Jack Neely

Last year, the University of Tennessee chose not to level Clarence Brown Theatre, as planned. Still in the UT bulldozer’s long-range sights is the Carousel Theatre, which sits separately, like Clarence Brown’s big garden shed.

Central Street is Knoxville’s defining axis. All addresses in the county from here to Farragut are numbered from it. Few blocks suggest its role as the spine of a metropolitan county of more than 400,000 people. It seems altogether too ...

Knoxville is the birthplace of Atlantic Records' first big star, who was one of the founders of rock ’n’ roll. Granville McGhee’s name is not as recognizable as that of Chuck Berry or Bo Diddley or Howlin’ Wolf—but as Stick ...

Rocky Wynder’s long career linked the era of tent vaudeville and black speakeasies to a time of upscale-restaurant jazz nights in a reborn downtown. He began his career before rock ’n’ roll, and dabbled with R&B, but always favored jazz, ...

I’ve been enjoying Bill Landry’s book, Appalachian Tales & Heartland Adventures. It chronicles the back story of the long-running WBIR series of anecdotal stories about backwoods crafts, sports, cuisine. I have only one complaint about the book. Landry spells possum ...

Folks have been asking me what I think of Gloria Ray, and especially whether she earns her annual compensation, which is slightly larger than that of the president of the United States.

You can’t help but notice that the Bearden area has gotten a little flatter in recent months. Near Kroger and Starbucks, an old motel building vanished. Its name, Biltmore Court, has an odd connection to some painted words barely visible ...

The announcement that a major development involving the Florida-based Publix grocery chain and international retail Godzilla Walmart would be lumbering toward central Knoxville was startling news in itself. But this 211,000-square-foot development is proposed for the foot of Cumberland Avenue, ...

In history, no city’s judged just by how amused and trendy and well-fed its citizens are. If people of the future are at all interested in learning about the Knoxville of 2012, well, it probably won’t be for the tonnage ...

Hudson K may intimidate the weak. It’s not just that Christina Horn is an especially talented vocalist, pianist, and songwriter. Standing at her keyboards, she wields her ice-blonde persona like a stiletto, as if maybe she’d kill you if doing ...

Knoxville is starting the new year with a new mayor, so we thought we’d ask Madeline Rogero what she has planned for the first year of her administration. Jack Neely chats with her about south-side development, city-county consolidation, and—shhhh!—Agenda 21.

Here are Mayor Rogero’s off-the-cuff thoughts on some perennial questions facing Knoxville.

For our first issue of the year, we asked a random sampling of Knoxville personalities a timely question: Do you have any predictions for Knoxville in 2012?

Everything sounds better if you rhyme it.

Christmas’ days of bloody mayhem, of drunken riots and fiery explosions and destructive pranks, were mostly behind it. The Knoxville Christmas was settling down a little. Since the closing of the saloons four years ago, Christmas had become almost eerily ...

Eulogies are easier to write when they’re about people you’ve met only once or twice. A limited perspective focuses the mind, challenges you to find out what you can discern from that glimpse. With someone you’ve seen and talked to ...

Chances are only a few Knoxvillians were even awake the next morning when 92 miners reported for work before dawn to begin working with picks and mules at the Knoxville Iron Company’s Cross Mountain Mine, about 30 miles northwest of ...

Maybe you’ve never heard of Johnson University. Until early this year, it went by the name Johnson Bible College. Even by that name, it’s a mystery to most Knoxvillians, though it’s been right here for the last 118 years. It’s ...

Some sort of faith-based education is available in every part of the country, but something makes Johnson University distinctive: Its campus.

Johnson University exists in a border territory between old mainline churches, which require ministers to acquire graduate degrees from seminaries, and some modern evangelical churches that don’t require much formal education at all.

The capacity crowd that turned out for the TEDx lecture night at the Square Room a couple of weeks ago was a small revelation to me. The idea that people would buy tickets to hear ideas is not a new ...

My first free morning after hearing about the angel’s broken arm, I strolled to the northern end of Gay Street, and Old Gray Cemetery. It’s a gorgeous place in the morning sun, its many oaks in full color.

The list of things that have never happened in Knoxville isn’t long, but last Wednesday evening’s event at the Square Room may have been one: in a nightclub setting, more than four hours of lectures on a liberal variety of ...

Some cynics suspect the mostly upscale Bearden area has been quietly trying to shake off its mental-hospital stigma for years, and is finally succeeding. But we should remember that the institution about to close has long been central to the ...

Next Wednesday, the Downtown Design Review Board will be considering St. John’s Episcopal’s proposal to demolish two old brick buildings on Walnut Street, across from the library. At the initial hearing, last month, a church leader cited the expense of ...

