Beagles I have known

My advice to anyone considering a beagle puppy as a pet is to go ahead and name the dog “Dammit” when you get it.   This will save the beagle much confusion throughout its life because, “Dammit,” is how you will end up addressing the animal most of the time.  Having said that, beagles are personable, charming and loyal especially when there is food involved (for them).  They are also extraordinarily energetic and stubborn and they “ain’t nothin’ but hound dogs” once they get on a scent. My definition of a beagle is this: a nose and a tail which are always in motion connected by a stomach that is always hungry.  Funny and frustrating, they are never boring.

Freckles

In "dog heaven" with Freckles & my two-tone shoes

My first beagle, Freckles, came into my life when I was a pup, myself, on Myrtle Street in Jackson, Mississippi.  Memories of Freckles are fond and, as an only child, I must have found him to be someone to play with and keep up with my own pre-six-year-old energy.  My dad was an accountant and one of his friends found Freckles for us and he certainly kept me busy as a kid.  One day Freckles disappeared and never returned. We always believed he might have gone off after a rabbit or something in the woods that were later removed to make room for Interstate 55.  That taught me in later adult beagle ownership to always have a fence or a pen – a beagle will follow a scent wherever it may lead.

Travis McGee…or “I gave my love a beagle and she married me anyway.” 

When Gail and I were dating and getting serious, I decided that I would give her a beagle.  She already had a big, lovable retriever/something/mix named Gold Rush.  Her beloved dachsund Huey had died so she began to talk about getting an “emergency backup dog” for Gold Rush.  She had a dog pen behind her house, so I knew she loved dogs and had a place to keep another one.  When Gail got home from work one day, I escorted her to the dog pen where I had made a sign that read, “Travis McGee, Salvage Expert.”  And there in the pen was the barking beagle puppy I had named after mystery author John D. MacDonald’s legendary private investigator.

The ever-curious Travis McGee, Salvage Expert

“Salvage expert” was a good job description for Travis because he was, like all beagles, an incessant snoop with his nose always in action.  He proved to be an escape artist by jumping from the roof of his doghouse over the fence of the dog pen.  This happened several times and he always went around the front door of the house, proud of himself, as if to say to us, “Look, I did it again!” After Gail and I married and moved to a house with a fenced-in backyard, he and Gold Rush seemed determined to reach Beijing through one of the many deep holes they dug in the yard.  We had a deck with a built-in bench and Travis would mount it with his back feet on the bench and front feet on the rail and survey the backyard kingdom he and Gold Rush shared.  When he struck that pose, I referred to him as “Captain McGee on the poop deck.”

Once, after he began to get older, he jumped off that deck running at Man O’ War speed chasing who knows what and broke his leg.  After costly surgery, Travis had to wear one of those odd looking cones around his neck to prevent him from bothering his stitches.  Beagles live to sniff and the cone just about drove him crazy because it kept his nose from reaching the ground.  I composed a limerick about his situation:

There was an unfortunate beagle

Who thought he could fly like an eagle

He jumped off the deck

Broke his leg -not his neck

And the vet bill should be deemed illegal.

A diva by any other name

…is the beagle we own now.  Our current critter is a little diva named after the Mississippi John Hurt song, “My Creole Belle.” She is the most cheerful, fun-loving dog I have ever seen.  And why wouldn’t she be happy?  Belle acts as if she might brag to other beagles about her “2,200 square-foot air-conditioned and heat-controlled dog house, complete with a butler and maid.”  She’s the first female dog we’ve ever owned and she seems to be far and away more intelligent than Travis was.  That’s good and bad, depending upon what she has a mind to do.  When we got her, Gail and I took her to obedience school.  It really worked well because we seem to do everything she wants us to.

Our Creole Belle

If it weren’t for Belle, I might never consider things like my blood pressure or what it’s like to sleep until daylight.  But just as those things cross my mind, she’ll do something really funny or curl up beside my desk and snooze away as I work.  The peaceful, loyal office dog, right out of a Norman Rockwell painting or the L.L. Bean catalogue. Who could resist a scene like that?   Then she wakes and howls at a volume that would give a Fender Twin Reverb amplifier a run for its money. Put another dollar in the jukebox, baby, she’s on a roll!

