Thursday, June 20, 2013
Chet Flippo was one of my favorite music journalists, and now he is dead. Great art creates great critics, don't you think? The height of American literature featured Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway-- and Edmund Wilson, Clifton Fadiman, Cleanth Brooks.... So too with jazz, rock and roll, and its anticedents. Reading Flippo's writing was a pleasure akin to listening to the artists he wrote about. This may be the best thing I've ever read about the Rolling Stones. This explained Dolly Parton to me when I just didn't get what made her great. His Hank Williams biography is terrific. Of course he understood Willie Nelson. When a writer who's work you admire dies the first thing that comes to mind is that there won't be any more work with that byline. I'm going to miss Flippo.
// posted by Bill @ 2:40 PM 
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