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The Pinkerton National Detective Agency, usually shortened to the Pinkertons, is a private U.S. security guard and detective agency established by Allan Pinkerton in 1850. Pinkerton became famous when he claimed to have foiled a plot to assassinate president-elect Abraham Lincoln, who later hired Pinkerton agents for his personal security during the Civil War.

In the 1850s, Allan Pinkerton met Chicago attorney Edward Rucker in a local Masonic Hall and formed the North-Western Police Agency, later known as the Pinkerton Agency.

Historian Frank Morn writes: "By the mid-1850s a few businessmen saw the need for greater control over their employees; their solution was to sponsor a private detective system. In February 1855, Allan Pinkerton, after consulting with six midwestern railroads, created such an agency in Chicago."

History Of The Pinkerton Agency - The First Private Eye

Bierce’s ghost stories are not among the best-written but they are unusual and distinctly ‘modern’ in their definition of what constitutes a ‘ghost’. They enjoy a popularity today that eluded them during Bierce’s lifetime, perhaps because the late twentieth century reader is more prepared to accept his psychological approach to the genre. The stories resist neat classification, no conclusions are offered. Whatever the true nature of the entity in The Damned Thing, Bierce offers no tidy answer. One of the protagonists offers his theory but it is no more than that and you are left with the feeling that perhaps the entity wanders the earth to this day and that Bierce merely recorded one episode of its existence.

It's hard not to feel ambivalent about The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams. Yes, it does give us an opportunity to hear previously unreleased lyrics by one of the greatest songwriters country music has produced. But Williams didn't write the music that accompanies his words, and as sincere as these performers are, none of the words are framed the way Williams would have, had he completed the songwriting process. Would Hank, for example, have set "The Love That Faded" to a waltz beat, as Bob Dylan has done with it? I like Dylan's performance, the way I like so many of his latter-day, gargling-with-Drano vocal turns. Dylan doesn't try to capture the sound of Hank Williams, and that's a good strategy. But so is Alan Jackson's, in "You've Been Lonesome Too," and if anything, Jackson sounds like an uncannily well-rested, well-preserved version of Hank Williams himself.

One of the greatest gifts of this project is to hear Williams at his most heartless, bitter and vengeful. The legend spent much of his career balancing songs of heartache with songs of faith. But I was thrilled to hear the dark Hank Williams presented by Vince Gill and Rodney Crowell in their stark version of a great, ruthless lyric, "I Hope You Shed a Million Tears." Instead of heartache, heartlessness — dismissals don't get much more decisive than that. Dylan was the first artist contacted to interpret this material, and the album has been released on his Egyptian Records imprint for Columbia Records. The stone-cold words in "I Hope You Shed a Million Tears" can't help but remind me of the harsh Dylan of "Like a Rolling Stone" or something from Blood on the Tracks. Similarly, Patty Loveless takes another face-slap lyric, "You're Through Fooling Me," and brings it to full crimson passion and beauty. It's interesting to see the words of one song as printed on the CD jacket of The Lost Notebooks, and to listen to where the line-breaks occur in the singing of the others. Williams usually wrote here in quatrains, each verse a direct ABAB rhyme scheme. Keeping the structure simple allowed him to speak directly yet artfully.

There's a flaw in this collection, however. Too frequently, the invited stars err on the side of caution, applying pallid, even rudimentary melodies to the lyrics, resulting in the washed-out backgrounds of songs covered by, for example, Sheryl Crow, Lucinda Williams and Jakob Dylan. Then there's Jack White's labored impersonation of the wrong Hank — he sounds more like Hank Williams III, the wobbliest member of the Williams family to trade on the great man's name. Overall, however, The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams is catnip for anyone familiar with Williams' greatest hits. A couple of these songs could have been crafted by the man himself into important additions to his canon. As it stands, we have these reverent, and sometimes inspired, interpretations of words that ring with graceful candor. [Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]

Breathing New Life Into Hank Williams' Lyrics

Eric Chilton from Wait, I Know This interviews celebrities from the retro era. Eric is from Mount Airy, NC (hometown of Andy Griffith) and it is know wonder he had to be classic TV guy. Wait, I Know This has a nice blog along with a podcast of the interviews from the Golden Era celebrities.

One recent interview of interest was not really a retro person, but Greg Bell, host of “Radio Classics” on Sirus-XM. Greg talks about the stars of radio making the jump to television. Very good show with some interesting trivia from the Golden Age of Radio.

Interview with Greg Bell on Wait, I Know This