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24 Sep 05 - 08:35 AM (#1569761) Subject: happy? - Sept 24 (Gamble Rogers medal) From: Abby Sale On 9/24/1992 The Carnegie Medal for heroism was awarded posthumously to Gamble Rogers (see 10/10/1991) Copyright © 2005, Abby Sale - all rights reserved What are Happy's all about? See Clicky |
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24 Sep 05 - 08:46 AM (#1569764) Subject: RE: happy? - Sept 24 (Gamble Rogers medal) From: Tannywheeler For those who don't know--WHY? Tw |
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24 Sep 05 - 10:31 PM (#1570083) Subject: RE: happy? - Sept 24 (Gamble Rogers medal) From: Abby Sale He died trying to save the life of a stranger. You could wait for 10/10 or have a peek at one of many pages - Gamble Rogers Memorial Foundation Especially see the Tribute / Musical / Gillette Mangsen "Song for Gamble" recorded by Steve Gillette & Cindy Mangsen Words & Music By: Steve Gillette & John Charles Quarto He was liked as a person and as a musician. |
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25 Sep 05 - 12:36 AM (#1570136) Subject: RE: happy? - Sept 24 (Gamble Rogers medal) From: Mark Cohen He was a screamingly good fingerpicker, and about the funniest storyteller I've ever heard. I had the great good fortune to hear him perform at the Cherry Tree Folk Club in Philadelphia in the early 80's. His story about Miss Eulilah Singletary and the snake (I'm probably misremembering the name) should be cast in bronze. Aloha, Mark |
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25 Sep 05 - 10:50 AM (#1570310) Subject: RE: happy? - Sept 24 (Gamble Rogers medal) From: Abby Sale I don't recall that one but since you ask, I'll post one from the pages cited supra. It's not the one about the tiny and huge dogs which I've used many, many times warning owners-with-huge-dogs to steer a wide berth of my (sadly in the earth now) fiercly territorial Cairn Terrier. It's another but I can't place the song or chantey to which it refers: Preachin', Pickin' & Politicin' -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's colorful down home. All the preachers talk like politicians and the politicians talk like preachers - the people who pick and sing, why, they sound like preachers and politicians. Do you remember Governor Jimmy Davis of Louisiana who wrote the song "You Are My Sunshine?" Made a top 40 hit of it back when Ray Charles was in knee pants. And then there was Pappy Leo Daniels of Texas who had a Country music group called Pappy Leo Daniels & the light crust dough boys. He became the Governor of Texas and wrote a song called "Beautiful Texas" which is an anthem of the Lone Star State. My dear friend and mentor Agamemnon Jones, that's Agamemnon Abromovitz Jones, remembers seeing Huey Long stumping the state in Louisiana campaigning from the bed of a two and a half ton truck - he had a hillbilly aggregation dancing attendance behind, and old kingfish was out in front in the band with a Prince Albert can full of quail shots strapped to his right forearm - picking out the great speckled bird on a Martin Guitar. Now that's colorful. But there ain't nobody so colorful in the annals of southern political history as Kissin' Christian Gentleman Big Jim Folsom of the sovereign state of Alabama. Now when Jim Folsom declared his intention to capture the democratic nomination for governor, all of his political detractors went out trying to dig up some sort of scurrilous misinformation - with which they could besmirch his pristine public image. They had only to go so far as the sylvan burg of Coleman, Alabama, where they found irrefutable evidence of some non-domestic peccadilloes - that had been orchestrated by the good gentleman during one of his carnal rampages in the vicinity. They wrote their findings up in the form of a polemical ballad and chose for the tune a traditional heir from an English Sea Chantey. A melody that was so catchy that their little track became an instant hit - raged over the face of Alabama and was sung at every street corner and college campus. Jim Folsom being nobody's fool appropriated this song as his official campaign song and swept to victory with his supporters chanting the very words of this song. |
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25 Sep 05 - 01:56 PM (#1570380) Subject: RE: happy? - Sept 24 (Gamble Rogers medal) From: Mark Ross A great picker, a wonderful storyteller, an amazing gift for the language, and a good friend. I met Gamble in the '60's when I was in Greenwich Village, and I always loved to run into him. The last time I saw him was in Chicago at the EARL OF OLD TOWN, when I was opening for him. We went to breakfast at 5AM. In the course of the meal we started talking about the best ways to travel and both agreed that our favorite was trains(passenger, not freight). He looked at me, set down his eating utensil and coffee cup an pronounced in that classic Florida accent, "Mark, trains are the most civilized method of travel man has ever devised." I can hear him now. By the way, I'm told that his daughter lives here in Eugene, Oregon. I'd love to say hello. Anyone know to reach her? Mark Ross |
