Mississippi Chris Sharp
Just glad to be here!
Just glad to be here! |
|
Ed Dye Memorial Page Check here frequently for Ed photos, stories, music, and video. If you have any to share, please contact me at missippichris@yahoo.com _____________________________________________________________
Thanks to John Lawless at The Bluegrass Blog for his report on the Ed Dye Memorial Bench!
MP3 file downloads of some participants in Ed's Memorial Show held at the Temple Theatre, Meridian, Mississippi, May 1, 2009. Thanks to all these people who participated in this event. Mike Compton, Pat Enright, and Raymond Huffmaster The Fedora Brothers (Geno and Zeno) Mississippi Chris and Jang-A-Lang Ed's memorial service was held at my home at Timberview Lodge, in Porterville, Mississippi, on May 2, 2009.
The events are recorded here in words by my friend Bruce Nemerov. They are recorded in photographs by my son, Canaan Sharp. This past weekend, May 1-2, a group of folks bid goodbye to Ed (or Ellsworth as he called himself these last few years) Dye. I thought you wouldn't mind if, in a few hundred ill-chosen words, I told you how Ed was sent off. Most of you included in this mailing were Ed's oldest friends from his West Coast days and couldn't make it to rural Mississippi for the festivities. And it was festive. For the past five years Ed had been an integral part of a very retro radio show, The Sucarnochee Revue, usually produced at the University of West Alabama in the small town of Livingston, a place so small the village idiot has to double as the town drunk. (Sorry for that one, Ed.) For the special show and broadcast, the producer, Jack White, and his right-hand man and houseband-leader Mississippi Chris Sharp moved the show to the Temple Theater in Meridian, Mississippi. This 1800-seat theater is in a restored 1920s Art Deco building, with a nice, large stage.
In addition to some of the shows regular LA (Lower Alabama) and Mississippi musicians, many of Ed's earlier musical associates were invited to come and play. Steve and Kim Young, Bob Fowler, Pat Enright, Mike Compton, Mike Bub, Gene Bush and I played in various combinations to a very receptive audience. The informality and "scotched-taped together" aspect of the show would have pleased Ed. Back stage lots of Ed stories were told. The folks who had only known Ed since he moved to Oxford, MS a dozen years ago were wide-eyed as Fowler, Young, Enright, myself and a few other of the gray-hairs recited tales of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Nashville and Ed's path of metaphysical mayhem through those cities. I had planned to record some of the stories for a possible piece for All Things Considered, but I didn't even put the batteries in the recorder. Not one of the stories could be put on the public airwaves.....you all have some you can tell, and if you tell 'em right---and don't clean them up---well, you see what I mean.
The next day 50-75 folks came out to Chris Sharp's land near Porterville, MS. The Sharp family has a couple thousand acres of woodland used as a hunting preserve. The guest cottages and meeting rooms make it a comfortable spot for gatherings. It was one of Ed's favorite places and his request was that his ashes be spread on the pond in the dell below the main house. Ed's sister Babs and her family, his wife Charlene, and Ed's four sons---three from California, one Oregonian---seemed to receive comfort from the laughter and good spirits so evident. One of Ed's requests before he slipped away was "No Doom and Gloom" and there wasn't. In the big room of the lodge was an easel with a blowup of Ed from the late 1970s (early 80s?)---anyway, from the period when he used to wear that atrocious coarsely-woven straw cowboy hat on stage, the hat Alan O'Bryant used to call "wicker furniture." There he was overseeing the party from the easel, hat on head, sly grin on face, moustache waxed. At a table off to the side was a book of hundreds of photographs that folks had brought or sent---early family stuff (Ed was a cute kid); in his Navy whites (looking like the toughest banty rooster in the yard); Ed in LA, SF, Portland, NY, Nashville, Oxford and on and on. Ed with people everybody recognized; Ed with people nobody knew.
About 11:30 everyone gathered together and Jack White, a congregationless Church of Christ preacher as well as a radio producer and songwriter, said a few words: light on the theology, heavier on the humor. Ed would have appreciated that. Then all stood around the pond, each with a bottle of bubble soap and a wand, and blew bubbles over the water as Ed's sons rowed to the middle and scattered the ashes on the surface. Variations on "sleeping with the fishes" jokes were heard. Back in the lodge a spread of food in the tradition of Southern funeral ceremonies was laid out---barbequed chicken, pork, baked beans, coleslaw, ham, bisquits, cakes, pie, and, over in a corner of the dessert table, a bowl of sugared doughnuts---Ed's favorite. Babs and Debbie Sharp didn't miss a lick with the food.
The rest of the afternoon was spent in small groups ebbing and flowing around the property; folks who hadn't seen each other in years---or decades---taking the opportunity to re-establish contact. In one circle an unlabelled glass container of amber liquid was being passed around....in his prime Ed would have been the leader of this clan. By early evening most had drifted off, back to the daily life that eats up our days. I've lost contact with many over those days, but some of you know where others are who were Ed's friends and are not on this e-mail list---that's why I've kept the list unhidden. If you want to forward this to someone not included here, feel free. If you see someone here you've lost contact with, send 'em a "Zoot! Reet!" It's what Ed would have done.....if he'd ever used e-mail. Best to you all, Bruce Nemerov
|
