The weird character known as Mother in Cormac McCarthy’s novel, Suttree, set in the early 1950s, may not have been fictional.īut you had to know how to find her. A mayoral delegation went to her to see about lifting the long-rumored curse off the 400 block of Gay Street, which had been visited by far more than its share of catastrophic fires. There were herb women, too, like the “hoodoo queen” who practiced in a hovel near the mouth of First Creek. The most visible part of the culture were the “herb men” who practiced along the Bowery–known to mapmakers as South Central Street–and in the Cripple Creek area, the bottomland just to the east of the modern Old City. There was a market for heads, like there’s a market for ivory tusks. Certain heads were known to have magical powers. It was also implicated in some grave robberies, in some disturbed graves, heads were discovered missing from corpses. The word sometimes came up in murder cases, in strange diseases reported to Knoxville General, in both marriages and divorces, when it was claimed one spouse exerted a weird control over the other. If never common, Voodoo was always around the fringes of town. The perfect setting for a herb man to trade his unusual wares. For people who couldn’t afford doctors, herbal remedies were worth a try.ĭuring the 1890s, the Bowery, shown here at the corner of Central and Vine, was an eclectic place. But many people still wanted their roots and herbs. Pharmacies started selling fewer roots and herbs, more factory-made pills and syrups. They began advertising around 1890, first under the heading of “roots and herbs.” Around the turn of the century, medical science was getting more scientific, claiming to sell only the stuff that was proven to be effective and safe. It was also the epicenter of a sort of underground economy, the herb men. The neighborhood known as the Bowery also included hundreds of little shops: secondhand shops run by immigrants, some early black barber shops and movie theaters, some of the city’s first Chinese laundries, some of the city’s last livery stables and blacksmiths, and drugstores that sold things that mainstream drugstores didn’t. But the neighborhood was a good deal more complicated than that. The Old City has played with that reputation for decades. On his death certificate, he was listed matter-of-factly as an “Herb Doctor.” By reputation, he was a conjurer.īy now most folks know Knoxville once had a saloon district, and that it hosted a few whorehouses. The dead man was known on the Bowery as Doc Mullins, and he was, to most of Knoxville, a mystery. At old Knoxville General Hospital, the man was pronounced dead. A college boy, driving his car back to campus after a night on the town, collided with the dark man, knocking him down and breaking his skull. This one's for those strange cats that wear their sunglasses at night, even at the clubs.In late October, 1935, well after midnight, a mysterious man was running across old East Church Avenue near Mulvaney Street carrying a dead chicken. It's a faster steady pace, creepy, cool and kicking. Yet, it’s the whispers which Dinsdale distorts with a delay that really sets this mix on fire as some slick synths peak into a wicked groove that never gets too big but doesn’t need to either. The tribal drums are more passive, popping in along with the preacher’s ‘Devil’s House’ rant, which is sampled even more heavily. On the B-side the Richard Dinsdale remix kicks off with eerie bits of whispered dialogue from the film segueing nicely into some nifty deep house. Save up that energy and wait for the next big tune.' While there's nothing extraordinary buzzing in it, it's nevertheless good fun in Lawler's dark house. Over all this, a dead priest rants on about the devil's house asserting the sinister flavor that Lawler is attributed to. The drum beat makes you imagine some Madam Santeria tapping away on a tanbou, fires blazing in the bayous of Louisiana, while a catchy melody, perhaps a little too brass, carries the track forward keeping your head bopping. The witch doctor of twisted, tribal house, Steve Lawler, seemed the perfect fit to add a little funk to a lost dusty vinyl that murmurs a spell when played in The Skeleton Key, Kate Hudson's excursion into voodoo hell.
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