Pizzareli has played with musicians as diverse as Benny Goodman, Zoot Sims, Bud Freeman, Dionne and the Belmonts, as well as his son, John Pizzarelli. He peforms a few tunes for a live Fresh Air audience.
Playwright and director George C. Wolfe. He wrote and directed the hit Broadway musical Jelly's Last Jam, starring Gregory Hines, about Jelly Roll Morton. Wolfe also wrote the play The Colored Museum, a satire about the black experience in America. Jazz pianist and composer Joel Forrester joins the interview to perform some of Morton's music.
Film critic Stephen Schiff reviews Wayan's new comedy film. While Schiff admires his ambition, he says the movie is short on humor and offers fraught messages about women, race, and class.
Record Producer Ernst Jorgensen. He's just put together a 5-CD box set of Elvis recordings from the 1950s, called "Elvis: The King of Rock 'n' Roll--The Complete '50's Masters." It includes several alternate takes, early demos, and some previously unreleased tracks.
A concert and interview with producer/performer/songwriter T. Bone Burnett. Rolling Stone once called him "the best songwriter in America." He's produced records for Elvis Costello, John Hiatt, Marshall Crenshaw, and others. His new album is called "The Criminal Under My Own Hat."
Part II of our interview with "Mr. Horror," writer Stpehen King. He'll talk with Terry about his greatest fear, his first writing efforts and his childhood.
Scott sang with Lionel Hampton's band in the late 1940s early 50s, and influenced such singers as Nancy Wilson, Marvin Gaye, and Stevie Wonder. Despite his talent, Scott has had a sporadic career marked by long periods of obscurity. His distinctive voice reaches into high registers, which many listeners early on mistook for a woman's. His new album is called "All the Way."
In light of the current debate over abortion and "family values," critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the new biography of social reformer and birth control champion Margaret Sanger, by Ellen Chesler.
Part I of a two-part interview with "Mr. Horror," writer Stephen King. To date, he's written 24 novels, 19 feature films, two mini-series, and one TV movie. He ushered in a whole new era of horror with his first novel, "Carrie," published in 1974. He's got a new novel, "Gerald's Game," which deals with sadomasochism.
Appiah is Professor of African-American Studies at Harvard. He was born in Ghana to Anglo-Ghanaian parents. His father Ghanaian and his mother British. His new book is "In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture," a collection of essays that one reviewer calls a, "groundbreaking. . . analysis of absurdities and damaging presuppositions that have clouded our discussions on race, Africa, and nationalism since the 19th century."
Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews the new CD by Edward Wilkerson's group, "8 Bold Souls." It's called "Sideshow," on the Arabesque Jazz label. Wilkerson came from Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, which spawned several cutting edge icons of jazz.
Journalist Frederick Kempe is a foreign correspondent and Berlin Bureau Chief for The Wall Street Journal. He spent five weeks traveling thru Sibera and has written an account of it in, "Siberian Odyssey." In many areas, Kempe was the first American there. He visited a nomadic tribe of reindeer herders, a former Gulag site, and the site of a Stalinist mass grave, talking to survivors of the former, and children of victims from the later. Kempe made the trip shortly before the August 1991 coup that ushered out the Communist Party.
Book critic John Leonard reviews Nobel Prize-winning writer Joseph Brodsky's new book of essays, "Watermark," which use Venice as a jumping-off point for a series of reflections on life.
Monette's book "Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir," published in 1988, was one of the first memoirs to be published about AIDS. It told the story of his lover's two year struggle with AIDS. Since then, Monette has watched another lover die of AIDS, and has been diagnosed with AIDS himself. Monette's new memoir about his life before he came out of the closet at the age of 25 is called "Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story."
Producer Naomi Person talks with writer Edward Jones. He's just published a new collection of short stories, "Lost in the City," about the "lives and souls" of black people living in Washington, D.C. This is his first book.
Both writers have been with the show since it went on the air. They're part of the "Harvard Mafia," comedy writers from Harvard who have influenced the comedy business from "Saturday Night Live" to "The Muppet Show."
Film critic Stephen Schiff says the new film, about a crime investigation in a Hassidic community, is a low point for its director -- but not so for star Melanie Griffith.
Lerner was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in "Barton Fink." He's been featured in the films, "Eight Men out," "Harlem Nights," and "The Postman Always Rings Twice." He's now acting in the new HBO movie, "The Comrades of Summer."
