Charles Farley - Blog

Wop bop a loo bop a lop bom bom!

5/21/2020

May 20, 2020--Well, they are burying Little Richard today here in Huntsville. There's a private graveside service out at Oakwood Memorial Gardens on the campus of Oakwood University, where the singer studied theology back in 1957, and where ethereal music flourishes like cotton in Alabama.
I'm sorry the service is not open to the public. I'm not much for funerals, but I would have gone to this one.
Why? It's just that Little Richard, the self-proclaimed King (and Queen) of Rock 'n' Roll, meant so much to my generation who grew up after World War II in staid, middle class (more or less), white-bread America where a boring, bourgeois life seemed all too certain. Then along came someone who embodied the antithesis of our fate: wild, untamed, black, androgynous, crazy as a mad dog, and oh so lollapalooza loud. Nothing could be better!
When he did shows in the South, back in the 50s, before he found God, they roped off the black kids from the white kids, but by the end of the show the rope was gone and the black and white audience intermingled, dancing for joy with each other. So Little Richard was more than just a Rock 'n' Roll singer (and God knows he was that!), he was also a mighty force of nature.
This excerpt from a poem by Bobby Byrd, entitled "Why I am a Poet, #7," pretty well sums it up for me:
Getting drunk on dreamy horny Friday nights
45 rpm records with the big holes dripping rhythm and blues onto the turntable
Jimmy Reed and Bobby Blue Bland and Little Richard,
God bless them all,
They saved my life I thank them I praise them

Say It Ain't So, Joe!

5/14/2020

It just can't be summer without baseball, but the longer this pandemic drags on, the chillier the forecast appears. At this writing, there is some talk about opening the major league season in some form or another (empty stands?) in July, but who knows? This virus seems to have an angry mind of its own.
With that said, we decided to head out to Toyota Field in Madison, Alabama, to get a peek at what was in store for us when, or if, this season finally starts.
The Huntsville, Madison County area has been without a professional baseball team since the AA Huntsville Stars absconded in 2015 for, of all places, Biloxi, Mississippi.
So when a deal was struck in 2018 for the Mobile BayBears to relocate to the Rocket City, fans were excited and eager, especially when a new $46 million stadium was thrown in, even if it was way the hell out on the I-565 connector in suburban Madison, and even if the AA affiliate of the L.A. Angels was too cutesily renamed after a local alias for a raccoon: the Trash Pandas. True!
Well, even if we can't watch a game yet, we decided to check out the new ballpark, sans the Trash Pandas. Here's the video of our tour https://youtu.be/BgUT93o9BWA

Blues Foundation 2020 Blues Awards

5/7/2020

This year this popular awards show was presented virtually, which was not a lot of fun, despite some outstanding performances by Samantha Fish and Tierinii Jackson and Ori Naftaly of Southern Avenue.
Shemekia Copeland was the personable host, with many "oldie but goodies" winning awards, including Bobby Rush (86), Bettye Lavette (74), Bob Margolin (71), and Jimmie Vaughan (69), as well as some newbies like Clarksdale Blues Museum alumnus Christon "Kingfish" Ingram (21), who garnered several accolades, including Album of the Year ("Kingfish").
The best part of the online show, which can be viewed at blues.org/blues-music-awards/, was the Flashback Moments that featured old film clips from previous Blues Foundation award shows. Particularly fun were B.B. King and Curtis Salgado, Irma Thomas, Luther Allison, and Rufus Thomas and Bonnie Raitt.
Hopefully, next year's show will be live again and back at its usual venue: the venerable old Orpheum Theater in downtown Memphis.

Brittany Howard

4/28/2020

I've been a fan of the Alabama Shakes since 2012 when they released their debut album, "Boys & Girls." Not because they were from Athens, Alabama, just thirty minutes northwest of Huntsville, where I live. And not because they were young, fresh, and new, and something different, but at the same time somehow hearkening back to the raucous, in-your-face, kick-ass days of early Rock 'n' Roll and Rhythm & Blues. And not because they were also echoing the great old Muscle Shoals sounds that drifted down the Tennessee River valley from that other Alabama town, nearly in shouting distance (well 40 miles) west of Athens.
Well, maybe all these helped, but, no, for me, it was more about the front woman of the band, Brittany Howard. Not since Janis Joplin had there been a sweltering, bold belting female rock vocalist with as much power, grit, and allure as this young (23 years old when "Boys & Girls" was released) songstress from the deep South. So when she decided to quit the Alabama Shakes in 2017 to go solo, I was concerned but not disappointed. When her first solo album "Jaime," finally came out last fall, my concerns were quickly dashed. It was freaky, funny, sad, and deeply personal, and I love it.
Despite all the accolades, I didn't know much about Howard's background and personal life. The music was enough for me. But now I'm happy to report that the rock critic Amanda Petrusich has written a fine, flattering profile of her for the April 27, 2020 issue of the New Yorker. You can find it online at: www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/27/brittany-howards-transformation
ENJOY!

