Singer Aretha Franklin takes a bow at the Elton John AIDS Foundation Gala at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine on November 7, 2017, in New York City.
Aretha Franklin is in hospice care –
Update: Aretha Franklin Dead at 76
Singer Aretha Franklin takes a bow at the Elton John AIDS Foundation Gala at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine on November 7, 2017, in New York City.
Aretha Franklin is in hospice care –
Update: Aretha Franklin Dead at 76
Next post: Let’s Review 113: Big Waves and Bad Americans
Previous post: Of the Democrats and Divorce
Address for Donations, Complaints, Brickbats, and — oh yes — Donations
Your Say
Where the Sidewalk Ends
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
by Shel Silverstein
My Back Pages
Search American Digest’s Back Pages
The People Yes
The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
The Vault
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Comments on this entry are closed.
The thumbnail for your second video shows Matt Guitar Murphy. We just lost him a few weeks ago.
Never made a red centavo off’n my ass.
Nor used up more’n about 3 seconds worth of my eyeballz.
All that screamin’ and yellin’ and shit.
Make me git up an lay rubbah…..
My all time favorite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtBbyglq37E
God bless her. May her soul rest in peace. Growing up in the sixties/seventies, I loved her sound. It reached into my being and I felt its warmth/strength. I will pray for her soul even though I know she was a very religious woman. Prayers cannot help one to reach the eternal Paradise.
Gerard,
Thank you for this beautiful remembrance of the Queen of Soul. She passed today. I never had any idea about her excellence with the piano. My wife guessed that she learned the piano by playing for her Pastor father at his church.
When the voice and the talent matched the fame: Aretha.
That era is over.
A great clip, and leave it to Gerard VanderLeun to find something that hasn’t been played everywhere else. A thought though, in looking at the picture from 2017, she looks like she lost a lot of weight. In hearing that pancreatic cancer was what took her, that is no surprise, since pancreatic CA causes wasting (not meaning to take away anything from the greatness we remember Aretha for). Giant talent. Growing up, her voice just got people up and dancing and singing. I’m afraid Casey Klahn is right. The era of pure talent is over, or sure seems to be.
I join the Old Fart Brigade with GS on this one. I never was able to force myself to like that wailing type of black music. After they massage it and ‘make it their own’, every song sounds the same.