Still more impressive is a 1999 performance from The Late Show with David Letterman with Trio, the threesome of Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt. They cover Neil Young\u2019s \u201cAfter the Gold Rush\u201d beautifully, with Parton front and center and Harris and Ronstadt supporting her in perfect harmony. <\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Other charmers includes an adorable duet with Los Lobos\u2019 David Hidalgo on Texas country singer Freddy Fender\u2019s \u201cBefore the Next Teardrop Falls,\u201d which Hidalgo posted with a note remembering how Parton could tell how nervous he was an put him at ease telling him, \u201cYou\u2019re shy and I\u2019m not.\u201d<\/p>\n There are two clips of performing for a clearly smitten Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show in the 1970s, each playful and clever, but also displaying what a fine finger picking guitarist she was. <\/a><\/p>\n And her excellent taste is also apparent in a 1988 episode from her ABC variety show Dolly in which she headed to the Crescent City for Dolly Down in New Orleans<\/a> and teamed with Allen Toussaint, Irma Thomas, and Dr. John for a delightful take on Lee Dorsey\u2019s \u201cWorkin\u2019 In a Coal Mine.\u201d <\/a><\/p>\n (Dolly also yielded the Patti LaBelle<\/a> duet on \u201cShort\u2019nin\u2019 Bread\u201d my colleague Elizabeth Wellington wrote about<\/a> this week.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n My favorite of the bunch, however, is of Parton paired with the late guitarist Doc Watson in rehearsals and on stage in 2001 at MerleFest, the North Carolina traditional music festival named after Watson\u2019s son Merle, who died in 1985. <\/p>\n Parton and Watson work up a tender \u201cThe Last Thing On My Mind,\u201d the Tom Paxton song she and Porter Wagoner recorded as their first single in 1967. She shadows Watson vocally, perfectly complementing him with her angelic voice. The furtive camera grants us the privilege to witness a private moment between a pair of legends working together for the first and only time, both now sadly gone. <\/p>\n \u2014 Dan DeLuca<\/p>\n A treasure trove of a coffee-table book celebrating Black art collectors<\/p>\n Last Saturday afternoon, I attended a book signing at Germantown<\/a>\u2019s Ubuntu Fine Art<\/a> for the coffee table book Keepers of A Movement: Black Collectors Who Preserve Art, Stories, and Legacies That Define Black Life<\/a> (Schiffer Publishing, $50) <\/p>\n The 272-page text written by art historian, archivist, and curator Myrah Brown Green <\/a>features the collections of Philadelphia-based art connoisseurs including Donnell Walker, founder of Fine Art for All Roots, a Lansdowne-based community arts organization; Vashti DuBois, founder of Germantown\u2019s Colored Girls Museum<\/a>; and the late Danny Simmons<\/a>, owner of North Philadelphia<\/a>\u2019s Rush Gallery. <\/p>\n (Simmons\u2019 widow Keia D. Carter Simmons<\/a>, associate director of Temple Contemporary Art Gallery penned the foreward.) <\/p>\n Portraits by Philadelphia artists Tara \u201cMisty Sol\u201d<\/a> Pearson, Nile Livingston<\/a>, and Chantelle Phillips are also featured. A sculpture by North Philadelphia potter and ceramicist Roberto Lugo<\/a> is pictured, too. <\/p>\n The glossy volume is a beautiful work of art overflowing with pieces that are timeless, unique, and oozing with history. Images of rare prints from African American masters including Elizabeth Catlett\u2019s 1957 portrait Nina, part of 94-year-old Brooklyn-based sculptor and collector Otto Neals<\/a>, is in the book. As is a Romare Bearden 1980 watercolor Man Seated with Red Rooster from the collection of the late Brooklyn-based attorney Patricia Scipio-Brim.<\/p>\n Six paintings from actress CCH Pounder\u2019s massive collection<\/a> are photographed in Keepers. <\/p>\n Even more important than the art of the masters are the works from lesser known artists. Often without recognition, they too document the lives, history, and experience of Black Americans and all who consider themselves apart of the diaspora.<\/p>\n Simmons\u2019 collection of comic books, toys, and superhero figurines is the kind of art I grew up with but didn\u2019t consider art until recently. New York based jewelry designer Donna Chambers\u2019 collection of 19th century Black cameos by unknown artists are a window into my obsession of the untold stories of the lives of my ancestors. Ohio-based quilter and historian Carolyn Mazloomi\u2019s social justice textiles expanded my idea of art with a purpose. <\/p>\n \u201cThis book is the appropriate response to the current conditions that are removing Black art and Black history,\u201d DuBois told audiences at the end of the show. \u201cBlack collectors have always done this work. We will continue to do this work as keepers of the movement.\u201d <\/p>\n Amen. Alleluia. <\/p>\n \u2018Keepers of A Movement: Black Collectors Who Preserve Art, Stories, and Legacies That Define Black Life\u2019 is available for purchase at The Colored Girls Museum located at 4613 Newhall Street in Germantown. <\/p>\n \u2014 Elizabeth Wellington <\/p>\n Like many other people going in and out of Philadelphia, I had gotten used to the scaffolding at 30th Street Station until this week a little sign from Amtrak urged me to look up. The scaffolding pipes were gone and a newly restored ceiling gleamed. Innumerable perfect squares with more perfect squares nested within. The sienna, gold, and cream colors look different as the light streams in from the 50-foot-tall windows and plays with the patterns and solid blocks of color along the length and breadth of the 93-feet high coffered ceiling. <\/p>\n The indented panels are clean, the ornate Art Deco chandeliers are glowing, and the pendant lights are on. Philadelphia union workers have painted, fixed, restored the station\u2019s ceiling and it\u2019s breathtaking in its Art Deco glory. A grand entry into a grand city.