Thursday, October 23, 2025

649. Leah Payne

649. This week we chat with Leah Payne about her book, God Gave Rock and Roll To You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music. We focus especially on the role of the family of Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Mickey Gilley in the history of Rock and Roll. Her book chronicles the confluence of evangelical, Pentecostal, and charismatic networks through the lens of Contemporary Christian Music, or CCM. The book indexes American evangelicalism’s political and social aspirations as seen through its cultural intermediaries: the youth group leaders, non-profit groups, industry executives, and parents who contributed to what was morally permissible and economically profitable in CCM. 
  1. Now available: Liberty in Louisiana: A Comedy. The oldest play about Louisiana, author James Workman wrote it as a celebration of the Louisiana Purchase. Now it is back in print for the first time in 221 years. Order your copy today!
  2. This week in the Louisiana Anthology. H. P. Lovecraft. "The Call of Cthulhu." "In a natural glade of the swamp stood a grassy island of perhaps an acre’s extent, clear of trees and tolerably dry. On this now leaped and twisted a more indescribable horde of human abnormality than any but a Sime or an Angarola could paint. Void of clothing, this hybrid spawn were braying, bellowing, and writhing about a monstrous ring-shaped bonfire; in the centre of which, revealed by occasional rifts in the curtain of flame, stood a great granite monolith some eight feet in height; on top of which, incongruous in its diminutiveness, rested the noxious carven statuette."
  3. This week in Louisiana history. October 25, 1769. Bloody" O'Reilly executes rebels who ousted Ulloa to hang but no hangman, they were shot instead.
  4. This week in New Orleans history. Earl Cyril Palmer born in New Orleans and raised in the Tremé (October 25, 1924 – September 19, 2008) was an American rock & roll and rhythm and blues drummer, and member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Palmer played on many recording sessions, including Little Richard's first several albums and Tom Waits' 1978 album Blue Valentine. playing on New Orleans recording sessions, including Fats Domino's "The Fat Man", "I'm Walkin" (and all the rest of Domino's hits), "Tipitina" by Professor Longhair, "Tutti Frutti" by Little Richard (and most of Richard's hits), "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" by Lloyd Price, and "I Hear You Knockin'" by Smiley Lewis.
  5. This week in Louisiana.
    Halloween in New Orleans
    Website
        If you thought that Halloween was just a night for the kids to go trick or treating with their parents in tow, you need to think again. Here in New Orleans, like everything else, it’s different.
        Halloween, Crescent City-style, is second only to Mardi Gras for wild and crazy, dressing-up-in-costume kind of fun and it isn’t just for kids, either. Adults get to join the fun and craziness as well. In fact, there are a few events that are much more fun for the grown-ups than for the little ones! You can go on our haunted tours, visit our voodoo shops, our costume shops, our street parties, and we even have events for the kids!
  6. Postcards from Louisiana. Delfeyo Marsalis at Snug Harbor.
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