France -- Disney Western Celebration coming up

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I wish I could clone myself! There are so many events I want to go to -- festivals, concerts, celebrations, encampments and all that, in so many countries.  Here's the trailer for the Western Celebration at the beginning of July at Euro Disney near Paris.

The Guardian Honors Gene Autry

The Guardian newspaper in the UK has paid tribute to Gene Autry, noting the date November 15, 1934, when Autry (already a radio star) became cinema's first Singing Cowboy  as Number 7 in its series of the "50 key events in the history of world and folk music."

In 1934, he made his silver-screen debut in a B-western called In Old Santa Fe, the first of his 93 films. ... In 1939, he visited the UK with his horse, Champion, and while he was really a Hollywood creation, he brought the songs of the range to the world.

Germany -- Confederate Reenactors

German Civil war reenactors (hobbyists) at the Country Music Messe in Berlin. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

There have been a couple recent U.S. media pieces about Germans who reenact U.S. Civil War battles from the Confederate side -- a phenomenon that is closely linked with other hobbyists who populate Europe's Imaginary Wild West, some (many?) of whom adopt the Stars and Bars flag and other "Rebel" symbols as an evocation of freedom, independence, anti-establishmentism and rebellion. The Rebel flags, in fact, is one of the most striking of all the striking visual images of the wild west scene in Europe. It is used on its own or in tandem with the American flag, the Stars and Stripes. It’s found as decoration, on T-shirts, pins, jewelry, backdrops, logos, you name it.

One  of the recent pieces on Confederate reenactors was a blog in the Atlantic.

If the German reenactors actually "model their characters in the reenactments after...German immigrant soldiers," as they explained to the reporter that they do, then those who wear gray have their work cut out for them. Less than 10 percent of the Germans immigrants in the United States, scarcely 70,000, dwelt in the entire territory controlled by the Confederacy at the outbreak of the war. Many fled north, with perhaps 2,000 joining the Union Army. Hundreds of those who remained petitioned the consuls of German states for protection from the draft. There were certainly some ardent secessionists, and even a few slaveholders, and between 3,500 and 7,000 Germans may have served in the Confederate Army. But of that number, many were conscripted, a large number deserted, and some mutinied. "The German minority of the South," one scholar concluded, "was all but insignificant politically, economically, and militarily during the American Civil War."

It was a comment by Yoni Appelbaum on a piece on PRI Radio by Caitlan Carroll.

So for those at the reenactment, it is appealing that the U.S. Civil War took place in another country, in another time. It is safer, even romantic. A lot of fantasies have built up around the Confederacy, thanks to the movie, "Gone with the Wind;" it is a staple of German popular culture.

On the other side of camp, the Confederate soldiers are busy preparing for the battle. More people want to be on the Confederate side, so the Union troops sometimes have to recruit local reenactors from the American Revolutionary War.
Chris McLarren plays a confederate captain from Texas. He is actually an American. He said the Germans are totally immersed in the history.

"The Germans like to do things 110 percent sometimes," McLarren said. "They are perfectionists in many ways and they want to do this the way it was then."

There are  Civil War hobbyists in other countries, too -- the Czech Republic, for example. The great Czech author Josef Skvorecky even wrote a novel, The Bride of Texas, about  Czech immigrants involved in the conflict.

I've been harrangued by Stars and Bars-wearing (or bearing, or selling) hobbyists about the Civil War and its meaning, and I've written in the past and posted many photos about the Rebel Flag phenomenon, which also goes far beyond Germany -- I've posted pictures from France, Austria, Cz, etc:

One of the most striking of all the striking visual images of the wild west scene in Europe is the frequent display of the Confederate (Rebel) flag, the Stars and Bars or Southern Cross. It is used on its own or in tandem with the American flag, the Stars and Stripes. It’s found as decoration, on T-shirts, pins, jewelry, backdrops, logos, you name it.

For most country music fans in the scene, the flag seems to represent pure “rebel-hood” or the anti-Establishment, rather than to have a direct link with the Civil War, Confederacy, or slavery, i.e. connotations that it evokes in the United States. “They don't now much about the history of the southern cross and for them it's not important, it’s a link to freedom and rebellion against the establishment and their normal life,” one German member of the scene, a former employee of one of the Pullman City wild west theme parks and a close observer of hobbyist and other behavior, told me. Rockabilly fans also use it as a symbol of their favorite music -- album covers often feature the image.

In France, Alain Sanders uses the Rebel Flag as the logo of his country music fanzine, “Country Music Attitude.” Country music feeling, he told me when we met in 2004, is a kind of attitude toward life.  “It's rebel attitude,” he said. “Don't believe  everything because it's printed. We don't like kind of world where you have the good and the bad. It's grey, like the uniform of the confederate soldiers. And we explain to people also that when you are country, when you have a country attitude, it's not once a month or once a year when you come to a festival. It's every day. You think country, you sing and you think country -- that's what we try to explain.”

Nonetheless, outside the country scene per se, some skinhead and neo-Nazi groups also use the flag -- as a symbol of racism, to link them to the Ku Klux Klan and other extremists.

Imaginary Wild West -- RIP James Arness, TV's Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

James Arness, the towering actor who carved out the TV role of Marshal Matt Dillon on the iconic western Gunsmoke, died today, June 3, at the age of 88. He was a true icon of the Imaginary Wild West (even though I prefer radio Gunsmoke's William Conrad in the Matt Dillon role.)

