Just got this in the mail: Three CDs of Charlie Feathers rarities — demos, b-sides, one-offs, and forgotten LP tracks — from Norton Records. Volume One, Wild Side of Life, includes Feathers’ ultra-rare debut with Junior Kimbrough, “Please Release Me.” Volume Two, Honky Tonk Kind, which focuses on Feathers’ mid-career output (including sides cut for the Meteor and King labels), includes “Feel Good Again,” another song with Kimbrough. And Volume Three, Long Time Ago, includes songs from Feathers’ Hi Records years on up through the 1980s.

Even if you think you’ve already got all of Feathers’ material, you don’t — Norton Records’ Billy Miller and Miriam Linna unearthed an astonishing 25 heretofore unreleased tracks for this three-disc set, which for all you audiophiles, is also available on LP.

From Mike Hurtt’s liner notes:

…make no mistake, mid-twentieth century Memphis was, perhaps more than any other American city, a series of parallel universes: trained ducks took their afternoon walk at the high-class Peabody Hotel while just around the corner, Beale Street’s buckets-of-blood throbbed with race music and rolling dice; hillbilly bands held forth below the cotton lofts of Front Street while century-old riverboats steamed past on the Mississippi River. Barbecue and beer joints mingled with midget wrestling and the Mid-South Fair while gone-to-pot political ruler Edward Hall “Boss” Crump reigned above the madness, just as he had since 1911. Stoking the flames of this glorious cultural collision were an array of totally original mold-shattering characters, be they sepia-toned screamers, crazed backwoods country boys, or anyone else who could beat on a guitar, pound a piano, and in general, as [Elvis] Presley himself so succinctly put it, “get real, real gone for a change.”

Doesn’t that make you wanna build a time machine and set the dial for 1950?

For the next best thing, go here to listen to WFMU’s Charlie Feathers tribute with Charlie’s son Bubba Feathers, Charlie’s former guitarist Ramon Maupin (a rockabilly singer in his own right, Maupin was also a labelmate of Charlie’s at Fernwood Records), and Norton Records’ Billy Miller.

He’s possibly about to marry Jessica Biel any second. Or maybe he’s the man behind Madonna’s impending break-up with Guy Ritchie? He’s on the big screen wielding a hockey stick in the new Mike Myers yuk-fest The Love Guru. And now’s he’s the latest face of Givenchy… Saturation overload for Justin Timberlake, Millington’s biggest export!

The Levitt Shell concert season starts Sept. 4. The free shows will take place each week, Thursday through Sunday, until Oct. 5. Performances start at 7p.m., except for children’s concerts, which begin at 5 p.m. Saturdays.

Here are some highlights:

Sept. 4: Roots songstress Amy LaVere
Sept. 5: Jazz saxophonist Kirk Whalum and New Olivet Baptist Church Choir
Sept. 11: Grammy winner Bill Evans’ Soulgrass, a mix of jazz, bluegrass and funk
Sept. 18: Memphis folk-bluesman Sid Selvidge
Sept. 20: Progressive Latin orchestra Grupo Fantasma
Sept. 27: New Ballet Ensemble and Memphis Youth Symphony present “Peter and the Wolf”
Sept. 28: French gypsy swing trio Samarabalouf
Oct. 3: Local R&B group The Bo-Keys with soul legend William Bell
Oct. 5: Grammy-winning polka outfit Brave Combo

For more on the historic Overton Park band shell, which is being restored with the help of the L.A. based Mortimer Levitt Foundation, read CA music editor Bob Mehr’s piece from yesterday’s paper, here. Read my interview with the Levitt Shell’s new executive director, Chip Pankey, here.

The most popular movie now in theaters (for one weekend, at least), Pixar’s “WALL-E,” presents its title robot as proof that rust never sleeps. WALL-E is determined, resourceful and even lovable, but he’s (it’s?) an obsolete bucket o’ scavenged bolts, rattling through an empty post-eco-disaster metropolis on unreliable tank treads while scanning the junk-heap horizon with wobbly binocular eyes. 

But even a malfunctioning WALL-E is a techno-wonder compared to the 1954 state-of-the-art “synthetic sentient being” that is the star of “Tobor the Great,” a family-friendly, 77-minute sci-fi programmer that recently made its DVD debut courtesy of Lionsgate Home Entertainment.

