grandmother knew "Barbara Allen" and that the African Americans on her father's plantation sang spirituals, but not like the version in the class text. Such experiences convinced mold that Alabama was a state full of folksong, whose riches had nor been explored systematically.
Less than two weeks after Byron Arnold joined the music faculty of the University of Alabama, he was taken to a Sunday "foot-washing" at an African American church in Northport. The chant-like singing and the religious fervor of the singers as they moved to the rhythm and flow of the music deeply stirred the Eastman School of Music graduate. During that fall of 1938, he was impressed with some old folk tune hummed by a friend as she prepared dinner and he encountered a student in his elementary school music class who said chat her
grandmother knew "Barbara Allen" and that the African Americans on her father's plantation sang spirituals, but not like the version in the class text. Such experiences convinced mold that Alabama was a state full of folksong, whose riches had nor been explored systematically. The date was August 5, 1965. Wernher von Braun, the world's most famous rocket expert, stands on the roof of a ten-story building at NASA's George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and looks south coward the Tennessee River. Two miles away, sealed in a concrete bunker with sixteeninch-thick walls, a group of engineers peers through periscopes; meanwhile, other team members push buttons on the bunker's steel-gray consoles. As von Braun and the engineers watch, a continuous plume of flame biases from the base of a mammoth concrete structure several hundred yards from the bunker. Thunder roll. Smoke billows. For two and a half minutes hell unfolds. Alabama has become, as writer Bob Lionel lacer wrote, "the land of the Earth-shakers." The sound and fury generated that day resulted from the test-firing of the first stage of the Saturn moon rocket. Throughout the 1960s, Huntsvillians would hear and feel that roar many times as ASA scientists aimed for the goal set by President John F. Kennedy in 1961-- "landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth." Before the end of the decade, the goal would be reached, and on July 16, 1969, a mammoth rocket, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty, would leave the launch pad in Florida carrying three human beings toward the surface of the moon. A heart for service paved the way for Annie Wheeler to become the "Angel of Santiago." But before her fame, Annie Wheeler made a name for herself throughout Lawrence County for her adventurousness and devotion to family. However, her most endearing quality was her hopeful spirit, the one that led her around the world.
Elvis Presley may have made "Hound Dog" a household name, but the origins of the song are rooted deep in Alabama.
"Hound Dog" belonged originally to a rhythm and blues singer, named Willie Mae Thornton, who, at the time of Elvis's recording, was making her living on what Black entertainers called "The Chitlin' Circuit." She had a big voice and suitably imperious manners, all of which had given rise to a nickname that had quickly supplanted her given name. On her rendition of "Hound Dog," released as a 78 rpm record, she was billed as "Big Mama" Thornton. "Big Mama's" version of "Hound Dog," recorded for Peacock Records on a hot August day in 1952 in Los Angeles, was the crowning achievement in the career of a singer who left her mark on rock and blues history. "Hound Dog" quickly climbed to No. 1 on the 1953 all-Black rhythm and blues charts and became a 500,000-plus seller. It also became by far the biggest success in Willie Mae Thornton's career. Thanks to a big decision made by a small but committed group of state historians decades ago, a drive down an Alabama highway has become an education in our past. At its first meeting in 1948, the Alabama Historical Association (AHA) embarked on a plan to commemorate historic sites in the state with roadside markers. Today, a sign labeled “Ellicott’s Stone” on Highway 43 north of Mobile marks the path to the stone laid by surveyor Andrew Ellicott in 1799 to identify the U.S. border with Spain. In downtown Huntsville, a marker at the site of “The Big Spring” tells the story of the city’s birth. Every year there are new treats for the traveler. After sixty years and some seven hundred historical markers, this program continues to be a vital part of the AHA’s efforts to promote interest in and the study of Alabama’s past.
|
From the VaultRead complete classic articles and departments featured in Alabama Heritage magazine in the past 35 years of publishing. You'll find in-depth features along with quirky and fun departments that cover the people, places, and events that make our state great! Archives
May 2024
Categories
All
|