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DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, professor of television studies at Rowan University, in for Terry Gross. Courtney B. Vance has been nominated for a guest actor Emmy for his role in HBO's "Lovecraft Country," a supernatural horror series inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. The period miniseries set in the past in the segregated Deep South was truly scary, but also managed to probe deeply into such concepts as racism, identity and self-worth. Here's a scene in which Vance, as George Freeman, finds himself invited to stay in a remote mansion along with his nephew and his nephew's girlfriend. It's a mansion that generates dreams and anxieties.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "LOVECRAFT COUNTRY")
COURTNEY B VANCE: (As George) You OK?
JONATHAN MAJORS: (As Atticus) Who'd they make you see?
VANCE: (As George) Doesn't matter. They're just trying to get inside our heads.
MAJORS: (As Atticus) Something happened in the war, something bad.
VANCE: (As George) Don't. You know who you are. You were a good boy. And you're even a better man. Don't you ever let them make you question yourself. That's how they win. They want to make us crazy, terrorize us, make us scared.
BIANCULLI: Vance also starred in "Genius: Aretha," the National Geographic drama series about Aretha Franklin. Vance played Aretha's father, the Reverend C.L. Franklin. Earlier, Vance won an Emmy for his portrayal of Johnnie Cochran in the 2016 series "American Crime Story: The People Vs. O.J. Simpson." At the start of his career, he was just out of the Yale School of Drama when he costarred alongside James Earl Jones in the world premiere of August Wilson's play "Fences," presented by the Yale Repertory Theater. Vance later starred in the original stage production of "Six Degrees Of Separation." He also starred in NBC's "Law & Order: Criminal Intent." Terry spoke with Courtney B. Vance in April.
Let's start with a scene from "Genius: Aretha," with Vance as Aretha's father. The son of sharecroppers, the Reverend C.L. Franklin became famous for his preaching. His reach extended far beyond his church. In the 1950s, he toured the Deep South's gospel circuit with his gospel caravan. When Aretha was 12, he took her on tour as a performer. The series is in part about the conflicts that developed between them over the years. Here's Courtney B. Vance as the father preaching at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "GENIUS: ARETHA")
VANCE: (As C.L. Franklin) I wish I had some praying people in here today. Y'all not hearing me tonight. Y'all not hearing me. Some people only want to trust in theyselves (ph).
(APPLAUSE)
VANCE: (As C.L. Franklin) Some people put all they trust in they bank account.
CYNTHIA ERIVO: (As Aretha) Oh, no.
VANCE: (As C.L. Franklin) Some folks trust in the government. But, ultimately - I said, ultimately - I said, ultimately, all those things will fail.
(APPLAUSE)
VANCE: (As C.L. Franklin) But I'm going to put my trust, my trust, our trust, in the Lord.
(APPLAUSE)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL GROUP: (Singing) I will trust - yes, sir - in the Lord. Come on, say, I will - I will trust - I'll trust - in the Lord. I will trust. I will trust - yes, I will - in the Lord. How long? 'Til I...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
TERRY GROSS: That's an excerpt from "Genius: Aretha." Courtney B. Vance, welcome to FRESH AIR. It's a terrific performance that you give.
VANCE: Thank you.
GROSS: It's a great portrayal of a very complicated man. So let's start with his preaching. When you listen to recordings of C.L. Franklin's preaching, what did you hear that you wanted to capture?
VANCE: Well, everything. He was a self-made preacher. He, as you characterized in my intro that he was a stepson of a sharecropper. So his stepfather gave him an ultimatum because he was running back and forth, literally running back and forth 10, 15, 20 miles to guest preach at small churches, and then rushing back to get back to do his sharecropping chores. He gave him a choice. He said, the pulpit or the plow. And he chose the pulpit. And the stepfather kicked him out. So he had to sink or swim. There was no safety net for him.
