On the 1987 Dolly Parton-Emmylou Harris-Linda Ronstadt collaboration TRIO, the incomparable Miss Dolly contributed a lovely song called "Wildflowers." The song's hook is one of my favorites of her lyrics:

When a flower grows wild, it can always survive
Wildflowers don't care where they grow.

In late spring and early summer here in the knobs, there are all sorts of wildflowers blooming: purple vetch, oxeye daisies, privet (aka hedge), honeysuckle, and one that comes in a rare color in nature--the gorgeous blue chicory.



Native to Europe, naturalized in North America by early settlers, chicory has uses in herbal medicine; it has been used in the treatment of gallstones, bowel upsets, and as a balm for cuts and bruises.

In the South, though, we have memories, some bittersweet, of another of chicory's uses: as a coffee substitute. During the Civil War, when coffee was not to be had thanks to the success of the Union blockade of southern ports, the roots of chicory were ground up and boiled and drunk. I'm not a coffee drinker myself, and have never drunk chicory coffee either, but I'm told it has a bitter taste--not so far from black coffee.

It grows in ditches, along fencerows, and not so very far from the house there's a field full of nothing but chicory and several types of non-blooming wild grasses.

In short, it's the essence of Dolly's lyric. It survives in times of rain and of drought, and it can grow just about anywhere--and it's the bluest of all blue flowers. Back when I was doing more artwork than I do nowadays, I painted chicory on a glass candleholder. It sits now on the corner of the mantle, possibly my favorite of all the pieces I ever did.

And on that blue note, fair thee well.

Today, thanks to the generosity and commitment of the Susan G. Komen Foundation, I was able to have a mammogram, which can be a great tool in the early detection of breast cancer.

My financial circumstances are such--I am unemployed while serving as Mom's caretaker--that I could not have had this test without the help of this foundation.

Suzy Komen lost her battle with breast cancer long ago, but before she died she challenged her sister to find a way to help women who did not have the resources to have these important diagnostic exams. Nancy, the sister, answered the challenge and created the foundation, naming it for the beloved older sister she lost to the disease.

I will not know the results of my exam for a week to ten days. God willing all will be well. But as soon as I am able, I will be making regular donations to the foundation, to show my appreciation for their mission and to help other women who cannot afford the exams.

And on that note, fair thee well.

I gotta keep movin', I gotta keep movin'/Blues comin' down like hail--

The legendary Delta bluesman Robert Johnson sang that line on his 1937 recording "Hellhound on My Trail."  It is possibly the most striking and original image ever applied to ice falling from the clouds.

We had hail yesterday afternoon.  The sky got ominously dark, almost navy blue with an odd yellow cast, and I knew hail was coming.  Still it startled me when I first heard it through the open front window.  Last summer we got a new roof on the house, a metal one--and the hail hitting it sounded like POPCORN!  It wasn't all that big--maybe as big as my thumbnail--although we heard later that in the mountains it ranged from golfball to baseball sized--

The hail ended very shortly, followed by flooding rain--coming off the roof like Niagara, loud, brash, beating the lilac nearly to the ground, creating its own channel as it rushed down the driveway and across the road, sloping toward the mailbox.

Today the skies are satiny blue, the wind is gentle and the air is fresher than it's been in days, rid of its burden of humidity and the smells of dust and diesel from quarry and highway.

And with that weather report, fair thee well.

 

                            

                          

Yesterday afternoon on Channel 10's (NBC Knoxville) LIVE AT FIVE, newsanchor John Becker did a segment about the sad life of "the greatest songwriter you never heard of"--Arthur Q. Smith.

Don't recognize the name? How about the names of songs he wrote?

"Wedding Bells"
"I Overlooked an Orchid"
"Rainbow at Midnight"

These are the names of but three of thirty-five to fifty songs written by Arthur Q. Smith that are attributed to other writers.