But all in all, it’s like this: Beagles – you gotta love ‘em.  Dammit.

Visit www.leskerr.com and follow Les on Facebook and Twitter.

Text and photos copyright 2012 by Les Kerr.

The U.S. Coast Guard – my 3 day hitch

Coast Guard Academy Training Ship Eagle

Stood watch with Fly at helm/beautiful night/…cadet showed me how to find wind speed, true and relative/found contacts on radar/plotted contacts’ course…

The above notes are from a little pad I took with me at age fifteen during my “Three Days in the Coast Guard” aboard the 295-foot sailing ship Eagle in 1972.   “Fly” McDermott was the cadet assigned to be my buddy and make sure I didn’t get into anything too dangerous or become a hindrance .  Fly’s nickname was bestowed upon him by shipmates because of the way his big aviator sunglasses looked in proportion to his small frame and slender face.  Like the huge eyes on a tiny fly.

I’m not sure how old Fly was – eighteen or nineteen, maybe, but I was a high school student with a consuming interest in anything nautical.  When I learned that U.S. Coast Guard Academy cadets spend part of their training on an actual tall ship, I was ready to sign on and ship out.  I sent off for the academy catalogue and pored over it as I dreamed of becoming “Captain Kerr of the Coast Guard.”

Three days before the mast

My family had moved from Jackson, Mississippi to Pascagoula on the Gulf Coast in 1970.  In Jackson, my step-father, Bob Gordin, owned a marina and I fell in love with sailing on the Ross Barnett Reservoir.  When we moved to the Coast and sailed the Mississippi Sound and the Gulf of Mexico itself, I thought I’d “died ‘n’ gone to heaven.”

Through Bob’s membership in the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, we learned that the Eagle would be in Gulf waters and a program for students interested in attending the Academy allowed them to take short trips on the ship when convenient.  When my invitation from the commander of the New Orleans Coast Guard district came, my head was in the clouds – or at least as high as one of the Eagle’s masts.  I joined the ship in Mobile, bound for New Orleans.

I boarded/got underway at 9:10/under power ‘til end of channel/cadets set sail/beautiful/stayed at helm most of time/

As the sails were set and the engines cut off, the sounds of orders being shouted and lines

One of the cadets gave me his cap - still a prize possession

being hauled eventually gave way to the moans and creeks of taught sails and steel hull gracefully moving through the Gulf waters.

Went aloft with Ron Nilsen/got cramp in arm halfway up/beautiful 

Eventually, with Fly’s o.k., a cadet asked me if I wanted to go aloft.  “Always keep three points on the rigging,” he said, “two hands and a foot or two feet and a hand.” As we climbed high above the deck, I did just fine, even looking down.  Until the ratlines started going back at an angle just below the platform at the first yardarm.  Climbing up while

The Eagle under full sail

leaning backward was a skill the cadets had mastered, but it was a surprise to me.  I felt a small cramp in my arm and wrote it off to nerves.  On and up I went, seeing 20,000 square feet of billowing sail at eye level.  It was like being in a puffy white cloud bank that was somehow pushing 295 feet of floating steel through water.

7:00/woke up/go topside/lowered boats/tacked/hauled/worked in Bosun’s Hole/

I hauled lines, helped tack and spent night watches at the helm and in the radar room, watching the occasional green blip that signaled another vessel.  I ate in the ship’s mess with the cadets, slept in the hammocks like they did and listened to them talk about learning seamanship the old fashioned way.  I could get used to a life at sea, I was certain of it.

When I asked about life back on the New London, Connecticut academy campus, I had a rude awakening.

“You have to be good at arithmetic,” a sailor said.  “And physics, engineering and science.”  I kept waiting for him to mention something I was good at.  No such luck. Next came accounts of strenuous physical training and almost drowning while learning how to prevent someone from drowning.  In freezing water.   It began to occur to me that I might not really be cut out for a cadet’s life after the sailing ship part.

My personal "ship's log"

But notes from my little ship’s log reflect that I was figuring out what I should do with my life.  From the first day’s entry: “played a friend’s guitar.”  From the third day’s entry: “played Mason’s guitar.”

The Eagle has landed

Because the trip was to end in New Orleans, my mom, step-father and grandfather decided to meet me there and spend a few days enjoying the French Quarter.  I was to meet them at the Hotel Monteleone.

