I love not only country music history, but all history. The brouhaha between Ann Coulter and Elizabeth Edwards brings to mind a character who is, perversely, my favorite from British political history: the vicious eighteenth century polemicist known as Junius.

From 1765 to 1771, Junius savaged King George III and a series of cabinet ministers, many of whom were forced to resign their posts by public outcry in the wake of his assaults. One hapless minister of finance was exposed as an inveterate gambler, unfit to handle the country's treasury. Another minister was accused of being a sodden alcoholic who handed out jobs and patronage to his drinking companions. A third was attacked as a shameless womanizer, then as a heartless seducer and betrayer when he married a woman other than his mistress. The king was characterized as stupid, incompetent, tyrannical, and equally as corrupt as his ministers.

Ann Coulter uses newspaper columns, books, blogs and TV to spew her venom; Junius spewed his through letters to the editors of newspapers, the lone mass medium of his day. Unlike Ms. Coulter, Junius was almost paranoid about concealing his identity; to a polite query from radical politician John Wilkes, Junius replied that if his identity was revealed, he would not survive a week, such was the fury and embarassment of his victims.

Although Junius continued to publish sporadic letters as late as l773, they show a marked decline in quality after 1771. As a bitter government critic, he remained a highly popular figure into the nineteenth century. In Lord Byron's satirical poem "A Vision of Judgment" Junius--whom Byron describes as a "mighty shadow of a shade"--rails against George III's admission into heaven.

In the twentieth century it was established that Junius was in fact two men: Philip Francis, a clerk in the Naval Office, and Tobias Fitzpatrick, a consumptive wit and man about town. Francis relayed workplace gossip to Fitzpatrick, who turned gossip into the scurrilous innuendo of the letters. Fitzpatrick died in 1771, and Francis lost his job at the Naval Office shortly thereafter. Although Francis was an unpleasant man at best, he was no fountain of spite like the late Fitzpatrick. Lacking both his vitriolic partner and the gossip that was Junius's lifeblood, he retired into obscurity.

Junius was a staunch supporter of the American cause long before our revolution began, and a stout defender of both the far-left radical John Wilkes and the brilliant Irish liberal Edmund Burke. He was never so crass as to pretend that his attacks on politicians added ideas to political discourse. He never took cheap shots at the bereaved, as Ms. Coulter has done at the politically active 9/11 widows and the Edwards family; nor did he ever express a pious hope of any politician dying as a result of terrorist assassination. (Yes, I realize Ms. Coulter was only parroting the sleazy Bill Maher; the comments were inappropriate, no matter what the source.) Although Junius was referring to the cabinet minister who fired Philip Francis, his bemused words could equally apply to Ann Coulter: "The proceedings of this wretch are unaccountable."

The genius of Junius, nightcrawler though he was, is that Francis, his surviving half, knew when to quit. Junius showed up, skewered his targets, and vanished back into the shadows after a short spectacular career. Too bad Ms. Coulter is too egotistical and proud of her nasty image to follow the example of her elder and better.

This morning brings news that a body found in an Ohio lake is that of Jessie Marie Davis, nine months pregnant, missing for over a week. A former boyfriend, the alleged father of her unborn child, has been arrested.

Perhaps because of greater opportunities for media attention, the murder of a pregnant woman nowadays seems horrifyingly commonplace. Over several years' time, the perpetrators have included football stars, slick yuppies, and one trying to prevent the exposure of an elaborate double life. All their victims were inconveniently pregnant, and their unborn infants died with them.

Interesting, therefore, that almost exactly two centuries ago, the murder of a pregnant woman was so phenomenal as to inspire what is arguably folk music's most famous "murder ballad."

The year: 1808. The place: Guilford County, North Carolina. The victim: an orphan called Naomi Wise, the ward of Squire Adams. The killer: Jonathan (Jon) Lewis. According to noted song collector Alan Lomax, although Jon Lewis willingly dallied with Omie, as the ballad calls her, he had ambitions to marry a woman of wealth and social standing, and when Omie told him she was pregnant, he lured her to a nearby river, where he drowned her.

Those are the bare facts. Like many a folk ballad, "Omie Wise" has a number of variants, both of lyrics and melodies. My favorite is an eerie minor-key version performed by legendary Deep Gap, North Carolina singer Doc Watson, who learned his variant from his grandmother. Doc's version fills out the dreadful story with details of how Lewis sadistically told Omie his intent; how Omie begged for her life and her baby's; how her body was found, some time after her disappearance, by two young boys fishing off the riverbank. Doc's variant ends with a ballad convention: Jon Lewis was arrested, and "no friends nor relations would go on his bail."

