Joe B. And Santa Claus In 2009 Outside Frederick Maryland. Photo By Rachel Lefebure Stewart. He Was Still There This Year 2014.

Click on the picture to enlarge it. Happier Days. Happier Times.

Cat Christmas Tree Disaster

Monuments For Rachel Lefebure Stewart And My Brother Bhob Stewart

Click on the three pictures above to enlarge them.

Rachel Lefebure Stewart In Scotland 2006. Hiking The Speyside Way.

Rachel Stewart in Scotland in 2006 Relaxing on the Speyside Way.
Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Happier days. Happier times.

Tuba Skinny - "Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives To Me"

Tuba Skinny - Lovesick Blues - Rapperswil 30 juni 2013

Here they are in daylight last year. For some reason I always feel they sound and play better when they are out of doors and not in a club like the one below this one. But that is just me.

Tuba Skinny - Lovesick Blues DBA New Orleans 12-12-2014

Here they are in the dark last night at DBA in New Orleans. I like Erika's singing better in the video above this one. But that is just my ears.
.

The Dying Gaul At The National Gallery Of Art Washington D.C. Photos By Rachel Stewart

Click on the above photos to enlarge them.

One year ago this Sunday Rachel and I went down to see the Dying Gaul at The National Gallery Of Art. These are her photos. Excellent as always.

In Feb.2014 when she was in the Virginia Hospital Center she struck this same pose in her room on her hospital bed and said, "This is my Dying Gaul pose".

 That was Rachel's idea of humor but at the same time seriousness. It was before her fatal diagnosis and little did she know how true it was going to be.

My Flickr Photos

https://www.flickr.com/photos/9815785@N06/page1/

The link above is to my Flickr photos. Enjoy.

Rachel Stewart And Jarbo Rolph And His Wife And Ed Kelly At The Opening Of The Walker Art Gallery At The American University 1961

Click on the pictures to enlarge them.


These pictures are of Rachel Lefebure when she was 20 or 21 years old. I found this picture in a 1962 TALON Yearbook. That was the Yearbook for American University in Washington, D.C.
Rachel is shown wearing clothes she borrowed from her mother Josephine Lefebure. Rachel is the one on the left wearing the long white coat. On the far right is her boyfriend at that time Ed Kelly. He was an artist and now deceased. Rachel's parents were not happy about their relationship since they thought he was too old for her. He was probably already in his thirties.
They soon parted when she realized he was not the marrying kind. He remained a single artist. I met him once or twice. He was from Chicago but lived in D.C. For several decades he lived in an apartment above the One Step Down Bar and Lounge on Pa. Avenue. It was a bar that featured live jazz.
The couple in the middle of the photo is Jarbo Rolph and his wife. Jarbo was an artist and sculptor. He is now deceased also.
Rachel seems detached from them in this photo.
She was in her Audrey Hepburn lookalike period I guess.

I found this yearbook behind a thrift shop. The thrift shop was three doors down from our house.  The 1962 Yearbook had been thrown out into a dumpster in an alley behind the thrift shop. I did not know Rachel was in it. I like old yearbooks. I like looking at the clothes we wore back then.

I brought it home and began to look at it. She was sitting beside me reading. I turned to the third or fourth page and saw this photograph. She looks just like our daughter Lorelei looked when she was 20 years old.
I said to Rachel, Rachel I think this is a picture of you. She said, It can't be. I said, Well I think it is.. She looked at it and agreed it was her.
She did not go to American University. She went to Catholic University. They were only there for the opening of The Walker Art Gallery.
My brother thought this was an amazing find. Not a co incidence as I would say but synchronicity as he would say.

Echoes of Harlem Tuba Skinny Melbourne Festival 2014

Echoes of Harlem Tuba Skinny Melbourne Festival Solo 2014

Rolling Stone Should Stick To Rock And Roll And Leave News Stories To Real Journalists

http://cw39.com/2014/12/05/rolling-stone-apologizes-over-account-of-uva-gang-rape/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalistic_scandal

New Orleans Streetcar Ride On The St. Charles Line Part 1

Going Back To The Big Easy(New Orleans) After 40 years And Riding The Saint Charles Streetcar To The End of the Line And Back

In 2004 one year before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans Rachel and I went back for a visit to the town where we lived in 1965 and 1966.
We decided to ride the St. Charles streetcar all the way from Canal Street to the end of the line and back.

