Monthly Archives: June 2013

New life for old interviews: Some Atlanta music & journalism history

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Eric King and Joel (J.T. Speed) Murphy at the Blind Willie's bar, Oct. 24, 1990. Photo by author.

Eric King (front)  and Joel (J.T. Speed) Murphy at the Blind Willie’s bar, Oct. 24, 1990. My recorder is on the bar. Photo by author.

Earlier this year I began taking steps towards completing a project that had its origins back in 1990. For a few hours the evening of October 24, 1990, Eric King and I consumed a fair amount of alcohol  and talked blues music and history at the bar of his Atlanta club, Blind Willie’s. At the time, I wrote a blues column for a short-lived alt-weekly, Footnotes. I had been spending lots of time in Willie’s and I had wanted to interview King for background material for future stories. Continue reading →

Another reason I love Atlanta’s Beltline

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Shot this morning on my ride on Atlanta’s Beltline Trail. What a great way to start the day.

Postscript: After this post went live I learned that this is Bon Jovi’s second brush with fame. He was pictured in a Feb. 14, 2013 New York Times article on the Beltline.

Now Atlanta Is Turning Old Tracks Green. The New York Times, February 14, 2013.

© 2013 D.S. Rotenstein

Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park, Washington

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The Washington, D.C., Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) office has begun posting excerpts from the oral history interviews I did for them between 2007 and 2009. The first excerpt posted is from my summer 2007 interview with Washington Parks and People executive director Steve Coleman.

My interview with Coleman covered a lot of territory. The clip posted at the DC LISC Website focuses on the rehabilitation of Washington’s Meridian Hill Park (also known as Malcolm X Park). Surf on over to the page or listen to the clip here:

 

Old Julia and Elwood

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Well, the name of it is Old Julia still. I guess you hard of that. — M.R., March 1988.

Former turpentine camp site, St. Johns County, Fla.

Former turpentine camp site, St. Johns County, Fla.

“Old Julia” was the name of a turpentine still and camp that operated in rural St. Johns County, Fla., in the 1920s and 1930s. And then, like other temporary naval stores processing sites in the Coastal Plain flatwoods, its owner moved the buildings and people to another stand of longleaf pines to extract resin for distillation into turpentine.

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