Marty Stuart, Vietnamese Food, and The Corona Virus

Last Saturday, March 7, 2020, my wife Candice and I attended a concert by Marty Stuart and The Fabulous Superlatives at the Lexington Opera House in Lexington, Kentucky.  We had bought the tickets several weeks before the corona virus pandemic and seriously considered just eating the price

Marty Stuart, Photo by Biography.com

of the tickets and not going because of the danger of being in a tightly packed crowd in a concert venue like the opera house which is a beautiful but small concert hall which was built and generally intended for performances such as opera, Shakespeare, and small classical music groups.  But I consulted with a friend who is a retired doctor with whom I served on a non-profit board for a couple of years.  She said that she is currently on immunosupressant treatments and still has not curtailed her activities in public.  Let me state, though, that the communication about the corona virus took place more than a week ago and what she said then might well not be what she would say when you read this post.  NEVER TAKE ADVICE ABOUT THE CORONA VIRUS FROM ANY SOURCE OTHER THAN THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL IN ATLANTA.  HERE IS A LINK TO THEIR WEBSITE.  Far too much wrong, foolhardy, and deliberately deceptive information about the corona virus is being handed out to the unsuspecting public and has been since a few weeks before the pandemic reached the United States and much of it has originated from the White House.  

Now, back to the evening of food and entertainment which is the primary topic of this blog post and was the sole reason we decided to take one last trip abroad from our home before shutting ourselves in as much as possible until the pandemic is brought under control.  Both my wife and I have always loved the work of Marty Stuart for many years.  He is a musical virtuoso and began earning a living as a road musician before he was a teenager.  He plays guitar, mandolin, bass, and fiddle, and could probably learn any other instrument he would choose to devote some time to.  He writes and performs in four different categories of music: country, bluegrass, gospel, and rock.  He has always had a wonderfully skilled and diverse band as well and they live up to the name The Fabulous Superlatives quite well. Ever person who has ever been a member of the band has played multiple instruments and sung well enough to be featured at times in the act.  My one regret in this concert is that we never saw Stuart while Paul Martin was still the bass player.  After several years of playing in the band, Martin left the group to perform with his wife and children in a family band.  He was replaced by Chris Scruggs, the grandson of virtuoso banjo player Earl Scruggs, who is a tremendous bass player whether he is playing the electric bass or what we Bluegrass fans fondly call the doghouse bass.  I do not say this to disparage Scrugg's musical ability in any way but I would have loved to see the band with Martin still in it. 

The concert was tremendous and the building was apparently at capacity despite the onset of the corona virus pandemic in Kentucky.  Since Candice is in a wheelchair, we were seated at the back of the front seating area in a row which is composed of straight backed chairs which can be moved to accommodate patrons in wheelchairs and might have had a little less contact with other concert goers than was true in any of the regular permanent seats.  The concert was billed as a "Pilgrim Concert" which meant that it featured a classic album of Stuart's from several years ago, "The Pilgrim", which has recently been reissued with several additional tracks.  The album was written in a form similar to "Tommy" by "The Who", a classic rock opera.  The album tells the story of two men and a woman from Stuart's hometown of Philadelphia, Mississippi.  It is complex, varied in its musical style and composition, and well worth listening to any time.  The story of the people it tells is about a tragic love triangle which results in the public suicide of the man who lost the woman's love.  The other man blames himself for the death of his rival and becomes a wanderer across America until he is able to contact the woman, learn that she loves him still, and wants him to return to Mississippi.  It is every bit as good a story as "Tommy" and just as pleasurable in a musical sense.  If you haven't heard it, listen to it on YouTube.  To say the least, we enjoyed the concert tremendously and have not yet shown any symptoms of corona virus although we are still not out of the two week incubation period which might even be a bit longer. 