She used to take the bus from Canal Street out to Tulane University where she worked in the Howard Tilton library because it was faster. She came home to the French Quarter that way every day also.
The streetcar was too slow for her.

We had not been living down south for close to 40 years and we had not readjusted to the pace of life in The Big Easy. Everything moves slow down there. The Mississippi River moves slow and the St. Charles street car moved slow and it seemed you could walk faster than the streetcar.

The operator stopped and got out and went in a nearby store. He took his friend or trainee with him.
No explanation was given as to their exit or when they might return.

We and the other passengers sat quietly and nobody said anything.
I was delighted. We were back in the city that "Care Forgot".

After 5 or 10 minutes with us sitting in traffic in downtown New Orleans on a stopped streetcar the operator and his friend returned and off we went. It seemed they had gone in that store to get a sandwich. It was New Orleans at its best.No explanation was given. Since this was in the middle of the day or early afternoon I guess they were getting their lunch or dinner.

Robbie Robertson Talks About Bob Dylan and the Basement Tapes

The Basement Tapes Complete Unboxing

Bob Dylan's 'Basement Tapes' Exclusive: Garth Hudson Returns to Big Pink

Happy Thanksgiving 2014

Happy Thanksgiving. Don't eat too much on Thursday.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Jimmy Ruffin - What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted (1965) HD 0815007

Tuba Skinny - Them "Has Been" Blues DBA 11-14-2014

Tuba Skinny Live on Royal Street

Tuba Skinny with Shaye Cohn on Piano

Tributes To Rachel Lefebure Stewart In The C&O Canal Bulletin June 2014

http://www.candocanal.org/news/rachel-across-the-berm.pdf

Tuba Skinny The Latest On Royal Street In New Orleans

Tuba Skinny New Orleans October 2014

Roy Rogers Quick Trigger Shooter Hat: Vintage Toy

Tuba Skinny - "Crazy Blues"

Moon Mullican - I'll Sail My Ship Alone

QUEENS OF NEW ORLEANS (to Erika Lewis and Shaye Cohn) - B93

Tuba Skinny - "Bloodthirsty Blues"

Tuba Skinny - "Shake It And Break It"

Tuba Skinny, Oct. 27, 2014 on Royale Street shot at curb level.

I Give Ben Bradlee A Piece Of My Mind In Person About The Janet Cooke Scandal. The Post Gets Their Hand Caught In The Cookie Jar

I watched the interview shown in the video below of Bob Woodward last Sunday on Media Buzz with Howard Kurtz  and was pleased to see  Bob Woodward step up and take the blame for the Janet Cooke scandal. He was her supervising editor.
Ben Bradlee took a lot of the heat at the time as he should have. But he really did not supervise Janet Cooke like Woodward was suppose to.

So it turns out that it was Bob Woodward's fault not Ben Bradlee's. At the time I did not know that. I just learned that fact last Sunday on Media Buzz.

After the fraud was revealed  I happened to see Bradlee on a sidewalk outside a bank a block from The Washington Post across from the Madison Hotel and found myself walking along beside him.
I looked at him and he turned and smiled at me as though he was expecting me to say something nice to him or something nice about him as many people would normally do. I think he was very used to being admired.
But I had something else on my mind.  This was right after the Janet Cooke story had been revealed to be a hoax.
I leaned in close to Bradlee and whispered, "No more Little Jimmy stories. We don't need that sh-t."
He looked briefly stunned. But I am sure he got over it quickly.
Little Jimmy was a made up story by Janet Cooke about a little black 8 year old kid who was a heroin addict.. The whole series was a fraud. Woodward bought it hook, line, and sinker.
She and the Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize for the series but when it was revealed to all be a lie they had to give it back.
And the Post was caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

Amtrak City Of New Orleans #59 Complete walk through tour (including sle...

