Performing Arts / Radio Books

Ninety-three years old at this book's publication, Chicago writer and broadcaster Studs Terkel is perhaps the preeminent American compiler of oral histories of the 20th century. With his innately humane, gently probing curiosity, he has explored the hopes and dreams of working people, soldiers, and actors in books about working, race, the Second World War, theater, and the movies. Here, he collects four decades' worth of interviews with some of the giants of 20th century music who have been featured guests on his long-running Chicago radio show. The list of personalities is astonishingly wide-ranging and eclectic. Here, we find conductor Leonard Bernstein in the company of Louis Armstrong and his formidably talented wife, Lil; Appalachian folk singer Jean Ritchie; a young Bob Dylan; the father of modern gospel music, Thomas A. Dorsey; and legendary impresario John Hammond, Sr.--each reflecting engrossingly on his or her successes, frustrations, dreams, and ambitions. Whether interviewing a loquacious Janis Joplin, glimpsed backstage at Chicago's historic Aragon ballroom in 1968, or lieder singer Lotte Lehmann at the end of her long and distinguished career, Terkel remains palpably fascinated by each of his subjects, conveying incisive character studies in a masterly display of subtle interrogation.

This errant, fluid, seemingly chaotic sampling of the airwaves is held together by a determined act of searching for America. For a single year Sara Vowell recorded her thoughts and impressions as a conscientious explorer in the one medium that might be seen as the great unifier in a land without unity. She demonstrates that the voices we hear and the randomness that persists collectively equal what we understand as the frantic, nervous, rich, and perishable U.S.A.

A book and compact disc set on the most sensational moments of the century, from the Hindenburg disaster to the death of Princess Diana.

For three years in the 1990s, Sue Carpenter's Los Angeles apartment was the headquarters for an indie-rock radio station. Then it was shut down by the FCC--but not before Carpenter managed to find and feature the likes of Jane's Addiction and Beck. Her memoir recounts those years in a scenario complete with druggy musicians, a tech-support nerd, and lots of leather.

In this memoir, the United States' first black disk jockey, Hal Jackson, relives his six decades in African-American radio, from 1939, when he starred in his first radio show, "The Bronze Review," up until his induction into the Broadcast Hall of Fame. In doing so, he shares colorful anecdotes about many famous personalities and discusses the race-related obstacles that he triumphed over.