And to see where he - the heights that he reached on that - after that very fateful day was - to me, was everything. It characterized his life, his choices to get where he had to go and his - the people that were in his church. That's why they were so passionate about him because he was them. He was everyone in Detroit. Most Black folks, 99% of the Black folks in Detroit, came straight up from Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas. They came up. And they were part of that Great Migration. So he was real with them.
GROSS: Let's talk about C.L. Franklin's voice, which you had to learn and understand for your portrayal. What did you hear in his voice and in the way he used repetition and just kind of savored words?
VANCE: I'm churched. So I - most pastors during that time, they did that. So that repetition was and is that Black tradition of call and response. And it ties everyone together. It ties the choir behind him - or as they say, the choir - behind him together with the congregation in front of him. And he's enveloped in sound and in family. And everybody knows what they're supposed to do. There's a person who gives the repetition of certain words. And so it is a rhythm. It's a rhythm that just builds. I listened to hundreds of sermons of his because they're all on - they're all digitized online. And I listened just to hear his cadence, his rhythm, his words that give me - keywords that keep me in sync with him. And it is a genius preachers at that time had, to be able to connect with anyone and everyone on any topic and be able to take it - bring it back to the cross. So I love the - I love listening to his sermons. But I love church. So I love listening to all pastors and getting their word.
GROSS: So in terms of playing complicated people, let's move on to Johnnie Cochran (laughter), who you portrayed in the "American Crime Story" series, "The People V. O.J. Simpson." And Cochran, of course, was the star lawyer on O.J.'s defense team. You've said you didn't watch a lot of videos of the trial, and you felt you didn't need to. Why did you feel you didn't need to?
VANCE: I lived the trial, the year-long drama that we all lived through, those who were of age who remember that nightmare. So I was intimidated to go back and to portray a person that everybody knows and has an opinion about. So my - the way I approach acting is it's problem-solving. And sometimes, based on who I am, the problem needs to be solved by delving into and doing all of the research and doing all of the minutia work and building from scratch. But with Johnnie Cochran in "The People Vs. O.J.," I said, no, I don't - I'm just going to read Jeffrey Toobin's "The Run For Your Life (ph)," I believe the name of the book is. And I'm going to stay away from watching footage. If I'm watching footage, I'm going to be - I'm mimicking. And I had to get to the place where I'm doing it, and the scripts are great, and people will forgive the minutia that I miss because they'll get wrapped up in the story. And I'm going to jump in.
I read the book twice. I saw that he - his mother - of her four or five children in his family, she chose him. She knew that he would have the stomach to deal with white folks. And so she put him in an all-white environment and went to, I believe, LA High. And then he went to UCLA and changed - the rest is history. So once I saw that, that he was put in an all-white world and used that to segue out into his life and his career, I said, got him. I know him. That's what - that was my journey - Detroit Country Day, scholarship to Detroit Country Day, Harvard, Yale, "Fences." You know, so once I knew that, I said, I got him. I don't need anything else.
GROSS: Well, let's hear a clip of you portraying Johnnie Cochran. And this is part of your closing argument. So Mark Fuhrman was the LAPD officer who found the bloody gloves near the crime scene while he was investigating the murder of O.J.'s ex-wife, Nicole Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman. During the course of the trial, the defense presented tapes of Fuhrman making racist remarks - not only making racist remarks, but kind of bragging about being racist. And Fuhrman's racism became a key part of the defense strategy. So let's hear a scene in which you're making - you as Johnnie Cochran are making the final argument for the defense.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "AMERICAN CRIME STORY: THE PEOPLE V. O.J. SIMPSON")
VANCE: (As Johnnie Cochran) But don't be fooled. This isn't just one officer. Mark Fuhrman represents the entire LAPD. Now, you may not know this, but you are empowered. Your decision has a major implication both in this courtroom and outside of it. Things happen for a reason in life. Maybe that's why we're gathered together. Something in your background, your character, helps you to know that this is wrong. Maybe you're the right people at the right time to be able to say, no more. We can't have this. What they have done is disgraceful. O.J. Simpson is entitled to an acquittal. They have entrusted this case to a man who says he'd like to see all [expletive] gathered together and killed. That is genocide. That man speaks like Adolf Hitler.
