5-10-2011 Interview At age 3 or 4 Steve Drukman discovered that fiction – something unreal – could change a person’s attitude and feelings. Of course, as he says, he didn’t have either the words or the sophistication to think of it in those terms, but…
5-3-2011 Interview Steve Alpert is a Renaissance man; musician, jock, writer, performer, documentary film producer, and perhaps above all a painter. A high lottery number kept him from fighting in Vietnam but many years later an unplanned trip to the Vietnam Memorial Wall showed him…
4-26-11 Interview Interview – Wes Grantom‘s grandfather would gather Wes and his 7 cousins around the campfire on weekends and tell stories – stories the kids believed were real. Including the night grandfather and uncles woke them up in the middle of the night pretending…
4-19-11 Norman Corwin Part 1 The following is actually history in the making. In February I was honored to interview Norman Corwin who will celebrate his 101st birthday on May 3rd 2011. 4-19-11 – Norman Corwin has been called “the poet laureate of radio,” the…
Interview with Betty Garrett Part 2 The second half of my interview begins with Betty talking about the impact that her husband’s decision to talk to the House on Un-American Activities Committee had on their lives. She describes the rejection they experienced and how it…
4-5-11 – Memorial for Betty Garrett – Part 1 Betty Garrett – was truly a singleton. A protege of Danny Kay, she starred on Broadway, capered on film with Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, Mickey Rooney and Red Skelton, made us laugh in Laverne and Shirley…
This year I was lucky enough to attend the 11th Annual Newport Jazz Party and not only hear some amazing music but interview some of our most talented (if not best known) jazz musicians. In the next few weeks I will be airing these interviews…
3-28-11 – Interview Family stories say that at the age of 2 or 3 little Graham Dechter would sing along with the records his parents played or the music his film arranger Dad was composing. “It just came naturally” he says. It was not that…
Show # 150 3-29-11 Holly Hofmann Is the flute a jazz instrument? Can a female flutist play jazz with the boys? When Holly Hofmann began her career most people – especially male jazz musicians – said an emphatic “no” to both questions. And they backed…
3-15-11 Anat Cohen Like her two brothers Anat Cohen is a jazz musician – she plays clarinet and saxophone. Music was always a part of her family life and her parents, who spent years chauffeuring their three children back and forth to lessons and concerts,…
March 8, 2011 Kevyn Morrow was interested in everything; he excelled in sports, played the violin and drums, and trained in ballet. But it was the image of 5 year old Kevyn’s older brother, performing with a “cast of thousands” in Peter Pan, that stayed…
March 1, 2011 Jason Bradley grew up in rural Wisconsin and spent his childhood running through the forest behind his house with his friends making up stories to act out. He says it was the freedom to play and the imagination that fueled this play…
2-22-11 Discussion – Have you suspected that you could really have enjoyed sports, or writing or painting, but have somehow been unable to pursue these things? Are you aware that there might be aspects of you that you’ve been unable to surface, access and enjoy?…
2-15-11 Interview – Bobby Neel Adams grew up in a town with the “most boring public high schools.” He had no exposure to art except Life magazine’s coverage of the Viet Nam war, which he says “told a bigger story” and clearly had an impact…
2-8-11 Apparently born with words in his mouth. Steve DePass was rhyming from the moment he could speak and performing on Broadway with Jimmy Durante at five years old. Nelson Rockefeller, who was then the Governor of New York, dubbed Steve America’s Singing Poet and…
February 1, 2011 David Hirson doesn’t know when he decided that he was a writer because looking back it seems that he was always a writer; by the age of 10 he was “filling notebooks with ideas and thinking about what he wanted to write.…
January 25, 2011 Interview – At about 5 years old Jimmy Clark saw the movie of A Midsummer Nights Dream and told his mom “that’s where I want to live.” Lucky Jimmy was surrounded both at home and in school by people who really saw…
January 18, 2011 Interview – Danny Scheie (pronounced Shay) was 4 or 5 years old when his parents took him to see Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins and when he saw her dancing with a cartoon penguin he thought “I must do that!” When family…
January 14, 2011 Interview – When he was nine years old Mark Winkler told his parents that he was going to be a singer and surprisingly his parents said “of course you’re going to be a singer.” As luck would have it Mark’s aunt –…
January 4, 2011 Interview – Frank Wildhorn says “As soon as my hands hit the keys, although I didn’t know what I was doing, I knew I was making music.” He was 14 and living in Hollywood Florida where his family had relocated, and although…