To the editor: What a lovely feature on such a local treasure as Barry Corbin (“Good Country for an Old Cowboy,” March 17, 2010). My daughter and I and our friends hang out at a grill where we see Barry frequently. We’re not the type to bother the celebrity, but we frequently make eye contact with him and nod, and he always returns in kind.
If we realize we haven’t seen him in a while, we ask the manager about it, and Big Dave says, “Yeah, he’s away making a movie or something. My Shiner sales are way down.” Occasionally I will speak to him. I told him recently how much I enjoyed his performance in No Country for Old Men and what a great movie I thought it was. He very graciously said he appreciated that.
I thoroughly enjoyed Jeff Prince’s article and will definitely tell Mr. Corbin the next time I see him how delighted I was to see him portrayed just as I’ve always perceived him to be: the quintessential good ol’ boy famous actor who just happens to choose to live close to where I live and to hang out where I choose to hang out.
Kitty Thompson
Arlington
To the editor: Wonderful article by Jeff Prince on Barry Corbin. I read it twice. I have seen most of his movies and TV series and enjoyed them all. Jeff, you truly can put words together beautifully.
Arlington
Clout against Tasers
To the editor: Peter Gorman’s article (“Not in Vain,” Feb. 17, 2010) addresses the Taser gun death of Michael Jacobs Jr. The controversy over their continued use should have been resolved long ago.
California has initiated the first baby steps in banning or curtailing Taser usage. The use of these weapons is a violation of the Fourth Amendment when it’s not a life-or-death situation that would warrant electrocuting an individual.
The Fort Worth incident should have resulted in disciplinary action in the least, not a slap on the wrist. But then, of course, good officers are hard to recruit and keep.
The Rev. Tom Franklin and other ministers will have the necessary clout if the NAACP joins their crusade to ban these lethal weapons, and with that it will afford some closure to the Jacobs family.
The Weekly has kept us well informed about the Taser controversy, and its high-octane content certainly merits revisiting.
Edna Maskell
Fort Worth
Keep ’em Dancing
To the editor: The article “Blues Got the Blues” by Caroline Collier (March 10, 2010) was very good, but it missed one of the main reasons for the decline of blues venues and interest in blues music. A friend who’s been in the club business for more than 20 years in Fort Worth has a simple formula. He once gave his DJ a pencil and pad, told him to never play a song that didn’t put someone on the dance floor, and to write down the songs that put the most dancers on the floor.
Too many bands play what they like, not what the patrons want to hear. If you book bands that way for two months, it will take two years to get the business back.
Here are the three commandments club owners should use in hiring bands:
1. Hire bands that make music that make you want to dance.
2. No more than two songs over a minute and a half in length each night. Some bands play five eight-minute songs and then take a break, which brings me to:
3. No 25- and 30-minute breaks between sets.
I’ve followed these rules for more than eight years, and most owners appreciate it. Everyone enjoys good music and a lot of it. Good blues is alive and well.
Landell J. Pugh
Fort Worth
