Celebrate Poe

Send us a textOur story tonight doesn't start in a toy store.No bright aisles.No sales.No blinking “Buy One, Get One Free” signs.Instead, we begin on a quiet city street, just after closing time, in front of an old stone building most people walk past without ever truly seeing.During the day, it's a respectable institution:The Metropolitan Museum of Toys and Childhood Artifacts.But tonight… it's dark.The front doors are locked.The lights are dim.And a slightly nervous job applicant stands on the front steps of this museum, wondering whether this was really such a good idea.  Interview interviewSupport the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textNow today's episode is a little different.Usually, we spend our time tracking the lives of composers, musicians, and artists—people whose names end up in history books, or on album covers, or carved into theater walls. We talk about how they changed the sound of a century, or rewired what pop music could be, or turned their lives into performance.But for a while now, I've been quietly working on something a bit… stranger.For December, I'm moving us into a different kind of gallery altogether—one where almost nothing is bigger than a shoebox, and yet the stories are enormous.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textIn this series, we've been spending time with artists who didn't just make hits — they rewired popular music itself.Some of them crashed.Some of them burned out.Some of them never got old enough to figure out who they might have become.In the previous episode, we talked about Michael Jackson — a man whose genius was wrapped in pressure, pain, and dependency, and whose life ended in an overdose in a rented mansion in Los Angeles.Today's story easily could have ended the same way.But it didn't.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday, we're going to spend some time with a figure who shaped pop music, dance, music videos, and the idea of celebrity itself—only to become a tragic warning about what happens when that level of fame collides with a fragile human body and mind.Michael Joseph Jackson was born August 29, 1958, in Gary, Indiana—a working-class steel town in the Midwest. He was the eighth of ten children in the Jackson family, packed into a small house where money was tight, tempers could be hot, and music was both escape and opportunity.His father, Joseph—“Joe” Jackson—worked in a steel mill and played guitar in a local R&B band on the side. His mother, Katherine, loved gospel music and encouraged her kids to sing in church. Out of this stew came something unusual: a whole family act, and in the middle of it, a little boy who shone like a spotlight was glued to him.Michael once described watching his father's band rehearse in the living room, feeling this almost physical need to join in. He and his brothers—Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon—began rehearsing as a group, first informally, then obsessively. Joe Jackson realized they had something, and he ran rehearsals like a drill sergeant: long hours, no nonsense, and a clear goal—this was going to be their ticket out of Gary.Here's the strange thing: from the very beginning, there were two Michaels.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday, I want to put two lives—and two mythologies—side by side. Not as gossip. Not as tabloid spectacle. As a question:What happens when two Black artists rise from a Houston salon and a Brooklyn housing project to a place where they can rewire the business, the sound, and the story of popular music—and do it as a partnership?Let's start in Houston.Beyoncé Giselle Knowles grows up in a middle-class Black family. Her mother, Tina, runs a salon. Her father, Mathew, works in sales. Church, local performances, talent shows—this is the rehearsal hall of her childhood.There's a shy little girl here who transforms when the music starts.By the early 1990s, she's part of a girls' group that evolves into Destiny's Child. This is not magic; this is labor. They rehearse until the harmonies are automatic, the choreography is drilled, the breathing is perfectly placed. Influences pour in: Michael and Janet, Whitney, En Vogue, gospel quartets, hip-hop swagger, pop hooks.Destiny's Child signs with Columbia. There are lineup changes, management controversies, public drama—exactly the kind of storms that break most young acts. But out of that storm come songs that define an era of young womanhood: independence, betrayal, loyalty, resilience.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textIn this current series, we've been living in the neighborhood of giants—artists who didn't just have hits, but re-wired what popular music could be.Today… someone different again.A man who refused categories, ignored rules, blurred gender lines, shredded guitars, whispered falsettos, wrote anthems for other people in his spare time, and turned a small Midwestern city into the center of a new universe.Prince.Not “Prince the nostalgia act.”Prince the problem.Prince the possibility.Prince the system update.Let's step into Minneapolis.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textIn this series, we've spent time with giants—singers, songwriters, bands, entire movements. Some of them changed my life from a distance, through vinyl and radio and the accidental sacrament of a TV set in the living room.Today's subject changed my life at arm's length.Not in a stadium, not in a Broadway theater, not on a movie screen, but in a small brick house in Richmond, Virginia—the Edgar Allan Poe Museum—where a visiting diva looked across a desk and aimed one very sharp line straight at a truth I was not ready to say out loud.Today we're talking about Bette Midler—The Divine Miss M. Her unlikely beginnings in Hawaii, her nights in the New York bathhouses, her Broadway stints and Hollywood turns, her persona that seems to mix stand-up comic, torch singer, drag queen, Jewish mother, and Vegas showgirl… and that one five-minute encounter that told me more about myself than any song ever had.Let's start far from Broadway, far from Manhattan clubs and Hollywood sound stages.Bette Davis Midler w she studied drama for a while at the university of Hawaii at Manoa and even worked as an extra and the 1966 film Hawaii showing up very briefly as a seasick passenger not exactly a star making moment         as born on December 1, 1945, in Honolulu, Hawaii—the third of four children in a working-class Jewish family in a mostly Asian neighborhood. Her mother, Ruth, was a seamstress and housewife; her father, Fred, worked as a painter at a Navy base and did house painting on the side. Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textThis is the story of Bruce Springsteen—“The Boss”—a kid from a working-class town who turned everyday American lives into epic songs, who built a career on sweat, loyalty, doubt, faith, and three-hour marathons onstage that left entire arenas wrung out and grinning.Let's walk through where he came from, what shaped him, how he broke through, who he's influenced—and why, decades in, Bruce Springsteen still matters.Picture central New Jersey in the 1950s and 60s. Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen is born September 23, 1949, in Long Branch, and grows up in nearby Freehold Borough in a blue-collar Catholic family. His father, Doug, bounces between jobs—factory work, bus driving, prison guard. His mother, Adele, is the steady one, working as a legal secretary and keeping the family afloat. The house is tight, money is tight, tempers are tight.Young Bruce doesn't thrive in school. He's restless, alienated; teachers remember him as the loner with the faraway look who really cared about one thing: the guitar. Then comes that moment. Like so many of his generation, he sees Elvis Presley on television—this wild, electric presence shaking up the polite living rooms of America. Soon after, he discovers the twin pillars who will haunt his work: Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. Guthrie teaches him that songs can stand with the powerless. Dylan shows him that lyrics can be literature without losing their bite.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday we are stepping straight into four decades of controversy, choreography, and calculated control.Madonna.Not just “the Queen of Pop,” but an artist who has treated her own life as a long, shape-shifting performance about power—who gets it, who's allowed to keep it, and what happens when a woman refuses to sit down, shut up, or age politely.I'm George Bartley. Let's begin.Madonna Louise Ciccone was born August 16, 1958, in Bay City, Michigan, and raised in the Detroit suburbs in a large, strict Catholic family.Her mother dies of breast cancer when Madonna is only five.That single loss—mother, faith, home base—echoes under almost everything that follows.You see it in the Catholic imagery she wears and tears apart, in the recurring themes of abandonment, guilt, and confession. The tabloids called it “blasphemy.” But for Madonna, it's also biography: a daughter arguing with the Church that shaped her and the God who took her mother.As a girl, she is a paradox: straight-A student, disciplined dancer, cheerleader, troublemaker. Teachers remember intelligence and defiance. She wants to be seen, but very much on her own terms.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textIf you've been following this series of modern day musicians, you may remember a concert I mentioned with the Rolling Stones. It is true that the Stones were able to hold the audience and follow their hands, so to speak. But even before Mick Jagger strut out on stage, the opening act was Stevie Wonder = a living definition of a hard act to follow. If I had just seen his opening act, I could've left knowing that I had seen a great show = but I admit I would've definitely been disappointed at missing the Stones.  But there was no question that Stevie Wonder had prepared the crowd for the excitement of Mick JaggerToday,ΩåΩ I would like to talk about an artist who can fill a stadium with joy using one riff, one chord change, and one impossibly confident note on a harmonica.That same Stevie Wonder.Composer, singer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, activist.A child prodigy who did not burn out.A hitmaker who refused to choose between romantic love songs and songs that tell hard truths.A blind musician whose music often seems to see the world more clearly than many of us who use our eyes.   In this episode, I'd like to walk through his background,the forces that shaped him,the run of hits that re-wired popular music,his effects on other artists,and how his blindness is not a side note, but part of how he developed an uncanny vision for sound, people, and justice.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday, we're going to spend some time with a figure who shaped pop music, dance, music videos, and the idea of celebrity itself—only to become a tragic warning about what happens when that level of fame collides with a fragile human body and mind.Michael Joseph Jackson was born August 29, 1958, in Gary, Indiana—a working-class steel town in the Midwest. He was the eighth of ten children in the Jackson family, packed into a small house where money was tight, tempers could be hot, and music was both escape and opportunity.His father, Joseph—“Joe” Jackson—worked in a steel mill and played guitar in a local R&B band on the side. His mother, Katherine, loved gospel music and encouraged her kids to sing in church. Out of this stew came something unusual: a whole family act, and in the middle of it, a little boy who shone like a spotlight was glued to him.Michael once described watching his father's band rehearse in the living room, feeling this almost physical need to join in. He and his brothers—Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon—began rehearsing as a group, first informally, then obsessively. Joe Jackson realized they had something, and he ran rehearsals like a drill sergeant: long hours, no nonsense, and a clear goal—this was going to be their ticket out of Gary.Here's the strange thing: from the very beginning, there were two Michaels.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday, we turn to an artist who never seemed entirely earthbound.David Bowie.For some listeners, Bowie is the sound of discovery: that first moment you realize a song, a costume, a performance can make the world feel bigger than the town you're standing in.For others, he's a gallery of snapshots:Ziggy Stardust in orange hair and stardust makeup.The Thin White Duke in a waistcoat and a stare like a searchlight.Jareth in Labyrinth, juggling crystal balls and rewiring childhoods.And finally, the enigmatic figure of Blackstar, composing a farewell while the rest of us didn't yet know to call it goodbye.Tonight, I'd like to walk through Bowie's life and work in a way that fits this series:his background,his influence,his first appearances in the United States,and the movies that made him more than “just” a rock star.