The Sounds of Silence at Shiloh

I fell in love with Herman Melville's poem "Shiloh: A Requiem" the second year I was teaching American literature.  I remember a wonderful discussion with my students about how the sounds created in the poem -- the repetition of f's and sh -- caused the poem to sound like one big "hush."  It was only because of the poem that I wanted to visit the Shiloh Battlefield, which lies between Memphis and Nashville.  I am not ordinarily one for visiting Civil War sites, but this one had my attention.  More than 23,000 soldiers were killed in a very short battle here in April 1862. 

This past year I discovered a story in the 8th grade textbook written by Ray Bradbury called, "The Drummer Boy of Shiloh."  

The story is short and quite intense, and includes the detail of the peach tree blossoms falling such that they looked like snow.  The peach trees were no longer present at the site, but the area was designated.  The story intensified my interest.

While there we learned about the Hornets Nest -- a battle in the woods where the bullets were so loud they sounded like hornets.  And the Bloody Pond, where both sides came to clean their wounds and quest their thirst.  The grounds are beautiful, but the loss of life on this battlefield is beyond the imagination.

Being at Shiloh is like one big hush.  The best I have to offer are pictures and Melville's beautiful words, which I read out loud on the church property while we were there.

Shiloh: A Requiem

by Herman Melville

Skimming lightly, wheeling still,

The swallows fly low

Over the field in clouded days,

the forest-field of Shiloh --

Over the field where April rain

Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain

Through the pause of night

That followed the Sunday fight

Around the church of Shiloh --

The church so lone, the log-built one,

That echoed to many a parting groan

And natural prayer

of dying foeman mingled there --

Foemen at morn, but friends at eve --

Fame or country least their care:

(What like a bullet can undeceive!)

But now they lie low,

While over them the swallows skim,

And all is hushed at Shiloh.

17,000 Books and a Bunch of Goats

I was not even aware of Carl Sandburg's home being in North Carolina until it was suggested as a destination for our day together with my cousin Doreen and her husband David.  The home is on a huge property in Flat Rock, North Carolina, tucked within the hills and simply stunning in its beauty.  

We arrived at "Connemara" around 2 p.m. and had to walk a mighty steep hill to get to the large white house, which overlooked a large pond.

Pondside

View from below

View from the house

One of the most interesting facts about this home, and the thing that makes it so fascinating, is that shortly after Sandburg died in 1967, his wife and daughters sold it to the United States as a historic site, taking only their personal effects with them.  Inside the home are the 17,000 books he owned, his record collection, and every stitch of furniture.  Below is a photo from his wife's office with the calendar still set at July 1967, the month he died.  His guitar is pictured below that, with a bust of a young Abraham Lincoln.  Sandberg did not just write poetry, but is known for his several volume biography of Lincoln, as well as fiction writing.

As the story goes, Sandburg and his wife lived in Michigan. But in the 1940's, they decided to move somewhere else because his wife Paula was deep into raising goats, and she wanted an environment more conducive to her goat-raising and breeding activities.  Carl could work anywhere, so they picked up and moved, taking every one of the 17,000 books with them.

The picture below is Sandberg's writing room. He propped his typewriter on an orange crate because he said, "If Grant could run his campaign from an orange crate, I can write about it on one."  His advise to writer, which we heard him say on an introductory video is "Just put one word down after another.  It is when you try to do two or three at a time that it gets difficult."

His wife's bedroom.  Doreen reflected in the mirror

Pathway to the goat barn

The house itself has a wonderful layout, and the grounds include gardens, a caretakers house, and several out buildings and barns.  There are many hiking trails which are definitely used, as we saw many people on the trails, even on a hot and sticky Carolina day.

Sandburg had a rock outcropping he often sat on to write.  That was probably my favorite place. 

 "It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness; to sit on a rock in the forest and ask of himself, 'Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?'...If one is not careful, one allows diversions to take up one's time -- the stuff of life."

Doreen giving perspective to the outcropping

An inspiring day

Music City Means MUSIC

Last year we did the tourist attractions. This year, it was about live music. Our trip to Nashville was sensational.  I got to see some incredible mandolin playing, and it has fortified me to go back home and work even harder on learning the instrument. Here are some pictures from our various musical events.

Tuesday night was the Grand Ole Opry.  We had floor seats this time, and the show was as enjoyable as ever.

The Henningsens

Bobby Osbourne

Jim Lauderdale

We also saw Maggie Rose, John Conlee, Mandy Barnett, Cadillac Three, and Mark Wills.

Here we are outside the Opry with guitars, no strings attached!

