Arts & Culture | Music & Literature | Smithsonian.com

Listen to Doc Watson Picking Away at his Banjo

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 07:00:00 GMT

In 1960, the producer Ralph Rinzler paired the forgotten banjo legend Clarence Ashley with an obscure young guitarist named Arthel Watson. The recordings they made (Doc Watson and Clarence Ashley: The Original Folkways Recordings, 1960-1962) introduced “Doc” Watson’s bluegrass flatpicking to a national audience. That’s just one reason Rinzler, who died in 1994 at age 59, was recently inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame. He was also a mandolin and banjo player of note, a tireless folklorist and a promoter, co-founding the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and helping the Smithsonian Institution acquire Folkways Records. What do you think the

A Nike Shoe, Now a Part of the Smithsonian

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 07:00:00 GMT

When the Nike shoe company asked runners what they wanted from a shoe, the athletes “would describe all the characteristics a sock would offer,” says Nike designer Ben Shaffer. So last year the company knit them a shoe, the Flyknit Racer, which is now in the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City. Cooper-Hewitt textiles curator Matilda McQuaid calls it an “innovative use of knitting”: The company had to develop a polyester yarn of varying elasticity, thickness and strength, plus machines to weave it into a virtually seamless mesh upper that expands and contracts with the wearer’s foot. The manufacturing process minimizes waste, and the resu

LISTEN: Stephen Wade’s Banjo Diary

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 07:00:00 GMT

It’s hard to think of anyone who knows more about the banjo than Stephen Wade, the roots music expert who has played, studied and evangelized the instrument for five decades. He developed the one-man song-and-dance theatrical show Banjo Dancing (and performed it at the White House in 1979). On his debut CD for Smithsonian Folkways, Banjo Diary: Lessons from Tradition, released
in September, Wade passes on what he has learned from a lifetime of seeking out American music
at its roots, from his native Chicago to deep in the Appalachians.

The History of Mapmaking, Jared Diamond’s Latest and More Recent Books Reviewed

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 07:00:00 GMT

The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond The author of the prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel is no stranger to sweeping assessments. Jared Diamond’s new book, The World Until Yesterday, is a macro examination of what Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic societies (WEIRD is Diamond’s handy, oft-repeated acronym) lack compared with traditional societies. His argument is presented as a series of studies grouped around themes—child care or diet, for example. How does our infant care compare with that of the !Kung of Botswana, whose babies spend 90 percent of their first years in skin-to-skin contact with their mothers? The constant proximity, Diamond writ

Esperanza Spalding Took on Bieber, Now Takes on Jazz

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 07:00:00 GMT

Esperanza Spalding, the 28-year-old bassist, composer and vocalist, is shushing her audience - many of whom have paid good money for the privilege. During the middle of her set at Chicago’s City Winery, a trendy restaurant and music venue, she holds the microphone close and admonishes: “Sssshh.” Her virtuoso bass playing and spellbinding vocals had the audience in the palm of her hand for the first half of her show. But an extended instrumental interlude showcasing her band has been marred by talking in the crowd. “I wanna hear them,” she tells her listeners, gesturing toward her 12-piece ensemble. There’s nervous laughter from the audience. A woman nea

What Do Alicia Keys, the Boss and Wagner Have in Common?

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 07:00:00 GMT

There are two kinds of flames in Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire.” From the first measure there’s the sharp tap of the snare drum rim, with the emphasis on the third beat constantly unexpected, keeping the rhythm slightly off-kilter. Those are the sparks, while a few seconds later Springsteen’s voice—low, airy, sometimes almost mumbled—enters, smoldering in an unhurried melt. In art and music—as in science and engineering—fire has been the fuel of creativity, the very symbol of inspiration. “The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire,” the sculptor Auguste Rodin said, adding that the artist must also &l

The History of Cooking and Other New Books, Reviewed

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 06:30:00 GMT

Consider the Fork by Bee Wilson To the extent that we devote any prolonged thought to the items on our plate, it’s probably to obsess over the ingredients. Are they organic, low-fat, whole-grain, local, genetically modified, raised with loving care? But what about all the tools we use to get things down our gullet? Bee Wilson’s spirited history of kitchen implements ranges from the humble wooden spoon to the cutting-edge sous vide machine. A British food writer and historian, Wilson is learned and personal, wise and charming. “There are fork cultures and there are chopstick cultures, but all the people of the world use spoons,” she writes sternly, then admits: &ldqu

Listen to the Elizabeth Mitchell Experience

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 06:30:00 GMT

Sweet-voiced Elizabeth Mitchell, known for her acoustic children’s albums, is also a famed rocker, co-founder of the band Ida. On her latest kids’ record from Smithsonian Folkways, the just-released Blue Clouds, she lends a folk feel to songs by David Bowie, Van Morrison and other rock giants. (Her pared-down version of the Jimi Hendrix ballad “May This Be Love” brings out the lyrics’ unexpected innocence.) She also gets a little help from her husband, Daniel Littleton (guitar and vocals), and their 11-year-old daughter, Storey (vocals). “As Storey grows, we continue to grow and step out into the world more,” Mitchell says.

Who Are the Geniuses Behind Your Favorite Poems?

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 06:30:00 GMT

Soon after he moved to New York City in 1951, Frank O’Hara got a job at the reception counter of the Museum of Modern Art. Every day he’d spend his lunch hour roaming Midtown Manhattan, and every afternoon he’d write a poem about his walk, sometimes between taking tickets and selling postcards. Over the course of a decade he produced thousands of such works, many of which were included in Lunch Poems, the 1964 collection of some of his most accomplished verse. O’Hara is one of the 51 American poets featured in the National Portrait Gallery’s recently opened exhibition “Poetic Likeness,” with photographs, drawings and paintings of men and women who

Lewis Lapham’s Antidote to the Age of BuzzFeed

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 06:00:00 GMT

The counterrevolution has its embattled forward outpost on a genteel New York street called Irving Place, home to Lapham’s Quarterly. The street is named after Washington Irving, the 19th-century American author best known for creating the Headless Horseman in his short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” The cavalry charge that Lewis Lapham is now leading could be said to be one against headlessness—against the historically illiterate, heedless hordesmen of the digital revolution ignorant of our intellectual heritage; against the “Internet intellectuals” and hucksters of the purportedly utopian digital future who are decapitating our culture, trad

LISTEN: The Freewheeling, Foot-Stomping Dust Busters

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 02:50:00 GMT

For Old Man Below, an album of string-band music released in August on the Smithsonian Folkways label, the Dust Busters enlisted the assistance of John Cohen, who helped propel the 1960s folk revival. The result, says Dust Busters frontman Eli Smith, offers “a direct connection to a previous era.” With Walker Shepard and Craig Judelman, Smith enjoys layering songs with unusual instruments, such as the manjo (a mandolin with a small banjo head) and the bantar (a six-string banjo guitar). “It’s just great, fun music to put on in the car.” He spoke with the magazine’s Leah Binkovitz How did you fall in love with string band music, it's not exactly the most

Ten Famed Literary Figures Based on Real-Life People

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 03:30:00 GMT

Writers are often told to write what they know, so it should come as no surprise that many of the most famous characters in literary history are based on real people. Whether drawing inspiration from their spouses, friends and family, or finally, after decades worth of work, inserting themselves into the text, authors pull nearly every word and sentence from some element of reality, and most often, that element is people. Many characters, like Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (based on real-life beatnik Neal Cassady), come to mind as obvious, but this list is for the real-life literary characters that do not get recognized enough, and who deserve as much credit as their fi

The Next Pandemic, the End of Men, Edward Curtis and More Recent Books Worth Reading

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen Perhaps the scariest thing about the many deadly diseases explored in this vivacious new book is how little we understand. From the decaying body of a possibly Ebola-infected ape in a forest in central Africa, three bees rose up and stung a worker gathering samples. “Can the Ebola virus travel on the stinger of a bee?” asks Quammen. “No one knows.” What we do know, at least slightly better, is the havoc that Ebola, the Hendra virus, rabies and other nasty pathogens can wreak: families struck down, industries destroyed, the outbreak’s unfortunate locale forever associated with death. Qua

“Black Hands”

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Laudanum-lullabied, schnapps- Nightcapped, hemophiliac Kings and hotblooded counsellors Sit up in bed with chest pains, But when the doctors arrive, Stethoscopes out, to listen, Each unbuttoned silk nightshirt Reveals the crisp soot print of A black hand. Gavrilo Princip’s standing On the wrong street this June day With his hands in his pockets When the Archduke’s open-top Car takes a right turn and stops. Gavrilo feels a soft throb, Looks down, and sees to his shock There, at the end of his arm, A black hand. Charcoal on the cheeks is best For night raids gathering fresh Blown roses off a thorn bush. In a land that is no man’s Lies a man that is no man, His helmet glow

“Midafternoon Midsummer”

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Midafternoon midsummer when the big paddlewheels came by pushing barges or self-contained in an astonishingly plush excursion boat, people waving from the railing, Tony Heywood and I would hear them coming and exult, and run toward the bluff, the lookout place, and get them maybe finally to blow the big horn bu-buh buuuhhhhhhh for no reason. And Jim Hitt would come down from his second-floor apartment to stand with his hands on his hips to take in the glory of the 19th Century going by, Mark Twain, Wordsworth, Dostoyevsky, Stendhal, Balzac, several Civil Wars, and the deliciously profound slush-slush of the wheel digging deep for push and purchase in the stern-swing of the bending toward t

David Byrne Offers Advice on How to Enjoy Music

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 02:00:00 GMT

In his third book for the McSweeneys imprint, How Music Works—excerpted in the October 2012 issue of Smithsonian—David Byrne, the former frontman of the Talking Heads, goes out of his way to avoid writing about himself. In fact, he talks about almost everything else: How the economic bottom line of the music industry affects what we hear, how the halls built for live performers can alter the social function of music, and how the digitization of recorded sound changes our relationship to live performance. It’s a fascinating work that reveals the rock star’s flexible, curious mind. We sent Seth Colter Walls to Byrne’s Tribeca studio to talk to Byrne about his ow

How Do Our Brains Process Music?

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 02:00:00 GMT

I listen to music only at very specific times. When I go out to hear it live, most obviously. When I’m cooking or doing the dishes I put on music, and sometimes other people are present. When I’m jogging or cycling to and from work down New York’s West Side Highway bike path, or if I’m in a rented car on the rare occasions I have to drive somewhere, I listen alone. And when I’m writing and recording music, I listen to what I’m working on. But that’s it. I find music somewhat intrusive in restaurants or bars. Maybe due to my involvement with it, I feel I have to either listen intently or tune it out. Mostly I tune it out; I often don’t even n

What's the Perfect Book to Get Over a Breakup?

