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Tom Daniel

Southern Cultural Literacy for America Blog

Southern Cultural Literacy for America

What are some songs or books that you think all Southerners should know? Cultural literacy is the ordinary process by which a population acquires a language of thought through the forms already belonging to it. Those forms are the songs, stories, images, and phrases that circulate in the ordinary life of a place. Everybody knows the Mona Lisa. Everybody knows…
Tom Daniel
November 6, 2026
The Hand on the Throttle Blog

The Hand on the Throttle

Southern railroad songs are often treated as a musical celebration of trains: their speed, their whistles, and the power of a locomotive moving through the landscape. The cultural connection is in the songs and in the life the songs come from. The South had more single-track, light-rail, and newly built lines than the Northeast in the decades after the Civil…
Tom Daniel
October 28, 2026
The Devil’s Box Blog

The Devil’s Box

Do you have a piano in your church? An organ? A guitar? A bass and drum set? A pedal steel? I’ve visited a lot of churches all over the South covering more denominations than I can count, but I have never once encountered a fiddle in any of them. The fiddle has probably acquired more theological baggage than any other…
Tom Daniel
October 22, 2026
Appalachian Murder Ballads Blog

Appalachian Murder Ballads

October is a time when folks put a skeleton on the porch and call it a personality. Plastic gravestones, jack-o-lanterns, spider webs, fog machines, and a playlist that treats death like a party favor. However, the Southern mountains don’t need October for that, because they’ve already got the murder ballads. There are songs about a girl who walked into the…
Tom Daniel
October 13, 2026
Music in the House of Lee Blog

Music in the House of Lee

Robert E. Lee did not play an instrument. That single fact, set beside the musical lives of Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and Jefferson Davis, requires a moment of careful consideration, because it does not mean what it first appears to mean. Jefferson submitted himself to decades of violin practice, treating musical discipline as inseparable from intellectual formation, and understanding that…
Tom Daniel
October 7, 2026
The Alabama Heathens Blog

The Alabama Heathens

The Alabama Heathens are a Southern rock band from North Alabama in the least marketable sense of the term. They didn’t assemble in a conference room somewhere to look like a region. They formed because some boys from Huntsville, Priceville, and Muscle Shoals kept ending up in the same joints with guitars, and then decided the joints were the whole…
Tom Daniel
September 28, 2026
Omnipotent Moral Busybodies Blog

Omnipotent Moral Busybodies

C. S. Lewis wrote that "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own…
Tom Daniel
September 15, 2026
Southern Music is Not a Purity Test Blog

Southern Music is Not a Purity Test

When a life as public as Dolly Parton's closes, the temptation is to sort the woman by the last arguments attached to her name. The internet-fueled predictable reaction is to give her a cultural Judgment Day based on cherry-picked items of discontent while ignoring her contributions to both music and the South as a whole. That is a poor way…
Tom Daniel
September 8, 2026
Sacred Steel and Southern Rock Blog

Sacred Steel and Southern Rock

I came to Sacred Steel late, and I came to it by accident. I'd been going back through my list of American musical traditions that are actually Southern, checking for anything I'd left out, and Sacred Steel was one of the names that turned up as a gap. I didn't know the tradition at all going in, so I did…
Tom Daniel
August 24, 2026
B.F. White and the Sacred Harp Blog

B.F. White and the Sacred Harp

History tends to remember songs, and is considerably less interested in the people who made sure there was somewhere to sing them. Benjamin Franklin White is one of those people. Born in Union County, South Carolina, in 1800, he spent the better part of his adult life in Hamilton, Georgia, where he taught singing schools, compiled tunebooks, presided over conventions,…
Tom Daniel
August 17, 2026
The Sacred Ordinary Blog

The Sacred Ordinary

There is a habit in modern life of searching for meaning only in the dramatic and flamboyant. We are told to look for fulfillment in great achievements, grand adventures, public recognition, and constant reinvention. The ordinary day, by contrast, is treated as something to escape. Routine is drudgery. Repetition is boredom. Domestic life is confinement. Work is merely transactional. The…
Tom Daniel
August 6, 2026
Patrick Henry
Give Me Fiddle Blog

Give Me Fiddle

Patrick Henry, otherwise known as Mister Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death, was a pretty good musician, much like his contemporary, Thomas Jefferson. But Henry did not practice scales. He did not copy violin pieces by hand into notebooks, did not build a personal library of Italian Baroque composers, and did not submit himself to the long discipline of…
Tom Daniel
July 31, 2026
Music in the House of Davis Blog

Music in the House of Davis

There is a rosewood Knabe piano at Beauvoir, the Jefferson Davis home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, that has survived more than most Americans could bear. Hurricane Katrina lifted it from the front parlor and deposited it in the limbs of an oak tree on the grounds. Restorers could not save it. But there it sits still, in the presidential…
Tom Daniel
July 21, 2026
Dabney Was Right About Music, Too Blog

