He originated the staccato, three-finger banjo technique that became known as the "Scruggs style." He got his start playing with Bill Monroe's band in the 1940s, and then teamed up with guitarist Lester Flatt (fronting The Foggy Mountain Boys). The two penned and recorded the tune "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," which was used on the Bonnie and Clyde film soundtrack and was one of the first crossover hits of the genre. They also recorded "The Ballad of Jed Clampett," the theme song for the sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies. It topped the charts in 1962.
He originated the staccato, three-finger banjo technique that became known as the "Scruggs style." He got his start playing with Bill Monroe's band in the 1940s, and then teamed up with guitarist Lester Flatt (fronting The Foggy Mountain Boys). The two penned and recorded the tune "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," which was used on the Bonnie and Clyde film soundtrack and was one of the first crossover hits of the genre. They also recorded "The Ballad of Jed Clampett," the theme song for the sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies. It topped the charts in 1962.
We talk about the Taliban with Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid. His new book is called Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (Yale University Press). In the mid 1990s, the Taliban Movement gained power in Afghanistan, a country in the wake of a civil war. The Taliban declared they wanted to restore peace and enforce traditional Islamic law. Instead, The Taliban has shown itself to be a troubling development in Islamic radicalism. It has launched a genocidal campaign against Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan. It has sanctioned acts of international terrorism.
Steven Pinker, a psycholinguist at MIT and director of its Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, has a new book on how language works: "The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language" (Morrow). He argues that language is not simply a cultural invention taught by parents and schools, but a biological system, --an instinct-- partly learned, and partly innate. To Pinker, a three year old toddler is a "grammatical genius", capable of obeying adult rites of language, similar to web-spinning in spiders or sonar in bats.
His new book is Between Midnight and Day: The Last Unpublished Blues Archive. It is a large-format book with photos and text by Waterman. In the early 1960s, Waterman became interested in traditional blues music. He rediscovered blues legend Son House living in Rochester, N.Y. Waterman then formed Avalon Productions, the first agency dedicated to promoting blue artists. Waterman managed many acts, including Bonnie Raitt. He's been representing and photographing blues artists for more than 40 years. He is the only non-performer to be inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.
Mubarak Awad grew up in the Occupied Territories; he later became a U.S. citizen, but returned to Palestine to advocate for civil disobedience as the best way to resist Israeli rule and discrimination. He joins Fresh Air to give his perspective on the intifada and Palestinian organizations like PLO, whose violent actions Awat sees as acts of resistance, not terrorism.
Growing up, comics Nadia Manzoor and Radhika Vaz never dreamed that they would one day co-star in a sketch-comedy series about two immigrant Muslim women in Brooklyn. But Manzoor who grew up in a Pakistani-Muslim community in London, and Vaz who grew up in India now star in the web series Shugs & Fats. The series won a Gotham Award for breakthru short form series.
Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews "X," the opera by composer Anthony Davis, about the life and times of Malcom X. It's just came out on CD. The opera is Wagnerian in scale and style, but it also has allusions to the music of Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, and John Coltrane, and others.
Saxophonist and clarinetist Ned Rothenberg has always been a musical cosmopolitan.
Early on, he studied jazz with George Coleman and shakuhachi flute in Japan. Later, Rothenberg put together his North African-influenced Double Band, and toured in duos with the Tuvan throat singer Saimkho Namtchylak, the shakuhachi virtuoso Katsuya Yokoyama and English saxophone improviser Evan Parker.
Rothenberg's new album, Inner Diaspora, sends him back to his roots.
Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater. Both are correspondents for The New York Times. Their new book about the 118th Congress, the one elected in 2022, is "Mad House: How Donald Trump, MAGA Mean Girls, A Former Used Car Salesman, A Florida Nepo Baby, And A Man With Rats In His Walls Broke Congress."
Liv Ullmann gained fame as an actress in Ingmar Bergman films. Recently, her work has involved traveling around the world and fundraising as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF. Bergman has just completed a tour of East Africa. Ullman has also directed a sequence in the film "Acts of Love."
About 10 years ago, a new variation on hip-hop became popular in San Francisco's Bay Area. It's called "hyphy" (pronounced "hi-fee"), slang for hyper-active, and it's gaining in national popularity. Hyphy Hitz, a new anthology of tracks from Bay Area acts, suggests that's partly because hyphy presents a more playful, energetic attitude than most contemporary hip-hop.
Justin Chang says the film is based on a densely plotted 2011 novel by the Ohio-born author Donald Ray Pollock, and it's grim in ways that can be both exciting and a little wearying: so many twists and betrayals, so many horrific acts of violence.
This is one weird-but-true story. It's a story that leads readers from 19th century scientific expeditions into the jungles of Malaysia to the "feather fever" of the turn of the last century, when women's hats were be-plumed with ostriches and egrets. And it's a story that focuses on the feather-dependent Victorian art of salmon fly-tying and its present-day practitioners, many of whom lurk online in something called "The Feather Underground."
Elementary school principal Madeline Cartwright took over the run-down Blaine Elementary School in a run-down, drug-infested neighborhood in North Philadelphia and turned it into a school that works. One of her first acts when she took over the school was to get down on her hands and knees and scrub the foul-smelling children's bathroom.
Foreman faces federal felony charges for allegedly plotting to blow up power lines leading to a nuclear power plant. His organization Earth First! has been praised and vilified for its use of "monkey wrenching" -- acts of sabotage and civil disobedience against organizations that are hurting the earth. Foreman, who has since distanced himself from the group, has a new book, called "Confessions of an Eco-Warrior."
The Butch Thompson Trio was a regular on Garrison Keillor's syndicated radio show. Thompson's specialty is classic jazz from 1890s to about 1940, including the music of Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, Eubie Blake, and others. He has a new series of solo CDs entitled "Minnesota Wonder."
Editor and columnist Raymond Sokolov. His new book is "Why We Eat What We Eat: How the Encounter Between the New World and the Old Changed the Way Everyone on the Planet Eats." (published by Summit Books) His premise is that Christopher Columbus initiated a worldwide culinary revolution when he discovered the New World. Sokolov is the editor of the Leisure & Arts page of "The Wall Street Journal," a columnist for "Natural History" magazine, and a contributor to "Food and Wine" magazine. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane).
Blake Mills has done a lot in his 28 years. As a guitarist, he has accompanied singers including Lucinda Williams, Neil Diamond, Kid Rock, and Lana Del Ray. He's produced songs for acts such as Fiona Apple and Alabama Shakes. His new album, his second, is called Heigh Ho, and Fresh Air critic Ken Tucker says it's notable for the diversity of its sound.
Thede's HBO series, A Black Lady Sketch Show, is the first sketch comedy show solely written, directed and starring Black women. "It is a nonstop job," she says of the various hats she wears.
