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Sunday, June 28, 2020

The Hermitage

The grand entrance to Andrew Jackson's Hermitage
The final stop before heading home to Las Vegas was Andrew Jackson's Hermitage. This is the home that he built after he retired from the military as the hero of the Battle of New Orleans (the bright spot in the otherwise not-disastrous-but-not-good War of 1812). This is the home to which he retired after completing his two terms as the President of the United States. And this is his permanent home, as he was buried in the garden out back behind the Hermitage.

This being the Year of Our COVID, the Hermitage mansion was closed. This is the back door entrance to the Hermitage. It is much less fancy than classical revival architecture of the front facade.


The grounds were open, however. This is the ice house adjacent to the mansion.


Even though it was locked tight to keep out those nasty COVID germs and the people who may or may not be carrying them, we could take a peek inside the Jackson home. This was an open room at the back entrance. For lack of any other direction, I will call this "the family room":


This was the formal dining room:


Note the portrait of Andrew Jackson above the serving buffet. Vanity of vanities; all is vanity. Of course, he WAS President of the United States. Elected three times, serving once, having been once cheated by a useless scion of the Adams family.


Above is the slave quarters. I am guessing it is the quarters for the house staff, as the field staff (I am purposely using polite terminology) were housed deeper out in the edges of the extensive property.

The front of the house featured a beautiful classical revival facade.


And, as is clear, it was just a facade.


The classical revival style was not carried over to the other three sides of the mansion. And I use the term "mansion" loosely here. The house is about the size of a mid-size house in a typical modern American upscale suburban subdivision. The grounds, however, are extensive. The adjacent garden is only a very small part of the property.


Andrew Jackson and his beloved wife Rachel are buried side-by-side in the garden.


Andrew Jackson's tombstone is actually surprisingly simple. It reads only "General Andrew Jackson",


Jackson's wife Rachel died after Jackson was elected president, but before he assumed office. It is thought that she died from the stress over nasty rumors that were rampant through Washington, D.C., society about her. (I believe the rumors pertained to the question of whether she was legally divorced from her first husband prior to her marriage to Andrew Jackson, but my memory could be wrong on this.)


The huge grounds make for a nice walk. Nowadays.


Back in Andrew Jackson's day, it was a huge cotton plantation, with 200 slaves working the fields. So leisurely walks were out of the question back then.


But the 20-minute nature walk through the property was nice.  This is the "original" hermitage.


Now that is a hermitage. Hermitage is the word for an abode for seclusion, as in the home of a hermit. That log cabin is fit for a hermit. By the time Andrew Jackson's career in the military and planting took off, this little hermitage was abandoned and the "mansion" version of the Hermitage became his home.


The grounds are so huge that even this faun was living there.

The grounds are so large that they can be driven. I drove over to the Hermitage Church, built for the local community. The church was Presbyterian. Jackson's wife Rachel was a devout Presbyterian. Jackson was, I believe, more of a nominal Presbyterian.


And at the end of the road is Tulip Grove, the home of Andrew Jackson's nephew Andrew Jackson Donelson.


Andrew Jackson Donelson, whatever his good qualities may have been, was the vice presidential candidate on Millard Fillmore's 1856 anti-Catholic "Know Nothing" party ticket.

I called on his home.


No one was there. Maybe it was because I am Catholic.


Saturday, June 27, 2020

Helen Keller Was Still Alive When Percy Sledge Hit #1 with "When A Man Loves A Woman"

Welcome to the City of Muscle Shoals
(actually this photo was taken in Sheffield, Alabama, which is close enough)
This shocked: When Percy Sledge had the #1 hit in America with "When A Man Loves A Woman," Helen Keller was still alive. And what, you may ask, do Percy Sledge and Helen Keller have in common? Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

Let's start where the Muscle Shoals sound started:


FAME studios on Avalon Avenue in Muscle Shoals. It is a nondescript building on a street that is now an endless line of strip malls. But at what time this was one of the centers of the music universe.


The name "FAME" stands for Florence Alabama Music Enterprises. It started in Florence, across the Tennessee River from Muscle Shoals, but in 1961 it moved to its current location on Avalon Avenue. The first hit to come out of FAME was Arthur Alexander's "You Better Move On". But the first #1 hit to come out of FAME was Percy Sledge's immortal "When A Man Loves A Woman" in 1966.

The offices probably looked about the same then as now.


