Greetings.

I no longer have any patience for the ignorant and ill-informed, the curse of our current society, steeped only in fashion and rejecting of intellectualism or any hint of something out of the corrupted past.

Having said that, while I no longer try to win over cretins to appreciate greatness in music (I've been teaching for 40 years) I will happily engage the open minded.   

Anyone who considers songs like, Old Black Joe, or, My Old Kentucky Home, in poor taste is aside from being ill-informed is to me, dangerous -- a portent of the fall of a civilization that has, quite simply lost it's mind.   A cursory glance at any Super Bowl half-time show should confirm this.    Let them revel in the putrid odor of their stupidity.

"Old Black Joe" is a poignant, lovely, dirge, if nothing else. But it is so much more.   It resonates in all people, around the world, who can identify with the awesome sadness that accompanies the passage of time, the fate of all men who are reconciled to the inevitable, and who, in the face of the inevitability, embrace it.   Loss, the harbinger of death, comes to all, and this song gives dignified voice to that experience. Hence, the song embraces the sublime.   

Thank you!