Blog What Makes This Musician Great?–The Balfa Brothers In a significant departure for this series, the 9th installment of What Makes This Musician…Tom DanielSeptember 22, 2021
Blog What Makes This Musician Great?–Freddy Fender Freddy Fender? You mean that Mexican fella? No, I mean the Southern musical pioneer from…Tom DanielSeptember 15, 2021
Blog What Makes This Musician Great?–Bill Monroe As I talk to people about American music and Southern music, I’ve noticed that many…Tom DanielSeptember 8, 2021
Blog What Makes This Musician Great?–Robert Johnson The sixth Southern musician to be examined in this series of What Makes This Musician…Tom DanielAugust 31, 2021
Blog What Makes This Musician Great?–Carl Perkins In this fifth installment of the series “What Makes This Musician Great,” we will travel…Tom DanielAugust 25, 2021
Blog What Makes This Musician Great?–Maybelle Carter When I was a kid, we had a bully in school who delighted in picking…Tom DanielAugust 18, 2021
Blog What Makes This Musician Great?–Ray Charles In this third installment of the series “What Makes this Musician Great,” I will try…Tom DanielAugust 11, 2021
Blog What Makes This Musician Great?–Hank Williams This is the second installment of the series ‘What Makes this Musician Great,” and will…Tom DanielAugust 4, 2021
Blog What Makes This Musician Great? – Duane Allman Recently, I started looking into the connections between musical preferences and personality types. In the…Tom DanielJuly 27, 2021
Blog Academy of Southern Music My name is Tom Daniel, and I’m a happy guy. I’m naturally optimistic, and I…Tom DanielJune 1, 2021
Blog Gomer Pyle and the Music of Southern Poverty Sometimes, you need to go halfway around the world in order to make a point,…Tom DanielMarch 31, 2021
Blog German POWs and Civil Rights I have written here before about my beloved hometown of Tuskegee, Alabama. Forgive me if…Tom DanielMarch 8, 2021
2018 Summer School: Southern Identity Through Southern MusicConferences Muscle Shoals Has Got The Swampers Thu, 29 Nov 2018 14:12:57 +0000 Tom Daniel Download MP3 Tom DanielFebruary 24, 2021
2018 Summer School: Southern Identity Through Southern MusicConferences American Music is Southern Music Wed, 28 Nov 2018 18:48:13 +0000 Tom Daniel Download MP3 Tom DanielFebruary 24, 2021
Blog Cajun Music If these were normal times, we’d all be unpacking our Mardi Gras gear right about…Tom DanielFebruary 16, 2021
Blog Rock ‘n Roll has a Southern Accent Rock ‘n Roll may be the most significant cultural export in American history. There is…Tom DanielJanuary 27, 2021
Blog Appalachian Music and the Phonograph In the late 19th century, Romantic composers were driven by nationalism as a means to…Tom DanielDecember 4, 2020
Blog How to Listen to Jazz When you hear the word “jazz,” what type of music pops into your head? What…Tom DanielNovember 27, 2020
Blog The Colored Sacred Harp I have written here before about the history and mechanics of Sacred Harp singing, shape-notes,…Tom DanielJuly 29, 2020
Blog Southern Rock for the Apocalypse, Part VI Hot 'Lanta - Allman Brothers Band https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWSoo3bLhIc The typical standard jazz composition that would be…Tom DanielMay 15, 2020
Blog Bluegrass and Jazz: What Do They Have in Common? If you’ve come across some of the other things I’ve written for Abbeville, you might…Tom DanielApril 24, 2019
Blog Scotch Snaps and Southern Music I need to tell you one story in order to tell you another. The Czechoslovakian…Tom DanielMarch 22, 2019
Blog Southern Music is American Music Why do Southerners continue to fall into that trap where we only talk about the…Tom DanielDecember 14, 2018
Blog Sacred Harp Singing If I was forced to give an example of at least one good thing we…Tom DanielMarch 12, 2018
Blog The Louisiana “Hippeaux” In America, there are a lot of places you can go that will make you…Tom DanielJuly 11, 2016
Blog American Music Is Southern Music “American Idol,” a reality-based music singing competition on the Fox Network, has come to an…Tom DanielApril 11, 2016
Blog The Tuskegee Confederate Memorial For anyone with a casual knowledge about Alabama’s juicy and active history, the words “Tuskegee”…Tom DanielMarch 7, 2016
Blog What’s Holding Alabama Back? As I watched my local Montgomery, Alabama news station this morning, I saw that question…Tom DanielFebruary 1, 2016
Blog The Cemetery Tour Revisited Well, another year has come and gone that the Auburn Heritage Association did not invite…Tom DanielOctober 16, 2015
Blog Whiskey As a teenager, I always loved Sydney J. Harris’ syndicated newspaper column called “Things I…Tom DanielJuly 9, 2015
Blog Where the Yankees Shoot You I used to always wonder if other Southern children were taught the same thing we…Tom DanielMarch 23, 2015
Blog Ten Things About Alabama You Might Not Know I’m still a little chapped about that recent story from Chicago where it’s considered racist…Tom DanielJanuary 9, 2015
Blog Imagined Utopias of Tolerance Malcolm X once famously observed that the violence and racial strife in America was indicative…Tom DanielDecember 29, 2014
