Arthur Smith - RIP

Legendary guitarist, banjo player, fiddler, songwriter, TV host, radio personality Arthur Smith passed away on Thursday. He was 93 years old. His death marked the end of a long and stellar career making music in Charlotte, N.C. Although he was born in South Carolina Mr. Smith made Charlotte his home in the early 1940’s and never looked back.

His radio and TV shows were regional in their makeup, but had a worldwide effect on music. His iconic “Fuedin’ Banjo’s” would go on to be heard in films like “Deliverance”, for which he was given no credit whatsoever and had to bring suit in order to obtain any money for the use of his song. When Mitsubishi used the song again in the 1990’s he made some more money by taking them to court. But that is just a small part of who Mr. Smith was.

All over the country there were regional variety shows along the lines of the Ed Sullivan Show in New York. These regional shows highlighted the music and happenings in the local area in which they aired. I have often been envious of the people who got to watch these shows when I was a kid. Sure, I had Sullivan, but so did the people in the small cities. They just had something extra.

Guests such as Johnny Cash; who used to stay at Mr. Smith’s home in Charlotte when he came for a visit; Billy Graham and his wife Ruth, Andy Griffith, and a host of young guitar pickers from Nashville; including a very young Vince Gill; all made appearances on Mr. Smith’s show. Paul McCartney played 2 songs in 1958 which got him in the Quarrymen with John Lennon. One was Eddie Cochrane’s “Twenty Flight Rock”; the other was Arthur Smith’s “Guitar Boogie.”

Regional shows like Mr. Smith’s have gone by the wayside in the wake of the expanding global economy, but they will always be remembered for the joyful noise they made. The world was much less complex in those days when television was live and the performers even livelier. RIP Arthur Smith.

For more about Mr. Smith use the following link;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ7IYL0qzrM 

Coke Bottle Gambling

The other evening as I was driving home I was listening to John Hancock on the local “talk radio” show. I used to call in a lot about politics, but these days I’m more likely to weigh in on such complex issues as “What did you collect as a kid and wished you still had?” The topic was really baseball cards and comic books, but all collections were allowed.

At the beginning of the show the announcer usually starts off with a preamble concerning what he is interested in discussing. The call screener then begins lining up calls, usually reserving a spot for the first, most interesting, or what is often referred to as the “kickoff” call.

I was calling to say that I had collected Coca Cola bottles, the green 6-1/2 ounce “Christmas tree” bottles, so named due to their shape and that the first ones actually bore the patent date of December 25, 1923. The photo above shows a Christmas tree bottle dated 1923 on the left and the older version of the green Coke bottle to the right. In between I have stacked a few of the Christmas tree bottles with the bottoms showing the plants where they had come from.

Across the country there were thousands of Coke bottling plants and each one stamped the name of the town, or city, on their bottles. In 1967 I had about 200 or so of these bottles in a wine rack, bottoms up. I had bottles from Anchorage, Alaska to Bangor, Maine. I was very proud of this collection. Every time I bought a Coke I would look at the bottom to see if I could add it to my collection. If not, I would put it back and choose another.

One day, and I don’t remember quite why, my father took a 9 pound sledge to my collection, shattering all that pretty green glass. Then I had to clean it up. A few of the bottles escaped unscathed and a couple of them are in the center of the picture, bottoms up, just as they once were many years ago.

Well, I got to be the “kickoff” call that evening and I have been thinking about those bottles ever since. So I thought I’d round up a few of them for this photo and story.

The funniest part of the whole thing was that John Hancock, the show's host, asked me if I had inherited the rage and anger of my father. It was an odd question, given the topic of the show, but I answered truthfully. I replied that I had struggled all through raising my kids to control my temper. While I may not have been entirely successful in that endeavor, I have not, at least in my memory, ever taken a sledgehammer to any of my children’s things.

But the real kicker to the whole story is the third call after mine, which bought back some memories I had forgotten. This caller, a local man from Albemarle, had a grandfather who owned a “filling” station there. On Saturday mornings he and his cronies used to gather around the Coke machine, next to the stacks of crates that contained the empty bottles. The bottles were in a standing position so the bottoms could not be seen. Each player would lay down his fifty cents and name a city. Then everyone would pull a bottle from the crate. The one that pulled the city closest to the one he’d named won the pot.

I had forgotten all about this game until that third caller. It bought back a mixture of memories, some good, and some bad. But one thought keeps rising above all the rest, “Hey Dad, you missed a couple.”