The tragedy is that talented people aren't more often good people as well - there seems to be an inverse relationship between the two virtues. The obstacles of power, fame or plain sex, drugs and rock'n'roll provide challenge enough for an artist to hold onto even a thread of moral fibre.

Across the highways from Clarksdale down to New Orleans, Paul Trynka tracked the true bluesmen. On

Ben Thompson meets Isaac Hayes, the great Stax singer/songwriter

You've heard of the Philly sound, the sound of Nashville ... Pop is inextricably linked with the city. Yes, even British cities. Nick Coleman presents a guide to the music of urban Britain

Saul Bellow writes in Herzog that there are people in New York so hungry for human contact that they will phone the police station at three in the morning and beg to be arrested.

UNLIKE their British counterparts, who are often considered parochial, American regional novelists are regularly acclaimed for using tiny locales to illuminate grand truths. Peter Taylor, whose imagination has, in the course of a long literary career, scarcely left the boundaries of a single US state, offers a fine example of this tendency. In The Tennessee Country - an expanded version of the story 'Cousin Aubrey' which appeared in his last collection, The Oracle At Stoneleigh Court - is the quintessence of his oblique, discriminating and increasingly fabulous vision of the Southern American past.

THE college friend of this book's narrator, Nathan Longfort, is one Robin Maury. One day after class, he compliments the 'all but illiterate' art history lecturer, who 'was allegedly a painter himself': ' 'I like the picture, sir. I think it has quite meretricious detail]' '

MOST people would have settled for a set of commemorative postage stamps, a porcelain music box that plays 'Blue Suede Shoes', or a replica gold disc. Richer obsessives could battle it out in the auction rooms for his rhinestone stage suit, his pink Cadillac, or the guitar he used to record 'That's All Right Mama' in 1954.

IT IS 7.30pm and the game has been in progress for 20 minutes. Cars are still backed up on the road leading to the Hoover Met stadium, their headlights a twinkling stream in the gathering Southern night. On a silky summer evening, minor league baseball is a sensual experience, a journey to the very soul of America's national sport.

Lloyd Lindroth, harpist, died Nashville, Tennessee 9 June, aged 63. 'The Liberace of the harp'.

THE FUNERAL firm that buried rock 'n' roll king Elvis Presley and several US presidents has become embroiled in a traditional British takeover battle, writes David Hellier.

THE FIRST transatlantic flight to Nashville took off from Gatwick yesterday. American Airlines has begun daily services to the Tennessee state capital. Lowest fare if booked direct is pounds 477 return, but Trailfinders' price (071-937 5400) is pounds 315.

A moment's silence, please, for the light-brown Smartie. Conceived in 1937 - along with red, yellow, orange, green, mauve, pink and dark-brown ones - it was last seen in 1989, when the German-made blue Smartie replaced it. France, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands had already submitted to the bright- blue invader when Nestle Rowntree adopted it 'temporarily' in the UK in celebration of the brand's 50th anniversary. It outshone the brown, ousting it within two years.

EVERYONE is standing in line: from blue- rinsed old ladies to six-year-old children. The queue goes twice round the building. There's such a swarm, in fact, that John Inman has to go in the back door. Inside, his hand swells from signing autographs and his voice starts to go. This is springtime in Tennessee, and Memphis has turned out to meet Britain's most popular export since Benny Hill: Mr Humphries from Are You Being Served?.