great. There’s been an earthquake and flood in Nepal. This morning on the BBC they kept talking about distressing pictures. They weren’t distressing to me and I dare say, many others. They were dramatic pictures (it was actually video) but for some reason the BBC has to inject emotion into the narrative and attribute it to everyone watching. All the media does this. Everyone needs trigger warnings now, it’s pathetic.
The “distressing” pictures I’m posting today are from yesterday morning’s ABC Australia news broadcast. Forgive me, but I wondered if I had landed in a different country compared to what I had experienced in the past.
Dolly Parton has gone to be with Jesus. I went to Pigeon Forge in the early 2000’s. Dollywood is located there. It’s kind of a Hillbilly Disneyland. They had things like cheese soup and funnel cakes, but most of the rides I don’t remember because it was night time, or I wasn’t that interested.
Everyone who worked there seemed like they were beyond retirement age. I got the feeling that Dolly had employed all her aging relatives to work there for low wages. I don’t know if that’s true, I’m making it up. She probably paid them top dollar for all I know.
In 2022, Dolly was honored with the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy for her decades of good deeds and said she was proud to receive the recognition. Her acts of kindness included the creation of The Dollywood Foundation and donating funds to vaccine research after the coronavirus pandemic outbreak in 2020. Uh oh, what actually killed her then?
Dollywood is fairly underwhelming, in fact I can’t remember a single thing about it apart from the The Southern Gospel Music Association Hall of Fame and Museum. It featured the Blackwood Brothers first tour bus among other things. I enjoyed walking through there, that was cool.
There was also a theater where the resident group, the Kingdom Heirs* did regular daily performances. Unfortunately I wasn’t there long enough to see them. I did have a connection with Arthur Rice, one of the singers however. I had met this guy back in the 80’s when he was singing with the Kingsmen quartet. I have a picture of me with the group taken at a concert that Keith Glass and I went to in 1985.
In 2020 the Hall of Fame, which featured over 350 artifacts and honored the history of Southern Gospel music, closed its Dollywood location when the SGMA lease was not renewed in 2021. It’s now located at something called the Biblical Times Dinner Theater, also in Pigeon Forge.
It’s one of three museums within that venue, sharing the space with a replica of the Shroud of Turin and a Christ life display. Obviously now I’ll have to go there, that sounds great!
While I was trying to remember the name the guy I knew from the Kingdom Heirs, I came across this story (below). You just never know what you’re going to uncover sometimes. It’s a mystery that’s for sure. You think all these Southern gospel dudes are as pure as the driven snow. It ain’t necessarily so.
Good Day
*Steve French, the former baritone, co-owner, and emcee of the Southern Gospel group Kingdom Heirs, died on June 22, 2016, passed away at age 56 along with his girlfriend, Lindsey Hudson, after the couple jumped to their deaths from the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia while fleeing police. The original charges against Steve French and Lindsey Hudson were never publicly disclosed by law enforcement.
The Kingdom Heirs here with Arthur Rice (blonde hair) and Steve French (grey hair). They have a great drummer!