HiDef: Amtrak's City of New Orleans: New Orleans to Hammond, LA

Savoy Stomp performing for Tuba Skinny

Lorelei Stewart And Bobby McGhee Mobile Alabama 1972 Photo By Bhob Stewart

Click on the picture to enlarge it. Notice the mailbox name is Bobby McGhee. Me and Bobby McGhee was a big song around that time. So Bhob posed Lorelei next to that mailbox for sure.

Rachel Stewart And Lorelei Stewart And Paula Clark Mobile Alabama 1972 Photo By Bhob Stewart

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Bare Bottom Blues Pictures From Mobile Alabama And Dauphin Island 1971 By Bhob Stewart

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City of New Orleans 2013 - Pullman Rail Journeys and Amtrak

Pullman rail cars: A detour back through time

Tuba Skinny - "Russian Rag" - Terra Blues 8/19/14

I like it. I like it very much. It really swings. Great instrumental music.

Tuba skinny melbourne festival 17 october 2014 'swing patrol-essence of ...

Looks and sounds like 1942 and World War 2.

What are these young people up to?

What is this world coming to? Backwards to a better place and time.

 By way of old time traditional New Orleans Jazz.

 And now we have a rebirth of this music thanks to Tuba Skinny.

Pictures From A Little Book My Brother Bhob Made Some Years Ago

 In case you don't already know you can click on the pictures to enlarge them.

Relaxing in Mobile Alabama 1971. Reading the Mobile Press Register. Those are Mission chairs that  belonged to our grandmother. I wish we still had them.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_style_furniture

On the Road again. Bhob and I took an art show from the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington , D.C.
to San Francisco in the late summer or early Fall of 1969. It was called Cybernetic Serendipity. It went to the newly established Exploratorium at the Palace of Fine Arts in S.F. Robert Oppenheimer's brother Frank was the Director of the then new museum. In this picture I am wearing Elvis sun glasses.
Here are some links to that show. The first is from London. 1968.
 http://cyberneticserendipity.net/?og=1
 Below is about the show in D.C. As I remember it was shown at the Corcoran Gallery Dupont Center. Not the main Corcoran Gallery of Art. Yes I remember that is right because I worked in that show operating an automatic drawing machine. It was a pen drawing on a piece of paper attached to a moving board underneath the stationary pen.
 http://www.experimentaltvcenter.org/cybernetic-serendipity
 A  series of groundbreaking art and technology experiments took place between 1965 and 1971, each seeking to integrate the advances of science and technology within the spheres of art and culture. The Exploratorium, itself a hybrid laboratory/museum environment, officially opened its doors in 1969 with the traveling exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity, organized by Jasia Reichardt for the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. The show featured the explorations of artists and scientists inspired by the creative possibilities of computation.

Here is the wikipedia entry on the origin of the Exploratorium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploratorium

Riding The Train They Call The City Of New Orleans March 1965.. Monday Morning Rail 25 Sacks Of Mail

Click on these pictures to enlarge them. Black and white pictures taken by Rachel Lefebure.

Above picture is me in Hammond La. after I picked some flowers. Happy to be back in the warm Southland.

This is what was frozen in the ice on a sidewalk when we left Chicago.

 Here we are in Batesville Mississippi.
 Below looking out the vestibule window.

Train station in New Orleans.

Jackson Square in New Orleans showing the St. Louis cathedral and some azaleas.

Lee Circle New Orleans. This is where we had to take our coats off because it was so warm in early March.
We rode this train in 1965 on the original Illinois Central Railroad. It is now operated by Amtrak.
Steve Goodman did not write the song below until 1970.
But I can assure you every line is 100 per cent accurate.

