By combining various snippets I guess I was trying to bring out the fact that a personality like Patton is always going to polarize opinion. Wardlow & Calt did that brilliantly in their bio, in fact they made it the focus of chapter 1. In other words I just tried to condense chapter 1 into a single quote.
In my opinion the creative way the book is structured is what sets it apart. It brought the whole scene to life for me.
« Last Edit: July 11, 2013, 08:36:04 PM by Rivers »
From everything I have read he didn't seem any more of a jerk than some of the others. Calts book on Skip James made him sound like a real jerk but that could be the authors take.
From everything I have read he didn't seem any more of a jerk than some of the others. Calts book on Skip James made him sound like a real jerk but that could be the authors take.
I got some extremely unfriendly comments on the woodshed forum, a few years ago, for suggesting that Calts Skip James biog had been an interesting read. I was made to feel very unwelcome and have never been, or looked, back.
I thought it was an interesting read as well. But reading other accounts from or about the rediscovery era lead me to believe there was a lot of subjectivity in the Skip book, mostly of the negative variety. Which is fine, so long as you balance it with other accounts.
I really liked the book and there is the possibility that it is the only book on Skip we get. From the book James came across as quite intelligent even if he wasn't cuddly. I can only imagine how I would act if for 60 years I got treated like dirt by a particular group of people only to have some young cats of that same particular group show up and shower me with attention and start getting me shows. I would be suspicious as hell initially. Having cancer on your penis and then having it removed wouldn't help my mood either.
Having it put in my biography wouldn't help my mood in the afterlife either. I imagine Skip is chasing Steve Calt around [insert your belief in what the afterlife looks like] with a 22-20, whatever that is.
I am surprised that Calt wasn't sued for some of his writings. I guess that Cora Allen never saw his statement on the Blind By Fuller Yazoo LP that "'Black & Tan' was a sexual perversion that Fuller and his wife performed" (memory citation). Many a time he stepped over the boundaries of good taste, often into total fabrication and potential liable. He must be taken with a giant grain of proverbial salt.
Peter B, Calt was sued...by Dick Waterman. As I recall defamation was the charge. Don't know the outcome though. best, bruce
P.S. I got curious (and wanted to check my memory) Searched for this and, lo & behold, a Weenie-thread quoting Waterman who sued Calt and the publisher for libel and lost.
« Last Edit: March 08, 2014, 09:19:03 PM by bnemerov »
Hi all, I have to admit that I fail to see what is so surprising or objectionable about one musician having personal differences with another--I guess that's never happened before! Who cares? All best, Johnm
Well, the reason some--not me--care in this fashion is that the first tendency of some is to treat these figures as hero- or god-like. That's a mistake of course (and goes with 'fandom').
Wouldn't an educated guess suggest that many of these musicians were uncouth? I think so. But also that rivalry--and envy--would have to be considered in evaluating judgments of these peers so many years after the fact. And that expectations for the present were also being made by those who were asked about their long dead peers and that would certainly have influenced--both positively and negatively according to the circumstance--their evaluations.