Now, since you can't trust the man, and you don't trust the people, is it any wonder, in the defining moment in this trial when they asked O.J. Simpson to try on the glove and the glove didn't fit, it didn't fit because it wasn't his? If you don't stop this cover-up, who will? Send them a message. Let them know that your verdict will travel far outside these walls. Ladies and gentlemen, remember these words. If it doesn't fit, you must acquit. If it doesn't fit, you must acquit. If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.
GROSS: Nicely done (laughter).
VANCE: Wow. Wow.
GROSS: That's my guest, Courtney B. Vance, as Johnnie Cochran in a scene from the "American Crime Story" series, "The People Vs. O.J. Simpson." Did you ever wonder if Johnnie Cochran thought that O.J. actually did it but he was going to give him the best defense he could possibly come up with?
VANCE: I don't know. He could. But, you know, defense attorneys - they don't want to know that. They don't want to know if you've done it or not. It's a show. And people are always, you know, talking about, you know, Johnnie, how he - demonizing him for him - I mean, that was his job. And it was the - it was Marcia Clark's job to prove that he was guilty. And she didn't do a good job, obviously, you know? And it was - it's so polarizing because it was a Black man that was - that got off. And it was a Black man that got him off.
BIANCULLI: Courtney B. Vance speaking to Terry Gross earlier this year - more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF GERALD CLAYTON'S "SOUL STOMP")
BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's interview from earlier this year with actor Courtney B. Vance. He's been nominated for a guest actor Emmy for his work in the HBO series "Lovecraft Country."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: So let's talk about growing up in Detroit. You've said that your family moved to a lower-middle-class, predominantly white neighborhood when you were a child. And then you got there, and then the white people moved out. What are some of your memories of that period and what it was like to be a Black family moving into a white neighborhood?
VANCE: That was a very heady time. I was just starting to become, quote, unquote, "aware." I was 9 the summer of Mayor Coleman Young, first Black African American mayor of Detroit, you know, Black power. Again, I - you can't - you know, with 20/20 eyes, you can't judge the time period. But Mayor Young told white folks, we don't need you, get out. And Detroit was a super segregated city like Chicago, St. Louis and the - you know, for years, the police were - you know, could do what they wanted to Black people. And they did. And Black folks were tired of it. And when they got their Black mayor, they said, get out. I mean, it literally was a - you know, was a battle, you know, for the soul of Detroit. And for the first time, Black folks had won a battle.
And it didn't go the direction that we would hope that it would gone, and this city would have kept climbing. White folks - a tax base left the city. And when the tax base leaves, the good schools go. But the neighborhood where we grew up was all-white and a smattering of Blacks when we came in. And our parents were so happy. We had a five-bedroom house. It was - you know, it was - we were - we had made it.
So - but we got there. And, you know, we saw it happen in front of our eyes, that the neighborhood flipped overnight. That's summer of '69. The white folks left. And my parents realized they'd never get their money out of the house. The school flipped to an all-Black school. And we were great students.
But eventually, the peer pressure shifted from, you know, getting great grades, which we always did, and to what you were wearing. And, you know, we started fighting. And our parents, you know, in the middle of the semester, pulled us out and put us in a Catholic school, an all-white world, and which was completely frightening and foreign to us. But we had to figure it out really quickly and get to the business of school.
GROSS: So you went on to Yale - studied at the Yale School of Drama.
VANCE: Went to Harvard, then went to Yale.
GROSS: Went to Harvard first, OK. So you were cast in the Yale Repertory Theatre production, which was the world premiere of August Wilson's play "Fences." And James Earl Jones played your father. I mean, that's a pretty big deal for a young actor who only recently figured out that he even wanted to act. Tell us a little bit about what you learned from James Earl Jones.
