Music and Principles

Salvation South has lots of music for you this week — and a touching story about an important value: standing by the folks who fought alongside you.

By Chuck Reece

Aug 18, 2022

Salvation South has lots of music for you this week. But we’ve also got a touching story about an important value: standing by the folks who fought alongside you. And we're featured on a podcast we dearly love! It's a great week around here.

Russell Worth Carter is a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who helped to write the just-released “Always Faithful: A Story of the War in Afghanistan, the Fall of Kabul, and the Unshakable Bond Between a Marine and an Interpreter.” Worth and a large band of his Marine brethren spent weeks last year before the fall of Kabul working like mad to extricate their Afghan colleagues from the country before the Taliban took over. The book tells a success story about an interpreter named Zainullah “Zak” Zaki, who worked with and fought alongside the U.S. Marines on the dangerous fields of the Sangin District of Afghanistan’s Helmand Province.

For Salvation South today, Worth tells us the story of Zak Zaki’s family — his wife and four children — as they adjust to American life in the large community. of Afghan refugees that has sprung up in San Antonio, Texas. And at the end of Worth's piece, you'll find a review of "Always Faithful" by J.A. Dailey.

I hope you remember Worth’s work. He penned the very first story we published in Salvation South. It was called “But I Have Hope,” and it was beautiful. Give it a read if you missed it the first time around.

Just this morning, the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta released the latest episode of Bishop Rob Wright's wonderful podcast, "For People." And we're happy to report that it features Salvation South. Please listen to Bishop Wright's interview with me. We had a great chat.

On the musical front, Don Schanche’s “Repeatedly Almost Famous” is a labor of love that was years in the making. Don promised his close friend Curtis Davis that he would tell the story of the soul band — the Chevelles — that he had formed when he was in high school in the late 1960s in Milledgeville, Georgia. Sadly, Davis died before Don finished his story, but he still kept his promise and told it. It’s an authoritative tale of a young band that had a hit record on the Billboard charts and a gig at Harlem’s legendary Apollo Theater before they had even graduated from high school.

And finally, our culture warrior Rob Rushin-Knopf brings us a great story about two acts that are keeping the deep traditions of Tennessee mountain music alive: the 80-year-old guitar legend Norman Blake and a much younger string band called the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys.

We have much to love, to read and to listen to in Salvation South this week. We hope you enjoy.

Chuck Reece

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Chuck Reece is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Salvation South, the weekly web magazine you're reading right now. He was the founding editor of The Bitter Southerner. He grew up in the north Georgia mountains in a little town called Ellijay.