Dabney Was Right About Music, Too

Robert Lewis Dabney stood before the graduating class of Hampden-Sydney College in June of 1882 and told them, with the measured certainty of a man who had already watched one civilization end, that another was ending around them. He was sixty-two years old, a Presbyterian theologian, Stonewall Jackson's chief of staff and biographer, and one of the most unsparing critics…
Tom Daniel
July 9, 2026
The Paradox of the Lomax Recordings Blog

The Paradox of the Lomax Recordings

Every folk song collector runs into the same problem the moment the recording machine actually starts turning: the song they are capturing has never had one fixed shape, and the machine is about to give it one anyway. A ballad sung on a porch in Kentucky on a Tuesday might run six verses. Sung again on Thursday by the same…
Tom Daniel
June 25, 2026
Across the Rappahannock Blog

Across the Rappahannock

The Confederate Army of 1861 went to war with music built into its structure. Every regiment was required by regulation to maintain a brass band — typically eight to twelve musicians, but authorized up to sixteen — whose duties were not ornamental. They beat the drum calls that moved men out of sleep and into formation before dawn. They played…
Tom Daniel
June 18, 2026
After the Cannons Have Cooled Blog

After the Cannons Have Cooled

Southern music is not a single thing. It never has been. What we casually call Southern music is in reality a family of related musical responses to history — responses that look and sound similar on the surface but serve entirely different human purposes. A song written to send men to war is doing something fundamentally different from a song…
Tom Daniel
June 9, 2026
Native American Music and the South Blog

Native American Music and the South

Frequently, I have described Southern music as a blending of influences. The interaction between Scots-Irish settlers and enslaved Africans produced a musical synthesis that is audible, traceable, and well documented. One can easily point to specific features to prove it. There are ballad forms, fiddle repertory, banjo construction, and rhythmic sensibility to reasonably identify their origins in Southern music. The…
Tom Daniel
May 27, 2026
Daniel Donato and Cosmic Country Blog

Daniel Donato and Cosmic Country

What would you call it if you created a band with Buck Owens, Don Rich, Duane Allman, Gram Parsons, Clarence White of The Byrds, and Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead? Daniel Donato of Nashville calls it Cosmic Country, and it might be the most intriguing thing you’ve heard in a long time. Daniel Donato is one of the more…
Tom Daniel
May 20, 2026
David Allan Coe Blog

David Allan Coe

David Allan Coe died. If you’re looking for a clean, agreeable tribute, this ain’t it. Those are easy to find, and they all follow the same predictable pattern of dates, albums, controversies, and a polite nod about his influences. That kind of writing treats a musician like a museum exhibit: labeled, contained, and ultimately harmless. David Allan Coe was a…
Tom Daniel
May 13, 2026
The South Will Always Do It Again Blog

The South Will Always Do It Again

I live in Alabama, and I see what’s happening to the South with my own eyes. Through the Abbeville Institute, I also stay connected with fellow Southern thinkers, so I read about the same things happening elsewhere. We are not experiencing cultural mass hysteria, because what’s happening is real. Institutional erosion, demographic churn, homogenized media, and the steady replacement of…
Tom Daniel
May 1, 2026
The Sons of Erin and the Sons of Dixie Blog

The Sons of Erin and the Sons of Dixie

It’s not unusual for music to preserve historical memory, but it is surprising sometimes where that memory ends up surfacing. One such instance appears in the work of Irish balladeer Derek Warfield, whose songs normally focus on Dublin and Belfast, but in this particular instance, he turns his attention to Dixie. This might seem like a head-scratcher of an unlikely…
Tom Daniel
April 24, 2026
Jefferson Could Play Blog

Jefferson Could Play

We love to affectionately remember Thomas Jefferson as a mind detached from the body. Many accounts present him as a man of paper, of correspondence, of carefully arranged ideas set down in elegant prose. The familiar image is that of the “Sage of Monticello,” seated at a writing desk, producing language that would echo across the centuries. That image is…
Tom Daniel
April 14, 2026
The Tempo of a Civilization Blog

The Tempo of a Civilization

Why does Southern music move the way it does? I’m not talking about a particular instrument it favors or a particular chord progression it follows. I’m talking about why Southern music leans into such a smooth shuffle groove instead of velocity, why it settles back instead of lunging forward, and why it stretches instead of snaps. And why, if one…
Tom Daniel
April 10, 2026
The Sound of Southern Easter Blog

The Sound of Southern Easter

The South has produced many distinctive musical traditions, but few are as recognizable or as beloved as the Southern gospel quartet. I’ve written many essays about Sacred Harp and gospel, but I have inexcusably written very little about the Southern gospel quartet. And what better time of year than Easter to celebrate one of the most iconic sounds of the…
Tom Daniel
April 3, 2026
From Ulster to Appalachia Blog

