Terry Gross

Sonny Sharrock was a guitarist. His genre was the free-jazz movement of the late 1960's Jon Pareles said in the New York Times that Sharrock's "guitar solos streaked and clanged, using blistering speed and raw noise to create music that had both the openness of jazz and power of rock." (Rebroadcast of 10/23/1991)

Jazz musicians Red Rodney and Sonny Sharrock. They're both important jazz figures who recently died. We will rebroadcast previous interviews with both Rodney was a trumpeter and band leader. He rose through the big band ranks and played in Charlie Parker's quintet. He was known as one of jazz's best improvisers. And he was known for regaling journalists with his stories-- often of dubious veracity. (Rebroadcast of 6/15/1990)

Mary Previte, superintendent of the Camden County (NJ) Youth Center. Previte, the great granddaughter of missionary pioneer Hudson Taylor, grew up in China with her missionary parents. During World War II, she and her fellow students and teachers spent three years in a Japanese concentration camp. Previte credits the structure her teachers' created with making the horrific experience bearable. For the past twenty years, Previte has run the youth center, a holding center for boys and girls charged with serious crimes.

Film Director John Dahl. His new film is a thriller called "Red Rock West." It takes place in a tough little town in Wyoming over a forty-eight hour period. It has a film noir feeling and plot that twists and turns. It stars Nicholas Cage, Dennis Hopper, Lara Flynn Boyle and J.T. Walsh.

Movie critic Stephen Schiff preview the upcoming live action film, "The Flintstones".

Mystery writer Walter Mosley. He's written a new book in his series about gumshoe hero Easy Rawlins. It's called "Black Betty" (Norton). Betty's a shark of a woman who leaves dead men in her wake. Like the other books in the series, "Black Betty" has Easy in post-War, but pre-present South Central L.A.--this time the year is 1961. Mosley gained public attention when then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton said that Mosley was his favorite mystery writer.

Writer Mikal Gilmore, youngest brother of executed killer Gary Gilmore. Gilmore's 1977 death --at his own request-- by firing squad in Utah, was the first American execution in ten years. Brother Mikal finds seeds of his brother's two murders sown far back in Gilmore family history, and its Mormon roots.

Commentator Jim Northrup looks at computers on Native American Reservations.

Civil rights attorney and law professor Jack Greenberg. He was just out of law school--a white Jewish man from the Bronx when he joined the fledgling NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). Greenberg took over the helm of the LDF from his mentor Thurgood Marshall when Marshall was appointed to the Federal Court of Appeals. During Greenberg's tenure there, the LDF litigated some of the watershed cases of the civil rights struggle. He has just published a memoir of his 35 years at the LDF.

Television correspondent Robert Krulwich. In a Frontline production (co-produced with the Center for Investigative Reporting) called "Public Lands, Private Profits" to be aired at 9 p.m. tonight on PBS (check local listings), Krulwich examines today's gold mining industry--the impact of mining activities and the current political battle for control of mineral resources on public lands. The Mining Law of 1872 was passed to encourage settlement and development in the West. It's still on the books.