HV097- Crow Fair II

Hearing Voices from NPR®
097 Crow Fair II: Apsaalooke Nation Celebration
Host: Scott Simon of NPR
Airs week of: 2010-08-25

“Crow Fair II” (52:00 mp3):

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This is the final hour of a two-hour special on the annual Crow Fair in southeastern Montana, recorded in 1977 by NPR. For all the info, see part one: HV096- Crow Fair I.

And check our photo gallery…

Crow Fair- Dancer, © Allen Russell

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HV096- Crow Fair I

Hearing Voices from NPR®
096 Crow Fair I: Gathering the Tribes
Host: Scott Simon of NPR
Airs week of: 2010-08-18

“Crow Fair I” (52:00 mp3):

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A century ago the six Crow Reservation Districts came together for a cultural gathering with other Great Plains tribes. Every third weekend of August the Crow Fair honors that tradition in a “giant family reunion under the Big Sky.” Five days of celebration in southeastern Montana, with a parade, Pow Wow, rodeo, and traditional and fancy dancing.

In 1977 a team of NPR producers and recordists spent a week collecting sounds and interviewing people at this annual event. This early ambient sound-portrait breathes with the arts and activities of the Crow people: the Apsaalooke Nation.

This is part one of a two-hour radio special which ran originally on NPR Folk Festival USA. Producer: Steve Rathe. Interviewers: Scott Simon, Frank Ray Harjo. Mix: David Rapkin. Engineering Supervisor: Jim McEachern. Recordists: David Harris, Ralph Woods. Thanks: Willy Stewart & the Crow Fair Board and the Crow Tribe for their hospitality. For the final hour, listen to part one: HV097- Crow Fair II.

And check our photo gallery…

Crow Fair, © Donnie Sexton, Montana Office of Tourism

Brady Locks, Little Wolf, Black Crane, and Big Beaver,
ca. 1926, Crow Agency, MT, photo by Elsa Spear Byron

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Carolyn Jensen Chadwick

CJC Photos:
Elephant seal, California’s Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

Humpback whale near Maui, Hawaii.

Mali camel herder “On the Edge, Timbuktu.”

Roy Sesana, Bushman elder (Kalahari Desert, Botswana), on a hike in the Santa Monica Mountains, “From the Kalahari to Malibu.”

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CJC, EP of Radio Expeditions, on the Rio Tiputini (photo: Flawn Williams).

Splendid with Sound: The audio world lost a great producer today, Carolyn Jensen Chadwick. With her husband Alex she co-founded NPR’s Radio Expeditions (article in Current) and produced the Interviews 50 Cents films.

Carolyn was Maya Lin’s sound consultant for “What is Missing?” She produced scores of sound-drenched, audio-intense stories for NPR — we’ve run several, with more coming.

We hope you’ll spend an hour soaking in her sonics below. Hubby Alex once described a jungle as “splendid with sound.” That phrase also does justice to CJC’s enveloping, enrapturing, sometimes ecstatic, and always engaging work.

Master-engineer Skip Pizzi (NPR, Microsoft) would play this first piece at workshops to illustrate how a simple story can be superb, when elegantly enhanced with stereo sound. David Molpus narrates a portrait of “Equestrian Olympian: Bruce Davidson” (1984 / Carolyn Jenson Chadwick, producer / 12:39 mp3):

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Radio Expeditions often recorded those who recorded sound, such as Rex Cocroft on “A Journey to the Edge of the Amazon” (2006 / Carolyn Jenson Chadwick, producer / 8:54 mp3):

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Among the natural sounds CJC captured were those of human nature, as when her husband Alex pitted wits with the regulars at a small-town casino, playing “Poker at the Ox” (Carolyn Jenson Chadwick, producer; Michael Schweppe, engineer / 9:55 mp3):

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The Chadwicks spent time in India charting the Geography of Heaven: Vrindavan. In this first of three-parts, they walked “The Streets of a Holy Hindu City” (2005 / Carolyn Jenson Chadwick, producer; Flawn Williams, engineer / 8:57 mp3):

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And in the mountains of Payette National Forest, it’s all guns, guitars, guts, and wild game, inside an “Idaho Hunting Camp” (Carolyn Jenson Chadwick, producer; Michael Schweppe, engineer / 12:57 mp3):

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We’ll miss you, Carolyn.

HV095- Inside the Adoption Circle

Hearing Voices from NPR®
095 Inside the Adoption Circle: Adoptees, Birth Parents, Adoptive Families
Host: Samantha Broun of Transom
Airs week of: 2010-08-11

“Inside the Adoption Circle” (52:00 mp3):

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First-person voices accounts from adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive families:

Voices from all sides of adoption. Stories about living with questions and searching for answers. We hear from birth families (mothers, siblings and a father), adoptees (both kids and adults), and various adoptive families including open adoption and international adoption (China).

Produced for Transom.org by Samantha Broun and Viki Merrick (also on PRX ), with help from Jay Allison. Photo above: Jackie Lantry and her son; © 2006 Nubar Alexanian.

