Today’s dispatch revolves around writer Stanley Booth. I met Booth in 1986. He counts as a subject in my book–Insured Beyond The Grave. He grew up in the Okefenokee Swamp. Booth once wrote this about the Okefenokee: “I loved the swamp country. At times I was afraid, but nothing in the woods was as frightening as what I would find in the outside world.”
Booth’s three books–The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones, Rythm (sic) Oil and Keith: Standing in the Shadows–rank as influential American literature. Booth’s new collection, Red, Hot, and Blue will be published by Chicago Review Press in 2019. It contains published articles throughout his long career.
I talked to Stanley on Monday, July 23, and he provided insight to the contents of his new book. “The first piece is an introduction that talks about my career. I talk about the guy who wrote a book about the blues and how he spent an afternoon in Memphis. I wrote I’ve been in Memphis 25 years and I’ve been to all the jails in the vicinity. Some people think they can read a book about the blues, listen to some blues records and they have an authentic thing to say about the blues. I don’t understand people.
(Keith Richards & Stanley Booth by Jim Marshall)
“After the introduction the pieces include King Joe Oliver, Ma Rainey, Blind Willie McTell, Ray Charles, the Rolling Stones, Mose Allison, Charlie Freeman, Bobby Rush, Marvin Sease, Elvis Presley, Fred Ford, Aaron Neville, Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham and Al Green. It also contains the liner notes to Jim Dickinson’s album Dixie Fried. Also, two TV scripts Cybill Shepherd hired me to write. The last article is about Dewey Phillips called Red, Hot and Blue.”
Red, Hot and Blue will definitely be worth the wait. Stay tuned…
(Photographer William Eggleston by Stanley Booth)
(Photograph #1 of Stanley Booth by James Calemine)
Stanley Booth: Can I Get A Witness by James Calemine from Insured Beyond The Grave
(Photo of Stanley Booth & James Calemine in Memphis courtesy of James Calemine Archives)