Month: September 2020

Mariachis make everything better.

By Anita Garner

Last Sunday our three-member quarantine family enjoyed a socially distanced brunch on the patio of a Mexican restaurant.  With mariachis!!  It’s just around the corner but it’s a new world when your family hasn’t been to a restaurant in ages. There’s a charming fence around the patio so the musicians can strum and stroll and be seen and heard. I had my song request and tip money ready.

In the 1950s, traveling with our family on The Glory Road through the Deep South, the revival circuit took us to Texas many times and during one long stay in El Paso, Daddy began learning Spanish.  He loved Spanish guitars, was drawn to all songs played bolero style and he made a special effort to learn some of Mother’s favorites.

My brother, Leslie Ray, and I grew up listening to Daddy’s Southern drawl stretching out lyrics in places where perhaps they hadn’t originally stretched.  His Spanish version of Maria Elena was Mother’s favorite.

Leslie and I adopted a love for Latin beats and for visiting restaurants with strolling mariachis.  Leslie’s Latin favorites lived in the jazz world, Cal Tjader and Poncho Sanchez among them, while Daddy gravitated to Jose Feliciano, Trio Los Ponchos, Los Indios Tabajaras and Eydie Gorme’s Spanish language album.

On Sunday, between renditions of Happy Birthday in Spanish and English, we were treated to some beautiful ballads.   One of them was my request for Sabor a Mi.  I added a version of it below, along with Maria Elena.  It’s sung in Spanish but it’s missing Daddy’s Southern drawl. And a bonus, Eydie singing Nosotros with Trio Los Ponchos.

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Gospel Gypsies Adapt

By Anita Garner

Early publicity tour
The Joneses traveling The Glory Road
Oklahoma 1950

That’s my family on the road, stopping at every radio station to sing a couple of songs and let people know we’d be coming soon to an All Day Singing or a tent revival near them.  Our parents, Brother Ray and Sister Fern Jones, made it through the 1950’s with limited-to-no resources, touring with a car full of musical instruments and harmony-singing kids. We were the advance team  driving from town to town with Leslie Ray and me mailing homework back to schools where we registered before leaving again.

When I signed a book contract last year  I already had a publicity tour planned. I was eager to get going.  The ways authors tell people about their books today keep expanding, but even with the boost from social media, the path to book sales still includes suitcases and planes and stops in many towns.

The publisher has two catalogs a year, Fall and Spring.  I hoped my book would make the Fall, 2020 edition.  I thought, oh yeah I can do that, get all my tour stops confirmed and hit the road by then.  Two things became clear.  1) I knew little about the process and 2) Authors would not be hitting the road in the second half of 2020.

Getting a book into the world via a University Press is a much longer process than I knew. Having now been through acquisition, vetting, peer review, board review, editing, design and working on marketing plans while moving into production, Spring, 2021 makes sense. Today I feel a pang for every writer who worked long and hard on a manuscript and counted the days til their Spring 2020 or Summer 2020 or Fall 2020 release.

I’ve now received more release details. The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life arrives in April, 2021 from University of Alabama Press, 232 pages, 22 photos and lots of stories.

April, 2021 is soon enough.
We have stuff to do.

Everything we’d planned for publicity is being retooled. There’ll now be a different kind of launch, one I’m excited about.  There will be guests. There will be music. How could there not be music?

I don’t accomplish this by myself.  My part of the marketing plan for The Glory Road involves many people.  Thank God for talented friends.  We’re right this minute creating the ways we’ll share this show. If Daddy and Mother could see all this communications magic, they’d immediately adapt to using everything at their disposal. I saw them do that many times.

At the end of my book, there’s a list entitled, Gospel Gypsies Know.  In light of the events of this year so far, the caption above, Gospel Gypsies Adapt feels more appropriate.

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List Season

By Anita Garner

My daughter’s illustrated birthday wish list.
Found on my office door

We’re a small family in this house.  Me.  Daughter, Cathleen. The Grand, Caedan Ray. Two out of  three have birthdays during the last quarter of the year.  Cath’s is this month.  Caedan Ray will have her Sweet Sixteen in November.  Then, of course, it’s Holiday Central.

Two of us do the planning and shopping for the celebrant.  Weeks in advance we’re nagging for  THE LIST.  Also, we need to know preferences about the day itself.  No party gathering this time but the  birthday girl chooses her dinner and what kind of cake she wants.

Cath did her list proud this year. It’s cheery and colorful and detailed. Do we attribute this to pandemic boredom? Or maybe she really, really wants only that specific kind of garlic press. And peanuts?  She had to put them on a list?  We know about her love for peanuts.

No, we don’t plan to get potholders for her birthday, but we get the hint that favorite old threadbare potholders need to be replaced once in a while. She does most of the cooking here and deserves consideration.

No sense teasing about the bunny slippers.  She really means it.  She loves those big slippers with animals on them, plush and heavy and I don’t even know how she walks in them.  The two pups, Charlie Brown and Benny, share her fondness for them.  Every day before Cath comes home from work, at least one slipper is dragged to the entryway to wait by the front door. She goes through slippers pretty quickly with the help of doggies dragging them.

Of course she won’t be getting all these things because shoppers also like to choose.  There are three bossy women here and it’s not logical to think you could make up your mind all by yourself about your own birthday celebration and have all your wishes come true.

The two shoppers will also buy things that aren’t requested.  Surprise!  Bet you didn’t even know how much you’d love this thing we decided to get for you.  Maybe Santa will bring the rest.  Or not.  The Or Not Factor is always a consideration when bossy women get together.

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