The great collector of North Carolina folklore, Frank C. Brown, reports that, with the connivance of friends, Jon Lewis excaped from jail and vanished. Meanwhile the memory of his crime was kept alive by the ballad, composed by some unknown mountain poet, "which was sung at every hearth." Brown--and Lomax, following him--say that some years later a party of Guilford County men located Lewis and brought him back to face trial; unfortunately, by then most of the witnesses against him were dead, and the case collapsed. Only on his deathbed, it is said, did he confess to the murders of Omie and their unborn child.

Some men take unspeakable shortcuts to rid themselves of an inconvenience. God willing, justice will not fail Jessie Marie Davis as it failed Omie Wise and her child, who lie buried not far from where they died.

Till next time, fair thee well.

Bill Monroe, the revered Father of Bluegrass Music, had another great passion in childhood: baseball. Unlike Roy Acuff and others, he was unable to pursue that passion because of a congenital defect; he was born with crossed eyes. Teased mercilessly about that flaw, he became—almost by default—an ornery, proud, isolated man. Orphaned by the age of sixteen, he channeled his loneliness, anger and love into music. Leader of the Blue Grass Boys from l938, and an Opry star beginning in October l939, he played highly innovative and deeply personalized music for over sixty years: old-time string music in overdrive, led by his own mandolin and high tenor voice, derived from his Scots-Irish roots, influenced by blues and jazz, much imitated but never equalled by legions of admirers.

Yet it was through music that Mr. Monroe was able to play baseball, as he dreamed in childhood. During World War II, the Opry began sending out traveling tent shows; groups of Opry stars fanned out across the rural South, performing under vast canvas tents, charging admissions ranging from 25 cents to 75 cents. (Gone are the days. . . ) During this period, the Blue Grass Boys, occasionally augmented by hired athletes, formed a baseball team, challenging local teams in games played before their performances. Mr. Monroe, his vision much improved by therapeutic means, was a pitcher and, old Blue Grass Boys recalled, a mighty hitter.

There’s a black and white photo, with John Rumbles’s excellent liner notes to MCA’s boxed CD set, THE MUSIC OF BILL MONROE FROM l936 TO l994, of Mr. Monroe and some of his Blue Grass Boys, suited up for a game, circa l943. In addition to Monroe, the players were all great musicians in their own rights: Howard Watts, aka Cedric Rainwater, bass player and comedian; Chubby Wise, one of the earliest of Monroe’s legendary fiddle players; Clyde Moody, guitarist and lead vocalist; and David "Stringbean" Akeman, banjo player and comedian, thirty years before his dreadful death at the hands of armed robbers. In later years, such diverse musicians as banjo player Don Reno, better known as half of Reno and Smiley, and guitarist Jackie Phelps, later a longtime member of Roy Acuff’s Smoky Mountain Boys, played music and baseball with Mr. Monroe.

By the late l940s, Mr. Monroe had become quite a baseball entrepreneur; in addition to the Blue Grass Boys traveling team, he was fielding a second team, based in Nashville, well into the l950s. The rockabilly revolution, spearheaded by admirers of Monroe, and a changing marketplace eventually ended the traveling tent shows, and Monroe himself was aging. In the l960s, festivals replaced tent shows, and the baseball games were no more.

Still, I wonder about those days. Did Mr. Monroe find those games as exciting as his childhood dreams? Were there dramas and lamentations among musicians over injuries to their hands, tools of their trade as vital as their instruments? (Having grown up among musicians, I imagine there were.) How often did the Blue Grass Boys win?

Dust, sweat, baseball and music—memories for a lifetime.

Till next time, fair thee well.

Lately I've begun to question my choice of newsanchors--specifically Keith Olbermann. His celebrated "feud" with the infamous Bill O'Reilly amounts to nothing more than a couple of neurotics taking cheap shots at each other; his "special comments" have tremendous bite but little polish; and letting pop culture and celebrity nonsense take precedence over hard news as "our number one story on the countdown" palls. And don't EVEN get me started about his bumbling attempts to make comic capital from quoting classic country lyrics in howlingly inappropriate contexts; it's a fine art, and I despair of him ever mastering it.

Once in a great while, though, there is a place where our respective passions intersect. His is baseball; mine is classic country, and only lately have I noted how many potentially great baseball players failed to reach that goal but went on to become great country singers. (And no, I do not have in mind the accident by which Tug McGraw fathered Tim.)

One such is Charley Pride, country music's only black superstar. Pride was a pitcher for the Memphis Red Sox at age sixteen. His baseball career was interrupted by military service. After he left the Army in l958 he played in the Pioneer League and was offered tryouts by the Mets and the Angels. He didn't make either team, and his dream of going to the majors ended for good by l962, following a catastrophic injury to his arm. Even at the height of his singing career, though, Pride attended the Angels' spring training for years.