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 05:05:19 GMT

Alain de Botton has provided a valuable service: giving reading prescriptions for a "shelf-help" approach to everyday problems

Martin Amis Contemplates Evil

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 04:01:48 GMT

Here’s Martin Amis, one of the most celebrated and controversial novelists of our time, comfortably ensconced in an elegantly restored vintage Brooklyn brownstone, having just moved with his family from London to the United States, to the neighborhood with the endearingly Dickensian name of Cobble Hill. Many in the U.K., especially those who have read Lionel Asbo, his viciously satiric new novel that is subtitled State of England, have taken his move to America as a bitter farewell to the U.K., a land that has become, if you read the new work, dominated by sinister yobs (U.K. slang for vulgar, often violent bullies) and an ignorant, toxic tabloid- and porno-obsessed culture. Amis ha

D-Day Spies, Lost Antarctica, Eating Dirt and More Recent Books

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre When we think of D-Day we think of men splashing through the choppy waters, bombs dropped from the skies, blood-soaked sand dunes. But before the massive amphibious assault began, British intelligence was busy tricking the Germans into thinking the attack would take place elsewhere. To do this it relied on a network of double agents—spies who professed loyalty to Germany but were actually working for the British. By Macintyre’s assessment, convincing the Germans that the Allies would come ashore at Calais rather than Normandy was essential to the invasion’s success. He’s in good company. “I cann

Los Texmaniacs Release New Album

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 06:00:00 GMT

“San Antonio Rose” has been a staple of Texas music since 1940, but Los Texmaniacs add new color to that and other country-western classics on their album Texas Towns and Tex-Mex Sounds, released July 31 on Smithsonian Folkways. Los Texmaniacs, a quartet founded in 1997, are rooted in conjunto, the jalapeño-spiced polka music featuring the 12-string bajo sexto and the button accordion (a legacy of 19th-century German immigrants to the Lone Star State). On Texas Towns, however, the band tours the region’s broad musical canon and draws on classic rock, blues and Chicano dance music along the way. Even “The Eyes of Texas,” written in 1903, sounds new.

As Long As Books Have Existed, Invisibility Has Been a Dream

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Who hasn’t wanted to be invisible? The endless possibilities for sneaking around, spying, playing tricks or just disappearing when relatives come to visit have made for a recurring fantasy in pop culture from slapstick to sci-fi: 1951’s Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man to Arnold Schwarzenegger battling an invisible alien in 1987’s Predator. Farce aside, there’s a serious moral dimension to the idea of a human being no one can see. For thousands of years invisibility has embodied (disembodied?) a unique contradiction, warning us of the consequences of unaccountable power while raising our awareness of those among us who are made to feel powerless. Perhaps t

A Lincoln Novel, Native Poetry, Marie Curie and More New Recent Books

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 06:15:33 GMT

The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln: A Novel by Stephen L. Carter What if Lincoln had not been assassinated on April 14, 1865, barely a month into his second term? Would he have paid for his attempt to win the Civil War and keep the country unified? Written as a mystery (there’s a conspiracy against Lincoln afoot), this meaty novel tries to sharpen our rosy view of the 16th president. “Lincoln has become so large in our imaginations,” the author writes, “that we might easily forget how envied, mistrusted, and occasionally despised he was by the prominent abolitionists and intellectuals of his day.” So Carter arranges for Lincoln to be impeached in the Senate

An Opera for an English Olympic Hero

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 02:18:48 GMT

Big skies, big Scunthorpe skies, Where the moon hangs in the evening Shining in the big sky and the air is still As though the air is waiting for morning As though the air is waiting for something to move. Ian McMillan, Cycle Song You could say Scunthorpe is in the middle of nowhere, but it’s really not that central. Squatting over a rich bed of English limestone and iron ore, Scunthorpe is six miles from Scawby, which is 43 miles from Sleaford, which is 94 miles from Luton, which is 33 miles from London. It’s the sort of drowsy hamlet in which you can get your tank filled at the Murco station, toss back a Ruddles at the Butchers Arms or get buried in Brumby Cemetery. It was

LISTEN NOW: Wu Man Brings East and West Together in New Album

Fri, 18 May 2012 03:03:25 GMT

Wu Man’s innovative arrangements combining musical traditions of the East and West have made her one of the world’s most important musical ambassadors. Classically trained in the Pudong School, Wu’s unmatched skill on the pipa, an ancient Asian lute, has led to partnerships with Yo-Yo Ma and the Kronos Quartet, among others. In Borderlands, out on May 29 from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, Wu turns her attention to the marginalized Uyghur people in the outer reaches of her homeland. In an interview with the magazine’s Aviva Shen, Wu reflects on their common roots and the differences in musical tradition. What inspired you to make this album? I have been really in

Loving Elephants, the Meaning of Life, a London History and More Recent Books

Fri, 18 May 2012 05:43:37 GMT

Love, Life, and Elephants: An African Love Story by Daphne Sheldrick If Dame Daphne hadn’t already been honored by the Queen of England, I would personally lobby on her behalf. This extraordinary woman has saved hundreds of orphaned baby elephants left parentless by poachers, as well as baby rhinos, gazelles and other African animals. Her memoir begins with the arrival of her ancestors in Africa in the 1820s and ends with her current daily routine: Nearing 80, she’s up at dawn making sure the creatures at her Nairobi National Park nursery have made it through the night, checking in with her 50 elephantkeepers, supervising the elephants’ bottle-feedings and mud baths. As

Rosanne Cash and the Many Meanings of Love

Thu, 17 May 2012 02:34:43 GMT

If you know Rosanne Cash only as Johnny Cash’s daughter, then you haven’t had your heart shattered, your life changed, your spirits lifted—then dashed into the dust—by one of her dangerously beautiful songs. You haven’t sighed tragically over her doomy, painfully romantic “Sleeping in Paris” or had your emotional life caught up on “The Wheel” or found yourself alone in a darkened room with an attractive stranger listening to her breathtaking, heart-racing “Runaway Train.” You have missed one of the most gifted singer-songwriters of our time. Her songs are intense; they stay with you like a lifelong fever. They create worlds

The Banana King, Surviving K2, the Allure of America and More Recent Books

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 04:39:27 GMT

The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King by Rich Cohen Americans eat some 20 billion bananas a year, more than apples and oranges combined. But it wasn’t always so—at the end of the 19th century, few people in the United States had ever seen a banana, much less tasted one. The once exotic fruit owes its ubiquity to one man, Samuel Zemurray—Sam the “Banana Man,” a Russian immigrant to New Orleans who gambled on the freckled bananas other companies discarded, getting them to market before they turned to mush. He built a mini-empire of his own, then merged with the industry juggernaut, United Fruit. In 1933, he engineered a

Pete Seeger: Where Have All the Protest Songs Gone?

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 06:00:00 GMT

In March of 1960, at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, a campus radio station recorded a Pete Seeger concert. The eight reel-to-reel tapes made that night have now been recast into a 2-CD set, due out April 17 from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. In The Complete Bowdoin College Concert 1960, the first-ever complete release of one of his community concerts, Seeger performs early versions of songs that would, in just a few years, captivate the entire nation, including anti-war ballad “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” Pete Seeger reflects on his legacy in a discussion with the magazine’s Aviva Shen. Listen to an exclusive live stream of The Complete Bowdoin College Co

Five New Books That Will Rock You Like a Hurricane

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:00:00 GMT

I love music, but I’m essentially a word person, and over the years, I’ve found I’m much more likely to stray into a bookstore in the evenings than a bar or concert venue. Still, there’s nothing more enlivening than a raw tale of rock ’n’ roll. Among the offerings on tap this spring: A Natural Woman by Carole King (Grand Central, April), Honky Tonk Girl: My Life In Lyrics by Loretta Lynn (Knopf, April), Jimi Hendrix: A Brother’s Story by Leon Hendrix (St. Martin’s/Dunne, April), and My Cross to Bear by Greg Allman (Morrow, May). The ’70s, it appears, are having a major moment. But before the new books go on tour, it’s worth recall

A James Brown Biography and Other Must-Read Books

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:00:00 GMT

The One: The Life and Music of James Brown RJ Smith Gotham Books In the early 1970s, James Brown typically performed 335 days a year; each month, he gave away 5,000 autographs and 1,000 pairs of cuff links, and went through 80 pairs of shoes.When he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986 with the inaugural class—Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Ray Charles and others—he was the only one with a new hit song at the time, “Living in America.” His work ethic was prodigious, his longevity almost unparalleled, but the essence of his talent more mysterious. The talk show host David Frost asked Brown what soul was. “The truth,” he replied. But

The Essentials: Charles Dickens

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:00:00 GMT

One of the most-read authors of the Victorian era, Charles Dickens wrote over a dozen novels in his career, as well as short stories, plays and nonfiction. He is probably best known for his memorable cast of characters, including Ebenezer Scrooge, Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. Becoming Dickens, a biography released in 2011 in time for the 200th anniversary of his birth, chronicles the writer’s meteoric rise from relative obscurity as a journalist to one of England’s most adored novelists. Here, the book’s author, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, recommends five novels by Dickens and five additional books that offer insight into the writer and his work. The Pickwick Paper

Dickens' Secret Affair

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:00:00 GMT

In 1953, when future biographer Claire Tomalin was studying English literature at Cambridge, she came across intriguing references to a figure named Ellen “Nelly” Ternan, a stage actress of minor reputation. Edmund Wilson’s essay about Charles Dickens, “The Two Scrooges,” and Edgar Johnson’s distinguished two-volume biography, Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph, “both mentioned this girl hanging about [the author], and they were both scathing about her,” Tomalin recalls, sipping tea at a café near her home in Petersham, Surrey. “She was [described as] this mercenary, who made Dickens’ kids unhappy, but to whom he seem

Going Mad for Charles Dickens

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:00:00 GMT

In an abandoned Gillette razor factory in Isleworth, not far from Heathrow Airport, the British film director Mike Newell wades ankle-deep through mud. The ooze splatters everybody: the 100 or so extras in Victorian costume, the movie’s lead characters, the lighting engineers perched in cranes above the set. Newell is ten days into shooting the latest adaptation of Great Expectations, widely regarded as the most complex and magisterial of Charles Dickens’ works. To create a replica of West London’s Smithfield Market, circa 1820, the set-design team sloshed water across the factory floor—which had been jackhammered down to dirt during a now-defunct redevelopment proj

Joe Temperley’s Ageless Sax

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 05:08:09 GMT

Slinking in through the heavy doors of a big rehearsal space just off New York’s Columbus Circle, I’m filled with awed glee. Nothing compares to watching a great jazz band at work—especially when Wynton Marsalis, Music Director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO), is in the room. The 15 band members sit on cushioned chairs, arranged in rows on a broad maple floor: saxes in front, trombones in the middle, trumpets (including Marsalis) in back. Drums, an acoustic bass and grand piano stand to the side. Three days before their fall tour begins, the JLCO is practicing a multilayered piece called Inferno. It was written by musician Sherman Irby, who’s also co