As the Eagle approached New Orleans, several cadets asked me about what they could do when they got there.  By age fifteen, I had been to New Orleans enough to know about some good restaurants.  The Eagle docked early so I decided to show the cadets around.  We stopped by the Monteleone and my family hadn’t arrived yet so I left word for them that I would be at the Court of Two Sisters with my Coast Guard buddies.

When mom, Bob and Granddaddy walked into the courtyard of that fine old New Orleans restaurant, there I was drinking a Mint Julep with three cadets.  They were amused by that scene and enjoyed meeting my pals in uniform.  And for me, that Mint Julep at the Court of Two Sisters was the perfect way to end my Coast Guard career.

Follow me on Facebook.  Click the Facebook link @ www.leskerr.com

Text and photos copyright 2012 by Les Kerr

Our annual Rendezvous for a Happy ‘Cue Year! (Song included)

Guy Clark’s great song “Stuff that Works” really hits home with me.  I love the philosophy that, well, when you find something that works, stick with it, especially if it sticks with you.   My wife, Gail, and I found what works for us on New Year’s Eve many years ago and we’re extraordinarily loyal to it.  Or them, as the case may be.  In a word, ribs. Not just any ribs, but ribs from the legendary Memphis establishment officially known as Charlie Vergos Rendezvous.

The legendary Rendezvous

Located in an alley off Union Avenue near The Peabody Hotel in Downtown Memphis, The Rendezvous has been a favorite restaurant of mine since I discovered it while attending college in North Mississippi. Like many Ole Miss students, I “majored in Memphis” doing my most studious research in many of the Bluff City’s iconic establishments, including Grisanti’s, Silky’s (on Madison, back then) and The Rendezvous.

The Rendezvous opened in 1948 and is a famous stop for celebrities, politician, locals, tourists and college students like I was when I was first introduced to “the taste of Memphis.”  It was mentioned in John Hiatt’s wonderfully gritty song Memphis In the Meantime (“At least we can get ourselves a decent meal down at The Rendezvous”). I couldn’t resist a reference to it myself in a song I wrote called Mackinac Blues (“I tried the Mackinac-style barbecue; Honey, get me down to that Rendezvous”).  (Hear my song at the link below).

Gail went to Southwestern at Memphis, now Rhodes College, and has also been a big Rendezvous fan for years. Not long after we got married, we learned that The Rendezvous will ship ribs packed in dry ice, along with the dry rub, sauce, slaw and popcorn anywhere.

About fifteen years ago, we decided to stay home and celebrate New Year’s Eve and give cooking the Rendezvous ribs ourselves a try. It’s as easy as it can be and the flavor is just as good as it is when you walk down the dark staircase leading in to the actual restaurant from that Memphis alley.

A "2-slabber" from The Rendezvous

So, once again, we’ll avoid the dressed up drunks and amateur drinkers always about in public places on New Year’s Eve and ring in our own “Happy ‘Cue Year” at home in Nashville. You can order the ribs anytime of the year and they are shipped by the Memphis-based FedEX, but we choose only to do that for New Year’s Eve to preserve the special occasion status of our tradition. If you want to experience this culinary wonder for yourself, you can call The Rendezvous at 1-888-hogsfly or go to www.hogsfly.com .

Happy New Year!

Listen to Mackinac Blues here: Les Kerr – Mackinac Blues

Visit Les Kerr’s web site at www.leskerr.com

Photos and text copyright 2010, 2011 by Les Kerr

P.S. We love you

Don’t get me wrong.  I am not anti-penguin.  I am not a penguin-hater. If a “Power to the Penguin” movement existed, I would support it.

But my question is this: when did penguins become symbols of Christmas? I’m no yard-art expert but I have noticed a proliferation of illuminated wire and inflatable penguins over the last few years during the holiday season.  It’s as if the penguins are part of an “Occupy Front Yards” campaign.

You’ve seen ‘em – they’re mixed right in with the mechanical wire light-covered reindeer nodding their heads incessantly toward the plastic nativity scene.  The one that looks like Baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the wise men not only are beaming radiant love but may also be powered by some undocumented nuclear device.