From Ulster to Appalachia

Every March, America goes nuts about green, and becomes briefly and theatrically Irish. Rivers turn green. Beer turns greener. Bagpipes appear in places that have not known sheep in living memory. Plastic bowler hats appear, and suddenly everybody sounds like a Frosted Lucky Charms commercial. An impressive number of folks discover that their great-great-great-grandmother’s second cousin once spelled her name…
Tom Daniel
March 17, 2026
The Carried Song Blog

The Carried Song

If I were a Yankee, I could likely make an outrageous claim and expect it to be believed on the strength of its articulation alone. Yankees, of course, possess the advantage of literacy, and literacy, in modern cultural shorthand, is synonymous with intelligence. As a Southerner, I don’t enjoy that rhetorical luxury. Everything I say must be prefaced, situated, and…
Tom Daniel
March 11, 2026
Townes Van Zandt Blog

Townes Van Zandt

Townes Van Zandt was an American singer-songwriter born in 1944 in Fort Worth, Texas, whose work occupies a quiet but enduring place in Southern music. His songs sit at the crossroads of folk, country, and blues without ever settling comfortably into any of them, largely because he showed little interest in belonging to pre-set categories. Born of Dutch ancestry and…
Tom Daniel
March 6, 2026
Songs of Lament Blog

Songs of Lament

There is a particular kind of song that only appears after history has already banged its gavel and rendered its verdict. While some songs are intended to rally the faithful or stiffen resolve, this is not that kind of song. This song arrives later, once the cannons have cooled, the banners have been folded away, and the surviving population has…
Tom Daniel
February 18, 2026
Front Porches Blog

Front Porches

When people talk about the history of American music, they almost always picture a stage, with a spotlight and a performer separated from an audience by footlights and distance. We imagine these grand, almost sacred spaces designed for reverence and applause. Of course, those places definitely matter, but they come late in the story. Southern music did not begin on…
Tom Daniel
February 3, 2026
Dolly Parton and Southern Endurance Blog

Dolly Parton and Southern Endurance

Greatness. In Southern music, “greatness” is rarely the result of innovation alone. More often, it emerges from endurance—specifically, the capacity to move through cultural, commercial, and institutional pressure without surrendering. The South has produced countless musicians whose work crossed boundaries of region, genre, race, and class, but far fewer who managed to do so while retaining control over their voice,…
Tom Daniel
January 28, 2026
I Don’t Want Christmas to End Blog

I Don’t Want Christmas to End

I Don’t Want Christmas to End, the 2021 Christmas album by Zach Williams, doesn’t feel as much seasonal as it feels Southern. Recorded at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, Zach Williams’ first full-length holiday record does a lot more than borrow the iconography of classic American music as it absorbs the essence of the iconic studio that shaped American…
Tom Daniel
January 20, 2026
The Graveyard Crossroads of Grady Blog

The Graveyard Crossroads of Grady

Grady, Alabama, was never more than a dot on the map, a rural settlement where the fields pressed in close and the pines rose taller than the houses. It lay twenty or so miles south of Montgomery, past the sprawl of the city and into a quieter country of red clay and sandy roads. The WSFA Tall Tower looms over…
Tom Daniel
October 31, 2025
The Sorrow Singer Blog

The Sorrow Singer

In the South, a funeral isn’t just a formality. It’s a moment when music becomes memory, and memory becomes something you can hum for the rest of your life. —Tom Daniel My memory puts on a coat of gray, A keening tweed that moans just like a choir, A dirge-like gabardine that knows the way Of tears, a worsted wool,…
Maura H. Harrison
October 1, 2025
The Drawl and the Song Blog

The Drawl and the Song

At a recent Abbeville Conference, I tackled a subject that’s been hiding in plain sight all along - the Southern accent. I’ve lived in Alabama almost my whole life, so I’m definitely familiar with the Southern accent. Now it’s true that my wife and I lived in Iowa for three years, but we actually kind of liked it up there.…
Tom Daniel
September 3, 2025
Blood in the Branches Blog

Blood in the Branches

This is a true story where music, memory, and mass murder meet beneath the Southern sky. I’ve said before that my family tree may have tangled roots, but this time, it’s got blood in the branches. I want to tell you a story that winds through the bare winter trees of Stokes County, North Carolina… a story that runs like…
Tom Daniel
August 11, 2025
Legends of Southern Radio Blog

Legends of Southern Radio

Imagine a world where radio wasn’t just background noise, but was a powerful force across an entire region of the country. I want to look into the dusty dials and glowing tubes of early Southern radio, and explore all about some of the stations that didn’t just play music, but changed culture, identity, and race relations in the American South…
Tom Daniel
August 4, 2025
Southern Food and Family Blog

