Twentieth Century Drifter: The Life of Marty Robbins by Diane Diekman
Recent winner of the Belmont Country Music Book of the Year Award! During his three decades as a country music performer, Marty Robbins (1925-1982) placed 94 songs on Billboard’s country music charts, with sixteen number-one hits. In addition to two Grammy awards, he was also honored with the Man of the Decade Award from the Academy of Country Music in 1970. Drawing from personal interviews and in-depth research, biographer Diane Diekman delivers the first biography of this country music icon. Buy the Kindle version here. Buy the Kobo version here. Buy the NOOK version here.

Spirits of Just Men: Mountaineers, Liquor Bosses, and Lawmen in the Moonshine Capital of the World by Charles D. Thompson Jr.
Spirits of Just Men tells the story of moonshine in 1930s America, as seen through the remarkable location of Franklin County, Virginia, a place that many still refer to as the “moonshine capital of the world.”  Drawing from extensive oral histories and local archival material, Charles D. Thompson Jr.  illustrates how the moonshine trade was a rational and savvy choice for struggling farmers and community members during the Great Depression. “A meticulous, exhaustive history of moonshining, poverty and Blue Ridge culture.”–Kirkus Reviews. Buy the Kindle version here. Buy the Kobo version here. Buy the NOOK version here.

A People’s History of Baseball by Mitchell Nathanson
Mitchell Nathanson probes the less well-known but no less meaningful other side of baseball: episodes not involving equality, patriotism, heroism, and virtuous capitalism, but power–how it is obtained, and how it perpetuates itself. By offering a fresh perspective on the firmly embedded tales of baseball as America, a new and unexpected story emerges of both the game and what it represents. Nathanson’s take on baseball’s racial integration that began with Jackie Robinson reveals the debilitating effects of the harsh double standard that resulted, requiring a black player to have unimpeachable character merely to take the field in a Major League game. Buy the Kindle version here. Buy the Kobo version here. Buy the NOOK version here.

Becoming Ray Bradbury by Jonathan R. Eller
Becoming Ray Bradbury chronicles the making of an iconic American writer by exploring Ray Bradbury’s childhood and early years of his long life in fiction, film, television, radio, and theater. Unprecedented access to Bradbury’s personal papers and other private collections provides insight into his emerging talent through his unpublished correspondence, his rare but often insightful notes on writing, and his interactions with those who mentored him during those early years. “Every page is packed with fascinating material about one of this country’s most beloved writers.”–Michael Dirda, Washington Post. Buy the Kindle version here. Buy the Kobo version here. Buy the NOOK version here.

The National Women’s Studies Association and the University of Illinois Press are pleased to announce a competition for the best dissertation or first book manuscript by a single author in the field of women’s and gender studies. Applicants must be National Women’s Studies Association members. We welcome nonfiction manuscripts that exemplify cutting-edge intersectional feminist scholarship, whether the area of focus is historical or contemporary. The competition is open to scholars from all disciplinary backgrounds, but we especially encourage work that speaks effectively across disciplines, and projects that offer new perspectives on concerns central to the field of women’s and gender studies.

NWSA and the University of Illinois Press are pleased to offer a $1,000 advance to the winner. Visit our page for the prize for more information: http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/NWSAPrize.html.

Troy Rondinone is an associate professor of history at Southern Connecticut State University and author of Friday Night Fighter: Gaspar “Indio” Ortega and the Golden Age of Television Boxing.  He answered our questions about Ortega and his new book.

Q: In the 50s, television really embraced the sport of boxing.  How many people tuned in for Friday Night Fights?

Rondinone: The numbers varied from show to show, but it is safe to say that during the show’s prime years in the early to mid-1950s, an average of seventeen million Americans watched Friday Night Fights regularly, with upwards of fifty million watching various boxing shows.  This was at a time when America had about 165 million people. So this number is significant.

Q: How many other Hispanics appeared on television at the time when Gaspar Ortega was fighting?

Rondinone: Not many. According to one study, just one in fifty characters on TV was Hispanic at this time.  Probably the highest profile Hispanics on TV were Desi Arnaz (a white-complexioned Cuban), Duncan Reynaldo (who may have been of European descent), and Leo Carillo.  The latter two being the Cisco Kid and his sidekick Pancho.

Q: Ortega had a persona in the ring.  What was his image and how did he develop it?

Rondinone: He used his childhood nickname, “Indio” (meaning Indian) in the ring. He got this nickname as a kid, based on his Indian looks and his poverty.  He couldn’t afford
shoes, and often went without any. His full nickname as a child was “Indo con Pata Rajada,” or “the Indian with the Cracked Foot,” related to the state of his feet. At first he saw the name as a putdown and did not like it, but eventually he became very comfortable with the name Indio. He is very proud of his mother’s Zapotec heritage, and the headdresses he wore into the ring and for publicity shots certainly boosted his visibility.

Q: Did TV change the sport? (And did the sport change the development of tv programming?)