If the penguins are supposed to be happy little buddies of Santa’s eight tiny reindeer and Rudolph (whom Blitzen and the others may regard as “’Number Nine’- the jerk who came in and stole our thunder with his blinkin’ red nose and stupid song after we got the whole thing up and running”), they are obviously on an extended play date.  Penguins are indigenous to the South Pole.  If you sent your letter to a big fat man in a red suit at an address near The Penguins’ house, no wonder you didn’t get want you wanted for Christmas last year.

Our very own "P.S."

Will the real Christmas yard art please stand up!

Everybody sing: Where has Plastic Santa gone (long time passin’)?  I’m talking tacky, red and white, chipped paint jolly old elves lit with 40 watt GE light bulbs from inside their fat bellies.  As inflatable penguins have moved in, it seems Plastic Santa (or “P.S.”, as we refer to him in the Kerr house) has moved out.  I don’t blame him. The King of Christmas Yard Art is a kind and loving guy but enough is enough.  Plastic Saint Nick could justifiably exclaim, “Christmas penguins – bah, humbug!”

A popular blues and country music motif is the line “You never miss the water ‘til the well runs dry.”  Likewise, of course, owning a Plastic Santa never occurred to me until I noticed they were dwindling in number.  My wife and I began a highly unscientific Plastic Santa count originating twenty years ago at a movable and quite fluid Christmas party aboard a Johnny Walker tour bus that wound through Nashville.  As we noticed they were becoming scarce, I began a quest to find our own P.S.

With some guidance from a friend who advised me to steer my sleigh toward an estate sale in Pegram, Tennessee in Cheatham County, just west of Nashville, this year I hit pay dirt.

So now, upgraded from yard art status, P.S. stands beside our Christmas tree in the living room.  And every night when we plug him in, it’s as if:

We hear him exclaim as we turn on his light, “Happy Christmas to all, not a penguin in sight!”

Text and photo copyright 2011 Les Kerr

Visit www.leskerr.com

Glen Campbell – Still on the line

Glen Campbell's Wichita Lineman album

The extended guitar solos in Galveston and Wichita Lineman were worth more than the price of admission for me.  Glen Campbell’s Goodbye Tour came to the Ryman Auditorium November 30, 2011 and the performance was an unadorned look at a man whose music has brought much joy to many people for over  four decades.

There was a lot of love for Campbell flowing from the audience who packed the hard old Ryman pews and from those around him on stage.  The band  included his son Cal playing drums, daughter Ashley playing keyboard, banjo and guitar, and son Shannon playing guitar.  With each song, everyone in the room was pulling for the star whose memory is leaving him.

After a teleprompter glitch caused a false start at the show’s beginning, Campbell launched into Gentle on My Mind, the song that brought him into the consciousness of most of the world in the 1960s.  And then he did them all. The aforementioned Galveston and Wichita Lineman, By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Where’s the Playground Susie, Dreams of the Everyday Housewife, Try a Little Kindness and on and on from his early career.

This is a man with soul, joy and dignity who knows what he’s about.  He laughed about his memory loss and said, “Did you ever go into a room and forget why you went in there?  That happens to me a lot.”  As he moved around the stage with the agility of a much younger performer, Campbell’s eyes looked for and at the teleprompter screens with a determination to offer the showmanship for which he is famous.  While they didn’t catch all the lines at the right time, those eyes still had the twinkle of a singer delighted to be on stage.  He referred to Nashville throughout the evening, sending the message that he was truly happy to be on the Ryman stage singing for us.

A Picker’s Picker

Song lyrics may have been elusive at times but the notes on his guitar came as naturally as the smile on his face.  The intro Campbell played on the electric 12-string as he began Southern Nights and his acoustic guitar part on Dueling Banjos with Ashley playing banjo showed that his fingers remembered every lick.  I was reminded why I wanted the Ovation acoustic guitar I got as a high-school graduation present – that was his trademark ax in the sixties and I still play my mid-1970s Legend model today.  To call Glen Campbell an inspiration for guitar players is a vast understatement.

Ghost on the Canvas

Campbell performed songs from his new CD, Ghost on the Canvas, and the lyrics seemed to be perfect for where he is in his life.  Especially poignant are the title song and A Better Place (view video at the link below).  I have never heard a singer perform more personally honest music.

