Cartoons Saturday, Plus Two Guitar Heroes

From 1927 to 1977, Lonnie and R.T.

Feb 08, 2025

Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books (see link) and now writer/director of three award-winning films aired via PBS, including “Atomic Cover-up” and “Memorial Day Massacre” which are still up at PBS.org. Watch trailer for my acclaimed 2025 film “The Atomic Bowl.” Before all that, he was a longtime editor of the legendary Crawdaddy. At Blue Sky and Twitter: both as @gregmitch. You can still subscribe to this newsletter for FREE, right here:

Saturday on my mind…. the usual cartoons down below, but first, for you “Demon Copperhead” (or “David Copperfield” fans out there (I am one, or is that two?): Author Barbara Kingsolver is putting her profits to great humane use near her home.

Next, my friend (going back to Crawdaddy in 1978), Tony Scherman is considering the greatest guitar solos ever at his excellent music-oriented Substack, to which you should subscribe. I don’t know what I would pick, although his “King Harvest” is a wise one, but it set me to thinking about the man many consider the “inventor” of the modern guitar solo, Lonnie Johnson. Here he is on one of the earliest, and most important, guitar solos ever, with Louis Armstrong in 1927 when Satchmo was laying the groundwork for so much of 20th century music that followed. Here on “Savoy Blues”:

And the enormously influential “Hotter Than That”:

Leaping ahead half a century to a current guitar hero, my man Richard Thompson, still with Linda here, on a lengthy live version of his “Night Comes In.”