Jim Dykes was, 20-plus year ago, the most read, most quoted, most feared newspaper columnist in East Tennessee. His column was called “Without a Paddle,” a name perfect for a Dykes effort in part because of the implied obscenity. Dykes ...

The fact that Phil Pollard was mortal might have seemed impossible, a week ago: Few people ever seemed quite so spontaneously, joyfully, arrogantly, irrevocably alive as Phil.

You may get the impression that Knoxville is the stealth drone of cities, off the American radar. Hardly any city of its age and metropolitan size is so little recognized by name abroad.

Locally, Minvilla Manor has long been an object of contempt, resentment, and ridicule—the city condemned the residential eyesore, long known as the Fifth Avenue Motel, in 2002, and it hasn’t been long since folks were saying it should just be ...

It was a little startling when a demolition application came in for a couple of nice early 1920s brick buildings on Walnut Street, across from the library. It’s not a famous block, maybe, but it’s one of the last little ...

When I heard there was a pottery exhibit at the History Center, I wasn’t tempted away from my daily routines. But attorney Charles Fels, who’s been doing some research into one of the Civil War’s most dramatic episodes, told me ...

A CSPAN crew was in town last week, shooting segments on East Tennessee history and literature.

William Johnson was fonder of Andrew Johnson than most white people were, and had interesting memories of the White House. When President Roosevelt visited Knoxville and paraded down Gay Street in 1936, the old man hoped for a chance to ...

You wouldn’t think that this would necessarily be the best time to be investing in lots of real estate, but downtown developer David Dewhirst hasn’t slowed his pace with the recession. With plans to redevelop the White Lily Flour factory, ...

With the help of latter-day Knoxville photographer David Luttrell, and photographs borrowed from the Library of Congress, we thought we’d have a look at two Knoxvilles: the city 100 years ago, and the city today.

Until last month, I’d assumed the worst-case scenario for Admiral David Glasgow Farragut’s embattled birthplace would be that the large stone marker would be off-limits to anyone but the few affluent property owners who bought property there. Now the marker’s ...

Since early this year, attendees to Knoxville Symphony Orchestra events have been doing double- and triple-takes in the Tennessee Theatre when one particularly distinguished-looking gray-haired gentleman walks by in the lobby, often alone.

What does it mean, when a major institution of healing qualifies as “all Vol”? Should we take care with what sort of signifying apparel we wear to the ER? Do they ever hire personnel who attended enemy colleges? Does that ...

After a week of convalescence, the aftermath of a smashed forearm I have less and less interest in thinking about, I have learned a lot about myself, especially discovering the inner self who’s a connoisseur of crap TV.

Last Thursday morning, I took a couple of slurps of coffee and set out to ride my bicycle to work. There was nothing in the least remarkable about that. It was maybe the 2,700th time I’ve started a morning that ...

I hate to get things wrong, and I especially hate reporting that living people are dead. It’s worse when in fact they’re active citizens, and not even feeling poorly.

Word is leaking out that Miller is ending his 20-year adventure as a Knoxville resident.

Hosted by world-music insider and ethnomusicologist Jacob Edgar, Music Voyager is a trendy travel show on PBS’s Create TV network that explores places around the globe by way of their local music. Recent episodes have found Edgar and his crew ...

This week Metro Pulse celebrates its 20th anniversary. We celebrate those 20 years sincerely, but we should offer this disclaimer: None of us on staff now were there at the very beginning.

Congressman Crockett flirted with a run for the presidency, himself, but finally he and several other former Jacksonians concluded America’s best chance to avoid a sort of Napoleonic succession lay in the person of a Knoxville man, Sen. Hugh Lawson ...

I hear the Tennessee Digital Newspaper Project is rolling out its project to digitize many of the state’s important newspapers in such a way that we can access them, and even look up things by key word, from our computers ...

Marie Wilson lives in a small apartment in Powell. She gets around pretty well for a lady going on 86, and some women half a century younger might envy her luminescent blue eyes. They might also envy her memories of ...

Everybody agrees that Knoxville sure seems like a much bigger city than it was in 1980, in terms of the variety of attractions and events it offers, as well as its general urban hubbub. But technically, at least in terms ...

Cormac McCarthy, Quentin Tarantino, Johnny Knoxville: They’re all three associated with bizarre, extreme, profane, often comical violence. All three are former Knoxvillians.

Knox County’s trying something new next month when it opens its new STEM high school. Enabled by a $3 million contribution from the state or Tennessee, it’s the first high school downtown in 60 years, located in the 1905 L&N ...