Toward the end of the evening, his hit Country Boy was a standout.  Finally, being ever the entertainer that he’s always been, Campbell led the audience in singing Rhinestone Cowboy as one of many standing ovations again swept the auditorium.

Minnie Pearl once said that Grand Ole Opry master of ceremonies George D. Hay advised her to, “Go out there and love the audience – they’ll love you back.”  Well, Glen Campbell loved those of us in the audience that night and we loved him back.

For a great video including an interview with Glen Campbell about his current Ghost on the Canvas CD and archival footage, visit this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbr_rCrEPVE&feature=player_embedded#!

Glen Campbell: A Better Place video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4mylwPMPhM

Visit Les Kerr’s web site at www.leskerr.com

Copyright 2011 Les Kerr

Sharecropping Cotton Chopping Delta Blues

On Saturday, November 19, 2011, I had the pleasure to perform at B.B. King’s Blues Club in Nashville with my longtime friends Sara Shepard and Johnny Mire. It was a benefit show for the American Red Cross and I really enjoyed sharing the stage with my friends for a good cause.

Although B.B. King wasn’t there, it was exciting to perform in the club and restaurant that bears his name. This great Mississippian and bluesman is someone I have admired for a long time. Having grown up in Mississippi myself, I’ve certainly been aware of his music for many years. The first time I saw him perform was in the early 1980s and I’ve seen him many times since, including his shows at the opening of his Nashville club several years ago and more recently at the 2010 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

BB King, JazzFest 2010

In 1994, Mr. King played at Riverfront Park in Nashville. My wife, Gail, and I drove back hurriedly from a family reunion in Mississippi to catch the Sunday afternoon show. As usual at Riverfront Park events, the stage was a barge in the Cumberland River pulled up to concrete at the foot of the sloping hill along First Avenue that makes a natural amphitheater. We watched the show and King reigned royally along with his guitar Lucille, as always.

At the end of the show, I said to Gail, “I would certainly enjoy meeting him.” Being the observant journalist that she is, Gail said, “Well, that ramp coming off the stage is the only way off and B.B. King will be coming down it in a minute.” So we went to the bottom of the ramp and I was able to shake his hand. We talked about being from Mississippi briefly and he gave me a “BB King” guitar pick.

I met him again several years later at the Nashville club opening and he was just as gracious.

Les Kerr onstage at B.B. King's Blues Club

Mr. King was the inspiration for a song I wrote called “Sharecropping Cotton Chopping Delta Blues” in 1996. The song was inspired by the story of his early life from his years in the Delta to his arrival on Beale Street in Memphis. The lyrics are below and you can also click the link to hear the recorded version. I am still inspired by his story, talent, and showmanship and it was a thrill to perform it at B.B. King’s Blues Club. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Click to hear Sharecropping Cotton Chopping Delta Blues by Les Kerr

Sharecropping Cotton Chopping Delta Blues
Words and Music © 1996 by Les Kerr

In the Mississippi Delta where the tall blues grow
From the Peabody Lobby down to Catfish Row
You can chop that cotton with your weary hand
But you’re working for nothing if you don’t own the land
In your over-hauls and your hole-y shoes
You got the Sharecropping Cotton Chopping Delta Blues

Itta Bena, Mississippi, of thee I sing
It’s the Land of Cotton and B.B. King
You can feel the blues in your aching back
They come oozing up from that cotton sack
If you had the choice, you would not choose
To sing the Sharecropping Cotton Chopping Delta Blues

To a cotton-picking rhythm, you begin to sing
Then you nail it down on a guitar string
If you can make a song from a field-hand shout
Then a slow bus to Memphis is a quick way out
And you can tell the folks how you paid your dues
And sing the Sharecropping Cotton Chopping Delta Blues

Songwriter: Les Kerr ASCAP
Publisher: O.N.U. Music ASCAP
Originally released on the CD Red Blues, Les Kerr, 2000
Use of music or lyrics without permission prohibited by copyright owner.