The Top 10 Books Lost to Time

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 05:28:43 GMT

1. Homer’s Margites Before the Iliad and the Odyssey, there was the Margites. Little is known about the plot of the comedic epic poem—Homer’s first work—written around 700 B.C. But a few surviving lines, woven into other works, describe the poem’s foolish hero, Margites. “He knew many things, but all badly” (from Plato’s Alcibiades). “The gods taught him neither to dig nor to plough, nor any other skill; he failed in every craft” (from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics). It is unfortunate that no copy of Margites exists because Aristotle held it in high acclaim. In his On the Art of Poetry, he wrote, “[Homer] was the f

Black Like Me, 50 Years Later

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Late in 1959, on a sidewalk in New Orleans, a shoe-shine man suffered a sense of déjà vu. He was certain he’d shined these shoes before, and for a man about as tall and broad-shouldered. But that man had been white. This man was brown-skinned. Rag in hand, the shoeshine man said nothing until the hulking man spoke. “Is there something familiar about these shoes?” “Yeah, I been shining some for a white man—” “A fellow named Griffin?” “Yeah. Do you know him?” “I am him.” John Howard Griffin had embarked on a journey unlike any other. Many black authors had written about the hardship of living in the J

The Cowboy in Country Music

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 05:56:12 GMT

Don Cusic’s new book, The Cowboy in Country Music: An Historical Survey with Artist Profiles (McFarland), explores how the cowboy became an American pop culture icon and the face of country music. Cusic is a music historian and professor of music business at Belmont University in Nashville. His book profiles artists who have embraced and promoted ideas about cowboys and the American West, including performers of western music, which he identifies as an offshoot of country music. Most of the profiles – from Gene Autry to George Strait – were first published in the magazine The Western Way, for which Cusic is editor. I talked with Cusic about how performers have fashioned

Ken Kesey’s Pranksters Take to the Big Screen

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 09:49:23 GMT

Before there was a Summer of Love, before the phrase “Turn on, tune in, drop out” became a counterculture rallying cry, before Easy Rider and the Grateful Dead, Ken Kesey set out on a journey to free America from a society he believed had grown intolerant and fearful. The success of his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, whose anti-hero Randle McMurphy rebelled against conformity, gave Kesey the financial freedom to test his theories in public. In 1963, the author was in New York attending rehearsals of a Broadway adaptation of Cuckoo’s Nest when he came up with the idea of leading a cross-country bus trip from California to the world’s fair, which would

Levon Helm’s Rocking Rambles

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 07:28:50 GMT

Editor's Note: Levon Helm died on Thursday, April 19, 2012 in New York City after losing his battle with cancer. He was 71 years old and best known as the drummer of the legendary rock group the Band. We examined Helm's extraordinary career and legacy in July 2011. Deep in the Catskill woods the church of groove has blessed this Saturday night. Beneath vaulted ceilings the horns blow, the women sing, the piano keys move the hammers and the drummer shakes his shoulders with the downbeat. A guest unrecognizable in denim, bandanas and sunglasses is introduced as Conan O’Brien’s bandleader, Jimmy Vivino. He addresses the assembled crowd of 200. “I got my musical educatio

How E.B. White Wove Charlotte’s Web

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 03:51:47 GMT

Not long before E.B. White started writing his classic children’s story Charlotte’s Web about a spider called Charlotte and a pig named Wilbur, he had a porcine encounter that seems to have deeply affected him. In a 1947 essay for the Atlantic Monthly, he describes several days and nights spent with an ailing pig—one he had originally intended to butcher. “[The pig’s] suffering soon became the embodiment of all earthly wretchedness,” White wrote. The animal died, but had he recovered it is very doubtful that White would have had the heart to carry out his intentions. “The loss we felt was not the loss of ham but the loss of pig,” he wrote in

The Top 10 Moments of Bob Dylan’s Career

Fri, 20 May 2011 05:40:16 GMT

"I'm a firm believer in the longer you live, the better you get." - Bob Dylan Dylan said that in 1968, when he was 27. He turns 70 this month, as enigmatic as ever, a traveling troubadour on a self-proclaimed Never Ending Tour that began in 1988 and saw him playing 102 shows last year. He has been the young protest singer claiming he’s unconcerned with politics, the confessional songwriter who has offered as many myths as truths about his personal life, and the aging chronicler of the American folk songbook. Here are 10 defining Dylan moments. 1. The Teen Rebel With a Cause Growing up in Hibbing, Minnesota, a young Robert Zimmerman, "Zimbo" to his classmates, started playing the

Q and A with Eddie Van Halen

Tue, 17 May 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Recently, guitarist Eddie Van Halen donated his guitar, the Frank 2, to the National Museum of American History. Smithsonian corresponded with him via email about his decision to give up his cherished guitar. “Eruption” is widely regarded as one of the greatest-if not the greatest-guitar solos ever. What’s the best guitar solo you ever heard performed by another musician? There are so many, it’s difficult to pinpoint it down to one. You’ve collaborated on projects with a number of musicians over the years, including Brian May, Geezer Butler, and Thomas Dolby. Do any collaborations stand out as your favorite? Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” is a

Broadway’s Top Ten Musical Flops

Wed, 11 May 2011 06:50:49 GMT

In Mel Brooks’ The Producers, washed-up theater producer Max Bialystock and wishy-washy accountant Leo Bloom figure they can get rich quick with a Broadway flop if they raise more money than they need to stage the show. (Their plan ultimately backfires and the pair end up in prison for fraud.) In real life, the creative minds that conspire to put on a show aim for greatness, but in the highly competitive New York theater scene, more shows bomb than succeed. Some of these failed productions have managed to attain a degree of fame—or infamy. Here are ten musicals that were spectacular flops in their Broadway debuts. 1. Pipe Dream (1955) Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein ush

Long Overdue, the Bookmobile Is Back

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 11:10:35 GMT

Tom Corwin clearly recalls the day when, on a whim, he decided to buy and restore a classic bookmobile. “The best ideas just happen to you,” says Corwin, a writer and musician whose boyish, intense enthusiasm is highly contagious. “A friend came to dinner, and showed me the ad. He was hoping to use the bookmobile to extend his home library—into his back yard. When he realized it wouldn’t fit, I had an idea: Get well-known authors behind the wheel of the bookmobile, taking turns on a drive across the country, talking about the books that have touched their lives. What a great way to remind people of our connection to the written word, and how powerful it can b

Forty Years of Philadelphia Sound

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 06:26:18 GMT

When Leon Huff and Kenneth Gamble would huddle to write songs, they’d each bring a long, yellow legal pad of potential titles, sometimes 200 or 300 each. Huff would sit at the upright piano in his office with a tape recorder rolling. He would start playing and Gamble would riff lyrics. “Sometimes [the songs] would take 15 minutes to write and sometimes they’d take all day,” Gamble recalls. “The best ones came in ten, fifteen minutes.” The two first ran into each other in an elevator in Philadelphia’s Schubert Building, where they were working as songwriters on separate floors. Soon after, they met at Huff’s Camden, New Jersey home on a Satur

A New Look at Anne Frank

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 09:45:12 GMT

Forty years ago, Ernie Colón was drawing Casper the Friendly Ghost and Sid Jacobson was his editor at Harvey Comics, where they also churned out Richie Rich, Baby Huey and dozens of other titles. They worked together again at Marvel Comics (The Amazing Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk) after Jacobson was named executive editor in 1987. Over time, they came to enjoy a close friendship and creative rapport while adhering to a fairly simple modus operandi. “I write the script,” Jacobson says, “and Ernie does the drawing.” Well, it’s not that simple, he adds. “There’s always the proviso that if you have a better way of doing it, please don’

The Trouble With Autobiography

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 07:00:00 GMT

I was born, the third of seven children, in Medford, Massachusetts, so near to Boston that even as a small boy kicking along side streets to the Washington School, I could see the pencil stub of the Custom House Tower from the banks of the Mystic River. The river meant everything to me: it flowed through our town, and in reed-fringed oxbows and muddy marshes that no longer exist, to Boston Harbor and the dark Atlantic. It was the reason for Medford rum and Medford shipbuilding; in the Triangular Trade the river linked Medford to Africa and the Caribbean—Medford circulating mystically in the world. My father noted in his diary, “Anne had another boy at 7:25.” My father wa

Five Fake Memoirs That Fooled the Literary World

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Telling the unvarnished truth in an autobiography or memoir is no small feat. The urge to slip in embellishments or heighten a dramatic arc through exaggeration can be hard to resist, especially when aiming for a compelling life story. But the past few decades have seen an increase in an entirely different category of memoir—the hoax, where the truth, if it’s even present, is of little consequence. Here are five stunning examples of literary fraud. 1. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey The 19th-century American humorist Josh Billings once said “There are some people who are so addicted to exaggeration that they can’t tell the truth without lying” His obse

Smithsonian’s 2010 Notable Books for Children

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 05:11:08 GMT

In the pages of this year’s titles, one may travel backward—or forward—in time; find the rewards of courage, hope and creativity; observe what it means to beat the odds or make a difference. Conjuring up settings from a Maine cottage, shuttered snug against winter, to the forests of Kenya or the hidden mountain canyons of Tibet, each book evokes a world where we may discover our shared humanity. The age categories listed below are, of necessity, arbitrary. Adjust any choices to the age and reading level of the individual child. For the Youngest Readers (Ages 1-6) Madeline at the White House by John Bemelmans Marciano The “twelve little girls in two straight line

Alvino Rey’s Musical Legacy

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 10:27:53 GMT

At the sold-out arenas where the indie rockers of Arcade Fire perform, the specter of Alvino Rey lurks. Handwritten postcards flash across a movie-size projection screen while band members and brothers Win and Will Butler sing from their first album, Funeral. The notes were written by Alvino Rey, the Butlers’ grandfather, who exchanged them with fellow ham radio operators. Nearby, Music Man amps project the band’s sound, amps developed in part by guitar innovator Leo Fender, who often sent his good friend Rey amps and guitars to test. And audible to everyone who’s ever listened to Arcade Fire—or the Clash, or Elvis, or any musician who’s ever played an electr

What Defines Latino Literature?