Southern Food and Family

You might be Southern if you think a salad means something held together by Cool Whip. In the South, we don’t just eat meals. We remember. We gather. We keep our people’s memories alive one bite at a time. As a big man that loves to eat, I’m concerned that we don’t talk nearly enough about Southern food. Every Abbeville…
Tom Daniel
July 23, 2025
The Southern Cadence Blog

The Southern Cadence

We all have an idea that when we hear Southern Music, we know it, but what is it? What is it about Southern music that makes it stand out from other types of American music or music from around the world? How do you know it when you hear it? How do you explain to somebody the difference between the…
Tom Daniel
February 25, 2025
It’s a Daniel’s Clothing Christmas Blog

It’s a Daniel’s Clothing Christmas

We give gifts at Christmas because we were given a gift. My grandfather, John T. “Tyson” Daniel, opened Daniel’s Clothing in Tuskegee, Alabama on May 5, 1939. Originally, he moved to Tuskegee from Montgomery in 1931 at the age of 26 to open a Singer Sewing Machine store, and he was a door-to-door salesman in Tuskegee for the Singer Corporation.…
Tom Daniel
December 16, 2024
Country Music in the 20th Century Blog

Country Music in the 20th Century

A review of Southern Story and Song: Country Music in the 20th Century (Shotwell, 2024) by Joseph R. Stromberg Readers who have enjoyed the articles posted here at Abbeville by Joseph R. Stromberg will be as excited as I was to learn he’d written a book about country music. This excellent book explores the rich cultural tapestry of Southern music,…
Tom Daniel
December 2, 2024
The Comical Tragedy of “Kumbaya” Blog

The Comical Tragedy of “Kumbaya”

In the Low Country of South Carolina and the coastal regions of Georgia, the Gullah people are everywhere because they never left. Although there were significant numbers of Gullah who migrated out of the South at the turn of the 20th Century, the multitudes who stayed replaced them quickly and remained isolated. Their customs, dress, arts, language, and music still…
Tom Daniel
October 29, 2024
Big Bang Blues BlogMedia Posts

Big Bang Blues

Tom Daniel discusses blues music, from the 2022 Abbeville Institute Summer School at Seabrook Island, SC, July 5-8, 2022 https://youtu.be/NZ9_hcxfpLw Note: The views expressed on abbevilleinstitute.org are not necessarily those of the Abbeville Institute.
Tom Daniel
September 29, 2022
The Ballad of Confederate Abolitionists Blog

The Ballad of Confederate Abolitionists

I am a descendant of a family of Confederate soldiers, and I have been told I should be embarrassed.  A liberal activist told me recently that all Confederates were racist degenerates who deserve nothing except desecration of their statues and memorials.  I usually avoid deep discussions of this topic on social media, because the predicted result is that people don’t…
Tom Daniel
July 25, 2022
What Makes This Musician Great?–The Balfa Brothers Blog

What Makes This Musician Great?–The Balfa Brothers

In a significant departure for this series, the 9th installment of What Makes This Musician Great will focus on a band instead of one musician, and more appropriately, a band of brothers.  The Balfa Brothers were a Cajun band of real-life brothers Rodney, Dewey, Will, Harry, and Burkeman.  They learned music from their father, who was a Louisiana sharecropper, and…
Tom Daniel
September 22, 2021
What Makes This Musician Great?–Carl Perkins Blog

What Makes This Musician Great?–Carl Perkins

In this fifth installment of the series “What Makes This Musician Great,” we will travel back to the cultural hurricane in the early days of Rockabilly music, and celebrate the innovative musical giant known as Carl Perkins. As our society moves further beyond those explosive, tumultuous days of the mid-1950’s, it’s becoming easier to lose focus on everything that was…
Tom Daniel
August 25, 2021
What Makes This Musician Great?–Hank Williams Blog

What Makes This Musician Great?–Hank Williams

This is the second installment of the series ‘What Makes this Musician Great,” and will focus on the man from Butler County, Alabama – Hank Williams.  In this ongoing series, I explain what makes Southern musicians and their music so great and worth remembering while using non-technical language that can hopefully be understood by non-musicians, and this is the perfect…
Tom Daniel
August 4, 2021
What Makes This Musician Great? – Duane Allman Blog

What Makes This Musician Great? – Duane Allman

Recently, I started looking into the connections between musical preferences and personality types.  In the early and middle parts of the 20th century, there were some questionable and unfortunate attempts in the world of substance abuse treatment facilities to use an addict’s musical preferences to predict his personality type and subsequent treatment options.  They tried to correlate musical preferences such…
Tom Daniel
July 27, 2021
Academy of Southern Music Blog

Academy of Southern Music

My name is Tom Daniel, and I’m a happy guy.  I’m naturally optimistic, and I love talking about all the good things that come from the South.  I get discouraged when I see Southerners who keep falling into that same trap where they only want to talk about the years 1861-1865.  When there are 400 years of Southern culture to…
Tom Daniel
June 1, 2021
German POWs and Civil Rights Blog

