Posted on 01/26/2009 12:19:12 PM PST by a fool in paradise
A CROWD gathers around crumbling walls that are a small evolutionary step up from a miserable pile of bricks...
This structure is a landmark of pop culture that never received the sendoff it deserved. Yet people are gathered here on a cold afternoon in mid-November not for a memorial service but to help resurrect King Records, the label that was once the home of James Brown, Nina Simone and Charlie Feathers.
King started as a so-called hillbilly label in 1943; moved into “race music” — the onetime name for what became rhythm and blues — around 1945; and attempted in ways great and small to merge both audiences until it essentially shut down a few years after the death of its owner, Syd Nathan. It never achieved the household-name status of Stax or Motown, but the crowd wants to change that....
...like many of those assembled today, he recorded for King, the independent label where Charlie Feathers cut “One Hand Loose” and the R&B singer Little Willie John cut “Fever.” King is where “The Twist” was first laid down, by Ballard, and where Wynonie Harris made “Good Rockin’ Tonight.”
Now Cincinnati is rediscovering a landmark it barely knew it had. The occasion is the unveiling of a historical marker, financed by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, celebrating the site as a historic address. Also announced at the event were plans to establish a King Records Center, including a recording studio, in the neighborhood. (Later this year the University of Illinois Press will publish “King of the Queen City: The Story of King Records,” by John Hartley Fox.)
Enough about New Orleans, Memphis or Nashville, and other, better-celebrated cradles of popular music. For Cincinnati, it’s star time...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
They never work.
Neither do public funding of sports stadiums. The taxpayers don’t see the money but do see the financial risk.
Read the Wikipedia entry for that place. It is unintentionally hilarious in the pains it takes to soft-sell the myriad problems.
They say Americans don’t ‘do’ irony but that hulking, unattractive doorstop parked smack dab in front of the downtown skyline serves as exactly the WRONG kind of reminder about race relations and history. It was and is a sop to all the rabble-rousers. Here’s the delicious irony: the next time this group or that preacher demands some kind of payout or ‘tribute’ even the most cowardly politician can point to the Underground Freedom Center and say ‘sorry but we’ve been down that road before.’
Yep. And every ‘bad thing’ that was predicted for the Football Stadium in Cincy has or is about to ‘come to pass’.
Yep. Didn’t cost me a dime, so I don’t get angry about it.
Used to own a copy of that one. Should have never sold it.
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