VANCE: I was completely in awe. I mean, as you said, I don't know upstage from downstage. I knew nothing. It was our second year in drama school. And so I was shocked. I read the play up in the library. I read it and said, wow, somebody - some big football player-type young man's going to get this role, put the play down and went back to, you know, doing what I was doing. I was doing - in class, I was doing some amazing work, you know, in "Uncle Vanya." And I know our first-year acting teacher, God rest his soul, Mr. Earle Gister, you know, was very impressed with what I was doing. I didn't know that.
But I was just - I was working. I was so happy. I was just, you know, doing my thing. And I'm sure he passed it on to Lloyd Richards, our dean, who was, you know, directing "Fences." But I was in shock that my girlfriend at the time told me to go look at the casting board. I said, what for? And she said, please go look at the casting board. And I saw my name up there. I was in shock.
So for me, the hardest thing was trying to figure out what to call James Earl Jones. Everyone was calling him Jimmy. He wasn't Jimmy to me. And I couldn't call him James. So I just called him sir. And that was exactly what I had to call him in the play.
I didn't know, as I said, upstage from downstage. I upstaged James Earl by, you know, doing the scene. He was sitting on the steps. And I was sitting - I was in the the nook of the steps in the porch. And he didn't say anything.
And on a break, Lloyd took me aside. And he said, Courtney, if Jimmy were any other star, he would tell you himself. But I'm telling you, when he's sitting on the stage, you have to be downstage of him looking up at him. I said, that's what upstaging is - oh. I had no idea.
GROSS: You got so much out of the Yale School of Drama. It led you to Lloyd Richards. It led you to "Fences." And it's also where you met your wife, Angela Bassett. You and Angela Bassett have twins. Being a parent must have been so different from your parents' parenting - different generation. They were struggling, you know, financially some of the time. And once you and Angela Bassett both established careers, you weren't struggling financially.
VANCE: Well, you know, our parents instilled in us some basic things that we carry on. So, as I said, the message is more important than the money. We are really about discipline and really about education and really about our God. And so we instill those things in our children when they go into this world, and the world's crazy, they have a sense of themselves. So our parents did that for us. And we're doing that for our children.
So, you know, the world may be crazy. They go to the fancy schools. But they weren't raised that way. They weren't raised with limos going to, you know, here and there. And we didn't take them to our events for that reason - so they would think that this is their world. This is not their world.
I remember we were coming back home from a big event. And we were - the - a car service was bringing us back home. And the children were at the day care center in the evening. The place was on our way back home. And Angela - let's stop and pick up - I said, no. Baby, please, let's go home, let the limo go away, get in our car and go back and pick them up. This is not their world. Our world is not their world.
And every now and then, we take them to something, to a premiere for a children's movie or something like that and do a little red carpet thing. So it's something for them, you know. And then gradually, you know, I think "Black Panther" became the first thing that mommy, my wife, let them, you know, really be a part of and go, you know, engage and go to the red carpet and do all that kind of stuff.
GROSS: Well, that's a pretty big deal (laughter).
VANCE: Yes. It was a huge deal.
GROSS: Courtney B. Vance, it's really been a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much.
VANCE: Thank you very much.
BIANCULLI: Courtney B. Vance speaking to Terry Gross earlier this year. He's nominated for a guest actor Emmy for the HBO series "Lovecraft Country." The Emmys are scheduled for September 19. After a break, we remember civil rights activist Bob Moses. That and more. I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SINNERMAN")
ALICE SMITH: Oh, sinnerman, where you going to run to?
DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, in for Terry Gross. "The Stone Face" is a 1963 novel by the Black reporter and fiction writer William Gardner Smith. It's just been released in a new edition by New York Review Books. And it tells the story of a writer who, like Smith himself, moves to Paris in hopes of finding a freedom he couldn't find in America. Our critic-at-large John Powers says that this book addresses issues that could hardly feel more timely today.
JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: In recent years, many Americans have been attempting to reckon with this country's harsh racial history. One happy offshoot of this often unhappy reckoning is that we're discovering glories of Black culture that have been forgotten, undervalued or simply ignored. In just the last couple of weeks, we've had Questlove's "Summer Of Soul," about the utopian 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, and "The One And Only Dick Gregory," about the suave, groundbreaking comedian who, just as his career began to soar, would skip $5,000-a-night gigs in order to head South to fight for civil rights.
At one point, Gregory's son says his father used to tell him that you can't really understand any aspect of life until you see the other side. You can't understand happiness unless you've been unhappy, can't understand good health unless you've been ill. I thought about this as I read "The Stone Face," a 1963 novel by William Gardner Smith, a Black journalist and novelist I'd never heard of until I came across this brand-new reprint, which includes an elegant and useful introduction by Adam Shatz.
Set in one of literature's most romanticized realms - the world of Americans hanging out in Paris - "The Stone Face" starts out offering a vision of paradise, then reveals the other side. The hero, Simeon Brown, is a Philadelphia journalist who wears a piratical eyepatch after losing an eye in a racist attack. Following in the tradition of Josephine Baker and James Baldwin, he moves to late-'50s Paris and enters expat Bohemia. While his white acquaintances are largely there for pleasure and the good exchange rate, his African American comrades have come to breathe air that's free of racism. As Simeon's hefty pal, Babe, says, I came over to get out from under. Them people and their prejudice was on the verge of making me thin.
At first, Paris is heaven. As Simeon bops between clubs and eats soul food greens in Montmartre, the French treat him with a respect he's never known. He gets romantically entangled with a beautiful Polish emigre, Maria, an aspiring actress who yearns for what she calls the froth of life. Then one night, he tussles with an Algerian guy, whom the cops arrest, while letting Simeon go. The next day, the Algerian's friends yell at him, hey; how does it feel to be a white man? As he comes to know them better and learns about Algeria's bitter struggle for independence from France, he discovers that in Paris, Arabs - especially Algerians - suffer the same abuse that Black people do in America.
Now, lots of famous American writers have written about life in expat Paris. While Smith doesn't write the memorable prose of a Baldwin, Ernest Hemingway or Janet Flanner, few do. He's a skillful writer who saw beyond his own circle to capture a social rupture in France that persists in today's racial conflicts. "The Stone Face" explores the shifting nature of cultural identity and social oppression. Nobody is wholly innocent.
While Simeon suffered racism in America, in France, the Algerians are the pariahs. As a Polish Jew, Maria survived the Nazis' staggering cruelty, only to encounter the virulent anti-Jewishness of some of Simeon's Algerian friends. Smith builds to a harrowing account of the infamous slaughter on October 17, 1961, when police murdered scores, maybe hundreds, of peaceful Algerian demonstrators, tossing many of their bodies into the Seine.
All of this confronts Simeon with his own privilege in being treated properly. His Black friends all know what's going on, but having found a safe haven in Paris, choose not to risk being deported for interfering in French politics. Ashamed by his own self-protective instincts, Simeon must answer the gnawing question faced by many white people today. When you know that your own comfort is violently denied to others of a different color or ethnicity, what part of that comfort will you sacrifice to fight for justice?
Dick Gregory used to joke that African Americans like football because it was the one time in American life that a Black guy could use a white guy and 40,000 people would cheer. Just as that line feels a slyly witty today as it did in 1961, so the issues Smith raises in his novel resonate at least as much now as they did six decades ago. Smith may not be Hemingway, but next to "The Stone Face's" portrait of the frothy, but race-torn, Paris, a moveable feast seems as ancient and fanciful as "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
BIANCULLI: John Powers reviewed "The Stone Face" by William Gardner Smith, first published in 1963. Coming up, we remember civil rights activist Bob Moses, who died Sunday at age 86. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF AARON DIEHL'S "PIANO ETUDE NO. 16")
DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. We're going to remember one of the pioneers of the civil rights movement, Bob Moses. He died Sunday at the age of 86. The quiet-spoken, self-effacing activist helped lead the effort in Mississippi to organize and register rural Black residents to vote. In 1960, after watching news footage of lunch counter sit-ins in the South, he left his job teaching math in New York City to help in the civil rights movement.