German POWs and Civil Rights

I have written here before about my beloved hometown of Tuskegee, Alabama.  Forgive me if you’ve read this before, but Tuskegee was unique among small rural Southern towns because of its large, well-educated, and fairly empowered Black population.  I wish I could find the reference source for this data, but years ago I read that the Black-to-White ratio in Tuskegee…
Tom Daniel
March 8, 2021
Cajun Music Blog

Cajun Music

If these were normal times, we’d all be unpacking our Mardi Gras gear right about now.  Purple, yellow, and green would be everywhere, and I would be writing about how the first (and oldest) Mardi Gras in North America was in Mobile, Alabama, and not New Orleans.  But things went a little haywire recently, and Mardi Gras got canceled.  However,…
Tom Daniel
February 16, 2021
Rock ‘n Roll has a Southern Accent Blog

Rock ‘n Roll has a Southern Accent

Rock ‘n Roll may be the most significant cultural export in American history.  There is no doubt that American culture, for good and bad, has had an enormous impact on global culture, and Rock ‘n Roll is one of our most iconic contributions.  Around the world, people don’t hear Rock ‘n Roll and think of Switzerland or Brazil or Thailand. …
Tom Daniel
January 27, 2021
Appalachian Music and the Phonograph Blog

Appalachian Music and the Phonograph

In the late 19th century, Romantic composers were driven by nationalism as a means to advance their art.  For example, Russian composers like Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov made their composed music sound Russian, and the only way to do this was to become immersed in Russian folk music to see what made it tick.  They studied work songs, play songs,…
Tom Daniel
December 4, 2020
How to Listen to Jazz Blog

How to Listen to Jazz

When you hear the word “jazz,” what type of music pops into your head?  What do you hear?  You probably hear piano, brass, saxophone, or all of the above.  But do you hear it melodious and catchy, or do you hear it jumbled and chaotic?  There’s a lot of jazz out there that’s very melodious and catchy, and extremely easy…
Tom Daniel
November 27, 2020
The Colored Sacred Harp Blog

The Colored Sacred Harp

I have written here before about the history and mechanics of Sacred Harp singing, shape-notes, and Singing Schools.  James Kibler has delivered some truly excellent talks about Singing Billy Walker and the origins of Amazing Grace as an original tune called New Britain in Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, and I strongly urge you to listen to his presentations.  Listen…
Tom Daniel
July 29, 2020
Southern Rock for the Apocalypse, Part VI 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 played by Miles Davis or John Coltrane is exactly the same type of composition as “Hot ‘Lanta.”  It begins with the melody (which is repeated), moves into a section where everyone takes turns improvising (Duane Allman melts off your face), and then concludes with a…
Tom Daniel
May 15, 2020
Scotch Snaps and Southern Music Blog

Scotch Snaps and Southern Music

I need to tell you one story in order to tell you another. The Czechoslovakian composer Antonin Dvorak moved to the United States in 1892, and immersed himself in American music while composing his New World Symphony.  Although he was fascinated, inspired, and moved by traditional Southern folk music, Dvorak complained that he simply couldn’t tell the difference between Scottish…
Tom Daniel
March 22, 2019
Southern Music is American Music Blog

Southern Music is American Music

Why do Southerners continue to fall into that trap where we only talk about the years1861-1865?  There are almost 400 years of Southern culture to talk about, yet we keep limiting ourselves to just four of them.  And it doesn’t matter how much of an expert someone becomes about Fredericksburg, Yankees will always have that same ace-in-the-hole comeback, “You lost.” But…
Tom Daniel
December 14, 2018
Sacred Harp Singing Blog

Sacred Harp Singing

If I was forced to give an example of at least one good thing we got out of the Puritans, I would quickly point to Sacred Harp singing.  Sacred Harp is a traditional, primitive method of church singing still favored in the Deep South, and it even comes complete with several different annual conventions.  Brion McClanahan and others have written…
Tom Daniel
March 12, 2018
The Louisiana “Hippeaux” Blog

The Louisiana “Hippeaux”

In America, there are a lot of places you can go that will make you feel like you’re in a foreign country.  Certain areas of Miami, Phoenix, or San Francisco immediately come to mind, and you might feel like you need a passport to go there.  However, I firmly believe that when I travel to some parts of Louisiana, I…
Tom Daniel
July 11, 2016
American Music Is Southern Music Blog

American Music Is Southern Music

“American Idol,” a reality-based music singing competition on the Fox Network, has come to an end, and Yankees everywhere can breathe a sigh of relief, as their long, national nightmare is finally over.  Yankees haven’t been whipped this badly since Fredericksburg, and it’s a miracle they allowed the American Idol carnage to continue on as long as it did.  All…
Tom Daniel
April 11, 2016
The Tuskegee Confederate Memorial Blog

The Tuskegee Confederate Memorial

For anyone with a casual knowledge about Alabama’s juicy and active history, the words “Tuskegee” and “Confederate” seem to be an odd match. Tuskegee, Alabama is the site of Booker T. Washington’s visionary Tuskegee Institute, the home of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen, and the location of the first integrated public high school in Alabama. And yet, the center of town…
Tom Daniel
March 7, 2016
What’s Holding Alabama Back? Blog

What’s Holding Alabama Back?