A huge number of famous artists came through the doors to record here at FAME studios under the legendary Rick Hall. Aretha Franklin (who only cut two songs here before leaving for New York City to finish her first record for Atlantic, taking the FAME backing musicians with her, but oh what two songs: "Do Right Woman" and "I Never Loved a Man"). Wilson Pickett. Bobby Gentry. Mac Davis. Clarence Carter. Candi Staton. The Osmonds (yes, those Osmonds, who recorded their five-weeks-at-number-one Jackson 5 soundalike "One Bad Apple" here with Rick Hall). Etta James. So many famous singers and musicians came here to capture the magic of the Muscle Shoals sound.


Yes, that is a harpiscord.


It was featured it many FAME recordings, but it is buried in the mix, usually with a piano playing the same notes over top of it, to create a "wall of sound" effect.

This is control booth that Rick Hall would have been manning for all those hits.


These are the various pianos used.


This is the second, larger studio in the same building. 


My tour guide sat down at the electric piano and knocked out a tune.


The tour was something of an unexpected pleasure, because I did not know that FAME studios was open for tours.


I was just driving past to snap a few pictures of the building.


But it was open. And the tour was great fun, very relaxed, as if I caught the production staff on duty and they threw together a tour. Very highly recommended.

Next stop; 3614 Jackson Highway.


This is the famous Muscle Shoals Sound Studios. This is the home of the Swampers.


In 1969, the house band at FAME studios had a falling out with the studio owner Rick Hall. Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records doublecrossed Rick Hall and set the band up as proprietors of their own studio, just up the street, but actually within the city limits of Sheffield, Alabama.

A few of the "Swampers," as the house band came to be called after Lynyrd Skynyrd namechecked them in the hit "Sweet Home Alabama," are still alive. That may be the reason you do not hear a kind word about Rick Hall on the studio tour at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios. (They do admit Rick Hall was very hard-working, but that's about all they will concede.)


The studio at 3614 Jackson Highway is just one studio (with a vocal isolation booth). They later moved to larger quarters, but like FAME studios, this is still a working music recording studio.

So many giants of 1970s music recorded here. The Rolling Stones did three songs here. "Brown Sugar" and "Wild Horses" were the two hits. Paul Simon did "Kodachrome" here. See that piano?


Swamper Barry Beckett played the manic piano in the outro on this song. (Speaking of people about whom you will not here a good word on this tour: Paul Simon stiffed the Swampers on their royalties that they were owed. What a ----.)


So many giants of the 1970s recorded here. Bob Seger. (Swamper Pete Carr, who died earlier today, did that iconic guitar riff at the beginning of Bob Seger's "Main Street"). The Staple Singers (there is that funny story about Paul Simon wanting the same "black" band he heard on "I'll Take You There," not knowing that the band was the all-white Swampers). Boz Scaggs (his first record, with "Loan Me a Dime") (with Duane Allman as a session musician guitarist). Linda Ronstadt (but no hits, although she did have Glenn Frey and Don Henley in her band at that time -- they stood around and listened to the house band accompany her). Cher. Names. Names.


The Swampers played and they did production work here. The studio is still available for rent, although the Swampers no longer play.

The final stop on the Muscle Shoals tour, again, was outside of Muscle Shoals. It was the adjacent town of Tuscumbia.



Ivy Green. The birthplace of Helen Keller.


Helen Keller was born 140 years ago today, June 27, 1880.


She died on June 4, 1968. I did not know until today that Ms. Keller lived into the 1960s. I don't associate her with the Sixties. But she was alive when the Muscle Shoals sound was all over the radio, including when ... so here is the link ... Percy Sledge had the first #1 hit to come out of Muscle Shoals when he topped the charts all over the globe with "When A Man Loves A Woman."

I got there right at the end of the day for Ivy Green, so I did not pay to tour the house. The gardens were free, so I took advantage.


This statue depicts that iconic scene where Helen Keller's teacher Anne Sullivan taught Helen Keller the word "water" by having running water flow over Helen's open hand. Anne Sullivan was assigned to Helen Keller at a school for the deaf that was recommended to Helen Keller's parents by Alexander Graham Bell. From Alexander Graham Bell to Percy Sledge: that's a journey.


The garden area is decorated by gifts sent by people all over the world. Above is a gift from the people of New Zealand. And here I am, re-enacting that famous scene by letting the waters of the fountains in the garden run over my hand.


I always wanted to go to Helen Keller's birthplace, stick my hand in running water, and say out loud, "Water. Helen. Water." Luckily, no one was around at that time to hear me say it. I have idiosyncratic ambitions. And that one was realized today,

On the way out of town, I saw this statue.

