Singing on the Mountain (1965)
White gospel music, like rock, is a group experience, involving the individual members of the audience in deeply personal yet collective way So did Rock’n’Roll come out of the church?
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True Adventure: Serpent Cult, early 50s
I came across a True Adventure episode from the 50s called “Serpent Cult” featuring at least one familiar face: Oscar Hutton (sometimes Oskar with a k). I dug through my archive and turned up some photos and a newspaper article. A Courier-Journal piece describes “the Rev. Oscar Hutton of St. Charles, Va., a native Kentuckian…
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A Night of Music (Photo Collection)
An interesting collection of photos of musicians playing at a church service. The room looks like it might be a temporary space, but it’s hard to say for sure. Photos found on eBay – more people posing with instruments on this Vintage Musicians tumblr.
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Harrison Mayes Roadside Marker Updates
Every now and then, I receive an email from people who found the Mayes Marker Map (or MMM, as we call it here :)) helpful, and want to contribute new locations, sightings, or send in photos to document a marker’s current state. I can’t express how grateful I am for this, because it helps document…
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Historic Photos of Harrison Mayes’ Sign Ministry
Ivan Massar, From the Selma to Montgomery, 1965 Like photo-essayist James Karales, photojournalist Ivan Massar documented the fifty-four-mile voting-rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Like Karales, Massar took a picture of Harrison Mayes iconic roadside marker in the foreground and the marchers on US-80 in the background. Elliott Erwitt, Alabama, 1955 French-American photographer Elliott…
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Roadside Signs – Photography
While I’ve rarely seen signs by Henry Harrison Mayes in snapshots, his work and that of other, even more anonymous sign makers is often documented by professional photographers (see With Signs Following, by Joe York). Here is a list of photographers with an interest in vernacular religious signs in the US. Meryl Truett Meryl Truett…
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A Mayes Sign at Finster’s Paradise Garden
Last year I found out that Henry Harrison Mayes and Folk Art legend Rev. Howard Finster knew each other and Mayes even influenced Finster with his sign ministry. The first clue about this relationship I found in Norman Girardot’s book Envisioning Howard Finster: The Religion and Art of a Stranger from Another World. And digging…
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Historic Photo of Henry Harrison Mayes Roadside Cross in Alabama
James Karales (1930-2002) was a photographer for Look magazine between 1960 and 1972 and is included in the show with his pictures of the churchs’ role during the events that Look published in the May 18, 1965 issue, and the Selma March. His iconic image of this event, which is permanently on view at the…
