Musician Favored By Twain to Get CD Release

After hearing Polk Miller & His Old South Quartette perform in the 1890s, Sam Clemens commented, "I think that Polk Miller, and his wonderful four, is about the only thing this country can furnish that is originally and utterly American." Now that's what you call a compliment.

And now, some rare recordings by Miller and his group will see the light of day, as Tompkins Square Records gets set to release a CD containing 14 tracks--seven of which were recorded on Edision tube in 1909, and the other seven some 19 years later on disc.

A word to the politically correct of our post-modern age: the music of Miller and company was intended as a tribute to plantation music and Negro spirituals. Although it may sound a bit troublesome to some sensitive 21st century ears, one should also note that Miller's music contained none of the low farce or black-face then common in so-called "coon songs".

The new CD comes with a booklet featuring photos, memorabilia and notes by African American music historian Doug Seroff. You can order it here, as well as take a listen to Miller's tune "Oysters and Wine at 2a.m."

Styron's "A Literary Forefather" Reprinted in New Essay Collection

In 1995, the late novelist William Styron, best remembered as the author of Sophie's Choice and Confessions of Nat Turner, published in The New Yorker the essay "A Literary Forefather", in which he illustrated the parallels he saw between himself and one of his greatest inspirations.

"Our early surroundings possessed a surface sweetness and innocence - under which lay a turmoil we were pleased to expose - and we both grew up in villages on the banks of great rivers that dominated our lives," he wrote, referring to Twain's Mississippi River and his own James River in Tidewater, Virginia. Now this essay, and others, can be found in the brand-new collection Havanas in Camelot, reviewed yesterday in the Boston Globe.

Like Twain, Styron also grew up in the shadow of slavery (albeit a century later), living in a Southern culture with slaveholding in his family's history. And also like Twain, he wasn't afraid to deal with it in his writings.