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textTonight we turn to a musician whose name has become shorthand for guitar mastery, blues devotion, and, depending on who you ask, the very idea of the rock “guitar hero.”Eric Clapton.For some listeners, he is the ultimate guitarist: the Yardbirds prodigy, the “Clapton Is God” graffiti on London walls, the molten solos with Cream, the aching beauty of “Layla” and “Tears in Heaven,” the tasteful bends and vocal-like phrasing that defined what an electric guitar could say.For others, his legacy is more complicated—shaped not only by brilliance, but by band breakups, addictions, controversies, and changing times.Today I want to trace how a quiet, art-school kid obsessed with American blues records became one of the most influential guitarists in history, move through the bands that forged his sound, and look at how his work helped define what “great guitar playing” means for generations of musicians.Eric Patrick Clapton was born March 30, 1945, in Ripley, Surrey, England. Raised believing his grandparents were his parents and his mother was his older sister, he grew up with a complicated sense of identity and a strong inwardness that would later surface in his playing — that mix of control, melancholy, and sudden intensity. Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textIn this podcast episode, we'll walk through where they came from, what shaped them, how they crashed into the United States—and then spend some real time inside Tommy: not just as an album, but as a story that refused to stay put, leaping from vinyl to concert halls, movie screens, and the Broadway stage.Imagine that it is Post war England and you are in West LondonBomb sites are turning into parking lots and playgrounds. Teenagers caught between their parents' memories of wartime suffering and a new world of consumer goods, television sets, and American rock records.Roger Daltrey grows up in a working-class family, handy with his fists and tools, assembling his own future piece by piece.Pete Townshend, the intense, sharp-nosed kid, is surrounded by music early—his parents are professional musicians—so the idea of a musical life is precarious, but not absurd.John Entwistle is the quiet one, a brass-band kid who picks up the bass and makes it sing.Daltrey starts a band called The Detours. He pulls in Entwistle. Entwistle brings Townshend. They grind through pubs, youth clubs, and dance halls. Then, after a name change detour as the High Numbers, shaped by managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, they emerge with the name that finally fits the impact:Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textIn this series, we've been spending time with artists who didn't just make hits—they changed the language of modern music.Today, we turn to a group that took blues, folk, volume, and mystery… and built a sound so iconic that entire genres still live in its echo.Led Zeppelin.Not just “loud.” Not just “wild.” Four musicians who fused session-honed precision, deep musical curiosity, and a taste for the epic into something that still feels massive generations later.Tonight, we'll look at where they came from, how they rose so quickly, why their time together burned so intensely, and how their shadow still stretches over rock and beyond.Led Zeppelin doesn't begin with rune symbols and stadiums.It starts with working British musicians paying their dues.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday we meet an artist who doesn't blow the doors off with volume or choreography, but with something quieter—and in many ways, just as radical.A woman alone with a guitar in an open tuning.A voice that can sound like a bell, a blade, or a diary you were never meant to read.A songwriter who refuses to keep her feelings, or her harmonies, inside the lines.But inwardly a mother with empty arms carrying shame that didn't belong to her and grief she poured into songs that people around her could feel even if they didn't know why  both sides now Chelsea morning  Joni Mitchell.In this episode, I want to explore:Her background: prairie girl, painter, survivor.Her influences: folk clubs, jazz giants, poets, painters, and her own wounds.Her effect on music: especially the singer-songwriter era and beyond.Her life's arc: including the hidden child, the fame she never really trusted, the experiments that confused critics, the silence, the aneurysm, and the astonishing later-life return.Because if Hendrix reimagined what a guitar could do, Joni Mitchell reimagined what a song could say.Small-town skies, big inner worldSupport the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textOur story begins not with sequins but with a housing project.Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard both grew up in Detroit's Brewster-Douglass projects, one of the first federally funded housing developments for Black families. Diana Ross, who grew up nearby, joined that same orbit.Detroit in the 1950s and early 60s was a complex place:Automobile money and factory work.Northern promise and stubborn segregation.Church choirs, street-corner harmonies, jazz clubs, rhythm & blues, gospel pouring out of radios.Music wasn't a luxury; it was a language.The three girls—at first part of a broader group of friends—found each other through that language. They called themselves The Primettes, designed as the “girl group” counterpart to a rising male group called The Primes (who would evolve into The Temptations).Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday, we turn to a musician whose care there were moves separations long stretches were Jimmy simply simply had to figure things out on his own no one was buying but whose shadow is so long that every electric guitarist since has had to walk through it.Jimi Hendrix.He didn't just play louder. He didn't just play faster. He changed what the electric guitar meant. He changed the expectations for sound, for performance, for what a song could hold.In this episode, I want to step past the posters and the legends—the burning guitar, the psychedelic clothes, the famous take on “The Star-Spangled Banner”—and really look at four things:His background: the fragile, human story underneath the icon.His influences: because Hendrix was not a meteor out of nowhere.His effect on music: how he reshaped the instrument and the stage.His life and his death: and the pressures and possibilities that surrounded him at the end.At the end of this journey, we'll eventually look forward—to some very different voices who were changing the sound of the 1960s in their own way: Diana Ross and The Supremes.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday we turn to a voice that has become a kind of measuring stick. A singer you can't ignore, can't casually imitate, and certainly can't replace.Aretha Louise Franklin.You can line up all the adjectives: legendary, iconic, incomparable. But with Aretha, those words almost sound lazy. The real story is more interesting. It's the story of how a shy, brilliant preacher's daughter walked out of a Detroit church and, without surrendering where she came from, changed what mainstream American music could sound like — and what it could mean.