Before the concert, we had a meal at our favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Pho Saigon, in Woodhill Shopping Center just off New Circle Road in Lexington.  They serve great, fresh, hot, beautifully presented Vietnamese dishes including pho or Vietnamese soups, hot pot dishes, and noodle dishes.  My personal favorite is Shrimp Hot Pot which contains more than half a dozen large shrimp, a rice base, and a belly full of fresh, perfectly cooked vegetables.  The secret to a hot pot is that it is served in a ceramic or earthenware oven proof deep dish which is placed in an oven before the dish is placed inside.  The rice is layered in the bottom and the pot is hot enough to make the rice adhere to the pot and become slightly carbonized beneath the vegetables, whatever meat you choose, and a wonderful sauce.  The pot is so  hot when it is served that you cannot touch it and if you take your time eating the last bite will still be hot when you reach the bottom.  That is a feat which very few restaurants can pull off successfully.  Pho Saigon serves beef, chicken, pork, seafood, and vegetarian dishes and everything I have ever eaten there was well worth having again.  And, in what I consider to be a positive sign of any restaurant which is billed as ethnic, when you go in Pho Saigon you will nearly always see other diners who are speaking the native language of Vietnamese.  If you hear Italian in an Italian restaurant, or Mandarin in a Chinese restaurant, or the native language in any supposedly culturally based restaurant, you will generally see and eat food which is more authentic than if you did not hear the language.  If you have never been in Pho Saigon in Lexington, the next time you are there take a trip to Woodhill and have a wonderful meal.  Another aspect of the place which I like a lot is the owner and employees are all friendly, talkative, willing to please, and hard working.  The dining room and bathrooms are spotless.  The room is large and comfortable and the atmosphere is always open, friendly, and inviting.  And if you like Asian foods, there is an Asian food market next door which I suspect is operated by the same owners. 

Martha, Kentucky, WPA School and Downtown Martha

Martha, KY WPA School--Photo by Roger D. Hicks

Today, June 29, 2019, my wife and I took a drive in the country to buy produce from one of our Mennonite friends in Keeton, Kentucky, on the Johnson and Lawrence County line.  A few months ago, I had driven further in that area without  a camera and had made a mental note to return with a camera and shoot some photos of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) school in Martha, Kentucky, which is one of those wonderful cut stone schools which the WPA built all across the country during the Great Depression as Franklin D. Roosevelt, our greatest president, fought to save the nation from the economic disaster of the Hoover Administration.  Between 1938 and 1943, as the nation recovered slowly, the WPA built thousands of projects from sea to shining sea and many of the older schools in Kentucky are WPA schools although most of them are no longer in use, at least not as schools.  Their stonework is phenomenal and worthy of preservation for all time both from a craftsmanship and a historical perspective.  I have written earlier on this blog about the former Morgan County High School in my hometown of West Liberty which has been remodeled, survived a disastrous tornado which demolished much of the town around it, and now functions as our Court House Annex and houses several county offices and a gymnasium.

Ricky Skaggs--Photo by Ricky Skaggs Official Website

The Martha Kentucky WPA school is now privately owned, seriously dilapidated, and in desperate need of restoration and preservation. Many of the windows are broken and the building is being used for hay storage.  I did not enter the building but suspect that the interior is probably not much better than the exterior. I am glad I shot these photos before it can succumb to even worse fates.  It sits on a slight rise above the north side of Kentucky Highway 32 at the junction of Kentucky 32 and Kentucky 469.  The school also has a somewhat interesting place in the history of Bluegrass and Country music since it was the grade school which Ricky Skaggs attended as a child.  I have been told by the current owners of the school that Ricky himself has also shot photographs of the school.  During my visit today I suggested to the current owner, who insists they will never sell the building, that they consider renovating it and turning it into a bed and breakfast.  She seemed only mildly interested in that idea.  But the school is located only 20 miles from Yatesville Lake State Park; 18 miles from Paintsville Lake State Park, the Kentucky Mountain Homeplace, and the US 23 Country Music Highway Museum, all of which are in Paintsville, Kentucky; 40 miles from Jenny Wiley State Park, Dewey Lake, and the Mountain Arts Center, all of which are in Prestonsburg, Kentucky; 50 miles from the Paramount Arts Center in Ashland, Kentucky; and about 50 miles from Greenbo Lake State Park as well.  The school is also only about 25 miles away from US23 which is otherwise known as the Country Music Highway.  This wonderful old WPA school is also only about 25 miles from Van Lear, Kentucky, which is the home of the birthplace of Loretta Lynn.  With this kind of central location to so much country music history, fishing, hunting, and artistic showcases, the school would draw fans of several different forms of entertainment to the bucolic crossroads of Martha. If you ever take a drive to Martha, stop at the combination country store, sporting goods store, and emporium across the highway from the school and reinforce for the owners, who also now own the school, that it would make a wonderful and profitable bed and breakfast.