Blog It’s In The Mud I have written before here at Abbeville about the legendary music that came out of…Tom DanielNovember 26, 2014
Blog The Southern Environmentalist If you were to conjure up an image in your head of an exploitive, money-grubbing…Tom DanielOctober 14, 2014
Blog Do You Know Billy Davis and His Mamma, Grace? Me Too. Over the past couple of weeks, a very simple act has renewed my faith in…Tom DanielOctober 9, 2014
Blog FAQs for the New Confederate States of America Scotland has certainly lit the fire under a lot of folks who are warming to…Tom DanielSeptember 24, 2014
Blog Give Me My Southern Space I think all of us have probably experienced this in one form or another. You’re…Tom DanielSeptember 8, 2014
Blog Porked Up Southern Culture The Abbeville Institute is dedicated to promoting Southern culture, and doesn’t shed a single calorie…Tom DanielAugust 27, 2014
Blog A Southern Sense of Humor My wife and I lived in Iowa during the mid-90’s, and we thoroughly enjoyed playing…Tom DanielAugust 21, 2014
Blog Tuskegee Part 2 I didn’t know there was going to be a “part 2” to this blog entry…Tom DanielAugust 6, 2014
Blog Tuskegee As I’ve mentioned before, my hometown is Tuskegee, Alabama, which is not famous because of…Tom DanielAugust 1, 2014
Blog A Confederate Tree It seems like every family is thankfully blessed with that one, highly motivated individual who…Tom DanielJuly 21, 2014
Blog “The Penmen of the Secession” About ten years ago, I was invited to participate in a cemetery tour in Auburn,…Tom DanielJuly 16, 2014
Blog What Every Southern Man Should Be Able To Do I was killing time the other day in my office looking through human interest websites…Tom DanielJuly 14, 2014
Blog “We Say Grace and We Say Ma’am” I’m afraid we may be looking at an upcoming generation of Southern children who don’t…Tom DanielJuly 10, 2014
Blog The Beatles vs Alabama On April 4, 1964, The Beatles achieved American chart success that will almost certainly never…Tom DanielJuly 7, 2014
Blog Rebel Yell Notwithstanding Ole Miss fans, those opening few bars of “Dixie” sends chills down the back…Tom DanielJune 30, 2014
Blog Southern Nicknames One of the unwritten great things about the South is our obsession with colorful nicknames.…Tom DanielJune 19, 2014
Blog Rednecks You can count me out of the trendy Redneck Renaissance going on. I guess I’m…Tom DanielJune 17, 2014
Blog On Being Asked About If I ever got started writing about Southern good manners, I’m not sure I could…Tom DanielJune 12, 2014
Blog “You is kind. You is smart. You is important.” They say that writing is good for the soul, and my soul needs something good.…Tom DanielMay 27, 2014
Blog “You is kind. You is smart. You is important.” They say that writing is good for the soul, and my soul needs something good.…Tom DanielMay 27, 2014
Blog Hair Cane Creek In a recent Abbeville blog, I wrote about the correct pronunciation of the racetrack located…Tom DanielMay 22, 2014
Blog Hair Cane Creek In a recent Abbeville blog, I wrote about the correct pronunciation of the racetrack located…Tom DanielMay 22, 2014
Blog The Lyrics or Melody in Southern Music? About ten years ago, one of my colleagues suggested to me that Americans listen to…Tom DanielMay 19, 2014
Blog The Lyrics or Melody in Southern Music? About ten years ago, one of my colleagues suggested to me that Americans listen to…Tom DanielMay 19, 2014
Blog “It’s a Trick General, There’s Two of Them!” Twenty years ago this Spring, I lost the greatest friend I never met, Lewis Grizzard.…Tom DanielMay 13, 2014
Blog College Football Yankees don’t understand the Southern obsession with college football, and if they don’t understand it,…Tom DanielMay 8, 2014
Blog Southern Night Life Although I’m not a mountain man, and I would never dare call myself smart enough…Tom DanielMay 1, 2014
Blog Muscle Shoals Has Got The Swampers Have you ever wondered about that cryptic third verse of “Sweet Home Alabama?” The music…Tom DanielApril 29, 2014
Blog GRITS Grits can simultaneously be both an item of pride and an item of derision. On…Tom DanielApril 24, 2014
Blog An Ethnic Food Group? In the mid-90’s, my wife and I lived and worked for several years in Ames,…Tom DanielApril 22, 2014
Blog Where’s The Rest of My Ice? Here’s another one of those things about our lives controlled by Yankees – ice quantity.…Tom DanielApril 17, 2014
Blog Top 11 Southern Rock Bands I decided to rank my own favorite Top Southern Rock Bands with some added personal…Tom DanielApril 15, 2014
Blog Southern Rock Lately, I've been doing a lot of thinking about Southern Rock, which is something very…Tom DanielApril 11, 2014
Blog Pronouncing Talladega My commute to work was a little bit spirited the other day. First of all,…Tom DanielApril 10, 2014
Blog American Idol We Southerners know a little bit about music. “American Idol,” for those who haven’t watched,…Tom DanielApril 8, 2014
Blog Watch What You’re Doing “Watch what you’re doing – you never know who’s watching you.” I can still hear…Tom DanielApril 4, 2014
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