Before Charley Pride, Texas singer Jim Reeves planned a career in baseball. He gave up a scholarship at UT Austin to enter the military during World War II; he played in the minors after the war, but a l947 leg injury ended his hopes of going to the majors. The story that he flipped a coin to decide whether to continue his baseball career or to accept an invitation to join Shreveport's Louisiana Hayride, a venue that was virtually a springboard to the Grand Ole Opry, is probably apocryphal. His rich baritone got him jobs first as a radio announcer, then as a singer, by l952, and he had not yet hit his peak in music when he died in a l964 plane crash.

And then there was the sad story of Roy Acuff. A fiddle player and an athlete who lettered in three sports at his native Union County TN high school, Mr. Roy was offered tryouts by baseball scouts in l929. Unfortunately he suffered a sunstroke that year, and, the following year, a nervous breakdown. While recuperating, he began to play the fiddle again, and by l932 had decided to pursue a career in music. He became a regular performer at the Opry in l938, and remained a beloved presence there almost until his death in l992. Roy Acuff holds the distinction of being the only Country Music Hall of Famer to receive a nickname that stuck from a baseball Hall of Famer; legend says the immortal Dizzy Dean proclaimed him the King of Country Music, an impromptu crown Mr. Roy wore proudly until he died. Legend also has it that during World War II the Japanese would run headlong into battle shrieking, "To hell with FDR! To hell with Babe Ruth! To hell with Roy Acuff!"--thus pairing him yet again with a legend in the sport Mr. Roy was forced to abandon.

There was also Roy Drusky, a would-be baseball star who became a veterinarian, a songwriter and a singer; and there was the curious case of Bill Monroe, which deserves a blog of its own. However, having negotiated the intersection of baseball and classic country music, hopefully successfully, I'm gonna take the advice of Susanna Clark and Carlene Carter; I'm gettin' off where the crossroads meet. And while I'm at it, I think I'm gonna start hunting a new newsanchor.

Till next time, fair thee well.

I cannot dance. I'm probably the only person on the planet whose gracelessness on the dance floor surpasses Tucker Carlson's. Still, I fantasize about waltzes. Originally a European import, initially considered racy because the partners touched more than hands in passing, the waltz is one of the loveliest of the classic dances. There's no prettier sight that couples gliding around the floor, and no sweeter sound than a band playing smooth three-quarter time.

In country music, we've got a long history of beautiful waltzes, some with lyrics, some without. One of my favorites from the early days is "Kitty Waltz" by the Original Carter Family. Mainly a bravura performance by Sara and Maybelle, I have one caveat about this lilting little piece; it's fast. Nearly as fast as a polka.

Hank Williams Sr. left some songs that were originally demos, home recordings with no accompaniment save his guitar. One such was a sentimental love song called "Waltz of the Wind," about dancing with his true love while "the trees played the waltz of the wind." It's among my favorites of Ol' Hank's lesser known works.

Another favorite is Ernest Tubb's "Waltz Across Texas." Tubb's voice was twangy and often uncertain of key, but there's something fetching about this piece. He often closed with it when he performed on the Grand Ole Opry.

Texan Waylon Jennings, recorded a gorgeous waltz called "The Last Letter" on a live album from the l970s. Penned, I think (don't quote me on this) in the l940s by Rex Griffin, the lyrics are fairly standard lost-love genre; the performance is distinguished by an achingly sensuous solo from Waylon's longtime steel guitarist, Ralph Mooney. That solo, and the anguish with which Waylon sang the last line--"if you don't love me, I wish you would leave me alone"--will stand your hair on end.

Doc Watson--my favorite guitarist, hands down--and the late Chet Atkins recorded a duet album in l979. One of the best tunes from that collaboration was "Goodnight Waltz," an instrumental. Doc played steel-string acoustic; Chet used a gut-string guitar, and the long lovely lines they played, alternating leads and rhythm, almost makes you think the guitars can waltz.

Finally, two great waltzes recorded by Pee Wee King and the Golden West Cowboys, featuring Red Stewart: "Kentucky Waltz" and "Tennessee Waltz." "Kentucky Waltz" was written and first recorded by Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys; the most famous performance of "Tennessee Waltz" was by Patti Page. That said, I infinitely prefer the King-Stewart recordings, especially of "Kentucky Waltz," where accordionist King and guitarist-vocalist Stewart play an intricate duet, the accordion taking the lead and the guitar playing a harmony line (a technique called takeoff guitar, different from rhythm guitar, about which my guitarist brother could tell you more) as silky as a sweet dream. As to which waltz is my favorite--c'mon, guys, I'm a Tennessee girl! You KNOW which one is my favorite!

Damn, with all that sexy three quarter time in my ears, I suddenly find I'm not tripping over my feet after all, so there's only one thing left to say: hey, Tucker, wanna dance?

Till next time, fair thee well.

PS Thanks to Willard for the great Fathers' Day blog. She wrote with grace and humor on a topic I could not cover with any sincerity.