When he arrived in Mississippi, he was one of only a few activists there. He joined the staff of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. And in 1964, he helped organize Freedom Summer, which recruited college students - mostly white students from the North - to come down to Mississippi to help in the effort to register African Americans to vote and to bring the country's attention to Mississippi's entrenched white supremacy. Here he is at a news conference announcing the program.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BOB MOSES: We hope to send into Mississippi this summer upwards of 1,000 teachers, ministers, lawyers and students from all around the country who will engage in what we're calling freedom schools, community center programs, voter registration activity, research work, work in the white communities, and in general, a program designed to open up Mississippi to the country.
BIANCULLI: Bob Moses and others faced brutal violence, relentless intimidation and death threats. Three of the young activists - Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman - were murdered by white racists. Later in his career, Moses, who had a master's degree in philosophy from Harvard, founded the Algebra Project to teach math literacy to urban and rural communities. He considered it an extension of his civil rights work. Terry spoke with Bob Moses in 1993.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
TERRY GROSS: How much of an issue was voting when you started in Mississippi? Was there already a popular movement to get...
MOSES: There wasn't, no. What had happened in Mississippi through the '50s was a really strong repression. Mississippi was sort of South Africa. And following the Supreme Court decision, the government of the state was really taken over by the racist organizations. So the White Citizens' Councils, which were the respectable face of the Klan, really took over the state government. Ross Barnett was the governor. And he was really the tool of those groups. And so you had a really state organized repression. And they really assassinated the NAACP leadership that they could. And so by the time we got there in 1960, '61, there was a handful of leaders left. Medgar Evers was the state representative for the NAACP. And he was sort of operating a one-man shop there with a few leaders strung out across the state. And they were struggling to hold on.
GROSS: What was the Supreme Court decision that you referred to?
MOSES: 1954, the Supreme Court decision around school desegregation. So that - you see; Mississippi just decided, well, they're not going to integrate the schools here. And the one - the people who might try are the NAACP leadership with court cases. So they began killing off some of that leadership. It was in Belzoni, and Gus Courts there also in Belzoni. There was a whole string of them that went down during the '50s.
GROSS: So you were operating in a climate of repression and intimidation and violence.
MOSES: Right. Right.
GROSS: What would you use - what would you do to convince people that it was worth the risk to try to register?
MOSES: Well, I think people's backs were up against the wall. So there was a consensus that we all ought to try to register. And then not that we all - well, that it should be done. And then the question was, well, who are the people who are ready to step out? Now, one of the things was our accompanying them to the registration office. So in those areas where people felt more at home going down there if we accompanied them, we did. And that's - the registration office became the scene of little battles. In Walthall County, the sheriff pistol-whipped John Hardy when he brought some people in. And then, in Amite County, they had some guys who came and jumped on me when I accompanied some people down to register in Liberty.
GROSS: When you accompanied people to register to vote and you got into the registrar's office, what were the typical obstacles that you'd face?
MOSES: Well, the delaying tactics. So they would take one person at a time. And, you know, they would just drag it out. And then the people had to fill out some section of the Constitution and interpret it. So they would give them some very difficult passage to read and to write about. And so - and then there would be some intimidations. Usually, you would have law enforcement officers and highway patrolmen, you know, sort of walking in and out. And so it would be a sort of intimidating atmosphere a lot of times. Then you would also have ordinary citizens coming in. And sometimes, they would talk to people, you know, to try to intimidate them.
GROSS: What would you do to make it clear that you couldn't be intimidated, and especially when people are trying to intimidate others through...
MOSES: Well, mostly, we just kept coming back.
GROSS: Yeah. Right. Right.
