Soul.

Although Palmerwood, naturally, maintains an on-site string quartet to play the regal baroque music I require whenever I walk into a room, I've got a real thing for rhythm and blues. REAL rhythm and blues. Not that lousy shlookh they play on the radio these days. But the real stuff, like Otis Redding, Maxine Brown, Sam Cooke, Booker T & the MGs, and my all-time favorites, Sam & Dave.

The kind of stuff that the Stax label put out in the 60's. Real rhythm and blues.

In fact, I love it so much that I myself, in my younger days, played the prodigal son, abandoning my hereditary aristocratic responsibilities as the Baron of Palmerwood, to hit the road as the frontman of a little-remembered act called "Little Jimmy Ray and the Bagelles."

Here's a photo of one of our gigs. I believe this was taken in Mobile, AL, in 1981.

That's me in front, my backup singers, the Bagelles, to the left, and my band to the right: Lou "The North Suburbs of Texarkana" Tubbs on the trumpet, Isaiah "The Illinois Central & Southern Railway Line" Dubuchet on the saxophone, and Yarnell "Shecky" Robinson on the triangle.

Boy, did we have some wild times. Actually, the band and the backup singers had some wild times. None of the Bagelles seemed particularly interested in me, except for Miss Berthella "Foghorn" Washington. Miss Berthella checked in at around four bills. She generally sat backstage, where no one could see her, and belted out the backing vocals. The rest of the Bagelles couldn't sing. They just stood there and looked good. And let me tell you, they did that job pretty darn well.

Tragically, the act didn't last long. Greil Marcus of "Rolling Stone"described Little Jimmie Ray's songs as "long, irritating, offensive, and overly wordy monologues mostly about politics and religion. Also he has a kind of fixation about comic books. And other stuff no one really cares about. Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that he's really white."

Dispirited, I trudged back to Palmerwood. But I'll always have the memories of those halcyon days on the road. 

From the Archives: My Heart's in the Highlands

In September of 2014, the people of Scotland, fed up, presumably, with close to 300 years of rule by the effete crumpet-monkeys of Buckingham Palace--the descendants of some minor German princelings who, through sheer luck, stumbled into the greatest gig known to mankind--decided to hold a referendum on Scottish independence, and whether or not to dissolve the Act of Union of 1707, which brought Scotland under English rule.

You can't blame them. Elizabeth II doesn't seem like a bad sort. Nice enough lady. But she's no spring chicken. Teeth, as they say, lengthen. And the notion of the bum of her likely successor, Prince Charles--once aptly described by the immortal (although tragically dead) Christopher Hitchens as "that jug-eared, slobbering, weak-chinned dauphin"--occupying the throne is enough to make the blood of even the boldest Highlander run cold.

And if you're telling me that a country that gave the world Adam Smith, David Hume, and Sherlock Holmes* can't run itself, you're crackers. Barmy. Or "meshuggeneh," as I believe it goes in Gaelic.

Filled as I am with a detestation of hereditary privilege, colonial exploitation, and the imposition of the will of the few upon the many, naturally, I wholeheartedly suppo--what? What's that? You ask how I could espouse such noble sentiments while living on a luxurious country estate and plantation, supported by the labor of uncounted numbers of peasants? You ask how on earth I can truly detest such advantages as the Royals enjoy while maintaining my baronial existence at Palmerwood?

Well,

1) I believe 'twas Emerson who said "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

2) Shut the &$%# up.

As I was saying, I enthusiastically supported Alex Salmond's Scottish National Party and the cause of Scottish independence. But then, we Palmers always have. While the referendum was going on, I dug out of the archives of the Palmer Portrait Gallery this magnificent representation of my great-great-great-great-great granduncle, Angus Hamish Shlomo Alasdair MacPalmer.

Palmer family legend has it that this stirring portrait was painted just before the Battle of Culloden in 1746, the last bold attempt at Scottish independence, in which Angus Hamish Shlomo Alasdair was supposed to have commanded the MacPalmer of Monaltrie's Regiment.

He disappeared in battle (some cynics wonder whether he actually took part in it at all). No one knows this brave highlander's fate. But we do have it on good authority that his last recorded words were, "Aye, lass... 'tis a mighty big sporran indeed," to a barmaid in Drumnadrochit the night before the battle.

Sadly, the Scots were to fare no better in 2014 than in 1746. The Referendum was defeated 55%-45%. But so long as the desire for freedom burns bright in the breasts of all true Highlanders, hope remains. As the great Highland poet Robbie Burns wrote, a man's a man for a' that.



*Sherlock Holmes? A Scot? Why yes indeed, folks. A well known bit of Sherlockiana is that Dr. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was once asked if there was a "real" Sherlock Holmes. "Most assuredly there was," he answered. The model for Sir Arthur's Holmes was a professor of the good doctor's at the University of Edinburgh, Dr. Joseph Bell, a dour Scots Presbyterian physician with an aquiline nose, piercing eyes, a decisive manner, and, like Holmes, an almost uncanny knack for observation and deduction, which made him one of the most gifted diagnosticians of his time, or any other. 

From the Archives: The Big River

I despise autumn, and I'm bewildered by the vast hordes of humanity who claim that it's their favorite season. I just don't get it. How can anyone get excited about the days getting progressively shorter and the weather getting progressively colder? How can anyone look forward to the ebbing away of light and warmth?

Or maybe it's just that I'm completely indifferent verging on hostile toward fall stuff that other people seem to enjoy, like football (literally couldn't care less. It wouldn't bother me in the least if football and everyone who played it disappeared into a black hole tomorrow), colored leaves (I like flowers better, and you don't have to rake them), and pumpkin flavored everything. Blech.

I will admit to liking tweed. I like tweed a lot. However, I'd give it up in a minute for the non-necessity of wearing it.

Times like these, when autumn raises its withered hand over the Midwest and starts killing everything that I will drive my sleek European roadster down to the riverfront, get out, and stare down at the Mighty Mississippi churning its way inexorably south, and I think to myself, "You know, if I just sailed down it, eventually, I'd hit the Gulf of Mexico. Where it's warm. And if I kept going, eventually I'd hit the Caribbean. Which is a little less oily."

Such thoughts put me in mind of my great-great-great-great-granduncle, Gideon DuBuchet "Ol' River-Rat-Mustache" Palmer, the famed Mississippi River Pirate. Ol' River-Rat-Mustache prowled the Big Muddy in his trusty pirogue (by sheerest coincidence, also named the "Raconteur," just like my luxurious 180-ft yacht today) with his equally larcenous sidekick Osage Phil, looking for plunder. Or booty, if you prefer. Whichever. 

Ol' River-Rat-Mustache wasn't a particularly successful pirate. Nor a politically correct one. In his declining years in the Old River-Pirates' Home, he bored his fellow retirees to tears with endless repetitions of the same story of his biggest haul: "D'I'ver tell you fellers 'bout the time me 'n' Phil took six silver dollars offa two half-breed Choctaws in Natchez?"