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Howard Baker sings (or at least writes the liner notes) for the blues
Posted By katie allison granju
Who knew our most famous East Tennessee lawmaker had this cool item on his resume?
While visiting my parents in Macon, Ga., for Christmas, I started looking at some of my dad’s old records. (For you youngsters, “records” were flat disks with grooves in them that were used to play music - on “record players” - in an earlier age.) As I flipped over the sleeve for “King & Queen,” an LP by soul great Otis Redding and Carla Thomas from 1967, I noticed a small picture of a white man in one corner. It was then-U.S. Senator Howard Baker, Republican of Tennessee.
In fact, Baker wrote the liner notes for the album, expressing his appreciation that Redding, Thomas, Sam & Dave and other artists on the Memphis-based Stax and Volt record labels were creating “a new ‘Memphis Sound’ ” to make Tennessee proud.
“Their music has penetrated the Iron Curtain and serves as a message of goodwill in our efforts to ease the tensions of the Cold War,” Baker wrote.
Jan 5th, 2008
