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Chess Records, the Chicago Blues, and the Rolling Stones

Thu, 09 May 2013 16:50 PM +0000

By Elizabeth Deane

Longtime producer and writer for WGBH

On their ?rst US tour in 1964, the Rolling Stones made a pilgrimage to Chicago. “2120 South Michigan Avenue was hallowed ground,” writes Keith Richards in his 2010 autobiography. “There in the perfect sound studio, in the room where everything we’d listened to was made…we recorded fourteen tracks in two days. One of them was… ‘It’s All Over Now,’ our ?rst number one hit.”

This month from the Vault: Chess Records, the Chicago Blues, and the Rolling Stones

Producers of Rock & Roll, the acclaimed 10-part WGBH and BBC co-production from 1995, sought out the founders of Chess Records, the men behind the “hallowed ground” so reverently described by Richards, for an episode on the electric blues and the 1960s British Invasion.

Brothers Phil and Leonard Chess were cigar-chomping, old-school record men who started out in the liquor business in Chicago. They produced mostly jazz, but took a chance on a rough blues singer from Mississippi called Muddy Waters. The raw country blues of Waters’s “I Can’t Be Satis?ed” was the hit that put the Chess brothers and their studio on the map.

Caption. (Credit/WGBH)

Leonard Chess died in 1969, but his son, Marshall, and Phil sat for an interview with WGBH in 1994, a portion of which we feature here.

“Waters’s recording is remembered as the ?rst masterpiece of electric Chicago blues,” says music historian Elijah Wald. Chess Records followed with records by Little Walter, Willie Dixon and Howlin’ Wolf, as well as Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry.

These were the saints in the church of the blues, and among their most ardent admirers were two teenagers from the UK, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. They were childhood friends who reconnected in the Dartford railroad station when Richards spotted the Chess records that Jagger was carrying under his arm.

“This cat’s together and he’s got the best of Muddy Waters and ‘Rocking at The Hop’ by Chuck Berry under his arm,” says Richards, who recalls the encounter in Rock & Roll. “‘Hey man, nice to see you, but where did you get the records?’”

Long before American teenagers caught on to it, a generation of young Brits had been captured by the sound of authentic American blues. But the records were hard to come by, “coveted keys to a mysterious, faraway world,” as music historian Wald describes them. Jagger had ordered his by mail from Chicago.

With fellow blues-lovers Brian Jones, Ian Stewart and Charlie Watts, Jagger and Richards formed a band and named it after a Muddy Waters song, “Rollin’ Stone.” Rock & Roll includes the text of a letter Jones wrote to the BBC in January 1963, asking for airtime, in which he articulated the group’s philosophy: “The band’s policy is to play authentic Chicago rhythm and blues music, using outstanding exponents of the music such as Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Jimmy Reed, etc.”

The BBC turned them down on the basis that their singer sounded too black.

In 1964, the Stones and the Animals brought the sound of the British blues to the US, and the Stones made their pilgrimage to Chess. Marshall, then 22, had a sense of what to expect, but Phil and Leonard were baf?ed.

“My brother looked at me and I looked up and said, ‘Who are they?’” Phil says. “They looked like freaks.”

Phil and Leonard were not alone. “I’ll tell you in Chicago in the heart of the Midwest, we hadn’t seen people who looked [and] acted like the Rolling Stones,” Marshall says. “Their hair, the way they looked. They…were drinking hard liquor out of the bottle. That wasn’t really happening very big in Chicago at that time.”

Still, the sessions were a success. “They wanted the Chess sound…to be exactly like the originals,” Marshall says in our video clip. “But it came out like the Rolling Stones, which was great.”

Watch the whole interview with Marshall and Phil on openvault.wgbh.org. Find the Stones’ instrumental salute to Chess, “2120 Michigan Avenue,” on iTunes.

Searching a Haunted Past

Wed, 08 May 2013 16:02 PM +0000

By Elizabeth Deane

Longtime producer and writer for WGBH Boston

Digging up a sidewalk in a small town in eastern Poland, three men unearth gravestones from a vanished culture. A black-gowned priest fetches tools to help them as a young boy looks on. The artifacts they seek are not ancient; this culture disappeared just 50 years ago. But time is running out for the three searchers. In a few years, all the living witnesses to this buried culture will be gone.

This month from the Vault: Searching a Haunted Past

Holocaust Remembrance Day is April 8, and on April 30, a new film from Frontline, Never Forget to Lie, premieres. It’s Polish-born Marian Marzynski’s quest to enter what he calls “the haunted world of my ancestors.”

Marzynski (right) a child survivor of the Nazi destruction (Credit/WGBH)

Marzynski (right), born in 1937, is one of a dwindling number of child survivors of the Nazi destruction of the Jews. In earlier film explorations of the story, including Return to Poland (1981) and again in Shtetl (1996), he found he could not bring himself to approach his own experience head-on.

The accompanying video clip is from Shtetl, and the gravestones he pries from the earth are in Bransk, Poland. It isn’t the shtetl (“little town,” in Yiddish) of his family but that of his friend Nathan Kaplan, from Chicago.

Kaplan, who was born in America, lost his father when he was two years old. “I have no memory of my father,” he tells Marzynski. “It’s only by going to Bransk that I can touch him, that I can understand who I am.” For Marzynski, it’s a bearable way into their shared past.

The third searcher is a more enigmatic character. He is Zbigniew Romaniuk, nicknamed Zbyszek, a young Polish Catholic born and brought up in Bransk. Before the Holocaust, the town had a population of 4,600, more than half of whom were Jewish. When Zbyszek grew up, there were no Jews left in Bransk and he became intensely curious, almost obsessed, with learning about the town’s lost inhabitants.