Books I recommend by and about B.B. King:
Blues All Around Me (The Autobiography of B.B. King) by B.B. King and David Ritz
B.B. King Treasures by B.B. King and Dick Waterman

Visit Les Kerr’s Web Site at www.leskerr.com

Dewey’s Tune

Railroad Man

Granddaddy, me and a toy train

October 18, 1900 was my grandfather’s birthday.  It was just a few months after legendary  railroad engineer Casey Jones was killed in a train wreck and later immortalized  in song.  My grandfather, George Dewey Pittman, became a railroad man, too, on the Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Railroad, or the GM&O, as most people called it.  Granddaddy eventually became Master Mechanic in charge of the mechanical shops in five of the states where the GM&O operated.

In 1954, he and my grandmother moved from Louisville, Mississippi to Jackson, Tennessee, with the Iselin shop as his GM&O base until he retired in 1971.  I was born October 19, 1956, just one day and fifty-six years after Granddaddy, as we often  joked.  He was a hero to me and instilled a respect and romance of railroads in me that exists to this very day.  Jackson was also the last home of Casey Jones.  Granddaddy took me to Jones’ home and museum so many times when I was young that he was issued a lifetime free admission pass to the museum.

On Christmas and summer visits, one of the thrills of my life was going to the railroad shop with him.  He had bought an old Ford from my dad to take to “The Shop” so grease
and debris wouldn’t get on his prized Buick Special that he and my grandmother loved so much. I remember piling into that old Ford, leaving Arlington Street and heading for The Shop where mechanics, engineers and office staff got to know me by name.

I'm in a big, red GM&O locomotive!

Granddaddy would take me up into the cabs of diesel locomotives with the engineers and let me blow the whistle.  Or into dusty old cabooses where I could climb up into the cupola and look out as if I would soon radio an engineer about matters of a train’s operation. Once, he took me from Jackson to Humboldt in a caboose when he was checking something up the line.  To me, it was better than any jet airplane, ocean liner or even a moon rocket ride could have  been.

I feel that music right down to my toes

My grandfather also loved music. As a young man, he was a big fan of Jimmie Rodgers, The Singing Brakeman.  Later, while he still loved country music, he became a devoted fan of the Lawrence Welk TV show.  And until he died, he talked about the time my grandmother made him take her to see that Russian “sympathy awkstra” that  came once with much fanfare.  My mother used to make me watch Leonard Bernstein’s classical TV broadcasts on Saturday afternoons and when Granddaddy visited us, he would switch to the Wilburn Brothers, Porter Wagoner and Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs’ shows the minute she left the room.

Granddaddy clipped this and we found it in the family Bible after he died.

When I was a kid with a toy guitar, I used to stand right in front of our old Zenith black and white TV set and pretend I was on with Lester and Earl or Porter.  Granddaddy loved that.  Once, due to the vibration of that big television, I said, “Granddaddy, I feel that music right down to my toes!”  He remembered me saying that the rest of his life and when I started playing real guitars in high school bands, he often reminded me of it.

After almost fifty years with the GM&O, Granddaddy retired and moved to Pascagoula to live with my mom, step-father and me.  He lived in an apartment in our backyard and I  spent many hours with him during my high school and early college years.  He helped me learn to drive in his big Buick (this one was a huge Electra 225) and we often took spins out Old Highway 90 where he would buy fresh tomatoes from a farm stand he knew about.  He taught me how to pick the best ones and how to shell black eyed peas and butter beans, which my mother “flat knew how to cook,” as he used to say.

As my high school graduation approached, Granddaddy told me he wanted to buy a new guitar for me as a present.  I picked an Ovation Legend, which was stolen the next year.  So he bought me another one which I still play, thirty-six years later.  Granddaddy died in 1976 and I’m glad that he got to see me play that guitar on TV in Biloxi. He often told me that he knew in his heart that I would be playing it in Nashville, Tennessee, someday.

Still playing that guitar

On October 18, 1981, five years after Granddaddy died and the day before my twenty-fifth birthday, memories and emotions inspired a song I wrote about him called Dewey’s Tune.  You can listen to it here and I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Listen to Dewey’s Tune: Dewey’s Tune – Les Kerr

Dewey’s Tune ©1981 Words & Music by Les Kerr; from the CD Southern Sound Sessions

Learn more about Les Kerr’s music, books and appearances at www.leskerr.com

Blog text and photos Copyright 2011

Jimmie Rodgers clipping from the collection of Les Kerr