The Echo of a Distant Time: Tennessee

Showing posts with label Tennessee. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 25, 2026

Fare thee well, Dolly Parton

A vivid colour studio portrait shows Dolly Parton smiling directly towards the camera against a deep navy background. Her famously voluminous platinum-blonde hair is arranged in cascading curls and an exceptionally high bouffant, framing her face and shoulders. She wears lavender eye shadow, dark eyeliner and glossy pink lipstick. Her fitted dark teal dress is dramatically contrasted by a bright pink ruffled neckline and enormous sheer balloon sleeves, gathered into extravagant tiered cuffs. Both hands rest across her waist, displaying long manicured nails and numerous ornate rings. The saturated pink, teal and platinum palette, theatrical styling and exuberant proportions give the portrait an unmistakably glamorous 1970s country-music aesthetic.

Dolly Parton Archive

A fond farewell to one of America’s most beloved public figures: Dolly Parton, 19 January 1946 to 25 August 2026. {NYT 25 August; photo: Dolly Parton Archive}

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/arts/music/dolly-parton-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8FA.CnX_.KKzjuoNR1foq&smid=url-share

linktr.ee/arthurnewhook

🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Friday, May 22, 2026

NASCAR champion gone too soon

A portrait photograph shows a man in a blue-and-red racing suit and matching cap branded “Lucas Oil”, identified in the accompanying context as NASCAR driver Kyle Busch. He wears dark reflective sunglasses and looks slightly off-camera with a relaxed half-smile. The vivid background dissolves into large blurred blue stage lights, creating a dramatic contrast against the darker surroundings. Bright daylight illuminates his face and uniform, emphasising the polished commercial aesthetic associated with professional motorsport media photography.

{AP 22 May} 2-time NASCAR champ Kyle Busch dies at 41 after being hospitalized with a ‘severe illness’

True story: I do not care for motor racing, yet I did once attend a race at Bristol Motor Speedway, there on the Tennessee–Virginia border. It was a Friday night in August 2009, and, if memory serves, Kyle Busch was the winner. I was far too busy having a panic attack from the sheer assault on the senses for however long we were there to take in very much of it, but my lady friend at the time was a noted Kyle Busch hater, and none too pleased to see him prevail. I am quite certain, though, that she is deeply saddened today.

Forty-one years old and still active — it is an appalling shock to all who follow NASCAR, and above all to his friends and loved ones. Godspeed.

Saturday, November 1, 2025

Dixie Lee, 4 November 1909 – 1 November 1952

Dixie Lee, actress and chanteuse of the early 1930s, stands immortalised in a studio portrait that epitomises the cultivated elegance of nascent Hollywood. She poses with her back turned in gentle contrapposto, her gaze cast over one shoulder—an expression suspended delicately between astonishment and seduction. Her sleeveless satin ensemble glistens beneath the studio lamps, tracing the supple contour of her figure, whilst a soft cap and a single strand of pearls lend a note of refined restraint. The chiaroscuro of light and shadow carves her silhouette with sculptural precision upon the wall behind, conjuring an image at once sophisticated and enigmatic—the very embodiment of Jazz Age glamour distilled into silvered stillness.

Fox Films promotional shot

Born Wilma Winifred Wyatt in the pastoral environs of Harriman, Tennessee, Dixie Lee is remembered—when she is remembered at all—chiefly as the ill-fated first wife of Bing Crosby, and, regrettably, not a particularly felicitous one. Yet before her light was dimmed beneath the vast shadow of his celebrity, she had, in her own right, been a captivating ingénue of early Hollywood. Having won a singing competition, she was promptly signed by Fox Film and, for one brief but incandescent interval at the dawn of the talkies, outshone even her future husband in renown—most notably 1929’s Why Leave Home? in a lead role, and where her charm, poise, and melodic grace marked her as something of a luminary of the shimmering, transitional age.

She first encountered Crosby whilst he was yet an aspiring crooner, and, as was the custom for so many women of her generation, she soon relinquished her own burgeoning career in deference to his. They were wed in 1930, yet the polished veneer of Hollywood domesticity began to fissure almost at once. The marriage was fraught from its inception; scarcely months after their nuptials, in 1931, she resolved to petition for divorce on grounds of ‘mental cruelty’—a grave charge for the time—though the document, in the end, was never formally submitted.

Between 1933 and 1938, four sons were born to the union, yet the household was ever shadowed by turmoil. Dixie’s protracted and ruinous struggle with alcoholism exacted a grievous toll, and tales of discord within the Crosby marriage were a recurrent feature of the gossip columns throughout the 1940s. Less than two years after her final professional appearances—a modest guest turn upon her husband’s radio programme—and at the cruelly premature age of forty-two, Dixie Lee succumbed to ovarian cancer. She departed this world upon this very day, the first of November, 1952, a mere three days shy of what would have been her forty-third birthday. —Arthur Newhook, 1 November 2025.

Thursday, July 20, 2023

Lowlife pseudo-country music star stirs controversy with video shoot at an infamous Tennessee courthouse

Beginning seven years ago, with the emergence of Donald Trump as the ultimate populist demagogue, this former right-winger was left with no recourse but to finally stop giving all these people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to most anything. In particular, in matters of race, religion, and morality. The assclown musician Jason Aldean and his people chose a particular courthouse with a sordid history for his video shoot as a dog whistle to his neo-Confederate fans and white nationalist populists everywhere. Let us be real, those types are by far the largest consumers of this kind of trash modern ‘country’ music, and Jason Aldean certainly knows this clearly and capitalizes. Trump has taught his little grifters quite well in the game, but how difficult can it be when there are millions and millions of Americans so gleefully willing to be gaslit and swindled by con-men who say or imply the sort of things they want to hear. Especially any rhetoric stating or implying that blacks must be kept in line. Do read this article from the Washington Post and the harrowing account of what happened at the Maury County Courthouse in November of 1927. {WP 7/19}