I’ve been to Nashville five times only because I had a Rebel great grandfather who surrendered there near the end of the Civil War, my Daddy called it the Confederate War. I don’t really go to Nashville except to honky tonk. But I go to Franklin, which is just south of Nashville, for the War and the site of a battle bigger and worse than Gettysburg, the Battle of Franklin, November 30, 1864. I feel it, the War, there. Let’s let Thomas Cartwright tell us about it so that is why after 140 years I still wake up in the morning wanting to go to Franklin. Can’t explain it. I could get into a lot of details but our Current War is even more desperate that this old War. One time on a Civil War trip following the Army of Tennessee from Alabama to Tennessee, a friend of mine whose great uncle, Gen’l John Adams who was killed at the battle, got Thomas to give us a staff ride around the battlefield which has been built over with houses and businesses years ago. After you do the Franklin battlefield, stand on Confederate Gen’l John Bell Hood’s headquarters at Winstead Hill and yell cuss words at Yankees across the valley and cuss Hood for his waste of Southern boys’ lives, you get thirsty. So you go up to Nashville to Broad Street and visit Tootsie’s Purple Orchid Lounge. Let’s do that. Want to? Good.I usually hit Tootsies for an hour or so in the late morning and afternoon, because after the sun goes down so do I, and it may be something like this there is always someone picking and singin’ some of them pretty good, too. The Grand Old Opry once convened around the corner at Ryman Auditorium. The Opry has moved up to a better place since then but the story is that singers and pickers, before or after their Opry gigs, would come to Tootsie’s in the old days. I believe it. Hate I missed this night Kid Rock but why not do the real thing? Hank Williams, Jr., “Family Tradition”
If I had just kept practicing my guitar licks I might be on one of these clips. Stephanie Corbin, “Dirty Twang” hell I can’t understand much on this one but it has that beat. and this one Lindsay Lawler well it ain’t the country of Hank or Waylon but it does get you going right?
As I’m walking away from you on this edition of the Serenade I’ll leave you with this one “As She’s Walkiing Away.”
See y’all next time, love ya, Southern