<\/p>\n The station, which opened in 1933, was designed by the Chicago-based firm Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White. It was part of the City Beautiful movement where, in the late 19th- and early 20th-century, governments took to designing grand and beautiful public spaces. <\/p>\n As part of a recent $550 million restoration<\/a>, there\u2019s talk of a food court and other things that\u2019ll crowd into the main concourse of this awe-inspiring building that is on the National Register of Historic Places. A small corner of the ceiling above the Dunkin\u2019 Donuts kiosk awaits renovation. Just outside, a world of steel, glass, and concrete awaits along with a news cycle of reflecting pools and algae. <\/p>\n But for the minutes we can spare, as we rush in and out of our commutes, the grandeur of the ceiling and the building do their very best to make us forget that outside world and immerse us in a bygone time when wrecking balls didn\u2019t charge through the White House but governments believed in investing in grand, beautiful spaces accessible to all.<\/p>\n \u2014 Bedatri D. Choudhury<\/p>\n A meeting of worlds with Diego Rivera and Gabriel Garcia M\u00e1rquez<\/p>\n There\u2019s a pair of stunning Diego Rivera paintings at the Art Museum from 1931 \u2014 depicting scenes of harsh, back-breaking, intensive labor in Mexico \u2014 that I can\u2019t stop thinking about.<\/p>\n The bright bluish-green stalks in Sugar Cane<\/a> tower above the workers who hunch over, some attacking the crop with curved knives while others hoist overweight bundles onto their backs for transport. In the background, a white foreman reclines on a hammock above two sleeping dogs while another overseer is on horseback with his whip at the ready. The exploitation cuts across age groups, too, as a little Indigenous girl is pictured, helping her mother harvest papaya. <\/p>\n The violence of Sugar Cane is quieter than that of its companion, on view across the narrow hallway, called Liberation of the Peon. <\/p>\n Both illustrate the devastatingly difficult reality for farmworkers forced to labor under inhumane and cruel conditions. In Liberation, four revolutionary soldiers come to the aid of a worker who was stripped naked, tied up, and ruthlessly whipped. The men gently hold the victim, placing a vividly orange sheet around his bloody body and supporting his head as they cut the ropes on his wrists. Waiting patiently behind them are gorgeous horses; they are the only figures staring out from the fresco, their tender, wide eyes captivating the viewer with probing gazes that feel fittingly accusatory. <\/p>\n These artworks feel directly in conversation with the exquisite-yet-underrated show One Hundred Years of Solitude, the Netflix adaptation of Colombian author Gabriel Garcia M\u00e1rquez\u2019s 1967 masterpiece of the same name that just released its series finale this week. It\u2019s a beautifully shot, profoundly magical, and deeply tragic story following multiple generations of the Buendia family. <\/p>\n Garcia M\u00e1rquez used his incredible writing to condemn exploitative labor practices in Colombia as one major storyline took aim at United Fruit Company, an American corporation that monopolized land and resources across Latin America to violent excess (today it\u2019s called Chiquita). One Hundred Years follows the expansion of banana plantations with horrifically abusive working conditions \u2014 concluding in the shooting of thousands of striking workers and their families, based on the Banana Massacre of 1928<\/a> \u2014 and mirrors the kind of greed-fueled brutality that Rivera captured in his paintings. <\/p>\n \u2018Sugar Cane\u2019 and \u2018Liberation of the Peon\u2019 are on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art<\/a>; \u2018One Hundred Years of Solitude\u2019 is streaming on Netflix.<\/p>\n \u2014 Rosa Cartagena<\/p>\n I’m The Inquirer’s Pop Music Critic. I cover Philly music makers of all genres, spotlighting local acts on the rise, telling stories from throughout the city’s rich music history, and reviewing big-name touring acts when they come to town. <\/p>\n![\"Cover](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/C3U4GGCHBVHCROHSCDJIHWIY5A.jpg\")
Cover of ‘Keepers of a Movement: Black Collectors Who Preserve Art, Stories, and Legacies That Define Black Life.’Elizabeth Wellington<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/DWETYDKWXFDIPL6FQ4FRQSINUA.jpg\")
The newly restored ceiling at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station. Photo taken on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026Bedatri D. Choudhury<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/HGZMQACP5RHQLOH6B3SONG2SCM.jpg\")
A sign asking people to look up and view the newly restored ceiling at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station. Photo taken on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026Bedatri D. Choudhury<\/p>\n![\""Liberation](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/WZTIESRP45EGDGNGGKAKTDFHR4.jpg\")
“Liberation of the Peon” (1931) by Diego Rivera is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.<\/p>\n![\"Dan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/https:\/\/author-service-images-prod-us-east-1.publishing.aws.arc.pub\/pmn\/87da3932-c28a-4a07-8c48-2300.jpeg\")
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