Have I been screwing up, not having a subscription to The Oxford American all this time?
Setting aside the free annual sampler, O.A. is up there with Texas Monthly and Gun and Garden as sources for really good contemporary writing on the American South. You can take the boy out of the South (and put him in the Pacific Northwest), but you can't entirely get the South out of the boy.
The 11th annual edition of O.A.'s Southern Music series was a double disc, and the first of their state-focused surveys, focusing on Arkansas. And that, to me, is the reason to give this an extended spin. What I know about music from Arkansas is mainly related to bands and people who left the state: Econochrist, Ken Sanderson of Prank Records...um, that's it. But now I've heard the Esquires, Sister Ernestine Washington, and Sleepy LaBeef, sounding like a branch of Dixie that I've not yet encountered. It's enough to make me curious about the branch of Mrs. Mummy's people who hail from Little Rock, to experience the Ozarks, to learn more about what it's all been about and where it's going.
1 comment:
It really is a fine magazine of literature and Southern culture, as well as having some of the best CD's to grace the magazine stand. I first heard a number of current favorite artists on Oxford American samplers, and there have been some great pieces in the music issues (like the one on Charlie Rich).
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