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 the Tennessee River, including Muscle Shoals, Florence, Sheffield, and Tuscumbia. In the 1960’s, the soul sounds of Motown in Detroit were sweeping through the American pop music charts as an answer to the chart dominance of The Beatles and the rest of The British Invasion. Motown was represented as the authentic sound of American soul music. The only problem is that it wasn’t.

The recording studios in Memphis, Tennessee and Florence, Alabama were busy producing some seriously competitive soul music, and it sounded a LOT more authentic than what was coming out of Detroit. Booker T. & the MG’s out of Memphis were providing backup to the spine-tingling vocals of Sam & Dave, and Otis Redding, and a separate group of musicians called The FAME Group in Florence were kicking butt behind Percy Sledge and Wilson Pickett .

In 1967, New York record executive Jerry Wexler brought newly-signed Aretha Franklin to FAME Studios in Florence to start recording some authentic soul music with some authentic soul musicians.

Aretha was wary of the fake-sounding soul coming out of Detroit, and she specifically wanted to do some authentic work with the same guys who were kicking butt with Wilson Pickett. When she walked into that Alabama recording studio in 1967 and saw a bunch of white guys plugged in and ready to play, she nearly quit.

More @ The Abbeville Institute

Three Americans Kidnapped in Baghdad by Iranian-supported Shiite militia members.

Via Billy

 

Less than 24 hours after Obama paid the Iranian regime for the return of US hostages in Iran three Americans are kidnapped in Baghdad, Iraq.

More @ The Gateway Pundit

Czech President: ‘It’s Impossible to Integrate Muslims into Western Europe’

Via Michael 

  

“Integration is possible with cultures that are similar, and the similarities may vary,” pointing out that the Vietnamese and Ukrainian communities had been able to integrate into Czech society.

It is impossible for Muslims to integrate into Western Europe, the Czech President Milos Zeman told local television Sunday. Mr. Zeman also blamed the New Years Eve sex attacks in Cologne, Germany, on “Muslim culture”.

Mr. Zelman has previously been outspoken on the migrant invasion flooding Europe and accused refugees “with iPhones” of exploiting their children to get asylum in the European Union (EU).

As Breitbart London reported, last December the 71-year-old issued Europe with a call-to-arms to tackle the forces of Islamic state.

“I am profoundly convinced that we are facing an organised invasion and not a spontaneous movement of refugees,” Mr. Zeman said in his Christmas message to the Czech Republic.

He went on to say that compassion was “possible” for refugees who are old or sick and for children, but not for young men who in his view should be back home fighting against jihadists.

More @ Breitbart

Say a prayer for Olivia, please

She's in isolation with pneumonia.  

 A miraculous recovery!

Couple assaulted by group of teens at Metro station in unprovoked attack

Via Billy

 

 

Two more victims have come forward in another violent attack at a Metro station. It is the latest in a string of violent assaults happening in the transit system.

"I don't know exactly what was happening,” said one of the victims. “I heard my girlfriend screaming."

It was 15 seconds of terror for a D.C. couple after they were attacked by a group of teenagers on Metro.

"I think there were about ten kids who were just all attacking us," said the girlfriend.

More @ Fox

Coulter On Cruz’s Ineligibility

Via Frank

If Ted Cruz is a “natural born citizen,” eligible to be president, what was all the fuss about Obama being born in Kenya? No one disputed that Obama’s mother was a U.S. Citizen.

Cruz was born in Canada to an American citizen mother and an alien father. If he’s eligible to be president, then so was Obama—even if he’d been born in Kenya.

As with most constitutional arguments, whether or not Cruz is a “natural born citizen” under the Constitution apparently comes down to whether you support Cruz for president. (Or, for liberals, whether you think U.S. citizenship is a worthless thing that ought to be extended to every person on the planet.)

More @ V DARE

Two Weeks Later, the Establishment Still Fears a Cruz Nomination

Via David

Two weeks ago I wrote that the GOP establishment fears Ted Cruz more than Donald Trump. What has transpired over the last two weeks has proven that hypothesis. Here’s what I wrote then:

Cruz is the larger threat to establishment because, if he wins, they lose all the levers of power. 

McConnell and his allies would be tossed out of organizations such as the Republican National Committee, National Republican Senatorial Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee, etc...  If history is any guide, the sitting president of a political party has a large leeway in choosing those in key power positions.  That puts the earning potential and power of the current political industrial complex in complete jeopardy.

That is why, come January, the establishment will continue to turn all their guns on Cruz because they would rather Trump win the nomination and lose to Hillary than for Ted Cruz to have a chance of being president.  If that happened they would attempt to blame a Trump loss on the Tea Party, and keep their cushy jobs.  As Cruz inevitably gains on Trump, the establishment will go after Cruz 110%, even if they are currently waging a rhetorical war on Trump.

More @ Conservative Review

Tear Down That Monument! A “Progressive” Case for Demolishing the Lincoln Memorial

Via Bill

 

Dated 

 The totalitarian socialists among us who try to disguise their true beliefs by calling themselves “progressives” are currently in the middle of one of their periodic fits of hyper-PC hysteria.  Upon learning that the mentally deranged, drugged-up little monster who murdered all those people in a Charleston church had his picture taken with a Confederate flag, the “progressives” commenced a new crusade to obliterate not only the Confederate flag from American memory, but also the memory of anyone in history whose views on race are not identical to theirs.  They have even called for the demolition of the Jefferson Memorial; and the July 4 Daily Caller included an article about a Portland, Oregon teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School in that city who has started a campaign to rename the school.  The Daily Caller refers to Wilson as “a model progressive Democrat,” which he was, but he was also a racist and a white supremacist.

More @ LRC

Southern Version of The Battle Cry of Freedom

Via comment by Anonymous on The North Shifts the Issue

How George Soros Is Playing Both Ends Of The Syrian Refugee Chaos

Via comment by Quartermain on German leisure centre becomes the first to ban all...

 

 Since John D. Rockefeller was advised to protect his wealth from government taxation by creating a tax-exempt philanthropic foundation in 1913, foundations have been used by American oligarchs to disguise a world of dirty deeds under the cover “doing good for mankind,” known by the moniker “philanthropy” for mankind-loving. No less the case is that of George Soros who likely has more tax-exempt foundations under his belt than anyone around. His Open Society foundations are in every country where Washington wants to put ‘their man’ in, or at least get someone out who doesn’t know how to read their music. They played a key role in regime change in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe after 1989. Now his foundations are up to their eyeballs in promoting propaganda serving the US-UK war agenda for destroying stability in Syria as they did in Libya three years ago, creating the current EU refugee crisis.

More @ Mint Press News

Horace's Handiwork

Physiotherapy Corp. of Aurora Stars

My therapist, Dr. Susan Woodruff, is second from the right with the great long red hair. I crocheted caps and scarves for all of them in team colors.  They got both of us through the last two years. 

He says he might even make the Spring PATCON, finally! :)