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 11:33:02 GMT

“Right now, being a Mexican in the United States is very scary,” says Ilan Stavans, Professor of Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College and editor of the recently published Norton Anthology of Latino Literature. “You are often at the bottom of the scale, and there is a lot of animosity.” Literature, Stavans says, can help smooth interactions among the diverse ethnic groups and cultures in the country. The 2,700–page anthology, which includes 201 authors, arrives at a pertinent moment. According to recent census statistics, more than one out of every two people added to the U.S. population between 2008 and 2009 is Hispanic, and by 2050, the group

Maurice Hines on the Legacy of the Apollo Theater

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 02:41:06 GMT

Dancer, singer and choreographer Maurice Hines, who began dancing at the Apollo Theater with his brother, Gregory, when the two were children, reminisces about the legends he observed and the lessons he learned at the famous Harlem theater. How old were you when you first appeared at the Apollo? Gregory and I were brought to the Apollo by Henry LeTang, who choreographed the movie The Cotton Club (1984). We were, I think, 7 and 5, and we did the Apollo almost every other week. We worked with a lot of great, great stars. Of course, there were a lot of rock ’n’ roll acts there at that time, the Flamingos, Ruth Brown. And we also worked with Dinah Washington, Diahann Carroll and a

Show Time at the Apollo

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 06:00:00 GMT

One night in April 1935, a statuesque brunette stood backstage at the Apollo Theater in New York City. Aware that the theater’s tough audience could make or break her career, she froze. A comedian named Pigmeat Markham shoved her onto the stage. “I had a cheap white satin dress on and my knees were shaking so bad the people didn’t know whether I was going to dance or sing,” she would remember. The ingénue was Billie Holiday. She would perform at the Apollo two dozen times en route to becoming a music legend and one of the most influential vocalists in jazz. For more than 75 years, entertainers—most of them African-American—have launched their

Excerpts From
Patience Worth's

The Sorry Tale

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 04:15:35 GMT

St. Louis housewife Pearl Lenore Curran was the stenographer for the words of Patience Worth, a spirit who wrote poems and stories through a Ouija board. These stories became bestsellers and a national phenomenon. The following excerpts are from The Sorry Tale: A Story of the Time of Christ was published in 1917 and received rave reviews. Learn more about Patience in Smithsonian’s article “Patience Worth: Author From the Great Beyond” from the October 2010. Excerpt from Book 2, Chapter I And behold, there shone from the east the white light of the early dawn. And this was at the fulling of the days unto the tides and the tides unto the many. And Jerusalem stood upon th

Rio’s Music is Alive and Well

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 09:03:38 GMT

On any given night in Rio de Janeiro, music lovers young and old mill in and out of nondescript bars and cafés in Lapa, a bohemian neighborhood of 19th-century buildings with shutter-flanked windows and flowery, wrought iron balconies. Strolling amid street vendors selling caipirinhas, Brazil’s signature lime and cachaça drink, visitors have come in search of samba and choro, the country’s traditional music currently enjoying a cultural resurgence. Late into the night, choro’s melodic instrumentations mingle with the swaying rhythms of 1940s-style samba to create an aural paean to Brazil’s musical past. On the outskirts of the city in the favelas, or

Patience Worth: Author From the Great Beyond

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Editor's note: An earlier version of this article stated that nothing ever came of a movie deal for Pearl's story. In fact, there was a film titled "Whatever happened to Rosa." This version of the article has been updated with that information. One cool autumn evening in 1919, a crowd of prominent New Yorkers jammed the parlor of an East Side town house to meet a writing prodigy named Patience Worth. A prolific charmer who was known for her flashy verbal stunts and quick wit, Patience dictated two original poems—about Russia and the Red Cross—in rapid succession, followed by a lyrical tribute to an editor friend. Though she seemed to compose the works on the spot, her words fl

Summertime for George Gershwin

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 08:21:16 GMT

On June 16, 1934, George Gershwin boarded a train in Manhattan bound for Charleston, South Carolina. From there he traveled by car and ferry to Folly Island, where he would spend most of his summer in a small frame cottage. The sparsely developed barrier island ten miles from Charleston was an unlikely choice for Gershwin—a New York city-slicker accustomed to rollicking night life, luxurious accommodations and adoring coteries of fans. As he wrote his mother (with a bit of creative spelling), the heat “brought out the flys, and knats, and mosquitos,” leaving there “nothing to do but scratch.” Sharks swam offshore; alligators roared in the swamps; sand crabs in

Tom Swift Turns 100

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 05:29:01 GMT

That’s just one more marvel from the fictitious boy inventor, who modestly but quickly took on ventures ambitious enough to entertain generations of readers. Along the way, he inspired more than a few actual innovators, such as Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak and Jack Cover, who developed the Taser. On July 1, 1910, the Library of Congress issued the copyright for the first Swift book, Tom Swift and His Motorcycle. Dozens of books followed in the first series, and four more series followed. In all there have been more than 100 books, with Tom passing the torch to Tom Jr. in 1954. “I don’t pretend that they are great literature,” said James Keeline, a Tom S

Tod Machover on Composing Music by Computer

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Tod Machover, Called “America’s Most wired composer” by the Los Angeles Times, has written six operas, including the robotic Death and the Powers, scheduled to debut in Monaco in September. The 56-year-old composer and cellist is the inventor of Hyperscore, a computer program that enables even the untrained to write music, and his students created the popular computer-based toys Guitar Hero and Rock Band. He spoke with the magazine’s Erica R. Hendry at MIT, where he’s a professor of music and media. How is technology democratizing music? Art can transform people’s lives. But it should be available and understandable to everybody. It should be serious bu

Carl Hiaasen on Human Weirdness

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:00:00 GMT

As a Miami Herald columnist and the author of a dozen satirical novels, including the forthcoming Star Island, Carl Hiaasen has compiled a body of work populated by venal real estate developers, crooked politicians, environmental zealots, dead tourists, ambitious strippers and numbskull lowlifes. He says that as nonfiction has gotten stranger than fiction, it’s become harder for a satirist to stay ahead of “the curve of human weirdness. America is becoming more like South Florida every day, which is terrifying.” Hiaasen, 57, divides his time between Vero Beach and the Florida Keys. He spoke with senior editor T. A. Frail by phone. Isn’t it possible we could just ge

Rita Dove on the Future of Literature

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Rita Dove was 41 years old when, in 1993, she became poet laureate of the United States—the youngest person and the first African-American to serve in the post. She has published nine books of poetry, including the 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning Thomas and Beulah, based on her grandparents, and this past year’s Sonata Mulattica. Dove, who has also written short stories, a verse play and a novel, is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. She spoke with associate editor Lucinda Moore. What is the future of literature? With the advent of technology and cyberspace and iPads and Kindle, I feel change happening even at the level of composit

Harper Lee's Novel Achievement

Thu, 20 May 2010 06:00:00 GMT

To spend an hour in Monroeville, Alabama, is to know why Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, ranks as one of the crankiest writers on the planet. Strongly inclined to put aside the hype and hoopla and let literature speak for itself, Lee, the best-known native of the town (pop. 6,372) that served as the model for her novel’s Maycomb, has found herself living a short drive from one restaurant called the Mockingbird Grill and another named Radley’s Fountain, after Boo Radley, the character in Mockingbird who might be voted Least Likely to Become a Restaurateur. That would be a mere T-shirt’s toss from a gift shop peddling Mockingbird hat

Allen Ginsberg's Beat Family Album

Thu, 20 May 2010 06:00:00 GMT

The two men pose for the camera at right angles to each other. They’re in a room in Tangier in 1961. Nothing in the picture indicates place or time, though, and neither really matters to understanding the image. Clearly, it’s about who rather than where or when. You don’t have to know that the subjects are the Beat poets Allen Ginsberg, in back, and Gregory Corso, in front, to realize this is the case. The photograph is all about the two individuals in it, both separately (each man has a striking appearance) and together. In fact, what most comes across is a sense of conjunction: “Siamese poetry twins,” as Ginsberg writes in his caption

Legends of the Apollo

Mon, 10 May 2010 09:53:01 GMT

For more than 75 years, some of the world’s greatest entertainers have performed at the famous Harlem theater

Mark Twain's "My Platonic Sweetheart"

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Mark Twain recounted his recurring dreams of a young woman in his essay “My Platonic Sweetheart.” Although his cherished muse possesses differing features and names, she is thought to represent a real-life sweetheart, Laura Wright, who he met, in 1858, when the steamboats they were traveling on down the Mississippi were docked in New Orleans. He wrote the essay 40 years later, but it was only published posthumously, in Harper’s magazine, December 1912, two and a half years after his death. I met her first when I was seventeen and she fifteen. It was in a dream. No, I did not meet her; I overtook her. It was in a Missourian village which I had never been in before, and wa

Mark Twain in Love

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 06:00:00 GMT

On an empyreal spring evening in 1858, with the oleander in bloom upriver and early jasmine scenting the wind, the steersman for the Mississippi steamboat Pennsylvania, a bookish 22-year-old named Sam Clemens, guided the massive packet into the docks under the winking gaslights of New Orleans. As the Pennsylvania berthed, Clemens glanced to his side and recognized the adjacent craft, the John J. Roe. Perhaps recalling his many happy assignments steering the Roe, the young apprentice pilot leapt spontaneously onto the freighter’s deck. He was amiably shaking the hands of his former mates when he froze, transfixed by the sight of a slight figure in a white frock and braids: a girl not

How the Paperback Novel Changed Popular Literature

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 08:49:05 GMT

The story about the first Penguin paperbacks may be apocryphal, but it is a good one. In 1935, Allen Lane, chairman of the eminent British publishing house Bodley Head, spent a weekend in the country with Agatha Christie. Bodley Head, like many other publishers, was faring poorly during the Depression, and Lane was worrying about how to keep the business afloat. While he was in Exeter station waiting for his train back to London, he browsed shops looking for something good to read. He struck out. All he could find were trendy magazines and junky pulp fiction. And then he had a “Eureka!” moment: What if quality books were available at places like train stations and sold for reas

The Rock Concert That Captured an Era

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:42:51 GMT

With movie attendance in a freefall in the late 1950s, Hollywood producers were trying everything to draw television viewers back into theaters. The number of moviegoers dropped roughly 70 percent in the years following World War II, from a high of 90 million a week in 1946 to 27 million a week in 1960. The producers hoped to attract teenagers through rock ‘n’ roll music: Elvis Presley starred in over 30 feature films during his career, and movies like The Girl Can't Help It boasted appearances by musicians like Little Richard, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran. But most of these films were made by Hollywood veterans, who tended to look down on rock music and packed their films wi

Gioia Diliberto on “Ghost Writer”

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 06:30:01 GMT

Chicago-based author Gioia Diliberto has written biographies of Jane Addams, Hadley Hemingway and Brenda Frazier, as well as two novels, I Am Madame X, a fictional memoir of Virginie Gautreau, the subject of John Singer Sargent’s most famous painting, and The Collection, which is set in Coco Chanel’s atelier. In Smithsonian’s September issue, she takes on the story of Pearl Curran, a St. Louis housewife, and her spirit writer Patience Worth, who was a national phenomenon in the 1910s and 1920s. You first came upon Patience Worth’s story 20 years ago. What fascinates you about it? I just thought that it was amazing that this woman could have achieved something so a