Basically a Cold War-inspired “Timmy and Lassie” episode with a robot instead of a collie, “Tobor the Great” stars Billy Chapin as 11-year-old Brian Robinson, nicknamed “Gadge” because of his precocious affinity for scientific gadgetry. (”Gimmickses, always gimmickses,” complains Franz Roehn as Karl, the Robinson household’s thick-accented but faithful Old World retainer of Gadge’s.)

In the confused tense of the movie’s opening narration, “Tobor” tells “a story that might have taken place the day after tomorrow.” Prof. Arnold Nordstrom (Taylor Holmes), Gadge’s “gramps,” is the inventor of Tobor, “an electronic simulacrum of a man” invented to replace human pilots during the dangerous test flights necessary before men can be sent into space. “Meet Tobor — a childish joke of mine, robot spelled backwards,” Nordstrom explains when he introduces this mechanical man to a pack of journalists (plus, one foreign and apparently Communist spy, whose presence is heralded on the soundtrack by what sounds like a quote from the Russian folks song, ”The Volga Boatmen.”) In a twist on the usual robot premise, Tobor is not powered only by gears and wires: He’s controlled in part by ESP, Nordstrom says.

Like many early screen robots, Tobor is a tall, ungainly but retro-cool-looking bipedal caricature of a man, with a stylized “face” and a gleaming body adorned with various tubes, wires and doohickeys (call this school of design Amazing Stories rococo). It’s love at first sight for Gadge, who lives in a house without a dog or a daddy (his father was killed in the Korean War). “Gee, Tobor, you’re beautiful!” marvels Gadge, who also uses such expletives as “gee whillikers” and “darn” (as in “You darn old Tobor!,” in response to the robot’s brief destructive rampage).

If Tobor becomes, essentially, Gadge’s pet, Nordstrom’s handsome colleague, Dr. Ralph Harrison (Charles Drake), is presented as a potential replacement daddy, a job he begins auditioning for as soon as he meets Gadge’s pretty mom (Karin Booth). No doubt mom thinks it’s nice having a man around the house, but a robot is even more useful, especially when Gadge is kidnaped by spies (who threaten him with a blowtorch!), requiring Tobor to race to the rescue. “Attaboy, Tobor! That’s using your coordinator!” encourages Gadge.

Produced by Republic Pictures (which also gave the world the boxy robots of 1940’s “Mysterious Doctor Satan” and other serials), “Tobor the Great” was scripted by mystery novelist and “Charlie Chan” and “Mr. Moto” screenwriter Philip MacDonald and directed by the tireless Lee “Roll ‘Em” Sholem, who — as his nickname suggests — was one of Hollywood’s more fast-working and efficient filmmakers, contributing entries to the Tarzan, Jungle Jim and Ma and Pa Kettle series. Child star Chapin, meanwhile, earned a place in film history the year after “Tobor” when he starred as one of the children being pursued by evil preacher Robert Mitchum in “Night of the Hunter.”

Unlike Tobor himself, Lionsgate’s “Tobor the Great” DVD is a no-frills product. The image is adequate, but obviously wasn’t remastered for this disc; in fact, it appears to have been lifted from an earlier VHS release of the film. Of course, I want even the likes of “Tobor” to receive Criterion Collection-worthy treatment, but, honestly, the simple, nostalgic fun offered by “Tobor” isn’t hampered much by this simple presentation.

The disc contains no worthwhile bonus features, but a nice fold-out poster of the DVD’s cover art – reproduced from a handsome vintage poster — is included as an insert in the snapcase. Whether a kid today would want to add Tobor to the WALL-E and R2-D2 posters on his bedroom wall, I can’t say; but I know plenty of adults who’d be happy to bid for an original version of this poster on eBay. It’s a great image, and utterly misleading: “Man-Made Monster with Every Human Emotion” says the ad slogan, over an illustration of Tobor carrying off a scantily clad, buxom blonde — in other words, Tobor appears to be violating not only all three of Isaac Asimov’s Laws of Robotics but possibly the Mann Act. Any adult males lured to “Tobor” on the basis of this lurid promise were no doubt disappointed to find themselves sitting through a fantasy with more appeal to readers of Boy’s Life than Argosy.

