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Bobby Koefer, steel guitar wizard, RIP
Steel guitarist Bobby Koefer, one of the last surviving members of the Texas Playboys who recorded and toured with Bob Wills, has died at the age of 95. Here is Bobby's obituary, written by western swing historian Buddy McPeters for publication here at BatesLine: John Robert 'Bobby' Koefer, passed away...
Memorial Day weekend 1973: Saturday night in Tulsa
For fun, I decided to look up the local newspaper from 50 years ago this weekend. I was particularly curious to see what kind of live entertainment was on offer, and what people were watching on TV. (News clips below are from newspapers.com. Click the image to see the original...
An open letter to Tulsa visitors on the centennial of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
To journalists, photographers, and visitors, pilgrims this week of the centennial of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: Welcome to Tulsa. Some context may help you interpret what you see and hear this week.
Bob Gregory, Oklahoma broadcaster and historian, RIP
Legendary Tulsa television broadcaster Bob Gregory died earlier this month, November 6, 2019, at the age of 88. As Vice President for News and Special Projects at KTUL, Gregory wrote, directed, and hosted the popular series of "Oil in Oklahoma" television programs, which aired throughout the 1970s and into the...
Paul Harvey remembers Tulsa and his neighborhood
In March 1994, national radio commentator Paul Harvey, whose thrice-daily broadcasts were carried on over 1400 stations nationwide on the ABC radio network, reaching an audience in the tens of millions, returned to Tulsa to speak at a Salvation Army benefit. After his visit, he spoke on the air about...
Apollo 11 50th anniversary: Video, audio, and documents from 1969 and today
For folks of my age and older, watching men walk on the moon for the first time was an unforgettable thrill. Happily, through the wonders of the internet, there are many ways you can relive that experience and share it with the Gen Xers and later generations that missed...
Greenwood Gap Theory: Tulsa's Green Book places weren't destroyed in 1921
A story published Monday by public radio station KGOU is another prime specimen of the cognitive dissonance that is the "Greenwood Gap Theory" -- the misconception that Tulsa's African-American neighborhood was never rebuilt after what is commonly known as the 1921 Race Riot (but more accurately described as a massacre)....
Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi
We saw the new Star Wars movie last night. I'm glad we went, mainly because we finally found out a few answers to the questions raised by Episode VII. The Last Jedi had its exciting moments, a few funny moments, but overall, I found it unsatisfying. Like many Tulsans my...
Smithsonian Channel mangles Greenwood history
There was some excitement among Tulsa history buffs when it was learned that the Smithsonian Channel would be showing colorized clips from home movies showing Greenwood, Tulsa's historic African-American district, as it was in the mid-to-late1920s. Instead we have another instance of the erroneous notion I call the "Greenwood...
Rick Steves needs to tour his own country "through the back door"
For many Americans, Rick Steves is the guru of European travel, specifically of an approach to travel he calls "through the back door" -- skipping the high-priced hotels, chain restaurants, and tourist traps which insulate you in an American bubble, and instead encountering authentic local culture, staying at B&Bs, hostels,...
Evangelical virtue signaling on racism
Derryck Green, an African-American writer currently pursuing his doctorate in theology and ministry, has written several recent columns at JuicyEcumenism critical of the way certain evangelical groups are falling all over themselves to embrace #BlackLivesMatter. Back in December, Green wrote that Intervarsity had been "seduced by compartmentalized justice" when it...
Silent films and pipe organs this Saturday and next Friday
Tulsans will have two chances this month to sample the movie-going experience as it was almost a century ago, thanks to the Sooner State Chapter of the American Theatre Organ Society. This coming Saturday, January 9, 2016, at 11 a.m., Circle Cinema will screen the 1927 film It, starring Clara...
Tulsa, April 18, 1914: Majestic Theater reopens
On this day 100 years ago, Tulsa's "new" Majestic Theater opened its doors to the public. The grand opening was announced with an ad and story on page 5 of the previous day's Tulsa Daily World: WELCOME Majestic Theatre OPENS TOMORROW---SATURDAY---APRIL 18 SHOWING DAILY. HIGH CLASS MOTION PICTURES. Music by...
American distinctive: Private organizations and civil society
Leadership Tulsa executive director Wendy Thomas, writing on Facebook back in late May 2013: Hannibal B. Johnson and I got to visit with a delegation of non profit directors and consultants from Belarus yesterday sponsored by the Tulsa Global Alliance. One of them posed and interesting question. He said they...
Films of Greenwood post-riot and Oklahoma's African-American communities in the 1920s
100 block of N. Greenwood Ave., Tulsa, west side looking south toward Archer, 1924 or 1925, just three years or so after this block was destroyed in the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. It is an exciting thing to see Greenwood alive as it was in its heyday. The...
Busy week in Tulsa: Music, politics, movies, and more
I'm really not trying to encroach on Tasha Does Tulsa's territory -- she has the definitive guide to Tulsa area pumpkin patches, by the way -- but there are so many interesting things to do in and around Tulsa this week that I decided to put a bunch of events...
Tulsa Christmas parade from the 1940s
Jack Frank, maker of many wonderful films about Tulsa history, has posted home movie footage of a Christmas parade in downtown Tulsa, from sometime in the late 1940s. The vantage point is on the east side of Main Street, a hundred feet or so south of 6th Street, looking west...
<em>The Cartel, The Lottery, Waiting for "Superman"</em> available online
Three recent documentaries critical of K-12 education in America are now available for online viewing. Each film dramatizes the failures of public education, the efforts by lower-income parents to secure a better education for their children, and the ways that bureaucracy and entrenched interest groups work to thwart those efforts....
Greenwood since the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
The story of Tulsa's Greenwood District did not end in 1921.
Churchill, water at Circle Cinema
Winston Churchill: Walking with Destiny, a documentary on the life and legacy of the greatest man of the 20th Century, continues its run at Circle Cinema in Tulsa's Whittier Square through April 21, 2011. The newest production from the Moriah Films Division of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, focuses on the...
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