Sunday Snippets - A Catholic Carnival 1

Tabb Centenary Year XXXIX: Five lyrics by Rev. John B. Tabb.

Confer.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 07/05/09 07:38:56 PM
Categorized as Catholic Carnival.

55 Years Ago Today

A quiet, reserved truck driver from Memphis made his first commercial record.

Elvis Presley recorded "That's All Right", Monday, July 5, 1954.

Some say the Rock 'n' Roll era started fifty-five years ago today when Elvis Presley began a two-day recording session at Sun Studio, produced by Sam Phillips, and accompanied by guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black. (Both musicians had played an audition with Elvis, July 4, and weren't very impressed, but they thought it wouldn't hurt to explore the singer's potential.)

"That's All Right" (not "That's All Right, Mama") was released later that month, July 19, backed with "Blue Moon of Kentucky".

Sun Records released five singles — backed with five other songs, for a total of 10 songs — from Elvis's recordings, in 1954 and 1955; all of the songs Elvis recorded in those sessions (except for at least two that have been lost) were released eventually, most notably in a complete edition in 1999, Sunrise, which includes four songs (two private recordings and two demos) that Elvis had recorded earlier. The National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress included Elvis's Sun Sessions in The National Recording Registry 2002 (number 39 in a chronological list), the inaugural registry.

The metallic master record of "That's All Right", from which the vinyl single records were pressed, was rediscovered in November 1998, thirty years after it had been purchased for fifteen cents, its identity and significance unknown at the time.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 07/05/09 05:11:36 PM
Categorized as Historical.

Tabb Centenary Year XXXIX

Five lyrics by Rev. John B. Tabb.

The Lake

I am a lonely woodland lake:
   The trees that round me grow,
The glimpse of heaven above me, make
   The sum of all I know.

The mirror of their dreams to be
   Alike in shade and shine,
To clasp in love’s captivity,
   And keep them one—is mine.

November 1892 (p. 97, Nature: Miscellaneous)

The Marsh

The woods have voices, and the sea,
Her choral-song and threnody;
But thou alike to sun and rain
Dost mute and motionless remain.
As pilgrims to the shrine of Sleep,
Through all thy solemn spaces creep
The tides—a moment on thy breast
To pause in sacramental rest;
Then, flooded with the mystery,
To sink reluctant to the sea,
In landward loneliness to yearn
Till to thy bosom they return.

January 1896 (p. 67, Nature: The Sea)

Lone-Land

Around us lies a world invisible,
With isles of dreams, and many a continent
Of thought, and isthmus fancy, where we dwell
   Each as a lonely wanderer intent
Upon his vision, finding each his fears
And hopes encompassed by the tide of tears.

June 1895 (p. 114, Life, Death and Similar Themes: Life)

Isolation

Far off a solitary Peak
   The restless Waves behold.
“Thou hast attained the heaven we seek;
   O teach us, self-controlled,
Thy constancy!” Alas, how bleak
   The mountain top and cold!

1902 (p. 152, Life, Death and Similar Themes: Sympathy)

At the Ebb-Tide

O marshes that remain
   In anguish dumb
Till over you again
   The waters come!

So must thy life abide
   In silent pain,
Till Love, the truant tide,
   Come back again.

February 1905 (p. 140, Life, Death and Similar Themes: Love)

[“The Marsh”: a threnody is a song of mourning. “Lone-Land”: an isthmus is a narrow strip of land connecting two larger land areas. “At the Ebb-Tide”: the sea-level lowers or falls during the ebb tide.]

The references (page number and section) are to The Poetry of Father Tabb, ed. Francis A. Litz, Ph.D. (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1928). All of Tabb's poems published here in the Father Tabb Centenary Year were originally published before 1923.

Biblical references link to the New Advent Bible comprising Bishop Challoner's edition of the Douay-Rheims Bible (English) and the Sixto-Clementine edition of the Vulgate (Latin), since they are the versions which Father Tabb would have used as a Catholic.

The year 2009 is the centenary of the death of Rev. John Banister Tabb, November 19, 1909.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 07/05/09 02:32:05 PM
Categorized as Father Tabb Centenary Year & Literary.