I just returned from a road trip across northern California, from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe, and if you think gas prices here - hovering at the $4/gallon mark are bad, try $4.86! Fortunately we had a fuel efficient car, and only used three tanks of gas for an entire week of driving.

Since a lot of us are sticking closer to home this summer due to those high fuel prices, which have affected everything from our road trips to our plane plans, I asked Heather Strickland of Travelennium to chime in on a few of her favorite, close-to-home destinations.

Q: A lot of us are sticking closer to home this summer due to the higher fuel prices. What are a few of your favorite close-to-home getaways that are a good value, especially now that it costs so much more to fill up the tank?

A: Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the cost of gasoline is going down anytime soon.  If you are on a shoestring budget, and afraid to put a pricey vacation charge on your credit card, you're not alone. 

The fact is, you can pretty much forget about a cross-country road trip, or a glamorous trip overseas.  But don't despair - there are still plenty of opportunities for a nice vacation close to home!  Here's some trip ideas that can be done on a couple tanks of gas:

The Big Easy.  New Orleans is probably my favorite close-to-home getaway.  Hotel accommodations and restaurants are found for every budget, and there are plenty of free things to see and do in the city for adults and children of all ages.  It's about a five hour drive from Memphis, and is the perfect long weekend getaway.  And even though the city is undeniably still recuperating from Hurricane Katrina, it still proudly boasts some of the finest cuisine in the country.  The white (albino) alligators at Audubon Zoo, the Jackson Square painters and the Garden District are must-sees.  And you simply have go on a tour of the city's historic above-ground cemeteries and haunted houses.  Don't worry - your tour guide will give you a gris gris bag to ward off any evil spirits you may encounter!  And of course, what is a trip to New Orleans without a midnight stop at the famous Cafe Du Monde for piping hot beignets and cafe au lait?  Mmm...I'm ready to go when you are!

In Hot Springs, Arkansas, you can get down and dirty while hunting for diamonds, then take a trip to Bath House Row for a little R&R!  Accommodations range from condo rentals on the water to quaint B&B's.  The trip is about three hours by car from Memphis, and on the way, you can stop to see the sights in Little Rock.

Bowling Green, Kentucky is another close-to-Memphis favorite.  You can tour Mammoth Caves (the longest cave system in the world), see the Corvette Factory (where you can witness an actual Corvette rolling off the line!), pick up a baseball bat at the Louisville Slugger plant, and much more in this culturally rich city.

Double Head Resort in Town Creek, Alabama is a cottage resort.  All guests are allowed to enjoy the numerous resort amenities: swimming pool, scenic nature trails, playgrounds, white sandy beach, volleyball, tennis courts, basketball courts, horseback riding, boating and clay shooting, to name a few.  After all the activities, you will want to be sure to stop at the general store which offers unique gift items and tasty treats.

Chattanooga, Tennessee is also brimming with things to see and do.  In Chattanooga, you can visit the Tennessee Aquarium, Rock City, Ruby Falls, Look Out Mountain, Lost Sea, Cumberland Caverns, Southern Bell Riverboat, Battle Museum, and do a little panning for gem stones on the side!  Best of all, it's a very budget-friendly place!

Travelennium Inc. American Express is celebrating their 40th anniversary in Memphis. They specialize in group travel, event planning, business and vacation travel. Travel is an inspiring incentive reward and they also develop incentives for sales organizations and fund-raising efforts.  Contact them at www.travelennium.com or 901-762-7040.

It makes me laugh. Hard.

I just got around to listening to Friday’s installment about a woman’s teenage bra mishap.

Having been a teen-age girl, I’m no stranger to the unexpected bra mishap. Strapless bras have slipped off in the middle of dance floors, they’ve come unhooked at inopportune times, and made unannounced showings.

But nothing I ever experienced comes close to the horror that Betty Jenkins (now 94) suffered on in an unpressurized airplane cabin over South America while wearing one of the first inflatable cup bras.

You don’t need Krulwich to figure out why this is a bad combination that resulted in a blow out.

I feel a little guilty laughing, but not too much, because all girls have at some point suffered through underwear-related humiliation. More than that, I’m laughing out of relief that it wasn’t me.

(photo from dM.nyc’s flickr.)

ShareThis