Academy Records, 18th Street, NYC, February 12, 2012.

Friends Ed and Margot Ryan were walking with their children to get a camera at Adorama this morning and they noticed this scene in the window of Academy Records next door.  Being in between Robert Johnson and the Met Opera just about nails it.

Thank you, Ed and Margot.

-Sam Stephenson

Tomorrow I’m giving a public talk at noon.  More information can be found on the University of Chicago’s Events page.

-S.S.

I’m working on a piece for Paris Review that afforded me the opportunity to receive in yesterday’s mail and hold in my hands one extraordinary object:  the deluxe box set of Over the Rhine’s remarkable 2011 album, “The Long Surrender,” produced by Joe Henry.  It was at the top of my list of favorite recordings last year.  The deluxe set includes vinyl, cd, and a 32-page LP-sized book with magnificent photographs by Michael Wilson.  It’s a moving work of art – the music, the photography, the care and attention and love so evident and powerful.

In 2006 I went to see Wilco at Memorial Hall in Chapel Hill.  At the time I was sporting a cast and crutches after falling and breaking my ankle in the subway at 86th and Broadway that January.  It was a struggle to make it to the show.  Because of my handicap the kind folks at Memorial allowed me to sit in an individual chair on the first row of the balcony.  I basically had the best seat in the house for what was a terrific show.  But what I remember most about that night is being stopped dead by the cover of Glenn Kotche’s album, “Mobile,” which was displayed on the merchandise table.  It features a photograph of Kotche’s hand.  When I first saw it I thought it was a flower.  I bought the cd, saw the credit for Michael Wilson, reached out to him, and bought a print of that photograph.  Since then I’ve become a big fan of his work.  He achieves a certain light in his work, no matter the subject, that is unmistakably his own.

-Sam Stephenson

Photograph by Kate Joyce. February 2012.

Kate wandered upon this amusing scene in a magazine stand recently.  That’s the current issue of Tin House, which has my latest piece on Sonny Clark, and sitting there is also the Paris Review, whose Daily I contribute to (including once with Kate).

-Sam Stephenson

The band of the "Asylum for Colored Insane" in Goldsboro, North Carolina. Date unclear.

Folklorist Sarah Bryan shared this photograph with me this week.  She first saw it in an exhibition in Goldsboro, N.C. at Cherry Hospital which was originally named Asylum for Colored Insane.  The Asylum was founded in 1877 by the North Carolina General Assembly.  After admitting its first patient in 1880 the name was changed several times and it became Cherry Hospital in 1959. I grew up 65 miles east of Goldsboro.  When I was a kid, if you did something deemed stupid or crazy, people would say, “Keep doing that and you’ll end up in Cherry Hospital.”  Thelonious Monk’s father spent the last two or three decades of his life there; hence, my original specific interest, which Sarah knew about.  But this photograph makes me think of a lot more work to be done beyond Thelonious, Sr.  You can make out some nurses in the background of the photo.

Along with the regrettable social and political impetus and ramifications of the existence of this institution at its inception, I’m haunted by what might be the date of this photograph.  On the wall next to the picture there was an ambiguous card indicating the picture may date to 1900.  If true, it could complicate some elements of jazz history.  To my knowledge, brass sections like this weren’t known to exist in places like rural North Carolina.  I’m not enough of a historian of this period to verify the date by the clothing.

-Sam Stephenson

Downtown Shelby, NC. January 28, 2012. Photo by Helen Woolard.

Saturday I drove 180 miles west to Shelby, North Carolina to conduct an interview for a project that will reveal itself soon (knock on wood).  Photographer Helen Woolard went with me.  For countless many, Shelby will always be known as the hometown of North Carolina State University basketball icon David Thompson.  DT and the University of North Carolina’s Phil Ford were the two best players to ever play in the Atlantic Coast Conference (the rest are chumps).  It occurred to me to try to find DT’s childhood home.  While wandering around downtown as Helen was shooting photographs, I sent a note to a listserv of college-basketball-oriented folks, asking if anyone had DT’s childhood address.  Nobody did.  Next time I’ll do more preparation.  An old friend on the listserv ran into DT at the State-UVA game in Raleigh later that night and mentioned to him that I had inquired about his home address earlier in the day.  It sounded like he was amused.