Me with the acoustic

Jim with the electric

Next up was the Bluegrass Thursday Night at the Ryman Auditorium. This was a bucket list item -- to see a show there.  I was particularly taken with Jesse McReynolds, an 85-year-old mandolin player whose fingers flew on the keys.  His sense of humor was hilarious.  What a treasure he is to the world of music!  I liked the headliner as well, the Sons of Leicester, a Flatt and Scruggs style band made up of some of the best in the business.  Mandolin player Ricky Scaggs was in attendance, and sat a few rows ahead of us.  We didn't fawn over him like many were doing, and did not take his picture.

Jesse McReynolds

Sons of Leicester

And finally, the highlight of the week.  When we heard that Marty Stuart and his band would be performing at the Frist Center on Friday the 25th for just the admission price to the museum, we planned our entire trip around being there. It was a beautiful evening for an outdoor concert.  We met a wonderful couple from Hot Springs, Arkansas -- Susan and Tom -- and spent a lot of time talking to them before the concert.  (She is a first grade teacher, he a writer.)  We got to briefly meet Marty after the show, get his autograph, and shake his hand.  A memorable night in Nashville!

Before the show

Marty's mandolin

The lovely Connie Smith

Marty Stuart

Kenny, Marty, Paul

Marty's fabulous mandolin solo...

...went on and on....

...captivating the crowd

The irony of a train going by while singing about that very thing. Marty had to stop and take a moment.

All in all, our trip to Nashville is one that we will never forget.  

Stories and Dreams: The Promised Land

Stories and Dreams: The Promised Land

The dogs on main street howl,

'cause they understand,

If I could take one moment into my hands

Mister, I ain't a boy, no, I'm a man,

And I believe in a promised land.

                                                              --Bruce Springsteen

Today I wind up the Stories and Dreams trilogy with reflections on "The Promised Land."  The words above are from a song with that title, and Elvis Presley had an album of the same title.  This idea of a Promised Land is certainly part of the mythology of American music -- a place where all is perfect, where what is important rules, where we are all One.  For some Memphis is the Promised Land.  For others, Nashville or Chicago or New York or LA.  Anyone who dreams lives to find the Promised Land in some way, shape, or form.

We visited the Rock and Soul Museum in Memphis that gave a detailed history of what we had already experienced in Mississippi -- how the hard work of the cotton fields and difficult employment led to the blues, and the blues were carried up Highway 61 to Memphis and came alive on Beale Street.  This museum made a clear connection between blues, country, and gospel, and how they built into the forms of rock and roll and soul music.

Near the end of the tour, there were plaques which made note of special events in the world or rock and roll and popular music in general. These included items such as Elton John singing at Princess Diana's funeral, and the Kanye West/Taylor Swift debacle.  However, there was one event I don't believe I knew about, and it involved Bruce Springsteen in 1975.

Elvis statue, Beale Street

This was the year of Bruce, and he made the cover of Time and Newsweek magazines the same week.  While touring in Memphis, he decided he wanted to meet Elvis Presley.  So he scaled the wall at Graceland and went right up to the door and knocked.  Presley was not home, and Springsteen was escorted off the grounds.  From what I understand, Springsteen never did meet Elvis.

For Bruce, the Promised Land had not come with the hit album or the magazine covers. There was still more to seek, and more to find.  Reading about this, I found this quote from Springsteen, a reflection on the event he spoke from the stage at a concert years later:

The passing of the King of Rock

"Later on, I used to wonder what I would have said if I had knocked on the door and if Elvis had come to the door. Because it really wasn't Elvis I was goin' to see, but it was like he came along and whispered some dream in everybody's ear and somehow we all dreamed it. And maybe that's why we're here tonight, I don't know. I remember later when a friend of mine called to tell me that he'd died. It was so hard to understand how somebody whose music came in and took away so many people's loneliness and gave so many people a reason and a sense of all the possibilities of living could have in the end died so tragically. And I guess when you're alone, you ain't nothin' but alone."




What Bruce seems to be saying is that we have a dream together, but each of us has to get there alone.  I am struck by the headline above: "Lonely Life Ends."  How is it that dreams we share, stories we live, the promised land we aspire to, makes us end up feeling so lonely and alone?  

I don't know that I have the answer.  Because there is something even more intense in Memphis that reflects this very same concept. And that is the Lorraine Motel, and what happened there.

Now the site of a Civil Rights Museum

You might say this is where the dream ended.  Visiting the various museums, studios, and Graceland, I couldn't help but notice it was primarily white people visiting these sites.  But when I got to the Lorraine Motel, it was primarily black people.  It helps me to realize that we still have a long way to go before we reach that Promised Land together.  That as intertwined as our stories and dreams are, they can still be miles apart.