He is a natural, if self-taught, historian and archaeologist, tirelessly and patiently reconstructing the world of the Jews of Bransk. It is he who found that the Germans, in an attempt to erase the Jewish past, had ordered that the gravestones be taken from the Jewish cemetery and used as under-pavement for local roads and sidewalks.

As the gravestones are pried from the soil and their inscriptions haltingly translated by Zbyszek, who has taught himself some Hebrew, the stones begin to speak.

Watch the clip to meet the three main characters and see what Zbyszek has created with the gravestones. I hope you’ll then venture into the full three-hour film, which will be posted on the Frontline

website [ frontline.org] on April 5.

Like the epic film Shoah, it requires time and it is sometimes painful, but it rewards, and it sets the stage for Marzynski’s Never Forget to Lie.

As you watch Shtetl, keep in mind that it stirred controversy among some Polish-Americans when it aired in 1996, and that Zbyszek Romaniuk, the young Polish Catholic in our video clip, was said to be unhappy with the finished film as well.

Go here for more on the controversy.

Eleanor vs. JFK-The Back Story

Thu, 02 May 2013 15:25 PM +0000

By Elizabeth Deane

Longtime producer and writer for WGBH Boston

At first glance, the 1962 black-and-white video doesn’t appear to capture anything more than a straightforward interview. Former ?rst lady Eleanor Roosevelt quietly prods President John F. Kennedy about the status of women in America. But WATCH closely, and read on. These two had a rocky history.

This month from the Vault: Eleanor vs. JFK–The Back Story

You’ll see that the former first lady is polite, but dogged, and she’s on message with every word. She’s been fighting this battle for decades.

Eleanor Roosevelt & John F. Kennedy interview on Prospects of Mankind. (Credit/WGBH)

The president, looking as if he’d rather be anywhere but in that seat, dutifully expands on the goals of the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. But he was a man of his time, and there’s a whiff of Mad Men-era assumptions in his careful language.

Filmed for Roosevelt’s WGBH-produced series Prospects of Mankind, their cordial conversation belies the adversarial past between these two power players in the Democratic Party.

The discord between them first arose in 1958, as JFK’s campaign for the Democratic nomination moved into high gear. Roosevelt gave an interview to ABC TV in which she suggested that the candidate’s father, millionaire Joseph P. Kennedy, intended to buy the presidency for his son in 1960. The elder Kennedy, she said, “has been spending oodles of money in the country on his behalf,” and the Kennedys had “paid representatives in every state.”

JFK was angry—and worried. Roosevelt had considerable influence within the party, and he needed her support. He wrote to her immediately, suggesting that she was “the victim of misinformation,” and asking for the name of her informant. “Surely,” he said, she would not want to spread “false statements, rumors or innuendo.”

In her reply, Roosevelt refused to retreat. Joseph Kennedy’s big spending was “commonly accepted as fact,” she asserted. “Building an organization is permissible,” she continued, “but giving too lavishly may seem to indicate a desire to influence through money.”

In our post-Citizens United world, the flow of big money through American politics is a given, but this was a different time. Worse, she had thrown a spotlight on JFK’s father. The elder Kennedy, once FDR’s ambassador to England, had supported the isolationist cause before World War II. He subsequently backed away from public life in disgrace, and kept a low profile as his son’s political star rose.

Roosevelt was convinced that Joseph Kennedy was the real power behind the campaign, and with him, she believed, came an odor of corruption that threatened the Democratic Party. She wanted Adlai Stevenson, who’d been defeated by Eisenhower in 1956, to run again.

Kennedy wrote back, this time blind copying his friend Donald Graham, editor of the Washington Post, and asking Roosevelt to “correct the record in a fair and gracious manner.”

Roosevelt stonewalled, but Kennedy persisted. She eventually yielded—just a little—while reminding him that there were other reasons for her opposition to his candidacy. “I have never said that my opposition to you was based on these rumors…but I could not deny what I knew nothing about,” she wrote. She added, “From now on, I will say, when asked, that I have your assurance that the rumors are not true.”

That last sentence gave Kennedy a small opening, and he seized it. “Many, many thanks for your gracious letter,” came his reply. “I believe we can let it stand for the present.”

Roosevelt answered with a telegram drenched in irony: “My dear boy I only say these things for your own good. I have found in a lifetime of adversity that when blows are rained on one, it is advisable to turn the other profile.”

Note the condescending “My dear boy,” and also the use of the word “profile,” rather than the familiar “cheek.” It’s a reference to Kennedy’s book, Profiles in Courage.

WGBH legend has it that JFK wanted to formally announce his candidacy in January 1960 on Prospects of Mankind, but Roosevelt refused. He did, however, fly up to Boston from Washington after making his announcement on January 2 in order to appear on her show (a discussion of US policy toward Europe). She opened the program with a reference to his “announcement”—without saying what it was that he had announced.

Roosevelt continued to press for Stevenson’s nomination for many months, and to belittle Kennedy. Nevertheless, he won the nomination in July. Roosevelt then conceded that she would support his candidacy, but not campaign for him.

Not enough for JFK. He went to see her in her house at Hyde Park, NY, in August. Finally, she agreed to campaign for him—but not without a price. Kennedy would have to involve Stevenson in the campaign on foreign policy issues. And, once elected, he would need to establish a commission on the status of women.

It turns out this rocky relationship has a proud legacy. Roosevelt’s commission has helped mobilize forces still fighting for women’s rights today.