HV094- Working with Studs

Hearing Voices from NPR®
094 Working with Studs: America’s Greatest Listener
Host: Sydney Lewis of Transom
Airs week of: 2010-08-04

“Working with Studs” (52:00 mp3):

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A Transom.org tribute to the great broadcaster and author Studs Terkel (1912-2008):

For many years, Transom.org editor, Sydney Lewis, worked side by side with Studs on his radio show and his books. For this remembrance, a blend of documentary and reminiscence, she brings together a crew of Stud’s co-workers. They share great stories and wonderful previously-unheard tape of Studs himself. Sydney Lewis co-authored Studs’ book Touch and Go: A Memoir.

Studs Terkel: Conversations with America

Studs @ Transom: Special Guest | Radio Special | PRX Piece

HV065- Cowboy

Hearing Voices from NPR®
065 Cowboy: Cheyenne Frontier Days
Host: Josh Darsa of NPR
Airs week of: 2010-07-28 (Originally: 2009-07-22)

“Cowboy” (52:00 mp3):

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Host Josh Darsa of NPR spends nine days with rodeo riders in a rural Wyoming town:

This 1980 classic radio doc from the NPR archives visits Cheyenne Frontier Days, “The Daddy of ‘em All.”

Along the way, Darsa digs into the the history of the “cowboy,” mixing in the experiences of Baylis John Fletcher on an 1879 cattle drive, herding 2000 longhorns from Texas to Wyoming (read by Paul Blakemore from the book Up the trail in ‘79.

And underscoring it all is the wild-west symphonies of Aaron Copland.

Josh Darsa wrote and narrated. The technical director and recording engineer was John Widoff, assisted by Miles Smith, Dave Glasser and shop technician Bob Butcher.

“While we were at the rodeo, Josh Darsa wanted to record multiple vantage points of a single scene. For instance, I’d have a Nagra tape recorder on the roof of the grandstand and Miles Smith would have a Nagra in the chutes where the riders would bust out for their ride. Then we would have a free-running Nagra III on the rodeo announcer. We ran them in sync kinda like you would do in video with multiple cameras. This gave us three vantage points. During the show you hear the perspective change through cross fading which is a result of these different but simultaneous perspectives.

There must have been 70 hours or more of tape we shot out there in Cheyenne and every single thing got dubbed. What you heard in the halls of the old NPR were rodeo sounds coming from RC1. Constant horses, bulls, things crashing, just all kinds of things. I think it drove people nuts hearing this stuff up and down the halls.

This was the height of my career at NPR. It was a combination of everything… the music recording, the production sound recording, interviews… every single thing that I had ever done for this company all came together in this show. This was probably how Walt Disney felt when he made Mary Poppins. It was a dream come true for me to build something like this. ‘Cowboy’ is the kind of show you would listen to in a darkened movie theatre. The writing is spectacular.”
–John Widoff, “‘Cowboy,’ a Study in Radio Tale-Telling”
Read the entire interview.

More Josh Darsa at NPR.org: “An Italian Mosaic” (1978) | “Josh Darsa Obituary” by Alex Chadwick (2000)

HV068- Jean Shepherd 2

Hearing Voices from NPR®
068 Jean Shepherd 2: A Voice in the Night
Host: Harry Shearer of Le Show
Airs week of: 2010-07-21 (Originally: 2009-08-19)

“Jean Shepherd 2″ (52:00 mp3):

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Shep rides again:

The final hour of a two-part tribute to radio raconteur Jean Shepherd. For info or to Comment, see Jean Shepherd, Part 1.

HV067- Jean Shepherd 1

Hearing Voices from NPR®
067 Jean Shepherd 1: A Voice in the Night
Host: Harry Shearer of Le Show
Airs week of: 2010-07-14 (Originally: 2009-08-12)

“Jean Shepherd 1″ (52:00 mp3):

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Hour one in this two-part tribute to radio raconteur Jean Shepherd:

Jean Shepherd used words like a jazz musician uses notes, winding around a theme, playing with variations, sending fresh self-reflective storylines out into the night. Marshall McLuhan called Shepherd “the first radio novelist.” From 1956-1977 Shep spun his late night stories over WOR radio, New York City. PBS gave him a TV series, “Jean Shepherd’s America.” In 1983 he co-wrote and narrated the film version of his “A Christmas Story.”

Shep inspired a new generation of spoken narrative artists who tap into the American psyche. Among them was Harry Shearer (Le Show), who hosts this two part tribute to Jean Shepherd. Shearer interviews Shep’s co-workers, friends and fans, including Robert Krulwich, Joe Frank, Paul Krassner, and Jules Fieffer.

Thanks to Mr. Shearer, KCRW- Santa Monica (and Sarah Spitz), NPR, and Art Silverman for production support, and for allowing us to re-air this two-hour tribute. This is part one; part two is next week.

One time I woke up at 3 o’clock in the morning. My radio was still on, and a man was talking about how you would try to explain the function of an amusement park to visitors from Venus. It was Jean Shepherd. He was on WOR from midnight to 5:30 every night, mixing childhood reminiscence with contemporary critiques, peppered with such characters as the man who could taste an ice cube and tell you the brand name of the refrigerator it came from and the year of manufacture. Shepherd would orchestrate his colorful tales with music ranging from “The Stars and Stripes Forever” to Bessie Smith singing “Empty Bed Blues.”
–Paul Krassner (from “How the Realist popped America’s cherry“)

The Realist: series of Jean Shepherd essays, Radio Free America, issue #42, #44, #48, #50.

Jean Shepherd – The Great American Fourth of July – PART 1

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