This brings me to the story of music related to the night Martin Luther King was assassinated.  I first heard this story at the Rock and Soul Museum, as they had an excellent exhibit regarding that tumultuous time in Memphis.

As the story goes, Ben Branch was playing his saxophone on Mulberry Street, near the Lorraine Motel.  Dr. King came out on the balcony and asked Branch to play "Precious Lord."  It was shortly after that, King was assassinated.

Ben Branch's saxophone

According to the sign at the actual site of the shooting, King's request of the gospel standard were the last words he spoke.

Where Martin Luther King died

On the wall near the doorway to the museum across the street were the words from King's speech the day before he died (see below).  It seems to point to a man who knew he didn't have long.  A man who had a dream and had inspired thousands, if not millions, to follow that dream to the Promised Land.  Yet, he knew it wasn't for him.  He, too, was alone in this regard.  For even as King dreamed his dream for all humankind, he knew that the truth of "take this moment into my hand" is a personal thing.  The Promised Land is fleeting.  It is only here in a moment -- a moment of music, a moment of connection, a moment of knowing. It is a place deep within us all. A place that ideally we will get to together, yet our aloneness often makes it difficult. A place we have to keep believing in or perish. A place where our dreams and stories reside, carrying us forward, ever seeking The Promised Land.

Stories and Dreams: Memphis

Stories and Dreams: Memphis

This is part two of the "Stories and Dreams" series, and focuses on Sam Phillips and his discoveries in Memphis, Tennessee in the 1950's. We visited the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi as well as the Rock and Soul Museum and Sun Studios in Memphis, hearing many of the same stories repeated with little to no variation. American music has a mythology, and indulging in the legends and myths has made our trip educational and engaging.

Sam Phillips is a man of legend--so much so that a Broadway Musical about one night in his life was created: Million Dollar Quartet.  If not for Sam Phillips--his strengths and weaknesses--the story would have been quite different.

Jerry Lee, Carl, Elvis, & Johnny

As told, this story begins with a dream. Sam Phillips is a disc jockey for an easy listening station, but his real interest is in more exciting music, the kind heard in the black nightclubs on Beale Street and the black radio stations. Sam opens a recording service with the motto "We will record anything, anywhere, any time."  This one act would lead Sam to his first big break-through.

Dateline 1951 Clarksdale, Mississippi  -- a man named Ike Turner and his friend Jackie Brenston play a game of watching out for new cars--Chevys, Fords, and most notably Oldsmobile. Jackie loves the Olds Rocket 88 and writes a song (with Ike, uncredited) about it. They hear about Sam's recording services, so they load up their equipment in a truck and head to Memphis. On the way, their amplifier falls out of the truck and sustains damage. They take it anyway. When they arrive at Memphis Recording Service, they stuff newspaper into the hole in the amplifier and play the song. It causes a distortion, which is a unique sound and one Sam realizes is transformative. He records "Rocket 88" which is released by Chess Records, selling big and now considered to be the very first Rock 'n' Roll song. Sam didn't reap much on the deal, however, since he was just a recording service and not a record producer. This experience motivates him to open Sun Studios.

In honor of the very first Rock 'n' Roll song

Sun Studios, 1953. A young man just out of high school walks in to Sun Studios to record a ballad called "My Happiness."  Sam Phillips is not in that day, but his secretary knows how to use the equipment, so she is the first to record Elvis Presley. Sam was not impressed. He did not like ballads and easy listening, so had no use for Elvis.

But Elvis was determined, and kept showing up at Sun trying to get a deal. Finally he gets a break when in 1954 Sam wants to put together a trio and needs a front man. He lets Elvis take a shot at it, but is disappointed when Elvis leans on ballads once more. In frustration they take a break, when just for fun Elvis starts singing an uptempo version of an Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup tune "That's Alright Mama."  Sam goes crazy!!!  This is the sound he has been waiting for!  They record it immediately, get it pressed into vinyl, and he takes it directly to his disc jockey friend Dewey Phillips who runs a radio show out of the Chisca Hotel. He plays the song and the response is immediate. Dewey plays this new Elvis hit 14 more times that night. Sun Records is on its way with its first major hit, and Elvis becomes a major star.  

Replica of Dewey Phillips DJ booth

Both Sam and Elvis had dreams that were so strong they simply could not die.  On a magical night in July 1954, their dreams converged and American music was changed forever.  

Elvis reminisces in 1968.

Jim and I rocking the Elvis microphone