Elizabeth Deane is a longtime producer and writer for WGBH

ABC Newsman John Scali Talks About the Cuban Missile Crisis

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 16:08 PM +0000

ABC's John Scali (WGBH)

This Month from the Vault: An interview with ABC Newsman John Scali

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, and we revisit the events that brought the world to the brink of a nuclear disaster in two specials on WGBH 2 (see below). In the archives, we found a gripping interview about that fate-of-the-planet drama of October 1962. It hints at high-level espionage but unfolds amid convincingly mundane details (a baloney sandwich, the coffee shop in Washington’s Statler Hilton Hotel), and it makes you feel as if you’re in the center of the storm as President Kennedy and his advisors struggle to avert nuclear war. The story held a respected place in the annals of the missile crisis for decades. But it turned out to be a blind alley. How it unraveled gives us a glimpse inside the fog of war.

Producers from WGBH’s ambitious 13-part series War and Peace in the Nuclear Age interviewed former ABC reporter John Scali in February 1986, where Scali describes his involvement with a high-ranking Soviet Embassy contact at the height of the crisis.

But with the help of hindsight, consider the backstory to this back-channel encounter: Desperate for information about Soviet intentions, President Kennedy and his top advisors took Scali’s story very seriously. It seemed to be the first sign that the Soviets wanted to back off, and US Secretary of State Dean Rusk devoted considerable time to drafting a reply. When the crisis ended a few days later, the deal announced by the Kremlin seemed to reflect much that Scali and his Soviet contact, Aleksandr Fomin, had discussed.

The secret story of the Scali-Fomin back-channel negotiations was revealed in 1964 in a book by Rusk’s head of intelligence, Roger Hilsman. It remained mostly unquestioned until 1989, when both Scali and Fomin (now identified by his real name, Aleksandr Feklisov) were present at a conference in Moscow. Feklisov disputed Scali’s account completely. It was Scali, he said, who floated the famous proposal; it was Scali, not he, who was fearful, and so on. Scali heatedly disputed these claims.

One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro On the Brink of Nuclear War, by Michael Dobbs

Thus began the unraveling of the Scali-Fomin myth. When scholars drilled deeper into the crisis in the ensuing decades, the significance of their secret meetings was shattered. As journalist Michael Dobbs described it in his brilliant 2008 book about the crisis, One Minute to Midnight, the Scali back-channel was “a classic example of miscommunication between Moscow and Washington at a time when a single misstep could lead to nuclear war.” The author concludes that “there is no evidence” that Scali’s message to the Soviets “played any role in Kremlin decision-making on the crisis, or was even read by Khrushchev.”

The late ambassador Richard Holbrooke, reviewing Dobbs’ book, added a layer of disdain, describing the Scali-Fomin back-channel as “a self-generated effort by an ambitious spy to send some information to his bosses in Moscow, as well as self-promotion by an ambitious journalist, who parlayed his meetings with the KGB agent into a public legend that eventually led to his becoming the American ambassador to the United Nations.”

Holbrooke is pretty harsh, but even without his slant on it we can begin to see how dangerous this was. The demolition of the Scali story is only a small part of a revolution in thinking about the Cuban missile crisis. Confusion reigned in Moscow and Washington, and as JFK and Khrushchev searched for a way out (with Washington jumping on the Scali story), their military machines were headed for war.

As James Blight, a leading missile crisis scholar, put it—referring not only to the Scali story but to the revelations of recent research—“the crisis [seems] far more dangerous, and its peaceful outcome far more miraculous, than ever before.”

Elizabeth Deane is a longtime producer and writer for WGBH

The Cuban missile crisis is brought to life on October 23rd with two PBS programs:

Cuban Missile Crisis: Three Men Go to War at 8pm

Secrets of the Dead’s The Man Who Saved the World at 9pm

Rock 'n' Roll Legend Dick Dale on the Origins of Surf Guitar Music

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 01:09 AM +0000

July 17, 2012

Although we're in the midst of summer, we’ll try not to get sand in the massive hinges of the WGBH vault as we open up a terrific interview from the 1995 PBS series “Rock & Roll.” It’ll take you back to the early days of surf music, that massive guitar-driven sound that reverberates all the way down through heavy metal, and the unforgettable theme under the opening credits of Quentin Tarantino’s film "Pulp Fiction." The Beach Boys may have surpassed this artist in popularity, but he alone bears the title "King of the Surf Guitar."

This Month's From the Vault: An interview with Dick Dale
Three selected clips from the original WGBH interview with Dick Dale for the award-winning series "Rock & Roll."

Dick Dale feeds his pet lion Elsa.

You’ll see immediately that Dick Dale isn’t anywhere near the surf in this interview. He’s in the California desert, where he raised lions and tigers. (Really.) But he has his custom Fender in hand throughout the discussion, and some of his demos take you straight to the beach, as he shows in one clip how the sounds of surfing influenced his music. Watch also for the moment when he talks about drummer Gene Krupa’s influence on his technique, and his demonstration of the way the sound of his lions turns up in his music as well.

In the last clip, Dale talks about the origin of his legendary version of the song "Misirlou." Bostonians might be surprised to learn where he first heard the tune that would become the theme song for "Pulp Fiction."

You can find the entire uncut interview with Dale on Open Vault, the website of the WGBH archives. For guitar aficionados, you’ll find there a tour of his guitar and the story of the development of the Showman amplifier, designs he perfected with legendary guitar maker Leo Fender.

Finally, near the end of the full interview, let Dick Dale take you back to his days as a surfing god and guitar hero in Southern California:

There was times I’d get out of the water … and everybody’s inside, like at the Huntington Beach Pavilion … and I’d come running up the stairs with my surfboard, still in my trunks … [I’d get] behind the stage, towel off, put on a T-shirt and I still had my trunks on. I’d be in my bare feet and I’d be playing my guitar on stage.