Abandoned Building At The Intersection of KY 32 and KY 469--Photo by Roger D. Hicks

Martha, Kentucky, and the intersection of Kentucky 32 and Kentucky 469 are not only bucolic.  Martha is tiny.  The store, the school, an abandoned old home or one room store building across the road, and what appears to be an equally abandoned Holiness Church beside the store are all there is in Martha.  It is a quiet, dusty crossroad in the heart of Lawrence County farming land with hay, cattle, and corn cropping up all the way around.  The US post office is located about a half mile south of the intersection on the east side of the road.  If the school were a bed and breakfast, it would be a wonderful place for people seeking country solitude for a weekend or a week within driving distance of entertainment.  I do apologize for the poor quality of my photographs from this particular day.  The sun was beaming down on a cloudless 90% day and I had no sunglasses and could not see the viewfinder.  I will try at some time to return and shoot better photos to update this post.

Abandoned Holiness Church, Martha, Kentucky--Photo by Roger D. Hicks

The abandoned old building at the intersection would be a blast to explore but I chose to not take any chances on vermin or an angry owner.  Judging by the sign nailed to the porch post, I am guessing it was probably the first country store in Martha although it could have been a home.  I love abandoned buildings and this is a fine example of such things in the South and Midwest.

Beside the actual operating store sits what appears to be an equally abandoned Holiness Church.  It does not have a sign with any particular church name but the sign above the door quotes Isaiah 35:8 and reads "And It Shall Be Called The Way Of Holiness".  That is a partial quotation of the verse from the King James Version of The Holy Bible.  The complete verse reads: "And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein."  In my opinion, the best, most quotable section from that verse for a sign at the Martha intersection would be "It Shall Be For Those, The Wayfaring Men (AND WOMEN)!".  Now wouldn't that be a great quotation to use to advertise a bed and breakfast in the Martha Kentucky WPA School?

Sign On Abandoned Martha Kentucky Holiness Church--Photo by Roger D. Hicks

You Don't Need A Reason In A Bluegrass Song

Today, while we were traveling to and from an appointment in Mount Sterling, KY, my wife Candice and I listened to a couple of Bluegrass CD's which we hadn't listened to in a while including Ralph Stanley's classic "Saturday Night" CD, Larry Sparks' "40" disc, and Dale McCoury's "Del And The Boys" album which contains one of the best Bluegrass songs ever recorded, "Vincent Black Lightning 1952" which was actually written by the great rock and roll guitarist Richard Thompson.  Actually, every one of those discs contains more than one Bluegrass classic recording.  Candice grew up in East Central Wisconsin and never listened to Bluegrass until we were married and she moved to Eastern Kentucky.  At first exposure, she frequently responded "it makes my ears hurt" but she has become a devout Bluegrass aficionado over the last twenty-five years.  But today, as she sometimes does in the middle of a Bluegrass song about death or murder she asked "but why did he kill her". This time she asked that question in response to "Banks Of The Ohio".  My first response, which I still think was a good one, was "you don't need a reason in a Bluegrass song".  But, if you listen to the lyrics, you will hear the words "I killed the girl I love you see because she would not marry me."  As is true with "Banks Of The Ohio", most Bluegrass songs which involve the murder of a loved one or an innocent do contain some stated reason for the murder. 

Bluegrass Banjo

The next best example of this type of song that pops into my head is "Pretty Polly".  Late in the song, the reason for the murder is clearly given: "Willie, Little Willie, I'm afraid of your ways The way you've been rambling you'll lead me astray".  The young Polly is clearly afraid that her lover, Little Willie  will lead her astray.  We don't clearly hear exactly how Polly is afraid this will happen but we learn almost immediately that Willie has planned this murder in advance and has "dug on your grave the biggest part of last night". 

