Tom Davenport.

Davenport is currently raising money to finish the film on Indiegogo.  This film follows Dr. Jerry A. Payne, “Entomologist, Georgia Naturalist, Uppervillian, Friend and Artist,” who remembers, as a child, looking at dead animals in the woods and wondering how they al disappeared.  As he says in the preview, “Animals die all the time.  Where do they all go?”

According to the producers, this film will be of special interest to anyone who enjoys watching birds and butterflies, those interested in the intersection of science and religion, entomologists, forensic scientists, and anyone interested in the history of northern Virginia.  It will also be of interest to those who find themselves pondering concepts of death, aging, and friendship.  Isn’t that all of us?  Sounds utterly fascinating, doesn’t it?

Here’s Davenport’s full description of the film:

Jerry and I met each other in the 1950s, riding the school bus to our small rural Marshall High School in northern Virginia.  His high school nickname was “Osmosis” because of his interest in the biological sciences.

Jerry grew up in a tenant farmer family on Llangollen, a 4000 acre estate and thoroughbred horse farm in Loudoun County near Upperville, VA.  Jerry describes his family as “hunter gatherers”.  His father and mother came from Appalachian backgrounds, with only grade school educations.  But Jerry’s mother Becky Payne, encouraged him to get an education so he could leave the farm. “When I got to college and they closed the door of the classroom, we were all equal.”

Jerry excelled and completed his PhD at Clemson University in South Carolina.  With the encouragement of his beloved teacher, the entomologist Dr. Edwin Wallace King, Jerry did a remarkable study of insect succession in carrion, using dead baby pigs he collected from local farms.

This study attracted national attention in Time Magazine and Scientifc American, and became a foundation of modern forensic science.  Jerry donated his 16mm time-lapse footage of the decomposition of a baby pig to the Smithsonian Institution, and on Youtube the clip has over 2 million views.

After retiring from a career in the field with the US Department of Agriculture in Georgia, Jerry and his wife Rose devote themselves to their 80 acre nature preserve near Macon, Georgia which they walk nearly everyday in the tradition of Darwin and his wife.

Both he and Rose excel at the taxonomy of birds, butterflies, and native plants, and they are active in naturalists circles in Georgia where they often bird and butterfly watch with Father Francis Michael Stiteler, the abbot of the Trappist Monastery of the Holy Spirit near Conyers, GA.  Jerry’s artwork (he paints bones and odd pieces of wood he finds in the woods) is often a prize in fund raising efforts by the Enviromental Resouces Network (T.E.R.N.)

Click on the link below to watch the video. 

Friday Video: Almeda Riddle: Now Let’s Talk About Singing.

From the Arkansas Encyclopedia

This past week I had my students watch a few films from the wonderful resource, Folkstreams, an internet site hosting hundreds of folklife films.  One of the films we watched was Almeda Riddle: Now Let’s Talk About Singing.  The film was produced by George West in 1985.

It had been a few years since I’d seen the film, and after watching again I discovered how many layers can be found in this story.  There are underlying discussions about the role of music and memory, tradition and future, even tradition and tradition bearer.  In case you are unfamiliar with ballad singer, Almeda Riddle, here’s a short description of the fim from the Folkstreams site:

Almeda Riddle was born in 1898, near Greer’s Ferry, Arkansas and lived her entire life in that area. Her father was a fiddler, a singer, and a teacher of shaped-note singing. The church she attended throughout her life used unaccompanied singing and this practice reinforced her use of traditional unaccompanied style as a ballad singer.

This video tells how and where Almeda Riddle began her 10 year stint of singing old ballads all over the country. In an informal manner, folk musician Starr Mitchell chats with Riddle about her singing tours and her commitment to preserving the past for the future. The video was filmed two years before Almeda’s death in 1986.

Almeda was “discovered” by John Quincy Wolfe, a professor at Arkansas (now Lyon) College who brought her to the attention of Alan Lomax, John Lomax’s son. Alan had, by this time, taken up the work his father had begun and was the best known collector of American traditional music. Usually called Granny Riddle, Almeda traveled to such places as Harvard and the Newport Folk Festival to sing, and she left behind an extensive body of recorded traditional songs.

More than eighty field recordings of Almeda Riddle can be heard, along with scores by other Arkansas singers, on the website “The John Quincy Wolfe Collection: Ozark Folksongs”.

Due to copyright  laws I can not embed the video here.  Click here to stream the video from the Folkstreams site.  

To learn more about Almeda, read her entry at the Arkansas Encyclopedia here. 

Friday Video: Truck Farm

From Truck Farm film.

This week’s video is a teaser from one of the films they showed last week at the Dig In Festival in Fayettveille, Arkansas.

Based in Brooklyn, this film chronicles the making of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in the back of a 1986 truck, an effort to supply healthy, locally grown food in urban centers.  The concept has grown and there are truck farms popping up all over the nation.

Follow the project online and watch portions of the film via truckfarm.com.   Check out the film teaser below.

Would something like this work in your hometown?  Maybe you already have a truck farm.  We’d love to hear about it!

Friday Video: Seed Swap Documentary

From Seed Swap Documentary

This week’s Seed and the Story column looked at the organization Conserving Arkansas’s Agricultural Heritage (CAAH) and the annual Seed Swaps currently taking place throughout the state.  This afternoon we will be posting a radio piece which will air on KUAF today  profiling voices from the swap last year in Russellville.