Today Dale, now 75 and a cancer survivor, is still on stage playing. He’s been touring since April and will be performing this week in Massachusetts.

Listen to Dick Dale talk about growing up in Quincy and his annual visit to Mass. on 89.7 WGBH Radio's Morning Edition.

Dick Dale's Massachusetts Tour Dates

Wednesday, July 18
The Beachcomber
Wellfleet, MA

Thursday, July 19
The Middle East
Cambridge, MA

Elizabeth Deane was the creator and executive producer of the 10-part, Peabody Award–winning series “Rock & Roll.” She says about the experience, "Like many viewers, I brought a general knowledge of rock history to the project, but it’s interviews like this one, produced by Dan McCabe and Vicky Bippart, that deepened our treatment of the music and set the series apart from other rock histories. We focused on the innovators, like Dick Dale — the people who changed the music — not only artists but also producers, songwriters, studio engineers and session musicians. The series premiere in 1995 was a big event for WGBH and our partners at the BBC, who produced five of the shows; we’re proud to have this opportunity to show off this rock 'n' roll gem from the archives."

The licensing rights to the epic 10-part series (1995) have lapsed; however, WGBH Archives has a small grant from the Grammy Foundation to preserve the uncut interviews for the five programs produced by WGBH.

From the WGBH Vault: MBTA Improvements

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 14:42 PM +0000

April 13, 2012

The more things change ....

In this Feb. 7, 1989 segment from WGBH-2's Ten O'Clock News, reporter Hope Kelly talks to MBTA riders about changes under general manager James O'Leary's tenure. Both ridership and budget increased, and some stations were renovated — but not everyone was happy. Their complaints are a lot like ones riders have today. Their eyeglasses? Maybe not so much.

Check back for a week of WGBH News Focus coverage of the MBTA starting April 23.

Thanks to producer Gary Mott for archival help.

Mike Wallace and the Early Days of TV News

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 18:06 PM +0000

April 12, 2012

BOSTON — For most of us, "60 Minutes" was appointment television in a time before 700 channels, Tivo and endless reruns. When news reached me of Mike Wallace's death, it took me back to the days when you actually had to get up to change the channel. It also took me back to the night I appeared in a "60 Minutes" story, ever so briefly.

Wallace was a merciless interviewer. On Sundays we'd see him confront a newsmaker. On Mondays, we'd all talk about it. But for all the ambushes, the pointed follow-up questions and the celebrity interviews, Wallace was a big believer and a strong advocate for making you, the news consumer, more responsible.

His death led us into the WGBH Vault, a climate-controlled room where thousands of archives are carefully stored. It is here where our team found a 1970 seminar at MIT in Cambridge. The topic centered on television news, which was still in its infancy. So the audience was suspect and ready to take on Wallace as if he were the spokesman for the entire industry.

Mike Wallace at MIT

"Catering" to short-term sensation

"Do you really think that in fact the profit motive of exactly appealing to your audience isn't accelerating, isn't teaching people to have a shorter time span, and to want more sensational things?" one attendee said. "Aren't you really reversing all the things that people learn from kindergarten to 12th grade about how to really appreciate complex issues by your catering to the sensational short-term, let's-do-this-and-move-on-to-another-thing type news broadcast?"

Wallace said television news was "getting better" but admitted, "We err sometimes, still."

At the time, the country was in the middle of the Vietnam War and college campuses were the focal point of anti-war rallies against President Richard Nixon and Vice President Agnew. Television news was getting battered from both sides, as Wallace noted, referencing a disparaging comment recently made by the vice president.

"I could hardly believe I would have to come to Cambridge to find so many allies of Spiro Agnew," Wallace retorted. "In three separate seminars today, it's become painfully obvious to me that the MIT community looks askance at television news just about as much as Agnew does, although for different reasons."

Wallace responds to the critique

Long before personal computers, cellphones and "apps," Wallace knew the audience's attention span was pivotal.

"If we in broadcasting fail at the mass communication of complicated issues, and I think we should plead guilty, we fail because first of all, the attention span of our viewers is probably minute," Wallace said. "If we delve too deeply, or linger too long on something difficult, we lose our audience — the ratings prove it. Second … there is almost no chance to savor and test an idea before another proposition has replaced it on the tube. And finally the average viewer or listener finds so many issues so overwhelmingly complicated to begin with that he despairs of understanding them anyway and says to hell with it and settles for a movie or a paperback whodunit or an episode of 'Mission Impossible.'"

But the audience isn't off the hook

In the WGBH Archives, I'm struck by the give-and-take, Wallace's comments and audience laughter, and think of a simpler time in journalism. But whether it was 1970 or throughout his career, Wallace always believed that you, the audience, held a powerful responsibility.

"We can sketch the outlines of the story. We can convey its feel. We can get the citizen involved, whet his interest, make him want to know more," he said. But for the complications and intricacies, the viewer would have to go deeper, "to the newspapers and journals, to the magazines and books, to public conversations and to private thinking — and in the final analysis, of course, that’s where he must go: to himself."

Wallace added, "It's hard work to learn about complicated issues. It is easier to pin the tail on the mass media for failing to keep us informed than to suggest that we ourselves lack the discipline to inform ourselves."

Which gets me back to my flash frame on a "60 Minutes" broadcast — when Wallace became interested in a situation that followed when my television station delved into complicated issues on the air.