Rondinone: TV certainly changed the sport. First of all, the demand for boxers emptied the fight clubs of their best talent, and if these men proved “bad” for TV—meaning they fought too conservatively or lost too often—their careers would be over. Watching boxing at home was also blamed for the decline of local boxing venues (why pay when you can see it for free?). Many also criticized TV for stressing showmanship over ringsmanship, meaning that what made for entertaining television did not necessarily correspond with longstanding boxing traditions of defensive “scientific” boxing. In other words, TV boxing was seen as causing a decline in skill. Finally, TV meant money, and the mob became
ever-more-intimately connected with the sport via the International Boxing Club, which basically exerted monopoly control. In terms of boxing changing TV programming, boxing sold many TV sets in the early days of programming, since it came over so easily given the extreme limits of the technology.

Q: How much did organized crime influence the sport of boxing in the 50s and 60s?

Rondinone: Organized crime exerted a tremendous, if limited control. To summarize, criminals (especially Frankie Carbo) controlled access to the ring by way of the Boxing Manager’s Guild. A manager would have to cut in Carbo in order to get his man in the ring on TV. Carbo, who was an intimate of Jim Norris, owner of the International Boxing Club, would take his cut via the Manager’s Guild. In this manner, most of the big fights provided the mob with a percentage, no matter who won. Fixed fights, interestingly, were more of a rarity. Although there were some notorious fixes (such as the 1947 LaMotta-Fox debacle), most fights were on the level. The mob made its money outside the ring, not in it.

Q: How did boxing fall from dominance on television?  Was the rise of the NFL a key factor?

Rondinone: Boxing went off air for a number of reasons. The simplest probably has to do with demographics. Kids became a huge market by the early 60s, and they were not interested in boxing. Add to this the crushingly bad publicity of Senate investigations that proved organized crime was involved, some high-profile ring deaths (such as the killing of Benny “Kid” Paret in 1962), and the decline of fight clubs, and you have a recipe for disaster. The rise of the NFL also contributed. Football became more watchable on TV as technology improved, and its brutal team aesthetic was very appealing for a generation of Organization Men.

Any field, any journal, ought to pause to savor such a moment: reaching 500 is no small feat, and represents in fact the combined effort of a vast number of folklorists, past and present, male and female. And folklorists do like to pause, call it an occupational hazard: the product of training that reminds us to view the present always with a cognizance of the past, and often with a level of discomfort at the changes we see around us. So readers of JAF might well expect that issue 500 would take note of its number, and they will not be disappointed on that score.

Murphy Hicks Henry

Q: You’re a professional banjo player. Growing up, did you encounter those who dismissed your playing because “you’re a girl.”

Henry: Oh, yes! I don’t think many women in bluegrass have escaped hearing the phrase, “you’re pretty good for a girl.” I know for me, since I was a girl, I felt like I had to play louder, harder, and better than any of the guys around me to be accepted—and respected. That was very important to me. In no way did I want to be considered a “wimpy” (read: girly) banjo player. This made me obsessive about studying the recordings of Earl Scruggs, to make sure I played it “just like Earl,” so no one could fault me. Part of this came from my own competitive nature to be “the best” but part of it also came from the cultural idea that doing anything “like a girl” was not good enough.

Q: Does the bias that bluegrass is “a man’s music” still exist today?

Henry: I would love to say that this bias no longer exists! But when people hear mostly male bands on the radio, when people see mostly male bands at festivals (and in ads for these festivals), when casual representations of bluegrass musicians are male musicians, and when even the Geico ad on TV features two male musicians on mandolin and guitar, what are people supposed to think?

In the March 2013 Bluegrass Unlimited National Bluegrass Survey, which tallies songs receiving the most radio airplay from reporting stations, of the top thirty songs listed, eight were by bands that included at least one woman. And eight out of thirty sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? But most of these bands have only one woman in them. So, the total count of women in these seven bands (The Roys had two entries) is nine—and that includes three women in the Kathy Kallick Band! Thanks heavens for Kathy! So the question is, since women are clearly out there, why is their music not receiving more airplay?

Q: The book begins with a profile of Sally Ann Forrester. Tell us a little about her.

Henry: Sally Ann was the accordion player with Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys from 1943-1946. She played on some of Monroe’s earliest recordings which included “Footprints in the Snow” and “Kentucky Waltz,” which are now bluegrass standards. She even took a swinging accordion solo on the instrumental “Blue Grass Special” and sang tenor to Monroe on two songs. She also sang solos when the band performed. However, because she was a women, her contributions to the music have, up until now, been ignored or dismissed. It was reported, in print, that she landed the job with Monroe as part of a “package deal” with her husband, fiddler Howdy Forrester, and it was rumored that she was “kept on” during the War as a “favor” to Howdy, who joined the Navy. Neither of these assertions is true. I was glad to be able to reclaim her life story and add it to the history of bluegrass.

I felt really lucky to get to meet Sally Ann, even if she was unaware of my presence. She was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s in a nursing home in Nashville when her son Bob took me to see her. I’ll never forget him bending down to her bed and gently saying to her, “Mama, here’s your Boswell.” He was referring to James Boswell who wrote the biography, The Life of Samuel Johnson.

Q: Was it hard to uncover some of the accomplishments of female players in the ‘40s and ‘50s because they were dismissed?

