Forty-six Bobbie Gentry compositions have been issued, principally from her 1967–1971 stretch on Capitol Records. From the three million-selling “Ode to Billie Joe” to the dark horse, funky country of “Fancy,” the Mississippi-raised chanteuse’s legacy continues to proliferate. The Girl from Chickasaw County box set [2018] is approaching 15,000 units purchased with an asking price of $80. Two years later the two-CD Delta Sweete deluxe edition sold out its first pressing of 5,000 in 24 hours. The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame also inducted Gentry in 2020. Never before has a chronological Gentry songwriting list with accompanying albums, A-side / B-side status, chart positions, release dates, and YouTube streaming links been attempted. …

Flanking the northeast side of the Alapaha River at Sheboggy — a mile and a half east of Alapaha, Georgia — a small-scale creosote plant owned by Bertie Moore once existed post-World War II until about 1957. Derived from the distillation of black tar from coal or wood — beech trees are a common source in the eastern United States — creosote is a dirty, thick preservative found on railroad cross ties and wood fence posts. It has since been prohibited for residential use as carcinogens can be leeched into groundwater.

At Sheboggy drawing knifes were used to peel pine posts so creosote, likely pre-purchased from another location, could be affixed. The creosote-treated posts were then placed in a cylindrical, metal boiler and heated in river water for a certain period of time. Upon removal, drying for several days made them stronger and resistant to rotting. Farmers, including Gene Griffin, would purchase the posts to stake in the ground and keep wire fences taut and standing. Metal T-posts are significantly more prominent today. …

Elvis Presley’s film debut was the modestly budgeted 1956 Civil War-set western Love Me Tender, forgotten except for its theme song repurposed as an eternal wedding ballad. A previously unpublished interview with costar James Drury, later earning TV immortality as The Virginian, takes stock of his friendship with the rock superstar and Mother Dolores Hart, who abandoned a promising six-year Hollywood career [e.g. Presley’s Loving You and King Creole] for a Connecticut monastery. Head back to part three, entitled “Sam Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country According to Dirty Rat James Drury,” in case you’re just joining the rodeo.

The James Drury Interview, Part Four

Let’s talk about your sole movie with Elvis Presley. …

Saddle up, pilgrims! The INSP cable network augmented 2020’s quarantine Christmas with a marathon sampling nine of John Wayne’s best Westerns distributed between 1944 and 1972. Within an astounding 167-film canon, the American institution appeared somewhere in the neighborhood of 87 Westerns in his workaholic 50-year career on the silver screen.

Affectionately known as the Duke by his army of aficionados, the late action star’s cultural impact is still felt over three decades after his death from the ravages of stomach cancer. Believe it or not, Wayne regularly places in the Top Five on the annual Harris Poll of America’s favorite living or deceased actors. He is the only actor to remain firmly ensconced on the list every year since the poll originated in 1994. …

In 1972 Miller’s Hardware unfastened its doors at 701 East Marion Avenue, indelibly impacting Berrien County’s economy for the subsequent 47 years. Former owner Roy Miller and wife-office manager Bonnie hosted a genuinely international Thanksgiving summit inside their conspicuously flat-roofed, French-designed home about a mile and a half northeast of Nashville, Georgia. Including daughters Angela [Vernon] Chambless and Amanda Miller and grandkids Colbie Spann and Finley Grace Miller, six, count ’em six, countries were compassionately acknowledged in this pointedly divided era.

Colbie, a 24-year-old chestnut-haired, spring 2020 Valdosta State University alumna, recently charted a new southbound course when she planted roots in Jacksonville. Angela’s only child applied for a lab manager position based upon her Bachelor of Science in Biology and Minor in Chemistry. Colbie kept any emerging butterflies under wraps by conquering Arabic and Spanish. Self-taught, of course. …

Sandra B. Tooze’s third tome is the engaging Levon: From Down in the Delta to the Birth of The Band and Beyond. So far it’s the sole biography of the cash-strapped sharecropper’s kid from Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, who established rockabilly roots in Toronto upon high school graduation, backed Bob Dylan when he abandoned acoustic folk, and served as the groundbreaking Americana quintet’s quadruple threat of a signature tenor vocalist, groove-laying drummer, mandolinist, and inspiration to songwriting architect Robbie Robertson. …

“I’ve always been a perfectionist and that’s a pain in the ass.” Steve McQueen: In His Own Words is a five-pound coffee table tome encompassing 450 vintage quotes and 547 black and white and color photographs. Compiled by Portrait of an American Rebel biographer Marshall Terrill, In His Own Words was disseminated on the 40th anniversary of the King of Cool’s mesothelioma-triggered death. Sip some hot chocolate as Terrill handily assembles the nuts and bolts of McQueen’s surly moods, romantic rendezvous, politics, death bed confessions, and encounters with paparazzi, Ronald Reagan, Natalie Wood, Ali MacGraw, and fantastical cast-iron coffins.

The Marshall Terrill Interview

I was blindsided to discover that the typically suspicious, reticent Steve McQueen tasked business manager Bill Maher with reaching out to Los Angeles Times film critic Charles Champlin about collaborating on an autobiography. …

Pen-pusher Andy Greene holds court on debut tome ‘The Office:’ The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s — An Oral History, deemed Vulture’s Best Comedy Book of 2020. A senior writer at Rolling Stone by trade, Greene’s voluminous interview examines the oddball paper company whose resurgence on Netflix shows no signs of abating and the parent whose “tenaciousness was my guiding light during the many setbacks I faced while researching the book.”

The Andy Greene Interview

How did you emerge at Rolling Stone?

I’m from Cleveland, and I worked at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for my senior project in high school in 2000 and then got hired that summer as a human resources assistant. In subsequent college breaks, I worked all over the museum, but mainly in curatorial. I became very close to curator Howard Kramer. It was head curator James “Jim” Henke, who used to work at Rolling Stone, who got me a six-month internship with the magazine straight out of college in 2004. …