MOSES: I mean, that - I mean, I guess that was the bottom line, that is that, OK, whatever you do. You know, we - you knock us down. And we get back up. And we come back. So that was basically it.
GROSS: You were more educated, I'm sure, than the authorities who were standing in your way in Mississippi. Did you ever use that as a credential to intimidate them?
MOSES: I didn't do a lot of talking, of course. And this is one of the issues, you know, because the - one of the first things is to let you know that you are not to talk, right? And I didn't really push that. And, I think, here, you're dealing with real personality, you know, dimensions, because I just - in my own way of reacting, I tended to sort of go into myself and find in myself some kind of core, which then I tried to project.
GROSS: That's the kind of thing that's sometimes interpreted as a sign of weakness.
MOSES: I don't know. It depends, I guess. There's a way of sort of projecting how you feel in terms of confidence in just stillness, you know, so that you're not rattled.
GROSS: But you said that the thing was not to talk. Why?
MOSES: Well, they - because, the talking - the first thing about talking is whether you're going to say, sir.
GROSS: Oh, yeah.
MOSES: So that's the first line of the battle. So as soon as you open your mouth, then they're going to want to say, you know, sir, you know? What did you say? Did you - you know, they want you to say sir to them. So you can hardly get a conversation off the ground.
GROSS: Were there tremendous acts of courage that you witnessed in Mississippi?
MOSES: Yeah, I think there were a lot of acts of courage. And some of them, you know, were small in one sense. There were a group of ladies when we were in jail in McComb who took it upon themselves to deliver food to us every day. They cooked it themselves, and they delivered it. And about 16 of us there in jail. And, of course, in doing that, they were branded, right? So - and later, one of them had her house bombed. So there were a lot of those kind of things happening.
And then, of course, there - people were murdered. Louis Allen witnessed a murder. And Herbert Lee, who was one of the farmers working with us, got gunned down at the cotton gin there in Liberty, the same place where I had gotten beaten. And Louis Allen saw it. And so the issue of testifying before the justice of peace, the jury that they pulled together there and of giving his testimony to the federal government - and the Justice Department saying, well, there's no way we can give you any protection. And because of that, he suffered - you know, he got his jaw broken by one of the policemen down there. They put him in and out of jail over a couple years. And finally, they killed him. They drove up onto his front lawn one day and just, you know, blasted him away.
And he sort of lived that, really, on his own for over a couple of years 'cause Herbert Lee was killed in '61, and Louis Allen was shot down in the beginning of '64. And it was really his death which really turned the corner about having the Mississippi Freedom Summer. It's like we had come full circle. And we weren't able to do anything in response to Herbert Lee's murder, but we were in position to do something when Louis Allen was gunned down.
GROSS: When people were murdered in Mississippi, people in the civil rights movement from Mississippi or people from outside who'd come down to work there like Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman, was it a personal crisis for you, too?
MOSES: Yeah. And Herbert Lee was the first person that we were working with very closely who was murdered. And that was in the first summer when we went down. And I guess the only way in which we could sort of live through it was to say, well, we're going to live our lives and go through the same kind of danger that led to his being murdered. And so we're not asking other people to do what we are not also daily doing. And that's how, from my point of view, I got through it.
BIANCULLI: Bob Moses speaking to Terry Gross in 1993. The pioneer civil rights activist died last Sunday at age 86. Coming up, Kevin Whitehead reviews two new solo albums by two tenor saxophonist recorded during the COVID quarantine. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHICK COREA AND GARY BURTON'S "WHAT GAME SHALL WE PLAY TODAY")
DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says COVID-era isolationism has produced a bumper crop of solo records from jazz instrumentalists. These include two very different new albums by two outstanding tenor saxophonists - J.D. Allen caught in the studio and Jon Irabagon recorded in the wild. He starts with J.D. Allen.