Judging journalism

In 1996, after a year's worth of work by top-notch, respected journalists, my station aired an investigative series on Northwest Airlines detailing safety issues, sizable fines and a culture that prevented employees from coming forward. We also had whistleblowers (something that, coincidentally, Wallace would come to know in his controversial story on big tobacco).

To this day, I believe Northwest knew the story would hold up in court. So instead of staging a legal battle, the airline filed a grievance with a public watchdog group called the Minnesota News Council. Its criticism of our investigation was lengthy; our defense was equally thorough. The result was a very public airing of journalism standards, tactics and techniques in newsgathering. We didn't stand a chance.

Over the years, I had testified before the council and defended news stories. But this case was different. Wallace was advocating for a national news council, where aggrieved subjects could take their case before a similar group. So when Northwest filed a complaint, Wallace came to town and "60 Minutes" covered it. Sunday night. Appointment TV.

A Wallace effect?

There was plenty of intrigue before and after the council ruled against the story. Did the glare of "60 Minutes" impact the council's decision? Was my station being held to a higher standard? How would Wallace's own, famously aggressive newsgathering tactics hold up in front of an ad hoc panel of former newspaper people and community members? Not well, I bet.

When the council ruled, there was celebration at the airline and a chilling effect in our newsroom. We realized that a news story could win in the courtroom but lose in the court of public opinion. The next night, my station won an Emmy for the Northwest investigation.

In subsequent years, instead of ignoring News Council complaints as my competitors did, I returned to the lion's den to defend more stories — none of which, I believe, we won. But it was important to face this "jury" even if its decisions seemed off the mark. The News Council disbanded in 2011 after 41 years.

Mike Wallace's passing could be the end of a conversation about journalism standards and the public's role. Or it could be a fresh start.

I'd like to know what you think. Tell me in the comments or email your thoughts to ted_canova@wgbh.org.

Ted Canova is the executive editor for news at WGBH Radio.

John Updike -- The Cartoonist?

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 14:54 PM +0000

March 16, 2012

On March 18, author John Updike would have turned 80. Most famous for his Harry "Rabbit" Angstron series of novels, Updike died in 2009. In this 1978 interview clip from WGBH's Open Vault, Updike tells reporter China Altman he secretly wished to be a cartoonist.

See the full 30-minute conversation on WGBH Open Vault, where Upike reads from his work and tells stories about growing up in Pennsylvania, life at Harvard, working at the New Yorker and how he developed the writing habits which enabled him to produce a book a year.

Updike lived his final years in Massachusetts. Read more of his biography.

D.I.Y. Disco: It Isn't Dead

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 12:42 PM +0000

BOSTON — If you can’t catch Opening Day at Fenway Park, don’t worry. We have your ticket to another (former) national pastime that is sure to get you out of your seat.

This Month from the Vault: Dancing Disco, Episode 1, “The New York”

Been wondering how to do "The New York?" You're in luck. instructor Randy Deats lays out the basics of the disco routine. (If you're having trouble viewing this video, watch it on Open Vault.)

“So what’s a nice television station like WGBH-Boston doing with a national television series called Dancing Disco?” Executive producer Sylvia Davis asked this question in 1979, and then answered it with a line that was both decorous and slightly wacky.

“We’re the people who bring you Julia Child, The French Chef, Masterpiece Theatre, and Nova. Why not disco? We figured if we could teach people the joys of French cooking, we could also teach them the pleasure of learning how to disco.”

Here’s How it Happened

Building on the success of The French Chef, WGBH caught “how-to” fever in the mid-to-late late 1970s. The Victory Garden launched in 1975, and the first episode of This Old House premiered locally in early 1979.

Davis and broadcast manager Mark Stevens jumped in with their disco idea after the huge box office success of John Travolta’s Saturday Night Fever (1977). Disco may have been offbeat for public television, but it was in step with the times.

In Boston, “discos began popping up like spring flowers,” Davis explained in a companion book to Dancing Disco. “Based on the marvelous dancing [in the movie], we began looking for someone to teach on TV.”

When Davis saw Randy Deats on an audition tape, she knew he was the right choice. “Suddenly, this man came on and began talking to me. He told me to stand up, start moving my feet, and do what he did. And I did. What Randy Deats could do for me, he could do for others.”

Deats, who is still active in the dance scene and has a studio in Warwick, Rhode Island, is a terrific teacher. In this episode, host and then-WCOZ radio personality Lisa Karlin sets the scene, telling viewers to push back the coffee table and get moving. Then Deats takes over. He teaches a line dance called the New York, so viewers don’t need a partner.

In other episodes, all shot at Club Max in Boston’s Park Square, Deats teaches dances with names like the Rope Hustle, the Triple Hustle, the Rock, and the Drop, among others. The episode featured here has a segment on disco fashion with Mademoiselle magazine fashion editor Diane Smith. Other shows include interviews with DJs, top dancers, special effects experts, musicians, and even a foot doctor—“because you can’t make those moves when your feet are sad,” according to a blurb in the WGBH program guide Prime Time from July 1979.

Whether you’re in it for the dance moves, or the clothes, or just the nostalgia factor, Dancing Disco is fun to watch. And keep in mind that entire cable channels have been inspired by the fruits of WGBH’s creativity in “how-to” programming (think Food Network and HGTV).

About Open Vault | openvault.wgbh.org

Open Vault is the WGBH Media Library and Archives (MLA) website of unique and historically important content produced by WGBH's public television and radio stations. It provides online access to video, audio, images, searchable transcripts, and resource management tools —available for individual and classroom learning.

And to learn more about Dancing Disco, visit the Open Vault.

