Here’s your second periodic digest post reviewing the last week’s entries and tossing in some recommendations, tidbits, etc. In the future, if you prefer to receive ONLY emails for the digest posts and not receive emails for the regular posts, go to settings and un-check the main Tropical Depression feed. If you do that, you’ll receive the digest emails when they come out every week or two, and then you can follow up and read the regular posts on the site. That’s an option for people who don’t like getting a few emails a week (to continue subscribing, you have to leave something checked, but the digests will never be more than once a week). The default remains getting an email for each post, so if you’re happy with things as they are, no action needed. My aim is to make the digests packed with enough little gems to be interesting even for people who are reading each post as they come out.
Meantime, if you are enjoying Tropical Depression, please think of one friend that might also like it and let them know! Or if you really want to get the word out, posting something on social media helps—and probably helps more. But I like the idea of telling a friend directly, that is just sweeter.
I’m trying to think of some paid-subscribers only content that would be community-oriented and fun. Maybe a book club? Let me know if you have any thoughts.
Last week’s posts
Monday, Jan. 2
Turn again, my daughters, go your way
Morning mixtape, volume one. Songs for a Sunday morning, or a new year. Whither thou goest I will go.
Tuesday, Jan 3
Honky-Tonk Weekly #2: Merle Travis, “Dark as a Dungeon”
Second edition of a weekly column here at Tropical Depression. Every week, I will listen to and share a country song and write whatever comes to mind (previous entry here). This week, we’re down in the dangerous (but addictive?) coal mines, with Merle Travis.
Friday, Jan. 6
The moon just went behind the clouds
Hear that lonesome whippoorwill, over and over and over again. The best and worst covers of Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” featuring Al Green, George Hamilton (!), Johnny Cash, Little Richard, Tanya Tucker, Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Johnny Cash, Carla Thomas, and many, many more. The sublime, the ridiculous, and Terry Bradshaw.
Resolute
Woody Guthrie’s New Years Resolutions, written and illustrated in his journal on January 1, 1943. My only resolution this year is to keep writing Tropical Depression at about this pace. I am having fun with it. But I’ll try to keep up with Woody’s ideas, too.
Vibrations from behind the Iron Curtain
Alien groove from our favorite Estonian singer/poet/painter Velly Joonas, recorded in the early 1980s as a demo for the band Vstretša—reportedly as part of their application for a permit to perform. According to the internet, “Stopp, seisku aeg!” translates to “Stop, time stand still!” or “Stop the time!” Phenomenal song. Conceived as a cover of Frida’s “I See Red,” though the Estonian lyrics penned by Joonas seem to be totally different.
Dept. of kind words
Nice writeup recommending Tropical Depression from my old friends at the Arkansas Times. Welcome to the readers that got here from there! I endorse this endorsement:
Everything he’s done so far is great, but his riff on the myth of Johnny Cash (and David Allan Coe) is a showstopper.
IMHO
Book recommendation: Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust. This line always stuck with me: A woman in South Carolina, following the Ordinance of Secession, declared—
I do not approve of this thing. What do I care for patriotism? My husband is my country. What is country to me if he be killed?
Faust’s more famous book, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, is also excellent.
Song recommendation: “Blue Yodel No. 9,” Jimmie Rodgers with Louis Armstrong
Recorded July 16, 1930 in Hollywood for Victor, with Louis Armstrong on trumpet and his wife Lil Hardin Armstrong on piano. It’s not entirely clear how the “Father of Country Music” and the jazz legend got together. The Armstrongs were not listed on the recording because Armstrong was contracted to Okeh. According to Armstrong, when he showed up that morning, Rodgers said, “Man, I feel like singing some blues.” Armstrong responded, “Okay daddy, you sing some blues and I’m gonna blow behind you.”
And here’s Armstrong in 1970, less than a year before he died, performing the song with Johnny Cash on “The Johnny Cash Show.” A wonderful performance that, unlike the Rodgers rendition, features Armstrong singing. Armstrong’s doctors had told him to stop playing the trumpet at this point, but he did not follow the doctor’s orders!