I don't have time to write an assessment at the moment -- so here is a link to a long obit by Ken Tucker  in Entertainment Weekly.

Here's what John Wayne said about him:

Imaginary Wild West -- the Bonanza Map

Map/Photo: Autry Collections

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Autry National Center in Los Angeles now displays one of the most potent icons of the post-World War II imaginary wild west -- the map of the fictional Ponderosa ranch that was displayed and set on fire at the beginning of every episode of the long-running and internationally popular TV show Bonanza.

The map -- which has been hung in the Autry's "Imagination Gallery" -- charts a  place that doesn't exist but is recognized and even beloved by millions world wide. As the Autry blog puts it:

NBC audiences from September 1959 to February 1973 saw this map every week in the opening credits of the Paramount Television show. It would appear briefly before it burst into flames, dissolving into a shot of all four members of the Cartwright family, astride their horses, as the memorable theme played.

“We’re talking 14 seasons, 431 episodes,” said Jeffrey Richardson, associate curator of western history and popular culture at the Autry. “Just those numbers alone are staggering. But at the beginning of every single episode, and the theme song that so many people can hum, it all began with a shot of this particular map.”

The burning map was a high spot for viewers, but Richardson notes that it actually was drawn with an incorrect geographical orientation.

The map is a beauty, hand-drawn in intense colors for Bonanza creator David Dortort by Robert Temple Ayres, a company employee. But it has a flaw.

When Ayres drew the map, he evidently thought that a fictional ranch didn’t need a terribly accurate map. So he drew Reno to the west of Carson City. Dortort noticed.

“They put it together; they brought it to David Dortort; he looked at it,” Richardson said. “He said, ‘I love it, but your directions are wrong.’”

Looking at it as it was designed, the map shows Reno to the west of Carson City. In reality, Reno sits to the north. To fix it, Ayres drew a compass. But instead of the north arrow pointing straight up as on most maps, it goes off in a vaguely west-northwest direction. To look at the map in its correct orientation, one would have to flip it on its side, with the “horn” of the property pointing upward.

“To justify the inaccurate locations the way they had them drawn, they had to slant the compass a different way,” Richardson said. “It was too late at that particular time in 1959 for them to redo the map, because again, it was hand-drawn, and they were going to start shooting the opening sequence."

Read more by clicking HERE


 Dortort had donated most of his papers and memorabilia to the Autry a year or so before his death last September at the age of 93. He had held on to the map however. After he died, his family gave it and other objects to the museum.

Germany -- Karl May Festival anniversaries

By Ruth Ellen Gruber


This year, two of the biggest Karl May festivals in Germany are celebrating milestone anniversaries.

The Karl May Festtage in Radebeul -- the town outside of Dresden where May lived, and where there has been a Karl May Museum since the 1920s -- marks its 20th anniversary with this year's edition, June 3-5.

Special feature will be the participation of Pierre Brice -- the French actor who won fame (and stole the hearts of girls all over Europe) by playing Winnetou in the German-made movies in the 1960s. I myself was one of these girls -- I saw my first Winnetou movie ("Old Shatterhand") in Prague in 1966, and I still have the pictures of Brice I bought or cut out of Czech magazines at the time.

In addition, the Karl May Spiele in Bad Segeberg, north of Hamburg -- the biggest and oldest Karl May Festival -- is celebrating its 60th anniversary this season! The festival runs from June 25-Sept. 4 and will feature a performance of "The Oil Prince" -- based on Karl May's classic book -- on its outdoor stage. Erol Sander stars as Winnetou, and Joshy Peters as Old Shatterhand (I saw Peters in this role in 2003).

Next year -- 2012 -- marks the 100th anniversary of Karl May's death, and many events are being planned.

France -- Line-up for the La Roche bluegrass festival at the beginning of August is now online

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

For the program of this year's wonderful European bluegrass festival at la Roche-sur-Foron, France (at the foot of the Alps near Geneva) -- click HERE

The line-up includes:

Thursday August 4th

18:30 - Workshop band

19:00 - Poa Pratensis (H)

20:00 - Dr Bluegrass and the Illbilly 8 (GB)

21:00 - Elenor (CH)

22:00 - Holy Water (NL)

Friday August 5th

18:00 - Autopista (E)

18:45 - Opening ceremony

19:00 - All Bells & Whistles (Cz)

20:00 - Blue Side of Town (D)

21:00 - Blueland (Sk)

22:00 - Kathy Kallick Band (USA)

23:15 - Bluegrass 43 (F)

Saturday August 6th

12:00 - Grass Road (Cz)

13:00 - Veget (Cz)

14:00 - Roots and Galoots (GB)

15:00 - Kid’s Concert with Lonesome Day (F) Square Danse Session, Masterclasses

17:00 - Tupelo (Ire)

18:00 - Le Chat Mort (S)

19:00 - Lilly of the West (Bg)

20:00 - Lazy Tater (NL)

21:00 - BlackJack (Cz)

22:00 - Hickory Project (USA)

23:15 - G-runs ‘n Roses (Cz)

Sunday August 7th

12:00 - Percy Copley (GB)

13:00 - Heather Joyce (GB)

14:00 - Blue REJ (Cz)

15:00 - Melting Times (H)

16:00 - Except 2 (NL)

17:00 - Country Cocktail (Cz)

18:00 - TBA

19:00 - Contest results and winner

20:00 - Lonesome Wally (USA/GB)

21:00 - Field-Thompson Band (USA)

22:15 - Howlin Fox (F)