From The WGBH Vault: Trying Times

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 09:56 AM +0000

Jan. 29, 2012

In 1968, mayor Kevin White addresses the audience at a James Brown concert the day after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (WGBH Open Vault)

BOSTON — Mayor Kevin White's four-term tenure as mayor spanned a time of tumultuous race relations in Boston. These exclusive videos from the WGBH archives show key moments from the 1970s, when White presided over court-ordered desegregation in Boston public schools.

Mayor White and James Brown, April 5, 1968

A day after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Boston was home to a famous James Brown concert. As violence was breaking out across America, White was considering canceling all public events, including the concert. Civil leaders advised White that canceling the concert might trigger a riot. The mayor relented and then persuaded WGBH to broadcast the event in an effort to keep African Americans at home.

Watch the speech from WGBH Open Vault.

Three Days Before Busing, Sept. 1974

White appeared on WGBH’s Evening Compass to deliver a message on how the city would implement its new busing policy. In-studio operators received calls from parents and Paul Russell of the Boston Police Department addressed concerns. In this video, you can also see a film of anti-busing protestors on City Hall plaza.

Day 3 of Desegregation, Sept. 16, 1974

White spoke at a press conference at City Hall on the third day of desegregation of Boston public schools. He fielded questions about the enforcement of busing in South Boston and the school boycott by South Boston resident.

Watch the speech from WGBH Open Vault.

This Year It Must Be Different,’ Sept. 3, 1975

White appeared on WGBH's "The Ten O'Clock News" to call for a safe start to the school year after the uproar of the year before and detail measures in place to ensure it.

Watch the speech from WGBH Open Vault.

From The WGBH Vault: Martin Luther King Jr.

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:17 PM +0000

Jan. 16, 2012

BOSTON — On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we look back at a pivotal moment in the struggle for civil rights, captured in three gripping, exclusive interviews from the WGBH archives.

It was the spring of 1963, a few months after Alabama governor George Wallace called for “segregation forever” and a few months before the March on Washington, when WGBH producer Henry Morgenthau III and director Fred Barzyk filmed “The Negro and the American Promise,” featuring author James Baldwin, Nation of Islam Minister Malcolm X and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The interviews reveal deep disagreement about the way forward for the movement and give a sense of the intense pressure on King. The interviewer is psychologist Kenneth Clark.

Martin Luther King Jr. (June 1963)

"There's a great deal of difference between non-resistance to evil and non-violent resistance. Non-resistance leaves you in a state of stagnant passivity and dead-end complacency. Wherein non-violent resistance means you do resist in a very strong and determined manner." Read a transcript of the interview.

James Baldwin (May 24, 1963)

This segment was filmed immediately after a frustrating three-hour meeting with Robert F. Kennedy — the so-called "secret meeting" — to discuss the racial situation in northern cities. You can see Baldwin take a moment to collect his thoughts at the start of the conversation. Read a transcript of the interview.

Malcolm X (June 1963)

"You don't integrate with a sinking ship. You don't do anything to further your stay on board a ship that you see is on its way down to the bottom of the ocean." Read a transcript of the interview.

Few people get to go inside the WGBH vault... a temperature-controlled storage room that houses thousands of tapes and recordings. It's a room full of living history and it helps WGBH News provide a perspective no one else has. Check out some of the materials, including original newscast coverage of the March on Washington, at Open Vault.

From The WGBH Vault: The New Hampshire Primary

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 11:13 AM +0000

Jan. 10, 2012

Sen. John F. Kennedy stops in a diner in Nashua, N.H., during the primary campaign. (JFK Library)

BOSTON — Today's New Hampshire primary is the very model of a modern-day election: Polls, pundits and non-stop analysis of the candidates' every word and move. But New Hampshire didn't always command such attention. We go into WGBH's vault for historical recordings showing the primary's rise to prominence.

The year is 1952 and political observers and New Englanders alike are trying to make sense of what happened in New Hampshire. The state's once-dormant primary rose up and captured national attention by playing a major role in determining who the presidential candidates would be that year.

The start of the primary system

Several states established primaries in the early 20th century to wrest control of the naming of presidential nominees from the rich and powerful. Interest in some primaries waned and New Hampshire’s primary eventually became the first in the nation.

According to professor Andy Smith of the University of New Hampshire, the scheduling was due partly to a classic Yankee trait: frugality.

"We had Town Meeting day on the second Tuesday of March," he said. "The town fathers… saw no reason to open up the town hall twice and turn the heat on twice so they decided to have the primary on the same day as Town Meeting."

(It has stayed first because state law now says that it has to be, even if it means casting votes while Christmas shopping.)

The 1952 campaign

The first New Hampshire primary was in 1916, but it wasn’t until 1952 that it really attracted attention.

Former N.H. House Speaker Richard Upton started it all when he was upset with how little interest voters had shown in the 1948 primary and set about to change things. He crafted a bill that would have the candidates’ actual names on the ballot — unlike before when only unknown party reps were listed.

In historical footage, Upton recalled then-Gov. Sherman Adams having his doubts about the new approach.

"He wasn’t too sure that he ought to sign it," Upton said. "He called me in and said 'What does this bill mean?' I gave it as my opinion that it would quicken the interest of the voters, that there would be a real, I hoped, a real lively contest and that our state would be put on the map."

The results went far beyond what Upton had hoped: Turnout more than doubled in 1952 despite a big snowstorm. And the campaigns and voting results in New Hampshire were seen nationwide on something new — television news, culminating on Election Night when broadcasters announced the win of Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower.

To earn the nomination, Eisenhower defeated conservative hopeful Robert Taft of Ohio. Taft just never could get into pressing the flesh with the common man; New Hampshire voters responded by giving him a stinging defeat from which he never recovered.