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25 Sep 05 - 02:13 PM (#1570386) Subject: RE: happy? - Sept 24 (Gamble Rogers medal) From: Mark Cohen Here's one I remember, from that website, about his friend Still Bill ("sorry is as sorry does": Bill is a consummate expert in the field of bovine midwifery. Has to be a good cow midwife because every one of those newborn calves is money in the bank for an aggregarian entrepreneur like Bill. Bill had this old bossie cow, she was about to drop a calf. He heard her lowing out in the upper forty - that's the mud hole behind the chopping block - sounded like she was in hard labor. He got a piece of rope, ran out to help her, got around behind her, first thing he noticed it was a complicated birth because the calf had breached. He tried to turn the little fella around and get it coming out head first into the world the way mother nature intended but he had no success. He had no recourse then but to take hold of the calves hind legs and start in to pulling. That cow's tied to the tree lowing, Bill's pulling on that calves hind legs. Now the interstate highway ran right behind the property at this point. Along comes this young woman with straight black hair and horn-rimmed glasses, driving a little MG with New Jersey plates, smoking a non-domestic tobacco. She looks down in the field and she sees Bill and the cow. She stops the car, she runs up there, she says "Sir, can I help you?" He says, "Yes ma'am, take hold of a leg and pull." They pulled and pulled and that calf came out into the world healthy and capered away. Bill said "Ma'am, I'm much obliged to you for helping me out in my time of need. Now is there any way in which I can recompense you for the services you have rendered her?" She said,'No sir, mister I wouldn't take a nickel for that. I just want to ask you one thing." He said, "what's that ma'am?" She said, "how fast was that little one going when it hit the big one?" (I believe that if he had seen this story transcribed, Gamble would have made sure to correct "aggregarian" to "agrarian" and "breached" to "breeched"--a cow and a whale being two altogether different creatures.) One thing those brief selections on the website don't give you is a sense of the magnificent tapestry of a Gamble Rogers story. He was not a joke teller, he was a storyteller. His narratives would roll like a mighty river, bending and meandering at times, but always carrying you along with the astonishing force and current of his words. Aloha, Mark |
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25 Sep 05 - 05:12 PM (#1570479) Subject: RE: happy? - Sept 24 (Gamble Rogers medal) From: Tannywheeler Oh--T*H*A*T* gamble rogers. Had the pleasure of seeing him live once in Austin. Made me proud (again) to be a storyteller's daughter. (Don't I remember one or more about catfish?) The many levels of human intelligence and interrelations addressed and satisfied by a well-told story spread like the proverbial ripples in a pond and reverberate forever in the heart of a hearer. Rotten that he's not giving us any more. But thank God for what he had time to give us. It's a different level of lifesaving (imho). Tw |
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26 Sep 05 - 10:45 AM (#1570865) Subject: RE: happy? - Sept 24 (Gamble Rogers medal) From: frogprince Do you know the yarn of the two young boys in the Saturday matinee, on one of Gamble's records? The first time I heard it I almost laughed myself sick; so demented, and yet entirely plausible. |
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26 Sep 05 - 10:46 AM (#1570867) Subject: RE: happy? - Sept 24 (Gamble Rogers medal) From: GUEST,Joe_F Mark Cohen: Now you've gone & stimulated my editorial reflexes. Surely, once you have ventured to call a farmer an "agrarian entrepreneur", making it "aggregarian" only adds to the fun? "Calves" should be "calf's", tho. --- Joe Fineman joe_f@verizon.net ||: Journalists and lexicographers have the professional duty of recording a great deal of foolishness. :|| |
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26 Sep 05 - 10:56 AM (#1570873) Subject: RE: happy? - Sept 24 (Gamble Rogers medal) From: Tannywheeler Double Amen to that, Joe F. Which are you? ('cuz that sounds like the Voice of Experience) Tw |