Photo Of An Appalachian Graveyard

The Bill Monroe classic "The Little Girl And The Dreadful Snake" actually falls clearly into this category of songs without a clear reason for the death, not by murder but by snake bite, and also falls clearly into another of the most unique categories of Bluegrass which I have written about previously, Dead Baby Music.  The child dies due to a snake bite without any clear reason being given in the lyrics for her death.  It is also interesting that this song is included on a very unique compilation CD called "American Gothic: Bluegrass Songs Of Death And Sorrow".  That CD also contains a Mac Wiseman version of an old song called the "Ballad Of The Lawson Family" in which the father kills his wife and six children and commits suicide.  It is a classic Bluegrass song without a reason for the violence and the lyrics clearly state that "we'll never know what caused him to take his family's life". Of course, since the song is about the death of six little children, it also falls clearly within the subgenre of Dead Baby Music. 

I could go on at great length about all the Bluegrass songs which contain tragic circumstances without a reason for the tragedy but I think you get the point.  Some of the best songs in Bluegrass are tragic and have no clearly stated reason for that tragedy.  Let's all hope Bluegrass song writer's keep going for the next hundred years writing without a reason. 

DEAD BABY MUSIC, A SUB-GENRE OF BLUEGRASS

DID I REALLY SAY "DEAD BABY MUSIC" YOU ASK?  YES, I DID!

Growing up in  Eastern Kentucky in the 1950's & 1960's I listened to a lot of bluegrass & classic country music primarily because that was what most of the people around me listened to and most of the radio stations I could pick up also played it daily.  But I also loved the music in all its manifestations.  As I became a hippie in the late 1960's, I ceased to listen to bluegrass and country for several years and listened primarily to rock and folk until about the middle 1970's.  At about that time, I returned to the music of my childhood and have listened to it nearly every day of my life since.  I generally prefer bluegrass over most other forms of music but do still periodically listen to classic rock, folk, blues, classical, jazz, and zydeco.  But, when I want to feel at peace, at home, comfortable and rested, I listen to bluegrass.  My favorite musicians include the Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs, Reno & Smiley, Bill Monroe, Dailey & Vincent, the Carter Family, Tom T. Hall, Doc Watson, Area Code 615, Dale McCoury, Ricky Skaggs, Dolly Parton, Clarence Kelly, Patty Loveless, Don Rigsby, and Larry Cordle.  Nearly every one of these people is an above average musician and there are some of the best songwriters in America in this group.  Nearly every one of them has written and/or recorded at least one American classic song which has woven its way into the hearts of the general public.  Several of them such as Bill Monroe, Tom T. Hall, Ricky Skaggs, Flatt & Scruggs, Dolly Parton, and Larry Cordle have written and recorded several such songs.

Bluegrass music is the music of the Appalachian working class, the poor, the disenfranchised, and many of the people in the country who seek to move upward from an economic or social condition which they do not wish to live in for the rest of their lives.  Bluegrass music shares these qualities with both country music and rap. Like country music, bluegrass has commonly heard themes of love, drinking, unrequited love, cheating, home & family, hard work, prison, Christianity, and love of place, an Appalachian Value I have discussed at length in several other posts. Bluegrass also shares several of these themes with rap and at some time in the future, I will also write a post about common themes in bluegrass and rap.  But for now, my topic is a sub-genre of bluegrass music which I have always referred to as Dead Baby Music. And I have to give credit for the name Dead Baby Music to my wife Candice, a transplanted Wisconsin native, who first heard bluegrass with every negative opinion possible and has since come to know and love it.  I have searched for a slightly less off putting name for this type of music and to be honest, I cannot find one that is more accurate or more appropriately descriptive of the music I am discussing.  What I mean by Dead Baby Music is music which almost always has a central character, usually a child, who dies an untimely and often painful or cruel death.  In some of these songs, that death may have even come at the hands of a parent, family member or friend. 