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textIf you grew up in a certain era, his name isn't just a performer on a poster. It's a weather system. A shift in air pressure. A bulletin from the fault line where art, politics, faith, doubt, youth, age, and trouble all collided.And at the end of this episode, I'm going to tell you about one night—one Bob Dylan concert—that coincided with the most frightening turn my own life had taken up to that point, and how, in a way, it nudged me toward paying attention to people many others don't see.But let's start with the man himself.Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota, and grew up in the mining town of Hibbing on the Mesabi Iron Range. Hibbing was not Greenwich Village, not California, not London. It was wind, work, winters, and radio.Inside that small-town house, though, the signals of the wider world were pouring in: country music, blues, early rock 'n' roll, gospel, and crooners—all collapsing into one restless imagination. He listened hard. He absorbed. And he did what born artists do: he tried things on.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday's pairing may look odd until you start really listening:The Beach Boys and The Grateful Dead.Two California bands. Two American institutions. Two completely different ideas of what a band is for.One built pop cathedrals in the studio and spent decades trying to bring that sound to the stage.The other built a moving city on the road and treated the studio almost like a postcard from their real life's work.Let's spend some time with both—and with the very different concert worlds they created.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday I want to put two names in the same frame—Joan Baez and Taylor Swift—not because they sound alike or have the same values but because they tell us how the culture around music, fandom, and accessibility to their shows have changed in less than one lifetime.Same art form. Very different worlds.This episode is about those two worlds.No boxing match.No “who's better.”Just what it means that one night with Baez cost you five dollars, and one night with Swift might cost someone else a small fortune.In one: Joan Baez at Catholic University—five dollars a ticket. A guitar, a voice that sounds like it  dropped in from a kinder universe, and the feeling that history, morality, and music are all sitting beside you.In the other: Taylor Swift in a sold-out stadium—tens of thousands of phones glowing, a three-hour epic of costume changes and choreography, and ticket prices that can look like a month's rent.Before I go any further, a brief portrait of Joan Baez - she was born January 9, 1941, in Staten Island, New York and raised in a Quaker family with a strong social conscience. She emerged at the end of the 1950s folk revival, her pure, ringing vibrato and unadorned guitar style making traditional ballads and spirituals feel both ancient and immediate. Her breakthrough came with performances at the Newport Folk Festival (1959–60) and early albums that brought folk music—and later protest music—to a mass young audience. Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textIn a recent episode, we spent time with a man who changed popular culture and then became a warning about what fame, isolation, and addiction can do to a single human body—Elvis Presley. Brilliant, iconic, but ultimately tragic.Today… similar voltage. Very different story.This is about a band that came out of the same storm system of sex, drugs, and rock and roll… but somehow did not end as a cautionary tale on a bathroom floor. Instead, they turned danger into discipline, scandal into strategy, and raw rebellion into one of the longest-running creative partnerships in modern music.In this series, we've already met Frank Sinatra, who turned phrasing and breath into a method—and Chuck Berry, who wired the circuitry of rock and roll into the American imagination. Elvis showed us how a single, fragile human can be crushed under the weight of that circuitry.Today's story is different. This is what happens when that same dangerous current is handed to a band that refuses to burn out.The Rolling Stones.This is not just a tale of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. This is the story of staying power.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textI'd like to begin, not in Liverpool or Hamburg or Abbey Road, but in an American living room—mine, and millions of others—on a Sunday night in 1964.It's February 9th. The television is a piece of furniture. The picture is black and white. Ed Sullivan is the gatekeeper of what “really matters.” We've heard rumors about four long-haired boys from England. Maybe we've seen a little newspaper photo. Maybe a DJ has spun “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and sounded half amused, half alarmed, while the phone lines lit up.And then there they are.John. Paul. George. Ringo.Matching suits. Hair just long enough to scandalize parents without terrifying them. Tight harmonies. Songs that feel simple and impossibly fresh at the same time. Sullivan reading his cards. Teenage girls screaming. Camera cutting to faces in the audience already past language.Seventy-three million people watching at once. Almost 40 percent of the country. Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday we're stepping into complicated territory.Not a personal hero of mine.Not a composer whose scores I pore over, or a bandleader whose arrangements I quote with delight or a singer I enjoy listening to.We've just spent time with artists like Frank Sinatra, who turned phrasing into a method, and Chuck Berry, who wired rock's circuitry with wit and precision. Both, in their own ways, were architects of how modern music sounds.Today's subject is someone you simply cannot walk around if you're tracing how popular music, celebrity, and American culture twisted themselves together in the second half of the twentieth century.Elvis Presley.For some, he's the thrilling young rebel in black and white. For others, he's a cartoon in a white jumpsuit. For many, he's a brand—lunchboxes, impersonators, Halloween costumes—more than a musician.For me, and for this podcast, he's something else: a case study in what happens when a very real, very shy Southern kid with a remarkable voice is plugged directly into a machine that never turns off.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textBefore we talk about charts and riffs and influence, I want to begin with a memory.Years ago, I saw Chuck Berry live at the Paramount Theatre in Manhattan. I later learned that a few years after that, the Paramount Theater was completely shut down.  Anyway, that night Chuck Berry was on a bill with The Animals and The Dixie Cups—a lineup that already told you how fast the musical world was changing.  