Lewis Carroll's Shifting Reputation

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:00:00 GMT

The Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was a teacher of mathematics at Oxford and a deacon of the Anglican Church. Some colleagues knew him as a somewhat reclusive stammerer, but he was generally seen as a devout scholar; one dean said he was “pure in heart.” To readers all over the world, he became renowned as Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alice was popular almost from the moment it was published, in 1865, and it has remained in print ever since, influencing such disparate artists as Walt Disney and Salvador Dali. Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, just released in movie theaters nationwide, is only the latest of at least 20 films and TV

Woody Guthrie's Music Lives On

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:59:58 GMT

Singer-songwriter Jonatha Brooke saw an impish grin, and a twinkle in Nora Guthrie’s eye as Guthrie handed her the sheet with lyrics Woody Guthrie penned nearly 50 years ago. At the bottom was the notation to “finish later.” He never got the chance. All ya gotta do is touch me easy All ya gotta do is touch me slow All ya gotta do is hug me squeeze me All ya gotta do is let me know Brooke figured it was some kind of test. This wasn’t what she expected from the author of Dust Bowl ballads and rousing working-man blues. She’d been invited to the midtown Manhattan offices of the Woody Guthrie Archives, administered by Nora Guthrie, his daughter, to set a few of

A Forgotten Tennessee Williams Work Now a Motion Picture

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 06:24:06 GMT

In April 2009, a collection of previously unpublished short stories and essays by Mark Twain was issued by HarperStudio. Vladimir Nabokov’s last novel, The Original of Laura, came out last November, despite instructions that his notes be burned should he fail to finish it. Now the trend of posthumous publication is seeping from books to movies. In December, The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, a film based on a never-before-produced screenplay by Tennessee Williams opened in theaters. Set in the 1920s, The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond centers upon Fisher Willow, a young woman living with her aging aunt while navigating the treacherous waters of Memphis society. The reputation of her father

Sherlock Holmes' London

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 07:00:00 GMT

One summer evening in 1889, a young medical school graduate named Arthur Conan Doyle arrived by train at London’s Victoria Station and took a hansom cab two and a half miles north to the famed Langham Hotel on Upper Regent Street. Then living in obscurity in the coastal town of Southsea, near Portsmouth, the 30-year-old ophthalmologist was looking to advance his writing career. The magazine Beeton’s Christmas Annual had recently published his novel, A Study in Scarlet, which introduced the private detective Sherlock Holmes. Now Joseph Marshall Stoddart, managing editor of Lippincott’s Monthly, a Philadelphia magazine, was in London to establish a British edition of his pu

Smithsonian Notable Books for Children 2009

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 07:00:00 GMT

This year’s titles range across cultures, into the past and toward the future. Their creators have relied on humor to touch our hearts; documentary accounts to bring history alive; biography to convey the true meaning of courage; poetic language to demonstrate the power of the written word—and the artist’s brush or camera to create ravishing illustrations. The age categories listed below are, of necessity, arbitrary. Adjust any choices to the interests and reading level of the individual child. For example, a book that may prove too demanding for a youngster to read on her or his own may constitute a perfect read-aloud. For the Youngest Readers (Ages 1-6) It’s

The Glorious History of Handel's Messiah

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:00:00 GMT

George Frideric Handel's Messiah was originally an Easter offering. It burst onto the stage of Musick Hall in Dublin on April 13, 1742. The audience swelled to a record 700, as ladies had heeded pleas by management to wear dresses "without Hoops" in order to make "Room for more company." Handel's superstar status was not the only draw; many also came to glimpse the contralto, Susannah Cibber, then embroiled in a scandalous divorce. The men and women in attendance sat mesmerized from the moment the tenor followed the mournful string overture with his piercing opening line: "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God." Soloists alternated with wave upon w

Real Places Behind Famously Frightening Stories

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:49:41 GMT

Discover old haunts that inspired thrills and chills in fiction and film

Hazel Scott’s Lifetime of High Notes

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:56:56 GMT

She was called the “Darling of Café Society” back in 1939 when New York City was alive with the sounds of swing. A sexy siren sitting bare-shouldered at the piano, Hazel Scott captivated audiences with her renditions of classical masterpieces by Chopin, Bach and Rachmaninoff. Nightly, crowds would gather at Café Society, New York’s first fully integrated nightclub, the epicenter of jazz and politics nestled in Greenwich Village, to hear the nineteen-year-old bronze beauty transform “Valse in D-Flat Major”, “Two Part Invention in A-Minor,” and “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2” into highly syncopated sensations. “But where ot

A Depression- Era Playlist

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:06:42 GMT

An excerpt from A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs (Schocken/Nextbook): As with cities, whole decades have their ideal playlists. Dorothy Fields would have had a box seat in the theater of my heart if she had done nothing else but write the words for Jimmy McHugh’s music in “On The Sunny Side Of The Street.” A true Depression-era song, it would anchor my list of songs from the 1930s, in this order: 1. Fred Astaire, “Let’s Face the Music and Dance,” music and lyrics by Irving Berlin 2. Ginger Rogers, “The Gold-Diggers’ Song (We’re in the Money),” music Harry Warren, lyrics Johnny Burke 3. Bing Crosby, “Pen

Jewish Songwriters, American Songs

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 06:50:44 GMT

By 1926, Cole Porter had already written several Broadway scores, “none of which had, well, scored,” poet and critic David Lehman points out. But one enchanted evening that year, while dining in Venice with Noel Coward, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, Porter confided that he had finally figured out the secret to writing hits. “I’ll write Jewish tunes,” he said. “Rodgers laughed at the time,” Lehman writes in his new book, A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs (Schocken/Nextbook), “but looking back he realized that Porter was serious and had been right.” The minor-key melodies of such famed Porter tunes as “Night and

Motown Turns 50

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 06:49:02 GMT

Editor’s note: It’s been 50 years since Berry Gordy founded Motown, a record company that launched scores of careers, created a signature sound in popular music and even helped bridge the racial divide. This article first appeared in the October 1994 issue of Smithsonian; it has been edited and updated in honor of the anniversary. It was nearly 3 A.M. but Berry Gordy couldn’t sleep. That recording kept echoing in his head, and every time he heard it he winced. The tempo dragged, the vocals weren’t perky enough, it just didn’t have the edge. Finally, he got out of bed and went downstairs to the homemade studio of his struggling record company. He grabbed the p

Jewish Bluegrass

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:29:53 GMT

This Passover, my friend Lester Feder sat at the head of his family’s Seder table, strumming away on his banjo and belting out Hebrew lyrics with a big-voiced Appalachian twang. As a bluegrass and old-time musician myself, I was familiar with Lester’s wailing sound. As a Jew, I’d been to countless Seders. But the transposition of these traditions was like nothing I’d ever imagined. For Feder, a Northern Virginia native, fusing his American identity with his religious heritage through music was a natural development. “I feel far more connected to the old time traditions of the upper South than the Ashkenazi traditions of Eastern Europe,” he said. “

The Full Brontë

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 08:56:35 GMT

The storm had been assembling itself all morning, and finally the glowering sky, veined with lightning, loosed a rain of Old Testament proportions. Alan Pinkney looked up approvingly, then turned to the seven walkers he was leading and exclaimed, “This is perfect—I can almost see Heathcliff riding across the moor!” We had ignored the clouds to hike some three miles to a remote, ruined farmhouse named Top Withins. It was little more than crumbling walls, but in its original form it is widely believed to have been the model for Wuthering Heights, home of the wild and mysterious Mr. Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s classic 1847 novel of passion, rage and revenge. Th

Lester Young Turns 100

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 10:03:32 GMT

Though Lester Young was revered in his time as an artist of the highest rank, the 100th anniversary of his birth has not sparked much in the way of commemoration. No postage stamp; no parade in Woodville, Mississippi, where he was born on August 27, 1909; no statues in New Orleans, Kansas City or New York City —all places with a claim on the spellbinding Swing Era saxophonist known as Prez. A shining exception is Columbia University's WKCR radio, where, for the past 40 years, jazz historian Phil Schaap has led marathon birthday tributes to Young, revisiting his landmark recordings from the 1930s and '40s with Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman and other leading lights, as we

Great Road Trips in American Literature

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 06:00:00 GMT

John Steinbeck declares in Travels With Charley that Americans descended from those who moved: those who left Europe, those who were forced to leave Africa, and those who came in search of a better life. It makes sense that we would be travelers. “Every American hungers to move,” he writes. But most of us can’t just pack up and leave, so here are 11 books about American road trips for those who can’t break away from life’s commitments. Roughing It and Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain, 1872 and 1883, respectively Perhaps the standard-bearer for translating the American spirit to paper, Mark Twain wrote two separate accounts of traveling through the count

Arlo Guthrie Reminisces About Woodstock

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 07:34:25 GMT

Listen to Coming Into Los Angeles by Arlo Guthrie. "You can call me Arlo," said the good-natured voice at the other end of the line. Arlo Guthrie, most famous for his extended-version 1967 song "Alice's Restaurant," has carried on the legacy of his prolific folk/protest-singer father Woody Guthrie well. Arlo played at Woodstock 40 years ago, and to mark that anniversary, he's releasing a lost tape of an August 1, 1969, Long Island, New York, show recorded just prior to that iconic festival. And the family tradition continues, as he'll be heading out this fall on the Guthrie Family Rides Again tour with his children and grandchildren in tow. So it's 40 years after Woo

A New Taste of Hemingway’s Moveable Feast

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:39:48 GMT

Ernest Hemingway fans are no strangers to revisions of his life story. “Hemingway, Wife Reported Killed in Air Crash,” a New York newspaper declared seven years before he died. Hemingway read the announcement with amusement while recovering from serious but nonfatal injuries sustained in said crash. Despite many biographies about the author, revelations about his life continue to make news. A few weeks ago, a new book, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, revealed that Hemingway was recruited as a spy in 1941 and met with Soviet agents in London and Havana. (Hemingway— agent “Argo”—never delivered any “political information,” acco

A Woodstock Moment – 40 Years Later

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 06:00:00 GMT

On August 15, 1969, Nick Ercoline was tending Dino's bar in Middletown, New York, while his girlfriend of ten weeks, Bobbi Kelly, sat on a stool, sipping nickel draft beer and listening to the news on the radio. In the past 30 days, Senator Ted Kennedy had driven off a bridge at Chappaquiddick Island, the Apollo 11 astronauts had planted a flag on the moon and the Charles Manson family had murdered eight Californians, including actress Sharon Tate, in Los Angeles. In the soft green hills of Catskills dairy country, such events seemed worlds away. That Friday night, however, waves of American youths were surging toward Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel, New York, 40 miles up the road, for three

Frank Baum, the Man Behind the Curtain

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:25:17 GMT

When the National Museum of American History reopened last fall after an extensive renovation, ruby slippers danced up and down the National Mall. Posters displaying a holographic image of the sequined shoes from the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz beckoned visitors into the redesigned repository. In its attempt to draw crowds, the museum didn’t underestimate the footwear’s appeal. When an alternate pair of the famous slippers went on the market in 2000, they sold for $600,000. Today, images and phrases from The Wizard of Oz are so pervasive, so unparalleled in their ability to trigger personal memories and musings, that it’s hard to conceive of The Wizard of Oz as the pr

Forget Edgar Allan Poe? Nevermore!