1952’s New Hampshire primary was decisive for the Democrats as well. President Harry S. Truman was coy about his intentions in 1951, saying, "One of the things I’ve been thinking about is next year’s election. I ‘m not going to make any announcement about who the candidate will be." But it wasn’t going to be him. He never clearly indicated he would run but and when he decided to enter the New Hampshire primary it was too late. He lost to Tennessee Sen. Estes Kefauver. It made big news and put the state's primary on the map.

The common touch

Adlai Stevenson ultimately became the Democrats’ candidate that year. It was Kefauver, however, who perhaps more than any other candidate established the style of presidential campaigning needed to win in New Hampshire.

The late Sen. Thomas McIntyre described it thus:

"If we had a toboggan he would ride in the toboggan. If there was an ice skater or something, he'd would try to skate with him. And every kind of a gadget — we found an old fire truck in Hooksett and that was all rigged up with lights and we ran it up and down the streets of Manchester at night with Estes trailing along with 'em shaking the hands of everybody he could find."

Once Kefauver did it, McIntyre added, everyone had to do it.

Smith said that kind of up-close-and-personal interaction is what New Hampshire adds to the political debate today.

"The one thing that the New Hampshire primary really allows the candidates to do is to listen to real voters express their concerns in public forums. So there’s an expectation that candidates have to talk with voters — that they can’t just run a tarmac campaign or a TV campaign," he said.

A 40-year tradition of victory

There was one candidate who realized early on how crucial a win in New Hampshire would be for his candidacy. John F. Kennedy skillfully worked with state Democratic leaders to craft his New Hampshire victory in 1960, which led him eventually to the White House.

From then on, whoever won the New Hampshire primary went on to win their party’s nomination. Even in 1988, when George Bush was trounced in Iowa, he won New Hampshire and then went on to win the presidency… over the winner of the 1988 Democratic primary in N.H.: Michael Dukakis.

It took 40 years to break the streak. Former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas won New Hampshire in 1992. The second-place finisher started to call himself "The Comeback Kid." Bill Clinton did indeed come back. It was the first time since 1952 that a New Hampshire winner did not become president.

Smith thinks that Massachusetts neighbor Mitt Romney will likely win on Jan. 10 — but you can’t trust the polls in the Granite State.

"If you go back historically, polling in New Hampshire and predicting the primaries is typically way off either predicting the wrong winner or significantly overestimating or underestimating the magnitude of a win for a candidate," he said.

Which makes the day that more interesting and suspenseful, ensuring that the New Hampshire primary continues as a political force to be reckoned with by any who seek to occupy the White House.

Historical audio excerpts are from the film "The Premier Primary," produced by Accompany Video Production and from the WGBH archives. Visit the WGBH archives online at openvault.wgbh.org.

A Pioneering African Environmentalist's Legacy Lives On

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 23:04 PM +0000

Oct. 14, 2011

Wangari Maathai with Linda Harrar in 1989 in Nairobi's Karura Forest, Kenya. (Jill Singer)

BOSTON — Last week, three African women were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, President of Liberia; a peace activist Leymah Gbowee, who helped to end Liberia's 14-year civil war, and human rights activist and journalist Tawakkul Karman of Yemen, who has been called "the Mother of the Revolution" in that country.

These three women follow in the footsteps of another pioneering African woman leader.

Making History

Last month, the world heard news of the death of Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai (pronounced wan-GAR-ee mah-THI), who in 2004 became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Maathai was the leader of the Green Belt Movement, a women-led effort to plant trees.

Using segments from an interview in WGBH's Media Archive from the 1990 series Race to Save the Planet, former Nova producer Linda Harrar offered this personal remembrance.

"The first time I met Wangari Maathai, in 1988 in Nairobi, Kenya, she was a little reluctant to be interviewed. She shook her head and said, 'I get into a lot of trouble because I have a very big mouth!' Then she burst into laughter, flashing her unforgettable smile," Harrar said.

A Vision Is Born

As a strong critic of the government, and a courageous fighter for the environment, Maathai did get into a lot of trouble over the years because of her outspokeness. During the 1980s, Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi labeled the Green Belt Movement "subversive." Maathai was arrested, beaten unconscious and thrown in jail for her protests to save parks and forests from development. But she managed to capture the attention of the world, and through her willingness to put her own life on the line, won many of her most important battles.

Maathai started her career wanting to work on preventing childhood malnutrition. In the process, she realized soil erosion was one of the root causes, and that planting trees would be key to solving it.

In the 1990 WGBH series Race to Save the Planet, Maathai said, "I know for certain that the soil is the sustainer of life. Without it, we cannot live. On this continent, we have seen too much suffering, starvation, due to degradation of the soil, and it has taken millions of years to build this topsoil. It is so important to protect it, because if we don't, we are on our way to the end."

Bringing Home The Brains

While Maathai received some of her education in the United States, afterwards she returned to live in Kenya for the rest of her life. Linda Harrar recalled why this was important to Maathai.

"Wangari hated the 'brain drain' of Africa's brightest students being lured away from home, and she believed that Africans need to develop their own leaders to solve the continent's problems," Harrar said. "But she also understood the need for foreign aid to get some promising programs started."

After earning her PhD in Kenya, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, which organized communities of poor women to plant trees and tend to them until they were strong. The women earned a small income for doing this work, in a land where jobs are very hard to find. The Green Belt Movement also taught children to grow green belts around their schools. And it taught farmers to plant trees in rows between their crops, which helps to restore nutrients to the soil.