As I watched my local Montgomery, Alabama news station this morning, I saw that question pop up on the screen. What’s holding Alabama back? Wait, what? What do you mean by “holding back?” In the segment, the news station sent out a roving reporter on the streets of Montgomery to ask random citizens to tell him what they believe is…
Tom Daniel
February 1, 2016
The Cemetery Tour Revisited Blog

The Cemetery Tour Revisited

Well, another year has come and gone that the Auburn Heritage Association did not invite me back to portray secessionist William F. Samford in their annual cemetery lantern tour. This year’s tour concluded last weekend, and it has been at least a decade since that fateful night when innocent young progressives were assaulted at dusk by my fire breathing interpretation…
Tom Daniel
October 16, 2015
Whiskey Blog

Whiskey

As a teenager, I always loved Sydney J. Harris’ syndicated newspaper column called “Things I Learned En Route to Looking Up Other Things.” I’m still fascinated with the concept of finding important information through the backdoor. The power of derailment on the internet is intoxicating, and I love getting side-tracked when I’m supposed to be being productive. I think most…
Tom Daniel
July 9, 2015
Where the Yankees Shoot You Blog

Where the Yankees Shoot You

I used to always wonder if other Southern children were taught the same thing we were while growing up. A particular case in point is a fabulous exchange that was heard often in my family around toddlers who were learning to identify various parts of their bodies. We would ask little kids to point to their toes, and to point…
Tom Daniel
March 23, 2015
Imagined Utopias of Tolerance Blog

Imagined Utopias of Tolerance

Malcolm X once famously observed that the violence and racial strife in America was indicative of “the chickens coming home to roost.” For once in my life, I completely agree with Malcolm X. Except I would substitute the words “Yankee Land” for “America,” because the race-related protests and outrages I see on my television are not located in Alabama or…
Tom Daniel
December 29, 2014
It’s In The Mud Blog

It’s In The Mud

I have written before here at Abbeville about the legendary music that came out of the Muscle Shoals area in the 60’s and 70’s, and that was before I’d seen the excellent new 2013 documentary film called Muscle Shoals. The film centers mostly on Rick Hall, the founder of FAME Studios, and his influence on everything that happened locally and…
Tom Daniel
November 26, 2014
The Southern Environmentalist Blog

The Southern Environmentalist

If you were to conjure up an image in your head of an exploitive, money-grubbing industrialist with no regards for pollution or conservation, and I’ll bet a Yankee pops into your head. Conjure up another image of an unrealistic, environmentally addicted hippie, and I’ll bet a different Yankee pops into your head. So if the Yankees have a monopoly on…
Tom Daniel
October 14, 2014
Give Me My Southern Space Blog

Give Me My Southern Space

I think all of us have probably experienced this in one form or another.  You’re standing on the toothpaste aisle in Wal-Mart, and you have the whole display to yourself.  No one else is anywhere near you, and you have the rare opportunity to take your time and actually shop for a new tube of toothpaste by reading the labels…
Tom Daniel
September 8, 2014
Porked Up Southern Culture Blog

Porked Up Southern Culture

The Abbeville Institute is dedicated to promoting Southern culture, and doesn’t shed a single calorie denigrating others. Every article I’ve read in the Abbeville Institute blogs cheer and champion the many good things about Southern culture, and I dare anyone to find even so much as a syllable that expresses outrage at what others might be doing. Personally, I couldn’t…
Tom Daniel
August 27, 2014
A Southern Sense of Humor Blog

A Southern Sense of Humor

My wife and I lived in Iowa during the mid-90’s, and we thoroughly enjoyed playing in the snow. The very first snowfall we encountered was an 11-inch blizzard that fell in early November. We knew we were going to be facing snow in Iowa, and we were expecting to see more than we were accustomed to seeing in Alabama, so…
Tom Daniel
August 21, 2014
Tuskegee Part 2 Blog

Tuskegee Part 2

I didn’t know there was going to be a “part 2” to this blog entry about Tuskegee, but someone pointed out that I didn’t finish the story. What happened to my sister and family during that month of September, 1963? Until Gov. Wallace re-opened Tuskegee High School, where did she go to school? Did she even go back to Tuskegee…
Tom Daniel
August 6, 2014
Tuskegee Blog