Henry: Yes, it was! And it was still hard to find much material on the women in the 1960s. That’s why I interviewed most of the women in the book—that’s the only way I could get their stories. Fortunately, most of their recordings are still available, often with excellent liner notes, and I listened to just about everything that was out there. The lives of a few of the more “famous” women—Rose Maddox, Ola Belle Campbell Reed, the Stonemans—had been documented in books and these resources were invaluable.

But the complete picture of women in bluegrass—especially in the early days— won’t be complete until someone undertakes the gargantuan task of ferreting out the women who didn’t record. These would be the women who played at small local shows or who appeared on local radio. These are the women who will really be hard to uncover.

The musician and activist was on hand to sign copies of the University of Illinois Press book Yellow Power Yellow Soul: The Radical Art of Fred Ho.

Columbia University professor and book contributor Kevin Fellezs gave a  presentation and reading from Yellow Power Yellow Soul.  The night also featured a screening of the documentary film Diary of the Dragon: The (R)evolution of Fred Ho.

Photos: © Michael A. Schwartz, Visible Me Productions

Drawing from personal interviews and in-depth research, biographer Diekman explains how Robbins saw himself as a drifter, a man always searching for self-fulfillment and inner peace. Twentieth Century Drifter is the first biography of this legendary country music artist and NASCAR driver.

Congratulations, Diane!

From IHE:
Jockers uses his digital tools to analyze novels by, essentially, crunching  them–determining what words appear in each book, tabulating the frequency with which they are used, likewise quantifying the punctuation marks, and working out patterns among the results according to the novel’s subgenre or publication date, or biographical data about the author such as gender, nationality, and regional origin.

The findings that the author reports tend to be of a very precise and  delimited sort. . . . There is a “high incidence of locative prepositions” (over, under, within, etc.) in Gothic fiction, which may be “a direct result of the genre’s being ‘place oriented.’” That sounds credible, since Gothic characters tend to find themselves moving around in dark rooms within ruined castles with secret passageways and whatnot.

In this 1958 clip, not only can you enjoy the snappy “Look Sharp!” Gillette theme, but also get a glimpse of Gaspar Ortega and “Classy” Mickey Crawford.  Both boxers get an introduction (in suit and tie) before the Friday night bout.

Q: As a native of the Philippines who emigrated to the United States in 1968, how did you first view the Marcos regime?

Fuentecilla: When I completed my graduate communication studies at University of Illinois, I had plans to return home to apply what I learned. One of Marcos’ first decrees after imposing his dictatorship was to muzzle the press and imprison journalists. So, heck! Why enter the lion’s den?

Q: Were you surprised by the increasing measures the Marcos regime took leading to the 1972 declaration of martial law?

Fuentecilla: No. It was inevitable that he had to do what he did in order to consolidate his power — restrict the press, round up oppositionists and throw them into prison, dissolve Congress, employ the military establishment as his personal police, weaken the judiciary, etc.

Q: How did you become personally involved in the anti-Marcos movement?

Fuentecilla: At the founding convention of our group in Washington DC in 1973, whose history is the subject of my book, I was elected the first Secretary General. Hence I was an  on-the-ground participant of the Movement from its birth.

Q: Were there many Filipino immigrants who supported the declaration of martial law?

Fuentecilla: The Marcos regime was very successful in intimidating immigrant relatives and their friends to refrain from joining opposition groups in the U.S. Reports of roundups of oppositionists back home gave the impression that if they participated in any U.S.-based anti-Marcos activities, their kin back home will suffer consequences. As a result, our movement could not mobilize a large following.

Q: What was the most shocking event to affect the movement during the Marcos regime?

Fuentecilla: The assassination on August 21, 1983 of a Filipino Senator (Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino) who returned to Manila on that date after three years in the USA for a heart operation. His murder at the airport upon his arrival was the spark that led to a gathering “people power” revolution that finally forced the Marcos family to flee the country in 1986.

Q: How much resistance did the exiles encounter from the U.S. government in their attempts to lobby for anti-Marcos policy?

Fuentecilla: Lobbying the U.S. government to limit military aid to the Marcos regime because of its rampant human rights abuses was the focus of their activities. We won allies in Congress but the White House administration, concerned that Marcos will retaliate against the U.S. bases in the Philippines for any military aid reductions, continued to support his regime in the 14 years that he was in power. Indeed it was this support that prolonged his rule. Ironically, it was a U.S. helicopter that flew him out of Manila and gave him refuge in Hawaii where he died.

Q: Did the Movement for a Free Philippines lean any particular way ideologically?

Fuentecilla: There were two main groups opposing the regime in the U.S.–  one allied with a leftist militant armed anti-Marcos New People’s Army operating throughout the
Philippines; the other was our group which preferred a non-violent return to democracy by various groups of society: students, workers, businessmen, the clergy, etc.

Q: Did you reflect at all on your experiences “fighting from a distance” when you saw the wave of political change that resulted in the Arab Spring?

Fuentecilla: Yes, as we watched the triumphant masses overthrowing dictators with minimal bloodshed, we said, “Been there! Done that!” It has been cited many times that the Philippine “People Power” revolution of some 20 years ago was the template of the Arab Spring.