The British Invasion bands were arriving with their sharp suits and American R&B records tucked under their arms. In fact, the animals had the number one song in the country with the house of the rising Sun. And there were girl groups with immaculate harmonies. The Dixie Cups had the number two song in the country with chapel of love.  Here was a crowd already fluent in the new language of pop.And then one of rocks pioneers - Chuck Berry - walked onstage.No elaborate light show, no army of amplifiers, no sentimental introduction. Just that stance, that sly half-smile, and a guitar tone as clean and cutting as a bell. You could feel the air in the room shift. Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textBirthdays - as well as the  500th episode of a podcast - are times that generally you might want to slow down and look at the past, the present, and the future. Using that logic, I'd like to touch on the past of this podcast by calling on none other then the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe.Ghost soundWell hello, Mr. PoeGreetings Mr. Bartley.  Congratulations on your 500th episode.And I couldn't have done it without you, Mr. Poe.Certainly Mr. Bartley - you devoted the majority of your podcast episodes to my life and works when the podcast was known as Celebrate Poe.Mr. Poe, Yes, at first I had difficulty in finding a subject for a podcast - then I realized that I had worked at the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, and it hit me that you might be an excellent subject.And I do admit that I miss those days.Mr. Poe, That doesn't mean that I can't have some more episodes regarding you and your works. You're very existence fits in with the topic of creativity.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textLeonard Bernstein played piano from age 10, and attended Boston Latin School and Harvard University.  So he studied music theory before studying conducting and orchestration. In 1943, he was appointed assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic. Then on November 14, 1943 he was summoned unexpectedly to substitute for the regular conductor Bruno Walter. His confidence and skill under such difficult circumstances and his overall talent marked the beginning of a new career. He later conducted the New York City Center Orchestra and appeared as a guest conductor in countries all over the world. In fact in 1953 he became the first American to conduct at La Scala in Milan. And from 1958 to 1969 Bernstein was conductor and musical Director of the New York Philharmonic. He made several international tours, and his popularity increased because of his skills as a conductor and pianist, but also as a commentator and even an entertainer.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday, we're going to begin in Hoboken, New Jersey, walk through the apprenticeship years, and then trace how partnerships, heartbreak, movies, and business instincts turned a talented singer into a blueprint many still follow.Frank Sinatra was born December 12, 1915, in Hoboken, New Jersey, to Dolly and Marty Sinatra, Sicilian immigrants. The home soundtrack mixed Italian song with the everyday music of labor, argument, and celebration. Outside the door, radio—that mid-century hearth—taught him something different: how a voice could cross a continent and still sound like it was sitting at your kitchen table.As a teenager, Frank Sinatra studied Bing Crosby the way a watchmaker studies gears. Crosby wasn't just stylish; he was quiet, and the microphone made quiet powerful. Before amplification, singers had to push air to the balcony. With amplification, you could saying exactly what you wanted and be understood.  You didn't have to shout your feelings; you could aim them.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday's episode is the first in a look at several dozen musicians who lived after 1900, roughly in chronological order.  And let me emphasize this is a extremely subjective look - it seems like every time I would look at my list, I f would find a new musician that just had to be on there - so I'm not presenting this in any way as an ideal selection of the most popular or talented or well known musician - just a deep dive into the lives and talents of some of the greatest singers and musicians of the 20th and 21st centuriesAnd I'm going to start with Bing Crosby mainly because he is widely considered the first multimedia star.  Bing Crosby was able to achieve unprecedented and simultaneous superstardom across the three dominant entertainment mediums of his time: recorded music, radio, and motion pictures. In other words, Crosby's career was characterized by his massive and concurrent success in multiple platforms, a feat unmatched by performers who came before him.Crosby was by far the best-selling recording artist of his time and remained so until well into the rock era. His recording of "White Christmas" is the best-selli Setting a standard for future male vocalist such as Frank Sinatra and he was also a major    ng single of all time. And he had 41 number one hits, a number that even surpassed Elvis Presley and The Beatles.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textMerci, Monsieur Bartley. I was born in 1875 in the little town of Ciboure, in the Basque country of southwestern France. My father was an inventive man, an engineer with a passion for mechanics. My mother was of Basque and Spanish descent, and it was from her that I inherited my love of Spanish rhythms and colors. Those two influences—precision and passion—shaped me from the beginning.That's fascinating—the mechanical precision of your father and the Spanish warmth of your mother. Did music enter your life early?Very early. I began piano lessons around the age of seven, though I must confess I was not a prodigy. I studied diligently, but what fascinated me most was sound itself—its clarity, its structure, its elegance. By the time I entered the Paris Conservatoire at fourteen, I was already dreaming of becoming a composer, though I was never the favorite student. In fact, I was often considered… how shall I put it… a bit stubborn.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textMaestro, thank you for joining me. Before we dive into your music, I'd really like to hear about your beginnings. Could you tell us about your background?Of course. I was born in 1862, just outside Paris. My father was a baker—always kneading dough while humming—and my mother dabbled in piano. I remember sneaking into the living room to press the keys while she played. My first memories of music are not concerts or lessons, but the hum of the street, the ringing of church bells, and my mother's faint piano melodies. At seven, I began formal piano lessons, though I often daydreamed through them.