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:05:28 GMT

Dead writers’ birthdays can be festive affairs. To mark John Milton’s 400th last year, English departments far and wide staged marathon readings of “Paradise Lost,” with at least one scholar reciting all 10,565 lines from memory. Charles Dickens’ 200th is still three years away, but already his bicentennial Web site is up and running, complete with a glossary of Victorian terms (bluchers: leather half-boots; gibbet: a post for displaying the corpses of executed criminals) and a detailed explanation of cribbage, one of Dickens’ favorite card games. Yet none of this compares with the hoopla surrounding Edgar Allan Poe, who turned the big 2-0-0 this year.

Words to Remember

Tue, 19 May 2009 06:00:00 GMT

There has never been a shortage of bad writers. Almost anyone can bang out an atrocious book, but to achieve fame and adulation for it takes a certain kind of genius. In this literary sub-genre, Irish writer Amanda McKittrick Ros reigns supreme. "Uniquely dreadful," proclaims the Oxford Companion to Irish Literature. "The greatest bad writer who ever lived," says author Nick Page. Ros, who died in 1939, abused (some would say, tortured) the English language in three novels and dozens of poems. She refers to eyes as "globes of glare," legs as "bony supports," pants as a "southern necessary," sweat as "globules of liquid lava" and

Herman Leonard’s Eye for Jazz

Thu, 07 May 2009 10:13:53 GMT

Editor's Note: Herman Leonard died on Saturday, August 14, 2010 at the age of 87. More than six decades ago, Herman Leonard began photographing icons of jazz in the smoke-filled nightclubs and rehearsal houses where the musicians worked. From jazz singers Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday to the geniuses of bebop—Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie “Bird” Parker and Miles Davis—Leonard captured for posterity a transitional period in the history of jazz. Why did it take so long for your jazz photographs to become recognized by the public? All of my jazz pictures, I did strictly for myself. After a while I did assignments for record companies, particularly Verve Records with

Jukebox: Pete Seeger

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:00:00 GMT

What kind of birthday present do you get for a man who skipped to his lou, lived where the deer and antelope play and knew an old lady who swallowed a fly? Pete Seeger turns 90 on May 3—and he is still singing the ballads that not only popularized folk music but, in the 1960s, helped transform it into a soundtrack for political activism. Musicians from Bruce Springsteen to Ani DiFranco will perform in Seeger's honor at New York City's Madison Square Garden. Join in the celebration with Smithsonian Folkway's five-record set of Seeger songs, including the album "American Favorite Ballads." Hear Hole In the Bucket, Home on the Range and Skip to My Lou Music courtesy of Smith

Julia Keefe’s Jazz

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 09:01:06 GMT

Nez Perce jazz singer Julia Keefe was in high school when she first became acquainted with the music of swing-era vocalist Mildred Bailey (Coeur d’Alene). Today, at age 19, Keefe has developed a musical tribute to Bailey that will be performed at the National Museum of the American Indian on Saturday, April 11. Bailey spent her early years on the Coeur d’Alene reservation in Idaho. She later lived in Spokane, Wash., where Keefe herself attended high school, and Seattle. Eventually, Bailey moved to Los Angeles, where she sang in clubs and helped her brother Al and his friend Bing Crosby get their first L.A. gigs in the mid-1920s. When Al Bailey and Crosby joined the Paul Whitem

For Smithsonian, Mangione Memorabilia 'Feels So Good'

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 02:58:34 GMT

You might not recognize Chuck Mangione’s mega-hit “Feels So Good” by its title, but take a listen. Chances are you’ll recognize the timeless smooth jazz classic instantly. And then you’ll probably be humming it the rest of the day. The soft-spoken American jazz flugelhornist and composer Chuck Mangione just signed away a cache of his musical memorabilia to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History yesterday. Included in the donation were his signature brown felt hat, scores to his most important works (including the Grammy-nominated single “Feels So Good,” among others), albums, photographs, and more - even an animation cell from

Voices from Literature’s Past

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 09:47:25 GMT

What we call a writer’s voice exists mostly in a reader’s imagination, called forth by a printed page. The audio series “The Spoken Word” offers reality checks in the form of historic literary recordings and radio broadcasts (most from the BBC) drawn from the Sound Archive of the British Library. Past CDs and albums from the Library have brought to life literary lions such as Edith Sitwell, H.G. Wells, Ted Hughes and W.H. Auden. But for many listeners, the pair of new samplers, British Writers and American Writers, will be the incontestable jewel in the crown, presenting a total of nearly 60 writers recorded between the 1930s and the 1980s. Whether one knows their w

Eudora Welty as Photographer

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:56:28 GMT

Eudora Welty was one of the grandest grande dames of American letters—winner of a Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, an armful of O. Henry Awards and the Medal of Freedom, to name just a few. But before she published a single one of her many short stories, she had a one-woman show of her photographs. The pictures, made in Mississippi in the early to mid-1930s, show the rural poor and convey the want and worry of the Great Depression. But more than that, they show the photographer's wide-ranging curiosity and unstinting empathy—which would mark her work as a writer, too. Appropriately, another exhibition of Welty's photographs, which opened last fall at the

Odes To Joy

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 06:00:00 GMT

As a young man in the 1940s and '50s, the late Rev. Frank Paschall Sr. toured Tidewater, Virginia, singing in a cappella groups. He passed his musical wisdom on to his sons, who became the Paschall Brothers—one of few remaining African-American gospel quartets. Their songs, which include "Joy" and "Jesus Gave me Water", are also influenced by soul artists such as the Temptations and Sam Cooke. The Paschall Brothers' album, "On the Right Road Now," was one of two Smithsonian Folkways recordings recently named winners at the eighth annual Independent Music Awards. Hear Joy and Jesus Gave me Water Music courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways, the non-profit re

Literary Landmarks: A History of American Women Writers

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:58:19 GMT

Literary historian and scholar Elaine Showalter has recently published a sweeping and insightful survey of American women writers, A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx (Knopf). She is the first person to attempt this all-encompassing project. Why do you think that no one before you has attempted to write a literary history of American women writers? There really wasn’t a sense until the late 1970s or even the 1980s that women writers actually had a history and that it was something worth investigating. For a long time it just didn’t exist as a subject in people’s minds. And then, after that, it came up against a lot of differe

Sing Like A Pirate

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Born in 1530, the Pirate Queen Granuaile was raised in an Ireland where English law was usurping Gaelic sovereignty. She refused to submit to authority and raided merchant ships bound for Galway Bay. According to legend, she fought off English troops besieging her stronghold by melting the roof and pouring molten lead on her attackers. The stories of her resistance, spread by ballad singers for centuries, became a symbol for Irish nationalism. Irish-American folk singer Dan Milner adapted one such political broadside, "Granuaile," for Smithsonian Folkways' newly released "Irish Pirate Ballads and Other Songs of the Sea." Hear Granuaile and The Ballad of Ó Bruada

Dr. John's Prognosis

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Mac Rebennack, better known as the musician Dr. John, has been impressing audiences since the 1960s with a stage show deeply rooted in the culture of his native New Orleans. In his heyday, Rebennack would appear on stage in a puff of smoke, decorated in Mardi Gras plumes, bones and amulets, reciting voodoo chants while spreading glitter into the audience. But he is also a highly regarded blues, rock and jazz artist considered a solid songwriter and session musician. In his most recent album, "The City that Care Forgot," he criticizes the government's response to Hurricane Katrina and plays with Eric Clapton, Willie Nelson and Ani Difranco. Rebennack, 68, spoke recently with Kenne

Jukebox: A Child Shall Lead Them

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 07:00:00 GMT

When Verve Records first released Janis Ian's song "Society's Child" in 1967, most radio stations refused to play it. The ballad tells the story of a white girl who ends an interracial romance because her community doesn't approve. Ian began writing the lyrics at age 13 while riding a school bus and completed the song a year later. The song became a hit on the protest circuit, alongside politically conscious music by the likes of Pete Seeger. Now it is part of Smithsonian Folkways' collection of "Classic Protest Songs," which will be released on March 24. Hear Janis Ian's Baby I've Been Thinking (Society Child). Music courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways, the non-profit r

Smithsonian Notable Books for Children 2008

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:11:28 GMT

Here at Smithsonian Magazine, we're reviving a tradition: our annual selection of outstanding books for children, a compendium of surprising, inspiring titles—everything from picture books and novels to memoirs—for youngsters and the grownups who read to, and with, them. Please note that the age categories listed below are necessarily arbitrary; adjust to the predilections of the individual child. For the Youngest Readers (Ages 1-6) Elena Odriozola (Peachtree, $16.95) In a mythical, close-knit village, as winter closes in and days grow icy, mysterious gifts appear: mittens for the schoolmaster; a coat for a frost-nipped cat. A story to spread warmth and cheer on the coldest n

Jukebox: Hail to the Chief

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 07:00:00 GMT

FDR delivered his fourth and final inaugural address in 1945. With the nation still at war, it was considered inappropriate to mark the occasion with festivities—and his speech, fewer than 600 words, echoed the day's solemn tone. Much of the address focused on the perils of isolationism; Roosevelt declared that World War II had taught Americans to "live as men, not as ostriches." According to Cynthia Koch, director of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library, FDR "was almost a teacher in chief, gently drawing homilies and lessons to help people understand his policies as a reflection of the best of our past." Hear Anthony G. Pilla. Music courtesy of Sm

Holiday Spirit

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

For 50 years, Ella Jenkins—once dubbed the "first lady of the children's folk song" by an admiring critic—has brought a unique touch to music, composing bedtime ballads inspired by spoken-word poetry and African folk tunes. In 2004, the Grammys paid tribute to Jenkins' genre-bending compositions with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Her Holiday Times album, recorded in 1996, features music for festivals including Kwanzaa and Hanukkah, as well as variations on traditional Christmas favorites such as "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." Click here to hear Holiday Times, Harmonica for Hanukkah, Kwanza Time and Winters I Used to Know. Music courtesy of Smithsonian F

