STUDS TERKEL: WHERE CULTURE MEETS POLITICS

He's the blackest white man you'll ever encounter: Studs Terkel, at 93, speaking this morning about his memories of Mahalia Jackson, about the difference between spirituals and gospel songs, about interviewing Louis Armstrong and listening to his favorite jazz tune, Armstrong's gorgeous recording of "West End Blues" (listen to it yourself), made with Earl Hines on piano, about James Baldwin and what Bessie Smith meant to him.

Studs Terkel
Terkel, left, who underwent open heart surgery six weeks ago, showed up at the downtown Manhattan firehouse that serves as Democracy Now!'s broadcast studio and put the broadest smile on DN anchor Amy Goodman's face that we've ever seen. Besides his cultural commentary, we loved his political remarks. In fact, there's no way to separate them. Of "the clown," his term for the Bullshitter-in-Chief, he says: "This guy is a burlesque of Ronald Reagan. He makes Reagan sound like Abraham Lincoln."

Studs Terkel's latest book As soon as Goodman's interview with this national treasure is posted, we'll put up the link. In the meantime, listen to this (give it time to download) for the pleasure of fabulous talk from a fabulous character who happens to be real. It's a WFMT Chicago radio interview with Terkel. And if you really want to explore, listen to this radio drama: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, featuring Terkel and the novelist Nelson Algren -- another black man who happened to be born white -- from way back in 1960.

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

Postscript: It's up. Here he is this morning being interviewed on Democracy Now! (Full disclosure: Studs is a friend.)

October 5, 2005 9:40 AM |

Categories:

Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
SAMMY'S WHITE DREAMS 
Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to "30 years in Biloxi," stripping him of "his Jewish star" and "his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor." Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish -- indeed his lifelong effort -- to be white.
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This page contains a single entry by Straight Up | published on October 5, 2005 9:40 AM.

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