Dr. Wangari Maathai in 2007 at a garden dedication at the Al Raby School for Community and Environment in Chicago. (via Flickr/Creative Commons)

Making The Mission Possible

Maathai wanted her movement to start with planting trees because it is something that anyone can do. The universality, she said, would help people access the movement.

"Then during the tree-planting campaign, you bring out all the other issues that are very much related: the issues of food production, firewood crisis, soil erosion. All these are part and parcel of what we are discussing, but when we first discuss, we start with the immediate problems, the local problems, the problems we can see every day," Maathai said.

Harrar says the movement planted over 30 million trees.

"Maathai would sometimes say that the healing of Africa is still only a dream. But she understood her own power to inspire people, of all ages and cultures to get behind her," Harrar said.

Maathai also had her human moments of doubt.

"Sometimes I get very discouraged because the problems are just enormous, and although the people are very willing, sometimes they really think that you can solve all these problems at once, and you can't," Maathai said. "But sometimes I also get very encouraged, especially when I see these trees growing in the nursery, or when they're so big that you see the farmers happy in their fields. It's very satisfying. So I go up and down all the time. And most of the time, I think I'm on the better side."

Crossing The 'Vale Of Tears'

What did Harrar find most striking about Wangari Maathai's work?

"Perhaps what I admired so much was Wangari's ability to keep fighting for what she believed in – and to inspire others not to lose heart. I last saw her just after 9/11, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when she was comforting us as Americans for all that we had lost when the Twin Towers fell. One of her best friends had lost a daughter. She of course knew that life can be what she called 'a vale of tears,' but she would always find a way to find strength in what she believed in," Harrar said.

Maathai reflected on why the work mattered so much to her.

"I don't really know why I care so much. I just have something inside me that tells me there is a problem and I have got to do something about it, so I'm doing something about it," Maathai said. "I think that that is what I would call the God in me. And all of us have a God in us, and that God is the spirit that unites all life, everything that is on this planet. And it must be this voice that is telling me to do something. And I'm sure it's the same voice that is speaking to everybody on this planet, at least everybody who seems to be concerned about the fate of the world, the fate of this planet!" Maathai said.

Linda Harrar said Wangari Maathai's legacy should serve as a source of inspiration for all of us.

"So here's an idea. If you're feeling sad or depressed, or cynical about the many problems of the world, think of Wangari Maathai's example: Get out and plant a tree, get your kids to plant a tree. It's something you can do for the future. And it would make Wangari smile that dazzling smile," Harrar said.

Remembering Steven Paul Jobs

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 21:25 PM +0000

Oct. 6, 2011

Steve Jobs in 1990. (via WGBH Open Vault)

BOSTON — With the loss of Steve Jobs, we have our own remembrance of him, in a superb WGBH interview from 1990. It's from a series called The Machine That Changed The World, a BBC-TV/WGBH Boston Co-Production. In it, Jobs talks about how that revolutionary device, the Macintosh personal computer, came to be and the particular gifts of the people who made it.

Here are some excerpts from the extended interview with Steve Jobs conducted for that series:

Steve Jobs: "I think the Macintosh was created by a group of people who felt that there wasn't a strict division between science and art. Or in other words, that mathematics is really a liberal art if you look at it from a slightly different point of view. And why can't we interject typography into computers. Why can't we have computers talking to us in English language? And looking back, five years later, this seems like a trivial observation. But at the time it was cataclysmic in its consequences. And the battles that were fought to push this point of view out the door were very large."

Jobs talked about the people on his design team and what they were like.

Steve Jobs as seen in his 1990 WGBH interview. (via WGBH Open Vault)

Jobs: "My observation is that the doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the 'thinker-doer' in one person. And if we really go back and we examine, did Leonardo [da Vinci] have a guy off to the side that was thinking five years out in the future what he would paint or the technology he would use to paint it? Of course not. Leonardo was the artist but he also mixed all his own paints. He also was a fairly good chemist. He knew about pigments, knew about human anatomy. And combining all of those skills together, the art and the science, the thinking and the doing, was the exceptional result."

"And there is no difference in our industry. It's very easy to say, 'oh I thought of this three years ago.' But usually when you dig a little deeper, you find that the people that really did it were also the people that really worked through the hard intellectual problems as well."

On Feb. 10, 1982, the Mac design group had a small party. Along with their cake and champagne, they each signed a large sheet of paper. Jobs had those signatures copied and engraved into the mold for the Macintosh case.

Another frame of Steve Jobs in his 1990 WGBH interview. (via WGBH Open Vault)

Jobs: "The people that worked on it consider themselves and I certainly consider them artists. These are the people that under different circumstances would be painters and poets but because of the time that we live in this new medium has appeared, in which to express one's self to one's fellow species and that's a medium of computing and so a lot of people that would have been artists and scientists have gone into this field to express their feeling, so it seemed like the right thing to do."

If you're the owner of a Mac128K, 512K, or Macintosh Plus, they signed your computer, too. When the new machine was presented at a shareholders meeting in early 1984, the design team was there.

Jobs: "The first few rows had all the people that worked on the Mac. About a 150 people that really made it happen were all seated in the first few rows and when it was introduced, after we went through it all and had the computer speak to people itself and things like that, the whole auditorium of about twenty five hundred people gave it a standing ovation and the whole first few rows of Mac folks were all just crying. All of us were. I was biting my tongue very hard because I had a little bit more to do. But it was a very, very emotional moment because it was no longer ours. From that day forward it was no longer ours. We couldn't change it. If we had a good idea the following day it was too late. It belonged to the world at that point in time."

You can view the entire unedited 45-minute Steve Jobs video interview on the WGBH Open Vault. Please be patient, the interview doesn't start immediately.