What Comes Round
I vividly remember Johnny Cash and Hank Williams, Jr’s version of That Old Wheel with lyrics including That old wheel will roll around again. The theme….evening up scores from past wrongs…works well for my use in using Country Music to deal with topics in how to teach history, geography, and even literature. And…it also relates […]
Ron Cohen: Part 3
My Rainbow Quest: The Life of Ronald D. Cohen Part 3 Managing Editor’s Note: This third, and final installment of Ron Cohen’s remarkable career shows his political bent in connection to Folk Music. Pete Seeger is truly iconic in American culture. Alan Lomax and The Weavers aren’t far behind. Folklorist Archie Green was a major […]
Ron Cohen: Part 2
University of Minnesota Dr. Ronald D. Cohen, Retired Indiana University Northwest Gary Indiana U.S.A. I graduated from the University of California, Berkley in June 1962 During my senior year, Clarke Chambers, professor from the University of Minnesota was hired to teach the recent US history course. I talked with Chambers about going to graduate […]
Country Music Cowboy: Trashtastic, Fun, and Deconstructable
James E. Akenson Managing Editor If you’re tired of long dense sentences from the likes of William Faulkner, Aleksandr Sozhenitsyn, or Leo Tolstoy then Sasha Summers Country Music Cowboy is just what the doctor ordered. And…less you think that romance novels such as Country Music Cowboy fall beneath your dignity level…think again. It reminds me […]
My Rainbow Quest: The Life of Ronald D. Cohen, Part 1
Dr. Ronald D. Cohen, Retired Indiana University Northwest Gary Indiana U.S.A. My brother Alan, four years my senior (b. 1936), was a major influence on my early life, in many ways, in particular my interest in folk music, past and present. I was born in 1940 in Eagle Rock, an older neighborhood of Los Angeles, […]
Ronald D. Cohen: An Introduction
James E. Akenson Managing Editor Ronald D. Cohen is a distinguished scholar of the Folk Revival. Managing Editor James Akenson and Cohen have connections to the University of Minnesota. They became friends at the International Country Music Conference at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. In 2014 Cohen and his colleague social activist Si Kahn […]
Is It Time For a Revival? A Second Coming: Is The Time At Hand?
James E Akenson All the signs point to a coming revival if not the end-of-the-world. Or…at least the Second Coming of Christ. In the last days there shall be much coming and going. The King James Version (KJV) of the Bible 2nd Timothy Chapter 3, Verses 2 and 3 makes clear the social media […]
Abi Miller: Woman On a Country Music Mission
James E Akenson Mission Impossible. Good Luck, Jim. A ‘fur piece’ back in another television universe the opening sequence of Mission Impossible gave agent Jim Phelps a task on audio tape that before it self-destroyed said “Good Luck, Jim.” Not only did I enjoy the series, but I enjoyed the fact that actor Peter […]
Plato, Aristotle, William James, Wittgenstein: No…Willie Nelson!
James E Akenson Sam Cooke mentioned that he didn’t know much about the history, French, geography he took…or other subjects. I’m not quite as deficient as what Sam Cooke made himself out to be. BUT…I do know that I don’t know a whole lot when it comes to philosophy. Just enough philosophy knowledge to […]
Black Pearl: You’ve Been in the Background Much Too Long
James E. Akenson Years ago during the Civil Rights movement Sonny Charles performed a song that stays with me to this day. Its intriguing how issues, lyrics, and melodies stay in your mind. Later, they become special in different ways that I couldn’t have expected when I first heard them. Black Pearl makes a […]