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textWelcome, Maestro Gustav Mahler. You've been called a composer of contradictions—cosmic in scope, but also obsessively detailed. If you could describe yourself in just a few words, how would you begin?Contradictions, yes—that is my very essence. I am a man who lived with one foot in heaven and the other in the street. My symphonies hold the singing of birds and the cries of the market, but also the silence of eternity.Your music often feels like it contains the whole world. Did you set out with that ambition consciously?Always. I once said, “The symphony must be like the world—it must embrace everything.” For me, a symphony was not just a piece of music—it was a life lived, with all its chaos, its laughter, its terror, and its final redemption.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textNow in a nutshell, the history of Halloween and how it developed can be described in a few sentences.  You see, Halloween originated from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, which marked the end of summer and the harvest, and the beginning of the dark, cold winter. The Celts believed that on the night of October 31st, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred, allowing spirits to return to Earth. They would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts. Later, the Roman Empire combined Samhain with their own festivals, and as Christianity spread, the church established All Saints' Day on November 1st, making October 31st "All Hallows' Eve," or Halloween.  In this episode,I would like to describe what I believe are the five best pieces of classical music associated with Halloween - in other words the scariest music.I would like to start - in each case after an introduction and description -  with a beautiful piece of music by the great French composer Camille Saint-Saëns.  This music is from a CD I did called FallingWater Dreams where I used basic midi files to start with, and do some arrangements of classical music.  You know this was many years ago ago, because this was back in a time when basic midi files were not copyright. This selection is called Aquarium and is from the Carnival of Animals. In the spirit of this podcast episode, I think Aquarium has a beautiful, but extremely eerie quality about it - not the kind of hard-core horror that is associated with some upcoming pieces in this podcast episode.  You could almost call aquarium to be creepy creepy.  Again, first before playing each specific piece of music - and there should be five - I am going to make some comments about that piece of music, it's history, and in some cases = it's influences.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textI am most happy to be here today with you, Mr. Bartley.And we are glad that you're here, Maestro Greig Could you tell us about your early life.Ya, I was born in Bergen, Norway, on the 15th of June 1843. My father was a merchant and my mother was musical; she gave me my first piano lessons. From a young age, I loved the sound of Norwegian folk tunes, their rhythms, their melodies, their stories.I studied at the Leipzig Conservatory in Germany, where I learned the techniques of composition, but my heart always remained in Norway. I wanted to create music that spoke of my homeland, its landscapes, its seas, its mountains, and its people.I became known for my piano music and for my orchestral works, but perhaps my greatest love was writing music that told stories of Norway, its legends, and its spirit.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textMaestro, could you begin by telling us a bit about your background?Ah, yes… I vas born in 1841, in a small village near Prague, in Bohemia. My father vas a butcher, my mother a simple, steadfast voman vith a love for folk songs. My family had little vealth, little expectation beyond the ordinary trades of life. Yet I felt Music as a calling — not for fame, but as a vay to capture the spirit of Bohemia itself. I vas not born a prodigy like some; I had to vork, to study, to listen, and to shape my gift slovly.Music vas everyvhere around me, even though I vas not born to it professionally. I learned the violin in the village, and at the church, I played in the local ensembles — but I vas alvays dravn to the melodies of our people, the dances, the songs sung in the fields.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a text2 Ghost soundI am most happy, to be here, and as a ghost, my heart carries the weight of a funeral march, even in moments of applause.Interesting analogy, Maestro Tchaikovsky, but could you tell us a bit about your earthly background? Ah, yes… earthly my background. I was born in 1840, in a small Russian town  nestled in the Ural Mountains. My father was an engineer in the mines, my mother of French ancestry, gentle but distant. Music was not the profession expected of me — Russia had no conservatory system then, no path for a composer. I was meant to become a civil servant, a reliable bureaucrat in the machinery of empire.What were your feelings about music as a young person?Ah music… music was in my blood. Even as a boy I could hear it whispering everywhere — in the birch forests, in the peasant songs that drifted on the wind, in the melancholy of Russian church bells. I studied law and served dutifully in the Ministry of Justice, but my heart withered there. When the Saint Petersburg Conservatory opened, I knew I must leave behind the safety of that life and risk everything for composition.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday I vant to talk vith the final Composer of the three Bs - this podcast has previously Broadcast episodes regarding Bach and Beethoven - and vill certainly have more regarding those musicians - but today I vant to talk about another composer vhose last name also begins vith B, and is also considered one of the greats.  That composer is yo-HAH-nes Brahms. Unlike some composers of his era, he did not have any recorded middle names or additional given names—he vas vas alvays knovn as  yo-HAH-nes Brahms.  And by the vay, the musical opening to this podcast it's an excerpt from a remix of Brahms Hungarian danceGhost soundAh, here is the ghost of - or if you vill -       the spirit of Brahms.Maestro Brahms, thank you for joining me today. To begin, could you tell us a little about your early life in Hamburg?Ah, Hamburg. A fine city of ships and sailors, though not so fine ven hen one is poor. I vas as born in 1833, the son of a bass player—my father Johann Jakob—and my mother, a seamstress. had little but music and determination. From the beginning, it seemed I vas destined to live at the piano.I've heard you began playing in public quite young.Herr Bartley, By the time vas a boy, I played in taverns and dance halls to earn a fev  coins.Imagine a skinny lad of thirteen, pounding avay at the piano vile sailors shouted for more beer. Hardly the glamorous concert life! But those rough rooms taught me discipline. I learned to keep the music alive, even if no one cared to listen.