Tuskegee

As I’ve mentioned before, my hometown is Tuskegee, Alabama, which is not famous because of me. However, some of the many things for which Tuskegee is known include the Tuskegee Airmen, the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, the Commodores and Lionel Richie, Tuskegee Institute (which is now Tuskegee University), Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver. Besides me, one of the…
Tom Daniel
August 1, 2014
A Confederate Tree Blog

A Confederate Tree

It seems like every family is thankfully blessed with that one, highly motivated individual who is willing to tackle the family tree. That person allows the rest of the family to sit back and say, “Whew, good luck to you.” In my family, I am definitely not that person – the keywords being “highly motivated.” On my father’s side (the…
Tom Daniel
July 21, 2014
“The Penmen of the Secession” Blog

“The Penmen of the Secession”

About ten years ago, I was invited to participate in a cemetery tour in Auburn, Alabama, because they were desperate, and I actually learned something. I’m pretty sure I upset a lot of innocent progressives with my participation, and I probably garnered some unwanted and stinging criticism for the little local cemetery society, but at least I learned something new…
Tom Daniel
July 16, 2014
“We Say Grace and We Say Ma’am” 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 know what it means to say “sir” and “ma’am.” It’s an interesting concept, but Southerners are certainly known for politeness, and that includes the habit of saying “sir” and “ma’am.” If a Southern child simply says a terse “yes” or “no,” (or, heaven forbid, a…
Tom Daniel
July 10, 2014
The Beatles vs Alabama Blog

The Beatles vs Alabama

On April 4, 1964, The Beatles achieved American chart success that will almost certainly never be duplicated. Only 15 artists have ever held on to the #1 and #2 spots in the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time, but that week, The Beatles topped everybody by holding on to #1, #2, and #3 all at the same time. But…
Tom Daniel
July 7, 2014
Rebel Yell Blog

Rebel Yell

Notwithstanding Ole Miss fans, those opening few bars of “Dixie” sends chills down the back of every good Southerner everywhere. By the time the notes hit the phrase “land of cotton,” it makes you want to throw back your head and rip out a good rebel yell. It feels good to do it. It feels right to do it. There’s…
Tom Daniel
June 30, 2014
Southern Nicknames Blog

Southern Nicknames

One of the unwritten great things about the South is our obsession with colorful nicknames. Everybody’s got one, and some people are blessed with several. If you’re Southern and you don’t have a nickname, then there might be something wrong with you. Maybe it goes back to the end of the Civil War when Yankee troops were stalking around looking…
Tom Daniel
June 19, 2014
Rednecks Blog

Rednecks

You can count me out of the trendy Redneck Renaissance going on. I guess I’m one of the silent minority who doesn’t feel any pride or respect for being called a redneck. I’m absolutely as Southern as I can be. I’m definitely a country boy, and I’m filled toe to top with Southern pride, but I’ll be darned if I’m…
Tom Daniel
June 17, 2014
On Being Asked About Blog

On Being Asked About

If I ever got started writing about Southern good manners, I’m not sure I could stop. I’ve heard it said that the South is the country’s last outpost of good manners, and it’s a topic that deserves special and exhaustive treatment. However, I overheard my wife talking to someone yesterday, and I can’t pass up this small opportunity. As I…
Tom Daniel
June 12, 2014
Hair Cane Creek Blog

Hair Cane Creek

In a recent Abbeville blog, I wrote about the correct pronunciation of the racetrack located in Talledega, Alabama, and I think it struck a familiar chord with some readers. Or it might have been a nerve – it was hard to tell. All in all, I received some very positive feedback. One person even wondered to me why we continue…
Tom Daniel
May 22, 2014
Hair Cane Creek Blog

Hair Cane Creek

In a recent Abbeville blog, I wrote about the correct pronunciation of the racetrack located in Talledega, Alabama, and I think it struck a familiar chord with some readers. Or it might have been a nerve – it was hard to tell. All in all, I received some very positive feedback. One person even wondered to me why we continue…
Tom Daniel
May 22, 2014
The Lyrics or Melody in Southern Music? Blog

The Lyrics or Melody in Southern Music?

About ten years ago, one of my colleagues suggested to me that Americans listen to music differently than people from around the globe. According to his way of thinking, Americans favor lyrics and beat exclusively to all other aspects of music, and ignore things like harmonic structure (what some people might call chord changes), melody, dynamics, instrumentation, song-form structure (verses,…
Tom Daniel
May 19, 2014
The Lyrics or Melody in Southern Music? Blog

The Lyrics or Melody in Southern Music?

