The True Adventures of Stanley Booth

Posted: Jun 10, 2007

6/10/07

THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF STANLEY BOOTH

As I wrote in the intro to my Charlie Louvin interview, I met writer Stanley Booth over two decades ago. Growing up in South Georgia with literary and musical pursuits, I discovered Booth’s hardback book, Dance With the Devil around 1984 or 1985.

The book fused my love for language and music into one tome written by the writer from Waycross, Georgia, during the Rolling Stones 1969 tour that ended with Altamont. Booth wrote with a sharp eye about not only the Stones, but American music, politics, racial divides, assassinations, Vietnam, free love, and dancing with the devil…

A short while later I met Booth. We became fast friends and he served as a serious mentor on the craft of writing. His warnings on what not to do always rang in my head. We went through some crazy times together, which this article I wrote in 2000 elaborates upon.

I plan on an upcoming Booth project/feature, but I figure until then this articles serves as testimony to Stanley Booth’s contribution to the facts, history, and folklore in southern American music. He knew almost all of the musicians he wrote about such as Furry Lewis, B.B. King, Bukka White, Gram Parsons, the Rolling Stones, Jim Dickinson & the Dixie Flyers and a long list of others.

So, read on…these serve as vital stories and pursuits with the Okefenokee Kid through the Land of the Trembling Earth and beyond…

James Calemine