Jukebox: A Choir of Turkeys

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 06:00:00 GMT

In 1973, Jim Nollman was a recent college graduate with avant-garde musical aspirations. The San Francisco resident had learned that wild male turkeys can gobble on cue—especially in response to loud or high-pitched sounds. So Nollman visited a turkey farm in Sonoma County, sat down among 300 adult male turkeys and serenaded them with the folk song "Froggy Went a-Courtin'." When he raised his voice during the chorus, the turkeys joined in. His recording of the event, "Music to Eat Thanksgiving Dinner By," became a local radio hit. Hear Froggy-Went-a-Courting (300 Turkeys), and Music to Eat Thanksgiving Dinner By (3 Flute Players and 300 Turkeys) Music courte

Rhythm and Identity

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 04:50:19 GMT

The history of jazz is not strictly black and white, Bobby Sanabria contends. It contains shades of brown, too, in the form of the millions of Hispanic people from throughout the Caribbean and South America. Why those musicians don't get their due frustrates the award-winning musician and composer. So, Sanabria—the son of Puerto-Rican immigrants—uses the power of the blackboard as well as the drums to right this wrong; in addition to performing, he teaches courses on Latin jazz at New School University and Manhattan School of Music in his native New York. We interviewed him over the phone at home in the Bronx shortly after he returned from a series of gigs in Italy. What is

What's Up

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Not Just for Kids Popeye, Peter Rabbit, Cinderella and other fictional heroes leap out from vintage pop-up books. Experience a second childhood October 3 at New York City's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. In-Flight Music Do you know a crow from a crane? Want to whistle like a willet? Ted Floyd's Field Guide to the Birds of North America comes with a DVD of 587 bird songs and offers detailed profiles of more than 750 species. Seeing the Light The annual Green Light competition features exceptional art by people with disabilities from ages 16 to 25. Artists from across the nation will exhibit their pieces at the S. Dillon Ripley Center until January 4, 2009. Hatchback Since 1879,

Making History: Bats to the Rescue

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Bats are a big help to plants because they devour leaf-munching insects, according to researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. The scientists conducted their investigation by covering plants with plastic and wire-mesh structures that let insects in but kept large bug-eating predators out. The research team then compared three groups: plants that were covered during the day (when birds are looking for food); plants that were covered at night (when bats are awake and hungry); and a control group of uncovered plants (open to all comers). The result? Plants sealed off from the bats had more leaf damage and were more infested with insects than the other two groups.

Musical Mudslinging on the Campaign Trail

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Before TV came on the scene, presidential candidates relied on songs for negative advertising. Consider this 1889 ditty in support of Benjamin Harrison: "Ben’s a man who bravely went for his native land to shoot / Whereas Grover Cleveland skulked behind the nearest substitute" Presidential Campaign Songs, from Smithsonian Folkways (1999), features tunes spanning 40 elections. The time-honored tactics of campaigning are all represented, from celebrity endorsements (a Charles Lindbergh testimonial in favor of Herbert Hoover in 1929) to fear-mongering (fire, pistols, guns, swords, knives and famines are threatened in a 1828 song if John Quincy Adams is not elected). And you th

At Moab, Music Among the Red Rocks

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 08:00:00 GMT

With its stunning red rocks, the area around Moab is an adventurer's paradise, attracting hikers, bikers and river rafters to southeastern Utah. But when the summer heat tapers off around Labor Day, the region becomes an extraordinary concert hall for world-class musicians. The Moab Music Festival, now in its 16th year, holds a series of chamber music concerts, most of them outdoors amid the spectacular red rock landscape and along the Colorado River. This year's festival runs from August 28–September 13. I've been lucky enough to attend 13 of the festivals since the event was organized in 1992 by artistic director Leslie Tomkins and Michael Barrett, a conducting protég&eacut

Underwater Discovery

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 03:12:08 GMT

Legend has it that the Greek mathematician Archimedes ran naked in the streets shouting "Eureka!" when, in his bath, he came up with a way to measure the purity of gold. While most modern scientists keep their clothes on, their enthusiasm for discovery remains unabated. "It's exploding like an egg!" exclaims William Chadwick Jr. of Oregon State University as he watches the first-ever video of an erupting underwater volcano, NW Rota-1. Chadwick, along with a team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (co-sponsors of the new Ocean Hall), used a remote camera to record this 2006 event. Click the link to the right to hear Chadwick's eureka moment and see the video that insp

Jukebox: Dogged Underdog

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:47:10 GMT

U. Utah Phillips, who died May 23 at age 73, once described himself as a "ne'er-do-well, wino, tramp philosopher, typical family man, folk intellectual and conversation assassin." Phillips was widely revered for his witty blend of storytelling and song. After returning from Army service in 1950s Korea, he fell in with a group of labor activists who gave his life new direction fighting for the downtrodden. Phillips ran for the Senate in 1968 and for president in 1976 and started a homeless shelter. He performed at coffeehouses and festivals into his 70s. Hear Utah Phillips Perform "Joe Hill's Last Will", "The Preacher and the Slave" and "The Timberbeast's

Who Do You Love?

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 02:05:35 GMT

I helped Bo Diddley find a drummer once. It was in 1971. I was 19, reading underground comics one sleepy afternoon at Roach Ranch West, a spacious, hippie-stuff shop in Albuquerque, when a black man wearing a big black hat walked in and said: "I'm Bo Diddley." It was, in the argot of the day, a cosmic moment. Could this really be Bo "47 miles of barbed wire" Diddley stepping out of the blue, announcing his presence in a remote desert city? Was I hallucinating? No, it really was that founding father of rock 'n' roll. He had relocated his family from Southern California to Los Lunas, New Mexico, after being shaken up by a big earthquake, and he wanted to play a free sh

The Persians Revisited

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 08:00:00 GMT

To the dramatist, all history is allegory. Deconstruct, reconstruct, adapt or poeticize the past, and it will confess some message, moral, or accusation. To that end, artists around the world have resurrected an obscure 2,500-year-old historical play, hoping it will shed light on one of the greatest political controversies of our time. The oldest extant play and the only surviving Greek tragedy about a contemporaneous (rather than mythological) topic, The Persians was written by Aeschylus in 472 B.C. The play chronicles the 480 B.C. Battle of Salamis, one of the most significant battles in world history: As the turning point in the Persian Empire's downfall, it allowed the Greeks—an

Jukebox: Memorable Melodies

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Like roasting marshmallows to make s'mores, a good summer camp song bridges generations. Musician Ed Badeaux recorded the Folkways album "Songs of Camp" in 1958 while working at Camp Killooleet in Vermont. Every evening after dinner, all 180 campers gathered for 45 minutes of singing along with Badeaux's banjo. In his opinion, nothing created "real closeness of spirit and soul" like people singing around a campfire. Fifty summers later, the tunes are still familiar. Hear "Sipping Cider," "Wimoweh" and "Hole in the Ground." Music courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways, the non-profit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. Please click here

The Arranger

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 06:16:20 GMT

His house stands atop a hill in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, at the end of a gated, guarded driveway, nestled among citrus trees and bougainvillea and caressed by Pacific breezes. It's a grand stone structure, both a monument to Quincy Jones' success and a metaphor for his particular way of making things happen. The sprawling property—house, cabana, pool, tennis court, vine-draped grounds—was six years in the planning and building, and Jones helped arrange the disparate elements into a harmonious whole. He picked the earth-hued travertine, alabaster and limestone with Egypt's pyramids in mind. He modeled the central feature, a rotunda, after an African mud hut. The compo

Jukebox

Tue, 27 May 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Last year, Smithsonian Folkways invited local musicians to a studio in Valledupar, Colombia, to record traditional vallenato music at its best. Seated in the studio and surrounded by fellow musicians, Leandro Díaz, 80, who claims to have composed 400 songs, told the story behind one of his greatest hits, "Matilde Lina." Years ago, a beautiful woman sat next to Díaz on a park bench. He fell in love and sought to court her. But each time he visited her, he found another suitor already there. "She stayed at home," he muses, "and I got this song."Hear his son, Ivo Díaz, as he performed it on the new Folkways recording "¡Ayombe!"

Lifting their Voices

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 06:26:39 GMT

AUDIO: Hear music from The Doctor of Alcantara and the Morgan State University Choir In 1873, just a decade after the Emancipation Proclamation, a group of African American singers debuted as the capital's first opera company. Organized as the Colored American Opera Company, the troupe's beginnings are rooted in Saint Augustine Roman Catholic Church, a 150-year-old black Catholic congregation that remains an influential parish in the city today. The church choir, responding to the need to raise money for a new building and school, created the opera company, which produced and toured The Doctor of Alcantara, a popular operetta of the times. The endeavor surprised music lovers and raised t

A Record Find

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 06:03:17 GMT

With 20 years' hindsight, it's easy to see that it was right there on the page, hiding in plain sight: "It will be remembered that, later, when digging in the substructure of the Opéra, before burying the phonographic records of the artist's voice, the workmen laid bare a corpse." Thus wrote Gaston Leroux in his horror classic, The Phantom of the Opera, first published in 1910. As readers, we are naturally drawn to the last words of that sentence: "a corpse." Dead bodies—fact or fiction—get our attention. Based on the author's clues, the mind races to the crime scene: "the substructure of the Opéra." And so, in our haste to discover

Amy Chua

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 09:15:37 GMT

You say your book, Day of Empire, is a warning. How so? I'm suggesting that, ironically, the secret to becoming a world "hyperpower" is tolerance. If you look at history, you see great powers being very tolerant in their rise to global dominance. So there is a sort of warning for today's hyperpower—the United States. The secret to our success for over 200 years has been our ability to attract the best and the brightest from all over the world. We can't just let every immigrant in. But it's important to not take a turn toward xenophobia and want to shut down the borders or root out certain groups, because history shows that that's always been the trigger of backlash and decl

Jukebox

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 08:59:17 GMT

The first recipient of Social Security benefits, Ida Mae Fuller, may not seem a promising subject for a song. But Joe Glazer (1918-2006), known as "Labor's Troubadour," sang "in the footsteps of Ida Mae, millions get their checks today" on a 1954 album. Hear it on "If You Ain't Got the Do-Re-Mi," songs about money from Smithsonian Folkways compiled to mark the opening on Wall Street of the Smithsonian-affiliated Museum of American Finance. Listen to Glazer sing "Ida Mae" Music courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways, the non-profit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. Please click here to purchase or for more information