About ten years ago, one of my colleagues suggested to me that Americans listen to music differently than people from around the globe. According to his way of thinking, Americans favor lyrics and beat exclusively to all other aspects of music, and ignore things like harmonic structure (what some people might call chord changes), melody, dynamics, instrumentation, song-form structure (verses,…
Tom Daniel
May 19, 2014
“It’s a Trick General, There’s Two of Them!” 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. Throughout the 1980’s, Lewis Grizzard was literally the voice of the Deep South as he vocalized many of the feelings and frustrations many Southerners shared about remaining proudly Southern in a growingly intolerant culture, and he made us laugh our butts off in the process.…
Tom Daniel
May 13, 2014
College Football Blog

College Football

Yankees don’t understand the Southern obsession with college football, and if they don’t understand it, then they naturally believe there’s something wrong with it. As for me, I don’t hate hockey. I’ve just never been exposed to it enough to like it. I know enough about it to know that it was a horrible mistake once to attempt staying awake…
Tom Daniel
May 8, 2014
Southern Night Life Blog

Southern Night Life

Although I’m not a mountain man, and I would never dare call myself smart enough to be a farmer, I do live on a farm back in the woods of Alabama. I hear people all the time referring to the various types of “night life” they encounter where they live, and I know they’re talking about restaurants, bars, clubs, and…
Tom Daniel
May 1, 2014
Muscle Shoals Has Got The Swampers Blog

Muscle Shoals Has Got The Swampers

Have you ever wondered about that cryptic third verse of “Sweet Home Alabama?” The music industry of Muscle Shoals, Alabama is almost a perfect encapsulation of the Southern experience – Yankees can’t figure out where it came from, and Southerners know exactly where it came from. Of course, “Muscle Shoals” refers to the entire quad-city area of northwest Alabama along…
Tom Daniel
April 29, 2014
GRITS Blog

GRITS

Grits can simultaneously be both an item of pride and an item of derision. On the old TV show “Mel,” the cartoonish waitress Flo used to insult people by drawling out, “Kiss my grits.” In the movie “My Cousin Vinny,” Joe Pesci was able to break down the testimony of a faulty witness by challenging how fast “boiling water soaks…
Tom Daniel
April 24, 2014
An Ethnic Food Group? Blog

An Ethnic Food Group?

In the mid-90’s, my wife and I lived and worked for several years in Ames, Iowa. No matter how much fun we still make of Midwesterners, we will always remember the Iowa State Fair as one of the great wonders of the modern world. Those people take their state fairs very, very seriously. For one thing, they sold beer right…
Tom Daniel
April 22, 2014
Where’s The Rest of My Ice? Blog

Where’s The Rest of My Ice?

Here’s another one of those things about our lives controlled by Yankees – ice quantity. Southerners love our drinks to be cold and iced to perfection. That’s why we call them “iced drinks.” The ice in the glass isn’t an afterthought, or a fringe benefit. It’s part of the very name of the drink. We don’t want a glass of…
Tom Daniel
April 17, 2014
Top Southern Rock Albums Blog

Top Southern Rock Albums

In light of Tom Daniel's post "Top 11 Southern Rock Bands," I thought I would create a list of my top Southern rock albums. Many of these records are from the bands he mentions, but I included several others. How did I choose? I selected albums that have stood or will stand the test of time and that can be…
Brion McClanahan
April 16, 2014
Top 11 Southern Rock Bands Blog

Top 11 Southern Rock Bands

I decided to rank my own favorite Top Southern Rock Bands with some added personal memories. Forgive me if your favorite is not named, but this list goes to eleven. 1) The Allman Brothers Band – Before he died, Duane Allman sure kicked a lot of musical butt. He was an early one of “The Swampers” in Muscle Shoals, and…
Tom Daniel
April 15, 2014
Southern Rock Blog

Southern Rock

Lately, I've been doing a lot of thinking about Southern Rock, which is something very meaningful to me. I’m a musician (guitar), and I can play 60’s and 70’s rock, jazz, folk, and classical music very well, because I had great formal and practical training. I played in a lot of bands when I was younger, and I especially loved…
Tom Daniel
April 11, 2014
Pronouncing Talladega Blog

Pronouncing Talladega

My commute to work was a little bit spirited the other day. First of all, I noticed a newly awakened hornet clinging to the inside of my windshield. Thank goodness it was a cool morning, because he/she never really got enough juices flowing to be active. Secondly, during my hornet-harrowing commute, I got a chance to yell at the radio.…
Tom Daniel
April 10, 2014
American Idol Blog

American Idol

We Southerners know a little bit about music. “American Idol,” for those who haven’t watched, is a reality-based music singing competition on the Fox Network. The very nature of what anybody would call “American music” is the definition of a blending of diverse American sub-cultures into one representative “sound,” and that alone is the definition of growing up Southern. The…
Tom Daniel
April 8, 2014
Watch What You’re Doing Blog

Watch What You’re Doing

“Watch what you’re doing – you never know who’s watching you.” I can still hear my mama say that. No, literally – she still says that to me. I have heard people say this is not a uniquely Southern thing, and it is universal in small towns across America. I disagree, because I’ve never seen this concept applied and executed…
Tom Daniel
April 4, 2014