Yes, that's my rented Camaro convertible the statue guy is about ready to stomp on.
This is the Singing River Statue, built in 2014. It is named for the Indian legend that the Tennessee River was a "singing" river, and that songs came from the river. I can't remember if it is the Cherokee or Chickasaw, but it is in that awesome Muscle Shoals documentary that you can find on youtube or Netflix. And when the Indians lost their land in the Tennessee River Valley around Muscle Shoals, and were exiled to Oklahoma over the Trail of Tears, they said that there were no more songs.

There were songs today. Muscle Shoals saved my vacation.

Nashville's Parthenon

Nashville has a Parthenon and, even though it was undergoing renovation, it was open to the public
Nashville used to style itself as "the Athens of the South." In its capacity as a New World Athens, it built itself a Parthenon. And, unlike the one in the Old World Athens, its Parthenon remains standing intact.

(The posting of the second half of yesterday's Nashville tourism was delayed due to the fact that, after 10 years of vacation blogging, I finally used up the 15GB of free photo storage from Google. I had to buy more. Actually, I have to rent more. You buy nothing nowadays when it comes to computer usage. Everything in a rental.)


Unlike just about all of downtown Nashville, and even though the land surrounding it was all torn up, Nashville's Parthenon was open for business.

No need to rest on the dragon/sea serpent shaped bench out front, which I don't believe they have in the original Parthenon in Athens. I could be wrong. Nashville's Parthenon is the only Parthenon which thus far I have visited. I have no plans to rectify that situation as Greece is so far down the list of places I want to visit, it would take the Hubble Telescope to see it. (It is, however, ahead of Ireland. Just for the record.)


The Parthenon was first built for the 1897 Tennessee Centennial and International Exhibition. I am referring to the Nashville Parthenon and not the Athens, Greece, Parthenon. I don't know why they built the Athens, Greece, one, but I know it was not to celebrate the centennial of Tennessee's admission to the Union.

Weirdly enough, the 1897 Tennessee Centennial and International Exhibition was one year after the actual Tennessee centennial. I think it had something to do with not getting the money raised in time. Anyway, the exhibition (the functional equivalent of a world's fair) was a huge success. Many of the buildings, such as the Parthenon, were designed to look like major structures from Old Europe. They had a mock Rialto Bridge just like in Venice, for example. And the structure built by the City of Memphis (named for a city in Egypt) and Shelby County was, as you can see from this photograph inside the Parthenon, was a replica of the Great Pyramid of Cheops:


The Pyramid is long gone, but the Parthenon still stands. Actually, all of the buildings were built to be temporary. Even the Parthenon. This is not the original Parthenon. And by that I mean this is not the original Nashville Parthenon. The Nashville Parthenon was built to be the Fine Arts Building for the exhibition. It was so popular that, after the fair, funds were raised to built a permanent Parthenon out of concrete.

It is now an art museum. The two major "art" exhibits are, first, the James M. Cowan collection of paintings on permanent display. Cowan was a major art collector in the early years of the previous century and he collected the works of major American artists. My favorite was this one:


"The Young Musician" by John George Brown. It was painted in 1878 and purchased by Cowan in 1901. The Cowan collection has far more landscapes than portraits, but I thought this one was exceptional, because (although you can't see it in this picture) "The Young Musician" in the painting has very expressive, very human, eyes.

The other bit of fine art is a replica of a giant statue:


Here she is. Athena Parthenos. The original also inhabited a Parthenon, the one in Athens, Greece. (I feel the need to keep saying "Athens, Greece," as if you will think that the original Parthenon was in Athens, Georgia, or Athens, Ohio. It's not. It's in Greece. Well, at least what's left of it is.)

For some reason, I thought that Athena Parthenos looked like Judy Tenuta
The original Athena Parthenos was sculpted of gold and ivory in the mid 400's B.C. She's Gone. I'd pay the devil to replace her. However, in 1990, a New World Athena Parthenos was erected in the New World Parthenon.


A view of her shield:


There also is a collection of statuary shards, matching what's left of these various statues in the original Old World Parthenon.


Of all the statuary in the Old World Parthenon, only the statue of Dionysus has kept his head when all those about him lost theirs:


Apparently that's a serious comment. Apparently he's the only one with a head in the original Parthenon.

The Parthenon is found in Centennial Park, west of downtown Nashville, where the original 1897 exhibition was held. I believe that Lake Watauga here also was built for the 1897 exhibition:


I could be wrong. Don't quote me.

Duck butts:


Duck derriere in Lake Watauga. After all that, it was time to enjoy something authentically Nashville. Nashville Hot Chicken, at the Party Fowl:


The Nashville Hot Chicken was good. It was an extra crispy fried chicken with cayenne in the batter. And lard, which made it a little greasy, but it was not "greasy tasting," if that makes sense. At least the Parthenon and the Party Fowl were open for business.