In keeping with this coversage of CAAH, today’s Friday Video is a trailer for the film, Seed Swap Documentary.  Produced by Zachariah McCannon, the film documents the early days of the CAAH organization and the work of anthropologist Dr. Brian Campbell as he organizes the first seed swap in Mountain View, Arkansas.   According to the film’s Facebook page:

This documentary film uses the development of a seed exchange and agricultural biodiversity conservation project in the Ozark Mountains as an ethnographic lens to explore the seed saving subculture of the region. 

To learn more about the film, follow the project on facebook here.

To read more and to keep up with screenings around the state, visit the film’s webpage.  It looks like there will be screenings coming up this March in Fayetteville, Hot Springs and Eureka Springs.

And don’t forget there will be a swap this Saturday in Russellville and one Sunday in Conway.  Go here for a full listing of swap dates and times. 

Friday Video: Alice Walker

From AALBC.

We’re back up and running with a Friday Video after a few weeks without a dependable computer.

This week’s video features poet, novelist, and activist, Alice Walker.  She’s most well known as the author of the novel The Color Purple and the person who saved Zora Neale Hurston from historical obscurity.  The name of this blog is drawn from a Zora Neale Hurston quote, and no doubt I’d never come across her work if it weren’t for the diligence of Walker, who revived her legacy and place a tombstone at her burial site.

A few years ago when working full time for public radio I had the opportunity to interview author Evelyn White about her then recent book, Alice Walker: A Life.   I’d loved Alice Walker for years—poured over Once during college and underlined 3/4 of the story “Everyday Use.”  But it wasn’t until I read her official biography that I began to fully comprehend the layers of Walker’s influence as author, social radical and freedom fighter. Walker is both loved and hated, lauded and discredited.  Her work brings out strong emotions, asking people to wrestle with questions of race, peace, environment, and self.  Her biography remains one of my favorite books of all time.

Yesterday ColorLines magazine posted this video, in honor of Walker’s 68th birthday.  It was originally released in 2010 by Google, but I’d never seen it until yesterday.  It’s full of timeless concepts, so it’s not dated.  It’s a long one, and I have not had a chance to get through the whole thing yet.  But what I’ve watched so far discusses her work in Gaza regarding International Women’s Day, her belief in the power and democracy of new media, and the importance of imagination in empathy and action.  She also talks about her “literary formothers,” including Hurston, her own mother, and others.

You can visit Walker’s blog here. 

If you have’t read it already, I highly reccomend her biography written by Evelyn White. 

Friday Video: Rest in Peace Etta James

Decided to scratch the Friday Video I had planned for today.  Rest in peace, Etta James.  Thank you for your music.

Friday Video: Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock.

From the U of A page. Daisy Bates with six of the Little Rock Nine. Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock. Courtesy of Independent Television Service, 2012.

I’m super excited about this week’s Friday Video, a trailer for the upcoming film, Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock.

Produced by Sharon La Cruise, this film will makes its debut on February 2, 2012 on PBS’s Independent Lens.

If you live in Fayetteville, however, you can catch a pre-screening of the film Thursday January 19 at 2:oo PM at the Donald W. Reynolds Center.  The event is hosted in connection with Martin Luther King Jr. week and organized by the University Libraries and Diversity Affairs.  After the screening, producer and director Sharon La Cruise, “will discuss the documentary filmmaking process as well as the social and historical issues the film brings to focus.”  If you live in the northwest Arkansas area this is a great opportunity.  If you get a chance to attend the event please let us know because we’d love to perhaps do a follow up post about the event.

Here’s more on the film.  Continuing from the University of Arkansas press release:

Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock tells the story of a seven-year journey by La Cruise to unravel the life of the Arkansas civil rights activist Daisy Bates. Beautiful, glamorous and articulate, Bates was fearless in her quest for justice, stepping into the spotlight to bring national attention to civil rights issues. Unconventional and  strong-willed, she became a household name in 1957 when she fought for the right of nine black students to attend the all-white Central High School in Little Rock. Her public support divided the Little Rock community and the state itself – culminating in a constitutional crisis that pitted President Dwight D. Eisenhower against Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus. 

To read the press release in its entirety click here.  

Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock premieres on the Emmy Award-winning PBS series Independent Lens on Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 9 p.m.http://newswire.uark.edu/article.aspx?id=17459

Friday Video: “We Got to Have More Love, More Understanding…” Sister Rosetta Tharpe, France, 1960

Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Photo public domain.

Every so often I do my routine Rosetta search on Youtube to see what videos have made their way into the world of the internet.

If you’re not familiar with Arkansas’s own Sister Rosetta Tharpe, here’s a bit of background on this amazing woman from Cotton Plant who bridged the worlds of sacred and secular music.  From the Arkansas Encylcopedia:

Rosetta Nubin was born in Cotton Plant (Woodruff County) on March 20, 1915, to Katie Bell Nubin, an evangelist, singer, and mandolin player for the Church of God in Christ (COGIC). No mention is found of her father. Nubin began performing at age four, playing guitar and singing “Jesus is on the Main Line.” By age six, Nubin appeared regularly with her mother, performing a mix of gospel and secular music styles that would eventually make her famous. As a youth, she could sing and keep on pitch and hold a melody. Her vocal qualities, however, paled beside her abilities on the guitar—she played individual tones, melodies, and riffs instead of just strumming chords. This talent was all the more remarkable because, at the time, few African-American women played guitar.  Read the entire entry, written by William K. McNeil, here. 

This week I came across this gem, which features a few different songs, including the wonderful “That’s All.” I don’t know much about its original source of the video, but if you do I’d love to hear what you know.

As Sister Rosetta Tharpe sings, “We got to have more love, more understanding, everyday of our lives and that’s all.” Happy Friday everyone!

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