Phil Ford, by the way, was from Rocky Mount, the same hometown as Buck Leonard, Thelonious Monk (see, JLP is one degree away from anything), and Allan Gurganus.  I hope these small towns are still producing people like this.

Downtown Shelby was marked by more evergreen ‘live oak’ trees than I think I’ve ever seen in a downtown like that.  I find these towns to be fascinating, maybe because I grew up in a similar one.  In some ways these towns are all the same (the confederate soldier statue in front of the courthouse), but they are all different.

-Sam Stephenson

p.s. (I recently found UNC coach Dean Smith’s childhood home in Emporia, KS).

I’ve told the story about how I got into W. Eugene Smith’s work a million times.  In short (here goes again, with a new nuance), I had begun research on a book about Pittsburgh when my Pittsburgh-native wife gave me a camera for Christmas 1996.  In January 1997 I was in a camera shop in Raleigh when a clerk asked me if I’d ever seen Smith’s Pittsburgh work.  I left the shop and went to the public library in Cameron Village and I checked out Jim Hughes’ biography of Smith, Shadow and Substance.  I read the book, wrote Jim a letter, and he generously sent me a new copy of his book with a signature and note of encouragement.  I returned the borrowed copy to the library.  In April of that year I made my first visit to Smith’s archive at CCP, with the support of DoubleTake magazine.

Flash forward to yesterday:  I grabbed lunch with friend Dave Simonton who gave me a stunning gift.  It’s the copy of Shadow and Substance that I checked out 15 years ago this month.  (Or, it almost certainly is.  It’s doubtful that the Cameron Village branch would have had two copies of this book).  Dave found it in a used book store in Raleigh.

When Dave showed me these stamps and markings on the back binding, I was speechless.

I wonder, if Cameron Village had not had this book, if my curiosity would have continued.  The internet search engines and their results were in nascent stages 15 years ago (if they existed at all), so a search wouldn’t have yielded much, and with slow dial-up access it wasn’t the inspiration it can be today.

There are people I’d sign up to spend 15 years studying – Monk, Coltrane, Joe Mitchell, Bernard Malamud, and John Berger come to mind this minute – but Smith wouldn’t have been on the list.  It just happened.

-Sam Stephenson

I’ve been working on the Kansas parts of Gene Smith’s Sink and my nephew Hank Stephenson has been working as my research assistant.  This morning, in the WPA Guide to 1930’sKansas (1939), he came across this passage in the “sports and recreation” section of the book (P. 117-118).

“The jackrabbit drive is peculiar to western Kansas. Advertised for days in advance for handbills and local newspapers, the drive usually starts on Sunday and is attended by great crowds of spectators. A certain area, covering perhaps thousands of acres, is surrounded by beaters armed with clubs and sticks; guns are banned. Hundreds of people take part. Slowly the lines close in on all sides, flushing the rabbits into a large pen or wire enclosure at a central point, where they are clubbed to death. The daily ‘kill,’ which in many instances exceeds 6,500, is reported by the local press. Denounced in other sections as a sadistic display, the drive is defended in the Western part of the State as an economic necessity, since the rabbits feed on green wheat.”

Curious, Hank then found this stunning 1934 video.

When word of this tradition spread, apparently, there was outrage.  Hank found this quote courtesy of the Kansas Historical Society:

“Eastern Kansas residents, who had no jackrabbit problems, were among the critics, prompting some farmers to propose that the rabbits be driven to the eastern part of the state.  The farmers tried to ship live rabbits to eastern states, but Ohio game and wildlife officials realized how destructive jackrabbits were and canceled their order.  Residents of western Kansas rounded up about 1,200 live rabbits to ship to Indiana; the press in Kansas City, Omaha, and Denver as well as the Pathé newsreel company covered this attempt.”

Thousands of bludgeoned bunnies

-Sam Stephenson

Invisible Man. Court Theater. Chicago. 2012.

Tomorrow I head to Chicago for the official opening of Invisible Man, the first-ever adaptation of Ralph Ellison’s novel for stage or screen.  The play is directed by Christopher McElroen, who is also directing the ongoing theater project mentioned in this blog many times, Chaos Manor. There are several good behind-the-scenes blog entries about the preparations for Invisible Man on the Court Theater’s site.

Update 1/20:  HERE is a good article on the production from the Chicago Tribune.

-Sam Stephenson