Full Moon Fever With Stanley Booth

Posted: Dec 23, 2007

Full Moon Fever With Stanley Booth
12/24/07

Full moon on the Little Satilla River...I return to my homesoil for the holidays, and it ain't the holidays if I don't visit my old friend, Stanley Booth. Ah, what a year. Our friendship casts a long and wide shadow. We sit in his beautiful home built in 1890 discussing old times on a journey through the past that brings us to now...

Stanley shows me Ethan Russell's new book of photographs, Let It Bleed, a $900 book based on the Stones fabled 1969 tour. We thumb through this heavy tome which he received three days ago that contains a plethora of quotes from his book, The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones. Also, keep your ear to the ground because the Whitney Museum of American Art is doing a one man photograph exhibition by Stanley's old friend William Eggleston. Stanley, commissioned to write a special essay for the catalogue, continues writing definitive pieces of the south's most influential artists.

I tell Stanley about my latest developments. I play him some of the Goodbye, Babylon boxset. I show him my John Sayles interview and we watch the promo copy of Honeydripper. Stanley shows me his new computer (seen in photo above)...what a machine. "I thought you might want to see this," he says, and hands me a soon-to-be-published book about Townes Van Zandt--A Deeper Blue--by Robert Earl Hardy. This book--Stanley's been asked to write a cover-blurb for the publication--serves as the first release in a new series called the North Texas Lives of Musicians Series. Stanley knows about my early meetings with Townes and my love for his music. "You should be writing this blurb," Stanley says to me.

Stanley's wearing a negro baseball league Memphis Red Sox jersey. His wife--esteemed poet Diann Blakely's upcoming book of poetry--Cities of the Flesh and the Dead--will soon be published...followed by a book about Robert Johnson. We watch Tommy Lee Jones' movie The Burial of Melquides Estrada with Levon Helm...a stone cold classic...check that one out...

Well, I could easily keep this up all night, so I'll wrap it up. I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas. Stanley says, "Y'all be particular..."

James Calemine
JCalemine@swampland.com