Dec 14

Sun Herald

SUN HERALD
 
 
 
The Sun Herald  is a U.S. newspaper based in Biloxi, Mississippi, that serves readers along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  The paper’s current headquarters is in the city of Gulfport.  It is owned by The McClatchy Company, one of the largest newspaper publishers in the United States.  The Daily Herald of Biloxi was purchased in 1968 by The State Record Company.  In 1973, the South Mississippi Sun was launched.  In 1986, the Sun-Herald‍‍ ’ ‍s owner, was acquired by Knight Ridder in 1986.  The Sun Herald offices and printing presses were squarely hit by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, but the newspaper never missed an edition.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
Among the many 1960’s psychedelic bands are the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Big Brother and the Holding Company, 13th Floor Elevators, the Chocolate Watchband, the Strawberry Alarm Clock, Iron Butterfly, and Tomorrow.  Our local newspaper, the Sun Herald reported over the weekend about a previously unreleased album by Arthur Lee’s band Love that is supposed to hit the stores shortly; I didn’t expect such hip news from them frankly. 
 
(March 2011)
 
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It has been a long time since a record grabbed me the way the Invisible Eyes did.  I was reminded of the first time that I heard “Kryptonite” by 3 Doors Down (the most successful rock band from the Mississippi Gulf Coast region) on the local alternative-rock radio station WCPR: I cranked the radio up full blast after I heard the first four or five notes, and I bet I hadn’t done that for at least 20 years.  Their debut album, The Better Life (also the name of a foundation that the band established not long after) was released in 2000 and was the 11th best selling album that year, with worldwide sales of more than 6 million copies.  “Kryptonite” was released nationally and also became a big hit, peaking at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 single charts.  It was exciting to follow the progress of the single and the album; the local paper, the Sun Herald would show the 3 Doors Down music on the national charts in bold print. 
 
(December 2012)
 
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Last week I was reading the local paper and learned of the death of Kim Fowley (pronounced like “foul-y” not “foley” – and, yes, he is a guy).  Mixed with sadness at his passing was my wonder at the size of the article about his death on the Obituary page in the Sun Herald.  Entitled “Kim Fowley, Runaways’ Creator, Dies at 75”, it didn’t miss being a quarter of a page by a whole lot.  I know that the Sun Herald is a Knight-Ridder newspaper (now McClatchy) – the Charlotte Observer is another of their papers that I am familiar with – but this Mississippi paper has surprised me more than once by giving prominence to hip news. 

 

The newspaper obit mentions Kim Fowley’s work with a #11 hit by Skip and Flip called “Cherry Pie”; also, with Gary S. Paxton – aka “Flip” in the other band – Fowley had a Number One hit in 1960 that was released under the name the Hollywood Argyles called “Alley Oop”, based on the comic strip character Alley Oop. 

 

Kim Fowley was a hustler first and foremost and would be a contender with James Brown as the Hardest Working Man in Show Business, at least among those (mostly) working behind the scenes.  The Sun Herald obituary noted:   “[Kim Fowley] went on to write or produce songs for a range of musicians, including the Byrds, the Beach Boys, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Gene Vincent, Helen Reddy, and Warren Zevon” – but the article could just as easily have listed a different half-dozen prominent names. 

 

(January 2015/1)

 

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A few days later, we were at the historic Gulf Hills Hotel, where we could use the bathroom and get the local newspaper (the Sun Herald published every single day through the catastrophe) and escape the heat a little. I was in the lobby and wandered up to the front desk and asked the woman there: “I don’t suppose you have a room available by any chance, do you?” When she said, “Yes, we do actually”, I just about collapsed on the floor. I knew that many people had ridden out the storm at the hotel, so I had no hope at all of finding anywhere to stay. As it turned out, Jim Cantore from the Weather Channel had just checked out that morning, so we got his room. I never get tired of telling that story!
 
(August 2015)
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In any decent sized city or town, there are a lot or a few nightclubs, restaurants, bars, and other venues where rock bands and other musicians perform live – in a tradition that extends back to the mists of pre-history.  As a tourist area, the Mississippi Gulf Coast region has more than its share I imagine.  Our weekly “Marquee” insert in the local newspaper SunHerald has a full page or more devoted just to the bars and nightclubs that mostly feature local bands. 
 
One of those bars, The Inn Zone was and still is on Highway 90 around the corner from where I lived in Ocean Springs from 1999 to 2002; and a local band that is still active called Rhythm & Rain was on their marquee in that time period nearly every weekend.  I imagine that the bandmembers have day jobs, but this goes to show that musicians can have some measure of renown, not to mention an income stream entirely on a local level. 
 
(December 2015)
 
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Arlo Guthrie’s father Woody Guthrie has been in the news lately; among other notes along the same lines, a reworking of one of his best known songs, “I Ain’t Got No Home” came to light in his papers that included a scathing indictment as a racist of “old man Trump”, that is, Fred Trump, the father of Donald Trump. Guthrie had signed a lease in December 1950 at one of the elder Trump’s apartment complexes near Coney Island, called Beach Haven and began noticing the lily-white neighborhood where it was located. 
Arlo Guthrie was quoted about this in our local newspaper, the Sun Herald: “Maybe the biggest difference between my father and I is that I was able to live a little longer than he did and was able to learn from my experience in ways he could not. He was hospitalized when he was only 40 years old and passed away at 55 in 1967. . . . [A]s I aged I became less judgmental of individuals and began instead writing about the things I liked or didn’t like, and stopped writing about the people themselves. My father didn’t have the luxury of living long enough to make that kind of change regardless of whether he would or would not have.” 
(March 2016)
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We have been bombarded with important anniversaries this year.  And then there is the War of 1812, our nation’s first war (the Revolutionary War doesn’t count because the US wasn’t a nation then).  Our local newspaper, the Sun Herald has been faithfully publishing articles on the progress of the Civil War – we are in the midst of the 150th anniversary of that one – yet I have hardly heard anything at all about the one that is 200 years old. 
 
(Year 3 Review)
  
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I certainly don’t know as much going into a monthly post as I probably let on, and despite its thousands, my record collection is not comprehensive.  For instance, my post awhile back about the origins of Cream and the many bands that arose in the wake of their break-up germinated from some writings by the music columnist Ricky Flake in our local paper, the Sun Herald.  At the time, I had precisely one album by Cream, Disraeli Gears (I still don’t have Goodbye) and only the first Mountain album, Climbing!.    

 

(Year 5 Review)

 

Last edited: March 22, 2021