A little background first: Arthur Q. Smith was born James Arthur Prichett in Griffin, Georgia, in 1909. In the period of the 1930s to the 1950s he performed on Knoxville radio WNOX's famed Midday Merry-Go-Round. The Merry-Go-Round, emceed for its entire run of some nineteen years by a DJ and promoter named Lowell Blanchard, was live music on East Tennessee's airwaves. It was also a springboard for a number of performers who became true legends of country music when they moved on to Nashville: Archie Campbell, Chet Atkins, Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters, the Louvin Brothers, Homer and Jethro, Don Gibson, the Everly Brothers, Carl Smith, Carl Story and the Rambling Mountaineers (one member of which was the mandolinist Red Rector)and many others.

James Arthur Prichett adopted the stage name Arthur Q. Smith. The "Q" was probably added to distinguish him from "Fiddlin'" Arthur Smith, and "Guitar Boogie" Arthur Smith, respectively a fiddler and an electric guitarist of the same era. Arthur Q. sang in a pleasant if occasionally faltering voice that reminds me of the vocals of Hank Williams Sr.--good old basic hillbilly singing. Arthur Q. shared another talent with Ol' Hank--he was an excellent songwriter.

But Arthur Q. was also an alcoholic, and therein lies the tragedy of his story.

At one time there was a corner bar called The Three Feathers in Knoxville, not far from the WNOX studios. Arthur Q. and performers from the Merry-Go-Round would meet there after live shows. Arthur Q. would write song lyrics--sometimes on the backs of envelopes or sometimes on napkins--sitting there at the bar. And some of them he sold, for beer money.

"Wedding Bells" was one such. A hit for Hank Williams Sr. in 1949, it is credited to Claude Boone--one piece of the puzzle behind rumors of Ol' Hank buying songs. "I Overlooked an Orchid" is credited to Carl Story, Shirly Lynn, and Carl Smith, who had a hit recording with it in 1950. "Rainbow at Midnight" is credited to and was recorded by Ernest Tubb in 1946.

Now, buying songs was not an uncommon practice in old Nashville. Webb Pierce was notorious for telling songwriters he'd record their material if they'd "give {him} half of it"--i.e. share songwriting credit with them; Pierce made money both off his recording and collected royalties as a writer (most notoriously, perhaps, off Mel Tillis). There were no such agreements for Arthur Q. Smith. He literally sold all rights to his songs, usually for sums ranging from ten to twenty dollars--drinking money.

East Tennessee historian Bradley Reeves showed John Becker a receipt he found in Arthur Q. Smith's papers (which are now held at the East Tennessee Historical Society as part of the Midday Merry-Go-Round's archives), the only one known so far to document such a transaction: dated December l5th, 1950, it shows that Don Gibson paid Arthur Q. fifteen dollars for a song called "Blue Million Tears." Allegedly this gave Don half the song, but apparently Arthur Q. never made another cent on it. There is some evidence, according to Marty Stuart, to indicate that Arthur Q. also wrote Gibson's hit "I Can't Stop Loving You." (Read more about this at
http://www.frontiernet.net/~martystuart/harlan.htm)

The one song that Arthur Q. refused to part with was one he wrote about a Second World War soldier who returns after being listed as MIA to find that his fiancee, believing him dead, has married another man. "Missing in Action" was a hit in the 1950s for Ernest Tubb. It is credited to Arthur Q. Smith and Helen Kaye.

Poor businessman? Alcoholic who sold the songs that could have made him a name to be reckoned with in country music, as many another addict sells their talent and soul? What breaks my heart about this story is that so many people knew and used his weakness in such a way. Harlan Howard, a great songwriter who was taken advantage of in the early days of his career, wrote the song "Be Careful Who You Love (Arthur's Song)" in honor of Arthur Q.:

The old guitar picker had run out of liquor
So I sat down beside him and bought him a drink
I bought him another and finally some color
Returned to his cheeks, and he said with a wink
Son, I worked for Red Foley, knew Hank and Old Lefty
I worked on the Opry back when I was strong
But in showbiz you know sometimes it gets slow
So you buy us another and I’ll sing you a song
Be careful who you love, for love can be untrue
Be careful who you love, be sure she loves you too

Arthur Q. Smith, songwriter extraordinaire, died at the age of fifty-four on March 21st, 1963. At the time of his death, he had seven cents in his pocket.

Until next time, fair thee well.