The three best examples of Dead Baby Music I can think of are "Little Bessie" written by Bill Emerson, Doyle Lawson, & Charley Waller, "Bringing Mary Home" written by Red Sovine, and "The Water Lily" written by Tom T. Hall. "Little Bessie" is an absolute classic which has been recorded by hundreds of bluegrass artists but the two best versions are by Ralph Stanley and Ricky Skaggs.  Skaggs recorded a version which is nearly 14 minutes long and is timeless in its musical skill & heart wrenching vocals.  In the song, Little Bessie, a terminally ill child tells her mother of a dream or vision in which "a window opened on a field of lambs and sheep. Some far out in a brook were drinking.  Some were lying fast asleep."  The next stanza describes "a world that was filled with little children and they seemed so happy there."  These clearly Christian symbols of pairing children with lambs lead into the next stanza in which Bessie asks if the Savior "saw me would he speak to such as me".    Bessie does go on to describe a conversation with Jesus in the next two stanzas in which he tells her "come up here my Little Bessie. Come up here and live with me".  Then the poor sick child tells her mother that she had just been getting ready to go when the mother called and she proceeds to tell her mother goodbye.  "Oh to sleep and never suffer Mother don't be crying so" is a request by the child for permission to die.  At this point, the "mother pressed her closer to her own dear burdened breast. On the heart so near its breaking lay the heart so near its rest".   And naturally, Little Bessie must die and go to join Jesus as the final stanza says "at the solemn hour of midnight in the darkness calm and deep lying on her mother's bosom Little Bessie fell asleep".  That is Dead Baby Music at its finest.  "Little Bessie" personifies nearly everything that Dead Baby Music is. It is played by thousands of bluegrass musicians ranging from the great to the miserably ordinary.  It is a crowd favorite at bluegrass concerts and festivals and will continue to be so long as bluegrass music is played in public.

Tom T. Hall, one of America's greatest living songwriters, with a portfolio of classics to his credit also wrote one of the finest pieces of Dead Baby Music when he penned "The Water Lily" which is best heard on the Hall & Stanley duet on Ralph Stanley's "Saturday Night, Sunday Morning" recordings.  The song also begins with a dream, another common element in Dead Baby Music.   But this time, the mother is dreaming "of a lily decked pool with a border of ferns and a beautiful child with butterfly wings trips down to the edge of the water and sings."  Hall has probably consciously reversed some of the best elements of the earlier classic by having the mother dream and the child beckoning from the dreamland asking the mother to come.  But he has also consciously kept the elements of the dream, the mother, the child, and the water.  Tom T. Hall did not become the unequaled songwriter he is accidentally. He has studied and written both novels and short stories.  His public nickname has for many years been the Story Teller.  During the time he worked as a regularly touring musician, his band was known as the Story Tellers.  And in the story of "The Water Lily", he has woven one of his finest and one of the favorites of all followers of Dead Baby Music.  The lyrics of the song are woven together by the chorus of the child with butterfly wings singing to her mother "come mother, come quick follow me. Step out on the leaves of the water lily."  And, naturally, the mother attempts to join the beckoning child "but the lily leaves sink and she wakes from her dream".  And of course, the writer and the mother let us all know the inevitable for "waking is sad for the tears that it brings and she knows it is her dead baby's spirit that sings".  There is no finer example of Dead Baby Music in the world today.  Hall kept the best themes from "Little Bessie" but reversed the position of the mother and child.  He has the child already dead and begging her mother who is unable to comply to come and join her.  But, like "Little Bessie" we still have the grieving mother left behind by the dead child.

