Nashville News Blog

Nancy Saturn, who died at her Whitland Avenue home Tuesday after a long bout with recurring breast cancer, is being remembered by friends, colleagues and artists across the city as one of the pivotal figures in the development of local arts. Those whose lives she changed will honor her memory today at West End Synagogue, 3810 West End Ave., in a service at 1 p.m., with burial to follow.

A Detroit native who moved to Nashville in 1969 with her husband, attorney Alan Saturn, she was perhaps best known for her artisanal crafts boutique The American Artisan, which she operated for nearly four decades until last year. The American Artisan Festival, which she founded (and which celebrates its 40th event this June in Centennial Park), blossomed into one of the premier arts and crafts festivals in the nation, according to Anne Brown, owner of The Arts Company.

"She pulled us up to a different level," said Brown, who knew Saturn personally and professionally for more than 35 years. "She used the term 'artisan' deliberately, because it means someone who brings beauty into function, and art into craft.

​Pith is sad to pass along that scholar and Vanderbilt professor of sociology emeritus Richard "Pete" Peterson has died. Peterson was one of the earliest academics to treat country music as a subject worthy of consideration. His book Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity is one of the most important scholarly works ever written about the genre.

Peterson wrote that the tension between "keeping it real" and "appealing to the widest audience with the deepest pockets possible" is not something that just came to light with the likes of Taylor Swift or Billy Ray Cyrus or whomever; it's built right into the music's foundation. Maybe that's one reason his book seems as fresh and insightful today as it did when released. (I've long thought rap aficionados and scholars would find it illuminating as well.)

Peterson was a well respected professor at Vanderbilt and a genial friend to many folks around town. He will be missed.

It's as if a forest of sequoias toppled in one killer wind. After losing Ted Jarrett and Johnny Jones within months--not to mention Theodore "Little Teddy" Acklen Jr., whose father ran the renowned Del Morocco club--it didn't seem that 2009 could hold any worse news for Nashville's R&B community. But it did. On New Year's Eve, Earl Gaines, one of the finest vocalists in any genre to record in Nashville, died at St. Thomas Hospital. He was 74.

Gaines is best remembered for the 1955 smash "It's Love Baby (24 Hours a Day)" by Louis Brooks & His Hi-Toppers, on which he sang lead vocal. But when labels both here and overseas began to reissue his vintage '50s and '60s Nashville recordings in the mid-1990s, a new audience discovered his classic sides for Excello, Poncello, Champion and other imprints. Rougher-voiced than his life-long friend and fellow Nashville R&B giant Roscoe Shelton, Gaines made a song sound emotionally immediate but never rushed his way through it: as proof, check out his fine 1975 cover of Joe Simon's "Nine Pound Steel" above.

From Michael Gray, who co-produced the Country Music Hall of Fame's monumental "Night Train to Nashville" exhibit and CD sets (and wrote a moving tribute last week to Jarrett and Jones for the Scene), we have word that Gaines' funeral services will be held tomorrow at St. Luke CME Church, located at 2008 28th Ave. N. Visitation begins at 10 a.m., followed by a musical tribute at 11. The funeral itself is scheduled for noon.

Sad commie.

​Man, for a bunch of pinko commies, we sure did miss a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to advance the agenda of our own kind. The Scene and Fidel Castro are sorry to report that we left out an entire category from the 2009 Best of Nashville Readers' Poll results in the print edition of the paper. And of all the categories we could have overlooked, we actually left out "Best Local Liberal." Hey, the irony's not lost on us! And just like all lofty liberal social efforts, hierarchical confusion and a proven inability to agree on one simple platform means we just now got around to telling you. So go ahead and take your best shot: Just don't call it a Freudian omission, and don't revoke our membership from the Bosom of Bleeding Hearts. As you were.

And the results are...

​A vital piece of Nashville's R&B history fell silent yesterday with the death of legendary blues guitarist Johnny Jones. The longtime frontman, sideman and guitar slinger was found dead at his apartment yesterday morning by exterminators. He was 73.

Jones was an integral part of the Music City R&B scene chronicled in the Country Music Hall of Fame's 2004 Night Train to Nashville exhibit. That project's Grammy-winning CD compilation and its sequel introduced a new audience to Jones' historic recordings, made with famed Nashville producer/songwriter/label owner Ted Jarrett in the 1960s.