(SOUNDBITE OF J.D. ALLEN'S "THESE FOOLISH THINGS")
KEVIN WHITEHEAD, BYLINE: Tenor saxophonist J.D. Allen giving "These Foolish Things" the gravitas of "Old Man River." It's from Allen's solo CD "Queen City," the nickname for Cincinnati, where he recorded it early in 2021. In the notes, Allen describes his own COVID-era journey, questioning what it's all about as the music world ground to a halt, then turning back to his horn - lockdown was made for practicing - and then towards self-reliance, making music on his own. He already had a sturdy, bluesy tone and deep authority as a player to build on.
(SOUNDBITE OF J.D. ALLEN'S "NYLA'S SKY")
WHITEHEAD: J.D. Allen's often rapturous playing on "Queen City" aligns him with lyrical but exploratory solo tenor practitioners like Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Rollins and Joe McPhee, a tradition dating back to the 1940s. Recording in a quiet, resonant space, Allen can focus on tenor's cello-like warmth. The studio recording catches all the nuances and lets him factor in the silence that surrounds him. The standards and originals on the album "Queen City" let J.D. Allen show off his handsome sound without needing to shout.
(SOUNDBITE OF J.D. ALLEN'S "KRISTIAN WITH A K")
WHITEHEAD: If J.D. Allen is a tenor griot preserving a tradition, Jon Irabagon is a trickster, a serious player with a playful streak. When COVID hit, Irabagon and family sheltered with his in-laws in Rapid City, S.D. So as not to drive everyone crazy practicing five hours a day, he sought refuge in the Black Hills just outside town, among the trails, canyons and roaring creeks, playing wherever. Jon Irabagon's album of solo field recordings, mostly tunes by or played by Charlie Parker, is called "Bird With Streams."
(SOUNDBITE OF JON IRABAGON'S "DONNA LEE")
WHITEHEAD: Playing and developing your music outdoors isn't like being in the studio. In the open air with ambient background noise, you may have to work to project your sound. On the plus side, Jon Irabagon had all that nature to interact with - engaging the birds, responding to his own echo, maybe getting tips about saxophone attack from mosquitoes.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WHITEHEAD: Jon Irabagon leans into the lo-fi nature of this remote recording. Playing in the wild, his saxophone sound gets wilder, a rough woodsman's tone. There is another aspect to his playing out in Falling Rock Canyon, where sound carries far. The horn established Jon's own presence and identity as he haunted the landscape for seven months. That said, with his command of eccentric saxophone textures, his call isn't always recognizably human. Picture the hiker approaching this sound up around a bend in the trail.
(SOUNDBITE OF JON IRABAGON'S "MOOSE THE MOOCHE")
WHITEHEAD: You'd proceed with caution as the saxophonist goes full moose on Charlie Parker's "Moose The Mooche." In its own mischievous way, Jon Irabagon's Black Hills musings on the album "Bird With Streams" are perfect music for an era when we never know what's coming at us next.
(SOUNDBITE OF JON IRABAGON'S "ORNITHOLOGY")
BIANCULLI: Kevin Whitehead is the author of the new book "Play The Way You Feel: The Essential Guide To Jazz Stories On Film." He reviewed solo albums by tenor saxophonists J.D. Allen and Jon Irabagon. On Monday's show, playwright Katori Hall. She won the Pulitzer Prize this year for her play "The Hot Wing King," which explores family, sexuality and Black masculinity. She's also the producer and writer of the Broadway show "Tina: The Tina Turner Musical." Her previous play "The Mountaintop" imagined the last night of the life of Martin Luther King Jr. I hope you can join us.
(SOUNDBITE OF HERLIN RILEY'S "BE THERE WHEN I GET THERE")
BIANCULLI: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld, Charlie Kaier and Tina Callikay (ph). Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Therese Madden, Ann Marie Baldonado, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelley and Kayla Lattimore. Our producer of digital media is Molly Seavy-Nesper. For Terry Gross, I'm David Bianculli.
(SOUNDBITE OF HERLIN RILEY'S "BE THERE WHEN I GET THERE")
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