Bob's 4th Sally Across the Printed Page

"The World In a Jug; the Lore of New Orleans and Dixiland Jazz" by Robert F. Brodsky, PhD. Foxbro Press rfoxbro@aol.com 235 pages

Bob could probably write engagingly about the whales' songs and their lifestyles. Here he tackles a subject that is not quite that immense, but just as interesting. Rather than "laundry list" writing of Greatest Songs or Greatest (name your instrument here,) he takes on the history of the genre, what has happened since it flamed across Southern skies to now going sadly downhill due to a general lack of interest from younger generations.

Leafing idly through it (as I would with any new book) I came to a bit of information that startled me greatly. Many of my generation remember "The House of th Rising Sun" by Brit band The Animals. Pause... you can hear it in your mind...

The origins of this folk song are unknown, but the first recording of it was in 1937. But get this! The lyrics were written for a female singer! Random verse samples: "It's been the ruin of many a poor girl, and me, O God, for one." "Go tell my baby sister, never do like I have done; to shun that house in New Orleans they call the Rising Sun."

Food for thought indeed!

I loved some of the performers' names -- who on your e-mail list is named: Irving Fazola? Peanuts Hucko? "Sweet Emma" Barrett? Trixi Smith? Hot Lips Page? "Slow Drag" Pavagneau?

A suggestion that the South may rise again ... "I'd druther drink muddy water, Lawd, sleep in a hollow log than to be a way up here in Noo Yawk, treated lak' a dirty dog."

But get this! The lyrics