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textWell, a logical place to begin would be to ask the Maestro about his beginnings“Ah, señor Bartley, I am pleased to be here. You ask about my beginnings? wery well. I was born October 10, 1813, in Le Roncole, a small willage in the Duchy of Parma. My father, Carlo, ran our taern, and my mother, Luigia, kept the household in order. We were not rich, nor were we musicians by trade, yet music found me nonetheless. The hymns of the willage church, the organ, the singing of neighbors — they became my earliest companions.”“So Maestro werdi you were drawn to music even as a child?”“Indeed. Herr Bartley, From the first I lowed the organ, its voices like a Conversation with the heavens. I studied with local teachers, but the most important influence was Antonio Barezzi, a wealthy merchant and music lower. He saw promise in a boy from the countryside, offered lessons, guidance, and even support. Without him, I might newer have left the Village where I was born. He became my mentor, my patron, and a friend.”“And yet life in a small Village must have had its challenges?”Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textMusical attributions at end of transcriptHere the ghost - or if you will - the spirit of Richard Wagner -  is reminiscing about his existence in 1864.  A struggling genius. A lonely king. One shared dream that changed the sound of Western music forever. In Music and Majesty, Richard Wagner and King Ludwig of Bavaria revisit the passion, faith, and madness that forged a masterpiece.GeorgeWe left you in the last episode, Maestro Wagner, with you rather down on your luck - especially financially - in other words there was no way to make your dreams come true.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textMusic attribution at bottom of transcriptThat was a portion of ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner - and if you're old enough, like me, you might remember hearing that from cartoons - especially porky pig dressed in a hunting outfit and singing kill the wabbit , kill the wabbit about Bugs Bunny - but I digress This is the first episode where I would like to explore the world of Richard Wagner.   The reason I say that this is the first episode, is that the more I delved into the life of Richard Wagner, I began to realize that there is no way that I could even begin to cover his life in one episode. Oh certainly I will have some more episodes later on as appropriate regarding the lives of Beethoven and Bach, but I wanted to have at least two episodes about Richard Wagner together - one after another - so stay with me as we look into the life of this unique composer.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textYou know, Every generation has its superstar — the one who turns talent into legend, and performance into art.  For us, that might mean Elton John or Lady Gaga. But in the 1800s, one name ruled the musical world like a comet blazing across the sky: Franz Liszt.A man whose concerts caused hysteria, whose charm        melted hearts, and whose fingers seemed touched by lightning.So let's pull back the velvet curtain and step into the age of Lisztomania!Ghost soundMaestro Liszt, welcome.Thank you, Herr Bartley. Speaking across centuries is a strange delight — music is the bridge that time cannot burn.Let's begin at the beginning. You were born in 1811 in Raiding, Hungary, the son of a musician employed by the Esterházy family. How did music first enter your life?Ah, Monsieur Bartley, Music was like breathing. My father played cello, piano, violin — he introduced me to the piano, and I was performing publicly at nine. By eleven, I studied with Czerny in Vienna, a pupil of Beethoven himself. The training was rigorous, but awe-inspiring.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textvelcome to Celebrate Creativity - episode 488 - in her voices. The opening bars to this podcast episode are from Robert schumann's troy mu ri - a word that means dreamingAnd today    ve speak vith the ghost of Robert Schumann—a man vhose music vas alive vith fire and reflection, vhose inner voices shaped every note. Step inside his vorld, if you dare.Nov before ve meet the ghost of or if you vill the spirit of - the great Robert Schumann, a quick note: you may hear me speak of his tvo sides—Florestan, fiery and bold, and Eusebius, dreamy and reflective. But don't be misled—Schumann definitely did not have multiple personalities -  at least until his final years. Florestan and Eusebius vere his artistic alter-egos, vays to explore contrasting emotions in music and vriting. Think of them as characters living inside his imagination, giving voice to the fire and the reflection that shaped his art.”  But enough of that for nov …Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textGhost entersAh, here is the ghost of Maestro Frederick Chopin - one of my favorite composers.  vould you prefer that I call you Maestro Frederick or Maestro Chopin.Maestro Chopin vould be sufficient.You could refer to me as simply Herr Bartley - or in the style of the French salons, you may also refer to me as Monsieur Bartley.Ah, then Monsieur Bartley it is.Well first, Maestro Chopin, could you tell us about your early years.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textIf you have ever been to a wedding or seen a portion of one on television or in the movies, I am sure you have heard some of them music of Mendelson - such as the wedding March at the beginning of this episode. Today we are fortunate enough to speak vith the ghost or if you vill - the spirit of Felix MendelsonHerr Bartley, thank you for that vedy direct introduction to vhat has to be my most vell-knovn vork.  But Herr Bartley—allov me to step into the light once more. By name, I am Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, born in Hamburg, Germany, on February 3, 1809.      You are Mr. Bartley, I am here Herr Bartholdy.  Perhaps ve are related.Not that I know of, but Maestro Mendelson, could you tell us about your family?Ja, Herr Bartley, my family vas vealthy, cultured, and deeply musical; my father, Abraham, vas a banker and patron of the arts, and my mother, Lea, nurtured a love of literature and learning. From an early age, music vas ever-present in our home—my mother's piano, the violin in our hands, and evenings filled vith song and discussion.     Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday we have the privilege of speaking With the ghost or if you will the spirit of Ludwig van Beethoven —arguably the greatest composer of all time.Ghost  soundMaestro Beethoven, thank you for joining us. Could you begin by telling us about your background?Herr Bartley, it is extremely strange to look back from beyond the grave, but let me oblige. I vas born in Bonn, December 1770, into a family of musicians. My grandfather, Kapellmeister Ludvig van Beethoven, vas a respected man, and my father, Johann, sang in the court chapel. From him I inherited both music and hardship. He drank heavily, and though he recognized my talent, his methods vere Vetty harsh.As a boy, I vas pushed to practice the clavier late into the night. Neighbors recalled hearing me sobbing over the keys, small fingers stumbling, vhile my father demanded brilliance. It vas a cruel apprenticeship, but it forged in me a stubborn resilience.By my early teens, I vas already performing publicly in Bonn and serving as assistant organist. The Elector of Cologne, vho ruled Bonn, supported my education. He sent me to study vith Christian Gottlob Neefe, vho introduced me to the vorks of Bach — those fugues became my daily bread, the grammar of my musical thought.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textAnd here, right on time is the ghost of maestro Haydn to tell us about his story - his life and his music - Maestro Haydn, why don't you start at the be ginning.Certainly, Herr Bartley. I, Joseph Haydn, vas born in 1732 in the small Austrian village of Rohrau, near the border of Hungary. My father, a humble vheelvright, could not imagine that his son vould one day travel to the grand palaces of Europe or have his music performed by orchestras in London. Yet music called me early. From my earliest years, I vas dravn to melody and harmony. I sang in the village choir, and it vas soon clear that my voice and my ear vere exceptional.From vhat I understand, Maestro Haydn, you vent to Vienna as a young lad to become a choirboy at St. Stephen's Cathedral vhen you vere only eight years of age.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textGavotteWelcome to celebrate creativity - in ze past few episodes, I'm afraid I've been a bit off in ze numbering of episodes - this is actually ze fourth season, and I believe that this is episode 483 - now we began this episode with ze Gavotte in G by ze ghost or if you will spirit - of our guest today.Ghost soundTaken a vastly different path than the one that my father had chosen for me well     Herr Bartley — good day. It is certainly good to meet you.Ya, I am Maestro George Frideric Handel; permit me first to speak plainly of those first years that zet me upon ze road of music.  That would be a very good place to start.Herr Bartley, I vas born in ze year 1685. My fazer vas a barber–surgeon and wished me to follow a sober, respectable profession — law vas his hope for me — and he forbade any serious musical study. My mozer, Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textI have the ghost of Herr Bach right here - Frst could you tell us about your early life and family.Herr Bartley, I vas born in 1685 in Eisenach, Germany. My family had been musicians for generations: organists, cantors, court players. To be a Bach vas, in truth, to be a musician. My father, Johann Ambrosius, vas Eisenach's town musician. From him, I learned the violin and the rudiments of theory.So in a sense you really didn't have a choice but to become a musician.Herr Bartley, it vas a choice that I made very, very gladly!Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textHost: Welcome to the "Echoes of Genius series” -  the podcast where we explore the lives and legacies of the greatest classical composers.  This is episode 480 - Red Priest Rising.  The music that you have heard at the beginning of each episode, and will continue to hear throughout this podcast series is a brief the ghost of the composer who stands at the pinnacle of the Italian Baroque movement -maestro Antonio Vivaldi   section of spring from The Four Seasons written by the ghost or if you will spirit - of our guest today(Sound of a short, elegant musical flourish)Ghost soundCiao, Maestro Vivaldi! La tua musica ancora ci incanta musica.For our English listeners, that is  Hello, Maestro Vivaldi! Your music still enchants us.  And before we go any further, Maestro Vivaldi, I have to say, I never realized your hair was quite that red.  With that shock of red hair, you'd look at home in a rock bandSupport the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textFirst I have a confession to make. I plan to do an episode regarding a musician every day, but my right hand started hurting and I mean excruciating painful. I worried about what to do, and realized if I continue to overdo it on an already injured hand/ I would have serious problems. I thought about giving up this podcast altogether but eventually decided to take a day by day approach. It seems to be getting much better than it was yesterday, so if I notice improvement I will certainly do a podcast/. I have already written the Scripps with voice control on the Macintosh, so I didn't really need to use my hands that much in what I consider the hardest part of doing a podcast, but there's no way that you can really use Voice control with an audio program.  So I'll just take it one day at a time, and I'm asking you to bear with me.Second,When I recorded my episode on Monteverdi, something unexpected happened. I'd worried I might not have enough to say, but as I began speaking in his rhythm — my approximation of his  lilting Italian cadence — the words seemed to sing themselves. I found myself moving my hand in slow circles as I spoke, and somehow the motion gave the voice its own kind of melody. The pauses stretched naturally, almost like rests in a score. What I thought would be a short reflection became nearly forty minutes, not because of the facts or analysis, but because Monteverdi's spirit reshaped the way I spoke.That experience stayed with me. It reminded me that a voice can be musical, even when it isn't singing — that the phrasing, the breath, the stillness between words are as expressive as the words themselves. And that's the insight I've carried with me into Purcell — another composer who understood that silence, rhythm, and human feeling are inseparable.”Today, we move forward in time — from Venice to London — to meet another spirit who carried that torch into a new century. Henry Purcell took the lessons of Monteverdi and shaped them into something deeply English yet profoundly human: the marriage of reverence and drama, sacred and stage.If Monteverdi taught us how to breathe through music, Purcell teaches us how to speak through it — to find the eternal note that echoes across time.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.