Cherry Blossoms

4/22/2020

I was thinking this week about how fragile our bodies are and how tenuous our lives sometimes seem. My kids were asking me if I had ever seen anything like this coronavirus thing before in my life time.
I told them about the spread of polio when I was a kid. How we couldn't go swimming in a public pool. The whispers and fear in the eyes of our parents when the disease was mentioned. How, when I was 9 or 10, I was among the 1.8 million early test subjects for the new vaccine developed by Jonas Salk.
I also recalled SARS, avian influenza, swine flu, Zika, Ebola, and other scares. "Yes, but," they pushed, "anything like this?"
Then I thought again and remembered the worst of it. My best friend in Battle Creek, where we were both new high school teachers, fresh out of college. And my old high school buddy and later best man at my first wedding. Both lost at young ages along with more than 30 million others to the AIDS epidemic, which our other TV star president, Ronald Reagan, as our present one, largely ignored until it was too late.
When I wrote The Hotel Monte Sano, I discovered why the mountain resort was so popular. In the late 1800's, people in the packed, low-lying cities of America were dying at alarming rates from typhoid, cholera, measles, and tuberculosis, and the hotel, on top of a "mountain of health" promised some respite.
So this new virus is nothing new as far as sickness, death, and pain are concerned. And once again we are reminded of how precious life is and how we owe it to ourselves and to our neighbors to be kind, gracious, generous, loving, and thankful for what little time we have here.
It brings to mind the Buddhists among us who see our life as a "floating world"--like cherry blossoms, a brief flowering in the cycle of reincarnation and dissolution.

National Poetry Month

4/16/2020

April is National Poetry Month, so here is a small sampling of some of my favorite modern poets--some well-known, some not so much, and others rather obscure, but all I know you will enjoy. In no particular order.

E. E. Cummings
A fun poet whose eccentricity of language, punctuation, and point of view set him apart as a true original.

Dylan Thomas
The popular Welsh poet whose poems are as lyrical as they are romantic.

Gwendolyn Brooks
A Kansas-born poet, although she was raised in Chicago, where she became the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize (1950) for her second book of poetry, Annie Allen, which painted poignant portraits of the Black urban poor whom she witnessed everyday.

William Stafford
Another fine, lyrical poet from my native state of Kansas whose subject matter runs the gamut, from meditative to playful.

William Carlos Williams
A pediatrician from Rutherford, New Jersey, whose poems celebrate the simple things in life in unique and surprising ways.

Bobby Byrd
I call Bobby the "Bard of the Border" for his delicious and moving poems about living and loving in El Paso across the border from Juarez. They are so good I had to borrow a verse from his "Why I am a Poet, #7" for the introduction to my Bobby Blue Bland biography.

Langston Hughes
Probably my favorite of the Harlem Renaissance writers, his poems are strong, straight-forward, and always sweetly rhythmic.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti
My favorite of the so-called Beat Poets whose funny, irreverent poems still speak to the country's outcasts and dreamers.

Joy Harjo
She was appointed America's 23rd Poet Laureate in 2019, the first Native American to be so honored. She is a member of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation and lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her poems about her culture and family are especially warm and spiritual.

Pablo Neruda
No one spends a love poem like this Nobel Prize winning Chilean poet and statesman:

Don't leave me, even for an hour,
because
then the little drops of anguish will run together
the smoke that roams looking for a
home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Happy National Poetry Month!

Soul of the Man now in Paperback

4/7/2020

The University Press of Mississippi has just reissued my biography of Bobby "Blue" Bland, Soul of the Man, in paperback. And, "for a limited time only," as they say," you can purchase a copy at a reduced price at www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/S/Soul-of-the-Man2

The book was also recently reviewed by DeMatt Harkins for the Mississippi [Jackson and Hattiesburg] Clarion Ledger: www.msbookspage.wordpress.com/2020/03/23/soul-of-the-man-bobby-blue-bland-by-charles-farley/

Return of the Blog

4/1/2020

Because I've been busy at school, it's been awhile since I've updated this blog. But now that schools are closed, I'm back with the blog again. As before, I will focus on writing, blues music, baseball, and tennis--my main passions in life, aside from my family, of course. Please use the Comments box below or the Contact section of this website to comment on anything that I offer here. Thanks, as always, for your interest and attention.

Older, but no wiser.

Writing: Little Haiku
The brevity of
This little haiku makes it
Hungry for more words

Blues Music: Please support you favorite musicians during these difficult times, either by donating at their streaming concerts or at COVID-19 Blues Musician Emergency Relief Fund.

Support your local musicians.

Baseball: Until Opening Day, watch my favorite baseball movies:
Bull Durham
Eight Men Out
Field of Dreams
42
A League of Their Own
Sugar
The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings
Soul of the Game
Bang the Drum Slowly
The Natural
Moneyball
Damn Yankees

Damn Yankess

Tennis: The Huntsville Tennis Center is still open--with players always staying at least six feet apart, of course. Yay!

Huntsville Tennis Center

News Update

1/17/2018

Outside at my new gig at The Country Day School in Huntsville, Alabama.

On the beach at Indian Pass, Florida.

Overlooking the Danube.

All that remains of the Hotel Monte Sano in Huntsville, Alabama.

Jackson Square in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Upcoming Events

3/6/2016

Garden Club

"The Hotel Monte Sano"
Tuesday, March 8, 2016, 10AM
Monte Sano United Methodist Church
Huntsville, AL

Family Reading Night

"Read Across America"
Tuesday, March 8, 2016, 6PM
Monte Sano Elementary School
Huntsville, AL

Apalachicola Municipal Library

"Authors in Aplach"
Saturday, March 19, 2016, 10AM--5PM
Center for History Culture & Art
Apalachicola, FL

Foxfire Ranch

"Foxfire Blues Fest 2016"
Saturday, March 26, 2016, 12PM--12AM
1465 Old Oxford Road
Waterford, MS

Harrison Brothers Hardware

"Local Authors Book Signing"
Thursday, March 31, 5:30PM--8:30PM
124 Southside Square
Huntsville, AL

Alabama Library Association

"2016 Annual Convention"
Wednesday, April 13, 2016, 5Pm--8PM
University of Alabama-Gadsden Center
121 North 1st Street
Gadsden, AL

Earth Day

"46th Annual Earth Day Festival & Farmers Market"
Sunday, April 17, 2016, 12PM--5PM
Monte Sano State Park
Huntsville, AL