Arlo Guthrie – The City Of New Orleans Lyrics

Riding on the City Of New Orleans
Illinois Central, Monday morning rail
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders
Three Conductors; twenty-five sacks of mail
All along the southbound odyssey - the train pulls out of Kankakee
And rolls along past houses, farms, and fields
Passing trains that have no name, and freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobile

Good morning, America, how are you?
Say, don't you know me? I'm your native son
I'm the train they call the City Of New Orleans
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done

Dealing card games with the old man in the Club Car
Penny a point - ain't no one keeping score
As the paper bag that holds the bottle
Feel the wheels rumbling 'neath the floor
And the sons of Pullman Porters, and the sons of Engineers
Ride their father's magic carpets made of steel
And, mothers with their babes asleep rocking to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel

Good morning, America, how are you?
Say, don't you know me? I'm your native son
I'm the train they call the City Of New Orleans
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done

Night time on the City Of New Orleans
Changing cars in Memphis Tennessee
Halfway home - we'll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness, rolling down to the sea
But, all the towns and people seem to fade into a bad dream
And the steel rail still ain't heard the news
The conductor sings his songs again - the passengers will please refrain
This train got the disappearing railroad blues

Good night, America, how are you?
Say, don't you know me? I'm your native son
I'm the train they call the City Of New Orleans
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done

Songwriters: STEVE GOODMAN

The City Of New Orleans lyrics © AL BUNETTA D/B/A JURISDAD MUSIC

Wall Street Panic Of 2014

 Copy and cut and paste the link below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929

Arlo Guthrie - The City of New Orleans - Dunegrass 2008

This  song was written by Steve Goodman in 1970.
My wife Rachel and I rode this train from Chicago to New Orleans in March of 1965.
Click on the label the train they call the city of new orleans below for more info on the train and our trip.

Welfare Cadillac~Guy Drake.wmv

Welfare Cadillac by Travis Bell (Johnny Rebel Version)

Please; Mr Custer

Wendy Bagwell, Ol' Ralph Bennett's Volkswagen

Charlie Douglas-Me And Dammit Ray (The Talking Outhouse)

Toy Caterpillar Construction Vehicles Rap

Hunting For Old Records By Robert Crumb

Click on the pictures to enlarge them.
  Originally from The Oxford American, issue 27/28 the third annual Southern music issue.

ALONE

Click on the picture to enlarge it.
This appeared in the Washington Free Press on May 31, 1968
It is a poem about a small child all alone in a basement of a large old house.

Roy Rogers and Dale Evans - Happy Trails

Click on the picture above to enlarge it. It is a beautiful RCA Victrola 78 rpm record player.

In 1965 I went to a "white elephant" auction in the courtyard of the Ursuline Convent in New Orleans. I think it rained or was going to rain. I do remember no one but me showed up. I saw an old time wind up Victrola. At that time nobody wanted them. You could not give them away. I had 2 dollars in my pocket. I bid 2 dollars and won the floor model full size old time wind up 78rpm Victrola in a large wooden cabinet. Then I had to carry it to our apartment by hand two blocks and up four flights of stairs. Then I went out looking for some 78rpm records. I found tons of them at a thrift shop in the French Quarter called Volunteers For America. In fact, a whole wall was filled floor to ceiling with 78rpm records. The price was 5 cents a piece. I bought twenty or so and took them home. The only one I remember now after all these years was Happy Trails by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. "Happy Trails to you, until we meet again".
Happy trails to you, until we meet again.
Happy trails to you, keep smilin' until then.
Who cares about the clouds when we're together?
Just sing a song and bring the sunny weather.
Happy trails to you, 'till we meet again.

Some trails are happy ones,
Others are blue.
It's the way you ride the trail that counts,
Here's a happy one for you.

Happy trails to you, until we meet again.
Happy trails to you, keep smilin' until then.
Who cares about the clouds when we're together?
Just sing a song and bring the sunny weather.

Tuba Skinny Fest Jazz 2014 Brittany France

Tuba Skinny Play New Orleans Bump On The Street In Brittany France

Marty Robbins - At The End Of A Long Lonely Day (Country Music Classics ...

I heard someone sing this song last Friday.
 Very sad if you listen to the words closely.

R. Crumb: The Complete Record Cover Collection

Robert Crumb New York Sketchbook From The 1960s

Click on the pictures to enlarge them.

And Robert Crumb gives the New Orleans band Tuba Skinny his seal of approval. See the post below this one for information about that.