Red Sovine used a different approach but achieved an equally touching effect with "Bringing Mary Home".  The song begins with a narrator stopping in the night to pick up a small girl from the side of the road.  The child climbs into the car and tells the narrator "my name is Mary please won't you take me home."  And the narrator goes on to give us a touching physical description of the little girl.  "She must have been so frightened all alone there in the night.  There was something strange about her cause her face was deathly white."  Here we also see another common theme in Dead Baby Music with white symbolizing purity as it has in literature for hundreds of years.  Then the narrator and driver takes the little girl to the house where she asks him to go and when he gets out to open the car door for her  "I just could not believe my eyes the back seat was bare.  I looked all around the car but Mary wasn't there." And finally, Sovine brings the mother into the song with these words " A small light shown from the porch a woman opened up the door. I asked about the little girl that I was looking for. Then the lady gently smiled and brushed a tear away. She said it sure was nice of you to go out of your way. But thirteen years ago today in a wreck just down the road our darling Mary lost her life and we miss her so."  This time the mother is providing the consolation for the innocent stranger who has just happened to become an element in the child's quest to return to the home and grieving mother."  And then we reach the somewhat surprising and chilling end of the song when the mother tells the man  "so thank you for your trouble and the kindness you have shown.  You're the thirteenth one who's been here bringing Mary home."  At this point, it is not uncommon to see tears in an audience when a good singer and band deliver that line.

Dolly Parton has also written and recorded some of the finest Dead Baby Music I have ever heard.  She, too, is one of America's finest song writers with more than a few classic songs to her credit in the fields of country, pop, and bluegrass.  But her best Dead Baby Music is rarely heard outside the world of bluegrass.  On her classic bluegrass CD "Little Sparrow", Parton actually recorded two fine examples of Dead Baby Music,  "Mountain Angel" and "Down From Dover".  Parton did some of her best writing in "Mountain Angel".  It is a song about a girl who was born as close to perfect as it is possible to be. "Skin as fair as lily's. Hair as golden as the corn. She was her momma's baby. She was her Daddy's pride."  And then a man enters the picture and changes everything in this woman's life.  He gets her pregnant and disappears before the child is born.  "They say she had a baby.  Some say that it had died.  They say it's just as well as it had been the devil's child".  And now the grief-stricken mother disappears "into the wild".  The most powerful lyrics in the song come in the last couple of stanzas.  "She waited for him as her beauty faded. Her parents died from grief before their time." Not only has the tragedy consumed the mother of the dead baby in this song, it has also consumed the grandparents as well.  And like the other mothers in the other examples, this mother tries to deal with her grief but cannot. "She tried to gather pieces of her life, they wouldn't fit. Beside the tiny grave deep in the woods is where she'd sit. Talking to the child, herself, to him, who knew for sure. Possessed they say by Satan's insane lure."  At this point in the song, she has now completely lost her mind and become an outcast "high a'top the mountain"  And that is how she lives out her life roaming the mountains, grieving for the dead child and the man who ruined her. Parton takes her out into the hills and leaves her for all eternity where "for years they say she's seen. Looking down upon the town where she had once been queen. She'd sneak around the playground, watch the little children play. They'd see the crazy lady then run away. They say she roamed these hills for years, wearing not a stitch. The lovely mountain angel now thought to be a witch."

Parton also narrowly misses the genre of Dead Baby Music in another of her songs, "These Old Bones" from the "Halos And Horns" CD.  In that song, she tells a story of witchcraft or clairvoyance about another woman who lives alone in the mountains with her bag of bones, a dog, a cat, and a goat.  The narrator turns out to be a daughter of the woman which "the country took you from me said I wasn't right in my mind."  But this child lives to find the mother and takes care of her, burying her, and assuming her position of telling fortunes and living in the mountain with "These Old Bones".

In the other example of Dead Baby Music on the "Little Sparrow" CD, Parton writes about another young girl who has become pregnant by a man who deserts her.  But this girl leaves her family and home and goes to take "care of that old lady" as a way to have a home away from her family who have ostracized her.  As childbirth gets closer, she keeps repeating the chorus line "I know he'll be coming down from Dover."  But the girl delivers the child still born and sings "dying was her way of telling me he wasn't coming down from Dover".  All the songs I have discussed here are fine examples of Dead Baby Music.  They share several common elements.  There are many more in bluegrass which fit the genre.  They are part of what makes bluegrass unique and wonderful.  Rarely would anyone wish to listen to these songs all day long.  But when you mix them in among the other standard bluegrass themes of love, work, prison, heartbreak, and religion, they are well worth paying attention to and accepting as a treasured part of the bluegrass music many of us will love to our dying day.