Jukebox

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:01:04 GMT

Poet Langston Hughes was "discovered" in 1925 while working as a busboy in a Washington, D.C. restaurant. He slipped some of his poems next to poet Vachel Lindsay's dinner plate and, with Lindsay's enthusiastic backing, went on to become a celebrated documenter of the African-American experience. He died in 1967. Hughes' earliest poems were short verses he penned for the Belfry Owl, his high-school magazine. He recited them for a children's collection released as an album in 1955. Hear him celebrate spring's soggy showers in "April Rain Song," along with other works from his teenage years, at Smithsonian.com/jukebox. Listen to Langston Hughes perform "April Rain S

Jukebox

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 10:03:34 GMT

The legendary folk singer Pete Seeger once said he wanted to "put a song on people's lips, instead of just in their ear." During the dawning years of the urban folk revival (1957-62), Folkways Records released Seeger's five-record series American Favorite Ballads, which encouraged a new generation to sing along to classic 19th-century tunes. Now, Folkways has reissued the albums, including previously unreleased material such as "Strawberry Roan," a ditty about a broncobuster who finally meets the horse that can throw him. Listen to Pete Seeger sing "Strawberry Roan" Music courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways, the non-profit record label of the Smithsonian Instit

Jukebox

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 05:56:20 GMT

In Uganda, a national awareness campaign has helped dramatically lower the percentage of the population infected by HIV over a period of 16 years. But grass-roots organizations aren't just telling Ugandans how to fight AIDS—they're also singing about how to do it. "Music has done so much," says one performer. "It's hard for people to go away with no lesson learned." In the song "Bannange Twajjirwa" ("We Have Been Invaded") from the Grammy-nominated Folkways collection "Singing for Life," a women's group describes the horrors of the virus and promotes prevention and testing. Listen to Singing for Life: Songs of Hope, Healing, and HIV/

Jukebox

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 02:13:26 GMT

The only known recording of Paul Robeson (1898-1976) singing "Let Us Break Bread Together on Our Knees" can be heard in the collection On My Journey, the first Smithsonian Folkways release in the African American Legacy series, co-presented by the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The legendary Robeson—athlete, lawyer, actor, singer, civil rights activist—made the recording at a friend's New York City apartment in 1955, when Robeson was being persecuted by the State Department, which revoked his passport for eight years beginning in 1950 because of his forceful criticism of racist U.S. policies. "Let Us Break Bread," an old spiritual,

Jukebox

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 06:00:00 GMT

The boisterous sound of American jazz echoed among the ancient pyramids at Giza this past February. With the Sphinx at their shoulders, members of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra—in Egypt as part of a cultural exchange program—played a Duke Ellington standard, "Take the 'A' Train." It's a fitting tune for traveling musicians. Composer Billy Strayhorn penned the song around 1939. The title came from a new subway line, the fastest way to get from Midtown Manhattan to Ellington's home in Harlem. Music courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways, the non-profit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. Please click here to purchase or for more information

Jukebox

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 09:13:20 GMT

Trumpet player Ernest "Doc" Paulin, New Orleans' oldest traditional jazz musician, led brass bands at parades, churches, funerals and, of course, Mardi Gras for more than 60 years. During those decades, his band served as a training ground for many up-and-coming jazz musicians, including Big Al Carson and Anthony "Tuba Fats" Lacen. In November, Paulin died at age 100. His legacy is celebrated on Doc Paulin's Marching Band, from Smithsonian Folkways (1982), which is one of the ensemble's last recordings. Listen to Doc Paulin's Marching Band perform "Bye Bye Blackbird" Music courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways, the non-profit record label of the Smithsonian Insti

Jukebox

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 03:06:11 GMT

The marimba, a type of xylophone with wooden bars arranged like piano keys, is believed to have been first brought to Latin America by African slaves. Marimba Chapinlandia, a band based in Guatemala City, uses an additional instrument, a train whistle, on "Ferrocarril de los altos" ("The Highland Train"), composed by the renowned marimbista Domingo Bethancourt in 1930 to commemorate the first railroad line from the highlands to the coast. Hear it below and Champinlandia: Marimba Music of Guatemala, a new Folkways collection featuring 19 of the band's songs. Listen to Marimba Chapinlandia sing "Ferrocarril de los altos" Music courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways,

Forgotten Music

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 06:02:08 GMT

In 1907, a "musical time capsule" was interred in a basement room in the Palais Garnier, Paris' opera house. Exhumed in 1987 and scheduled to be examined this month, the two urns contain gramophone recordings of some of the greatest singers of the early 20th century. Here is a list of the songs and artists included on the discs, which the EMI music company will compile for release on CD, at long last, to be heard by the public for the first time in 100 years. First urn Marguerite Mérentié, Ariane, by Jules Massenet Berthe Auguez de Montalant, La Procession, by Seville, by Gioachino Rossini Second urn Francesco Tamagno, La Mort d'Otello, by Verdi Enrico Caruso and

The Curiosity of Cats

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 08:52:05 GMT

Even for Broadway, it was a grand opening—and a grander gamble. As audiences poured into the Winter Garden Theatre on the evening of October 7, 1982, for the American première of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, they knew they were getting a first look at the hot new dance musical that had swept London. Many even knew that the show was opening to the largest advance sale in Broadway history—$6.2 million. For months, they had been bombarded by publicity, with a cat's-eye logo peering out enigmatically from T-shirts, watches and billboards. "Isn't the curiosity killing you?" asked the voice-over on a television commercial before the show opened. And the answer was yes

Second Time Around

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 05:00:00 GMT

If you have ever entertained dinner guests by running a wet fingertip around the edge of a crystal goblet to create a musical tone, you have experienced the pure sound that inspired one of Benjamin Franklin's most fantastical creations, the glass armonica. Despite Franklin's lasting contributions to science and politics, his favorite invention was perhaps this rare creation: "Of all my inventions, the glass armonica has given me the greatest personal satisfaction," he wrote. This beloved instrument disappeared mysteriously from the musical landscape in the 19th century, but is now enjoying a renaissance. While living abroad as a delegate for colonial America, Franklin enjoyed co

Portugal's Soulful Sound

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 04:00:00 GMT

She sweeps in with regal dignity, the very image of a diva, her sumptuous black dress gently caressing the stage floor, her short, light blond hair and slim figure making an arresting sight. Mariza, the internationally known Portuguese singer, is at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., captivating yet another audience with the haunting sounds of fado—the music called the soul of Portugal and often compared to American blues. As her voice fills the hall—alternately whispering and shouting, rejoicing and lamenting—the wildly receptive audience confirms her rising reputation as the new queen of fado, and the genre's increasing world appeal

Remembering Jack Kerouac

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 09:46:17 GMT

One snowy January night in 1957, I found myself in a Howard Johnson's in Greenwich Village buying a hot dog and baked beans for a virtually unknown writer named Jack Kerouac. It was a blind date arranged by Allen Ginsberg, who always looked out for his male friends. As Allen no doubt saw it, Jack needed a place in New York to stay for a while until he could take off for Tangier, and I was that rare thing—a girl who had her own apartment. My independence at 21 would not be questioned now, but in the 1950s it was definitely the wrong way for an unmarried woman to be living, though nothing would have induced me to go back to my parents. By day, I typed rejection letters for a literary

Q at the Castle

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:00:55 GMT

It seems Quincy Jones pops up everywhere. He produced the best-selling album of all time (Michael Jackson's Thriller, recently re-released in a 25th anniversary edition), played with jazz greats of the 50s and 60s, wrote music for everything from "Roots" to "Sanford and Son" and even had one of his '60s classics revived in Austin Powers. Jones, who turns 75 this March, was involved in many of music's great moments of the last 50 years. But that's not news to the Smithsonian Institution. Both the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the institution's jazz and music scholars have sought out Jones for his expertise on a number of projects. "Q

Chip Kidd

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 02:21:09 GMT

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Extended Interview You wear many different hats—designer, editor, writer. For which are you most passionate? That's an interesting question. Ah, I mean the cop-out answer is I'm passionate about all of them. I think one thing was meaningful to me at some point was to turn from becoming a designer to becoming an author and I don't mean just a writer, but I mean generating the content as well as deciding what it was going to look like. I think that's the thing that interested me the most, whether it's a novel or a book of comics. That's what I'm most passionate about is the authorship. You have designed some 1,000 book covers. How do you keep them unique? I depend o

Mind Games

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 05:59:33 GMT

Don't know about you, but when I see a STARBUCKS sign, I don't think coffee. I think, "SKCUB RATS." A sign above a supermarket called GELSON'S prompts: "SNOS LEG." Maybe I then pause to wonder what skcub rats are, or what it feels like (or worse, looks like) to actually suffer the torment of snos leg. For some reason, the bored angels that wired my brain included a reflexive read-it-backward function that often requires a deliberate, conscious effort to override. It just comes naturally for me to note that ARCO backward is practically a vegetable—and that MOBIL almost spells "lip balm." It doesn't end there. For some reason, I have a need to make sense

A Love Letter Set to Music

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 03:44:47 GMT

Shoo doot 'n shoo be doo, Shoo doot 'n shoo be doo... You were on the dance floor with the one who turned you inside out. And then the music started, and you closed your eyes and floated away. In the still of the night I held you, held you tight 'Cause I love, love you so Promise I'll never let you go In the still of the night... Everyone has a special song buried somewhere in their memory. For me, and I suspect for a lot of others of my generation, a doo-wop ballad that a 19-year-old soldier wrote to his sweetheart while standing guard duty on a starry fall night still shimmers like the eternal first love. As its author would agree. "There were other nights that we spent together,

What is This Thing Called Love?

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 03:59:09 GMT

A stand of logs burns brightly in the fireplace, snowflakes flicker at the window, and servants attend the gentlemen and ladies gathered around a grand piano played by a young Cole Porter, on holiday break from Harvard law school. Carolers, joined by his female cousin, sing: In the still of the night, While the world is in slumber, Oh, the times without number, Darling, when I say to you, "Do you love me as I love you? Are you my life-to-be, my dream come true?" Porter gazes across the room at Linda Lee, the cousin's roommate who has come to celebrate Christmas on the Porter family farm in Peru, a humble town on the plains of northern Indiana. Porter and Lee have only just met,

"All Music Is Folk Music"

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:07:22 GMT

In 1948, Moses Asch founded Folkways Records in New York City, and for the next four decades, till his death in 1986, he and his legendary label introduced the listening public to an unprecedented expanse of musical sounds and oral traditions from cultures throughout the world. The catalog featured American artists and genres (think bluegrass and blues, cowboy songs and cowboy poetry, mountain ballads and plains music, Lead Belly, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Ella Jenkins), along with an extraordinary gathering of artists and genres from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe. In 1987, the Smithsonian acquired the 2,168 recordings of Folkways Records from the Asch family, and

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