PS: It occurs to me in rereading this post that I should have given Webb Pierce his due: he actually was helping songwriters in a way with his practice of taking half the song, since there was a period of roughly a decade to fifteen years from the 1950s up until nearly 1970 when placing a song with Webb Pierce would almost guarantee the songwriter a hit. He also was the owner of a publishing company, though; this was another source of income for him, not to mention that he made even more money by "taking half the song" for writing credit, and a number of the songwriters were contracted to his company. Not savory, but not exactly illegal. Mel Tillis got around this eventually by getting out of his contract and forming his own publishing company; others weren't so lucky.

Moonstone posted a lovely blog about columbines (http://muchadoaboutnothing.blogstream.com) this morning; riffing on Ophelia's mad scene from Act IV of HAMLET and then working her way around to a meditative remembrance of the tragedy at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado in 1999.

Now you know my mind works on peculiar pathways all its own, and the picture of the blue columbine she posted reminded me of a story from MaryJoy Martin's TWILIGHT DWELLERS: GHOSTS, GHOULS & GOBLINS OF COLORADO (1985) about the Lady of the Columbines.

In a cemetery overlooking Central City, there stands a monument to the Cameron family: father, mother, and their only son. The son, John Edward, died on November 1st, 1887, at the age of twenty-eight, of what was called, on his death certificate, "paralysis of the heart."

John Edward Cameron was a handsome man, a fireman by profession. Many a mother in Central City tried mightily to get his attention focused on her daughter, as he was also reckoned to be kindhearted, brave, polite, and a good provider, as all mothers hope a son-in-law will be. But John Edward took no interest in the girls of Central City; he apparently had a girlfriend in one of the neighboring towns. He took frequent walks to Bald Mountain in particular, so it was surmised that she lived there.

John Edward Cameron fell ill on Monday, October 31st, 1887, and died the next day. He was buried beside his father, who had died seven years previously, under one of those tall marble shafts so popular as tombstones in the nineteenth century. His funeral was well attended, with the fire departments of several nearby towns marching with the hearse from the Presbyterian church where his funeral was held to the cemetery.

A young lady in a conventional black dress was seen staying behind after the funeral was done; she stayed late that afternoon and visited the grave nearly every day throughout the long winter that followed. In the spring she planted a rosebush on John Edward's grave, and later was observed leaving a bouquet of columbines propped against the tombstone. Then, in June 1888, she stopped coming to the cemetery.

It was two years before she was seen again, and then she only came on two days of the year: April 5th and November 1st, leaving a bouquet of columbines on each date, although columbines were not a November flower. November 1st, the date of John Edward's death, was an obvious anniversary for her to observe, but April 5th stumped even the gossips until someone decided that April 5th would have been their wedding day had John Edward lived.

More importantly, since she seemed to appear out of nowhere and vanish the same way before anyone could speak to her, the gossips decided she must be a ghost.

On November 1st, 1899, twelve years after John Edward Cameron's death, a mingled group of gossips and skeptics "staked out" his grave, determined to learn once and for all who the lovely lady was and whether or not she was a living woman--as the skeptics believed--or a ghost--as the gossips insisted.

They only were able to observe her long enough to note that she wore mourning in the style of a decade or more earlier, and that she placed a bouquet of columbines on his grave as always. That was all; when one skeptic approached her she walked over the crest of a hill in the cemetery. When the skeptic reached the top of the hill, she was gone. Within a moment or two, a fierce wind sprang up, forcing the group to abandon any attempt to find where she had gone.

The only person who might have given a definitive answer to the question--John Edward Cameron's mother, Catherine--died in 1912 without ever saying a word about the lovely lady who left columbines on her son's grave on two melancholy anniversaries.

As time went on the stories got wilder: now the lady was characterized as a jealous lover who poisoned John Edward and visited his grave as penance, or perhaps was guiltridden because she refused his love and he died of the proverbial broken heart. Others said that only "true believers" could see her and then only under a full moon.

Irrelevancies all. What is known is that, for years after John Edward Cameron's death, and perhaps after her own, a mysterious lady placed columbines on his grave.



And until next time, fair thee well.