Podcast appearances and mentions of Bruce Jackson

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Best podcasts about Bruce Jackson

Latest podcast episodes about Bruce Jackson

JSA Podcasts for Telecom and Data Centers
CBRE's Bruce Jackson: Florida's Evolving Data Center Market

JSA Podcasts for Telecom and Data Centers

Play Episode Listen Later May 29, 2025 5:49


In this live JSA TV interview from Metro Connect USA, Bruce Jackson, First VP of Data Center Ops at CBRE, shares valuable insights into Florida's evolving data center market.Don't miss Bruce's perspective on why Florida is becoming a key player in the global data center landscape.

SharkFarmerXM's podcast
Bruce Jackson from Farr West, UT

SharkFarmerXM's podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 23, 2025 24:28


Rated R Safety Show
EP 1136 – Blame, Brains & the Behavioral Beef

Rated R Safety Show

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2025 59:59 Transcription Available


Episode 1136 – Blame, Brains & the Behavioral BeefOn today's Rated R Safety Show, Jay Allen dives headfirst into the philosophical (and occasionally theatrical) debate tearing through the safety world right now.It started with a bold session at the Western Conference on Safety—“Investigations Done Differently,” featuring Jeff Lyth and Bruce Jackson. But when a longtime behavior-based safety veteran publicly questioned whether HOP (Human and Organizational Performance) has any evidence of reducing incidents or injuries… the floodgates opened.So today, we talk about it.Is HOP just razzmatazz—or is it the necessary evolution of how we treat error, people, and performance?Jay pulls receipts from:Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety

Rock N Roll Pantheon
Set Lusting Bruce - Jackson Reed - Springsteen, Prince, and Beyond

Rock N Roll Pantheon

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 9, 2024 65:32


In this episode Jesse Jackson interviews musician Jackson Reed from Calgary, Alberta. They discuss Jackson's band, Jackson Reed and the Silverbirds, their recent cover of Prince's 'Little Red Corvette,' his successful music podcast 'Guess That Record,' and the pivotal influences on his musical journey, including The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Bruce Springsteen. Jackson shares stories about his band's formation, the challenges of being a solo artist, his admiration for live energy in performances, and his future aspirations to get a record deal and tour full-time. The engaging conversation also covers Jackson's experience meeting and interviewing members of Billy Joel's band. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gill Athletics: Track and Field Connections
#255: Bruce Jackson-Academy of Art

Gill Athletics: Track and Field Connections

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 15, 2024 125:36


Join us on the latest episode of the Gill Athletics Connections podcast as host Mike Cunningham, National Business Development Manager at Gill Athletics, dives into an engaging conversation with Bruce Jackson, the assistant coach for Academy of Art. With a unique blend of passion for the sport and a keen insight into the challenges and triumphs of collegiate coaching, Jackson shares his journey from a successful high school coach to making his mark in the collegiate realm. In this episode, we peel back the curtain to explore the multifaceted role of a college track and field coach, revealing the unexpected aspects and challenges that come with the territory. From administrative duties to fostering deep connections with athletes, Jackson opens up about the learning curves and the satisfaction that comes from guiding student-athletes to success, both on and off the track.

Second City Works presents
Getting to Yes, And… | Bruce Jackson – ‘Never Far From Home'

Second City Works presents "Getting to Yes, And" on WGN Plus

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 11, 2023


Kelly meets Bruce Jackson, associate general counsel for Microsoft and a former entertainment attorney. He has a new memoir, “Never Far From Home: My Journey from Brooklyn to Hip Hop, Microsoft, and the Law.” “You can live a Black life at home, in your own bubble, but when you walk out the door it's a white world. That's what my […]

ABA Journal: Modern Law Library
‘Never Far from Home' brings readers from NYC projects to 90s hip-hop scene to Microsoft offices

ABA Journal: Modern Law Library

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 5, 2023 50:08


Bruce Jackson grew up shuttling between Brooklyn and Manhattan public housing projects. His journey led him to Hofstra University, then Georgetown Law. He ditched a white-shoe firm job to launch a career in entertainment law, and represented some of the hottest hip-hop and rap artists in the 1990s. When Napster changed the music industry, Jackson left for Seattle and Microsoft, where he traded in his sharp suits for polos and khakis, and sick beats for mosh pits–briefly. As he tells the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles in this episode of the Modern Law Library, one exposure to a Seattle grunge concert had him packing his bags to return to New York City. But Jackson didn't leave Microsoft—where he now serves as an associate general counsel—and a major focus of his career at the company has been to increase the tech giant's diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. In Never Far From Home: My Journey from Brooklyn to Hip Hop, Microsoft, and the Law, Jackson reflects on the people and programs that made his own career possible, and is unflinching about the dangers he faced, the racism he encountered, and the mistakes he made in his personal life as he pursued professional success. Jackson tells Rawles that before demanding others share their stories with us, it important to tell our truths as well. In this episode of the podcast, Jackson shares how his childhood love of musical theater dovetailed with his skill at accountancy and tax law while representing his clients in the hip-hop music scene. He discusses his top tips for improving the diversity pipeline within organizations, and reflects on finding commonality with people from entirely different backgrounds to his own.

Legal Talk Network - Law News and Legal Topics
‘Never Far from Home' brings readers from NYC projects to 90s hip-hop scene to Microsoft offices

Legal Talk Network - Law News and Legal Topics

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 5, 2023 50:08


Bruce Jackson grew up shuttling between Brooklyn and Manhattan public housing projects. His journey led him to Hofstra University, then Georgetown Law. He ditched a white-shoe firm job to launch a career in entertainment law, and represented some of the hottest hip-hop and rap artists in the 1990s. When Napster changed the music industry, Jackson left for Seattle and Microsoft, where he traded in his sharp suits for polos and khakis, and sick beats for mosh pits–briefly. As he tells the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles in this episode of the Modern Law Library, one exposure to a Seattle grunge concert had him packing his bags to return to New York City. But Jackson didn't leave Microsoft—where he now serves as an associate general counsel—and a major focus of his career at the company has been to increase the tech giant's diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. In Never Far From Home: My Journey from Brooklyn to Hip Hop, Microsoft, and the Law, Jackson reflects on the people and programs that made his own career possible, and is unflinching about the dangers he faced, the racism he encountered, and the mistakes he made in his personal life as he pursued professional success. Jackson tells Rawles that before demanding others share their stories with us, it important to tell our truths as well. In this episode of the podcast, Jackson shares how his childhood love of musical theater dovetailed with his skill at accountancy and tax law while representing his clients in the hip-hop music scene. He discusses his top tips for improving the diversity pipeline within organizations, and reflects on finding commonality with people from entirely different backgrounds to his own.

ABA Journal Podcasts - Legal Talk Network
‘Never Far from Home' brings readers from NYC projects to 90s hip-hop scene to Microsoft offices

ABA Journal Podcasts - Legal Talk Network

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 5, 2023 50:08


Bruce Jackson grew up shuttling between Brooklyn and Manhattan public housing projects. His journey led him to Hofstra University, then Georgetown Law. He ditched a white-shoe firm job to launch a career in entertainment law, and represented some of the hottest hip-hop and rap artists in the 1990s. When Napster changed the music industry, Jackson left for Seattle and Microsoft, where he traded in his sharp suits for polos and khakis, and sick beats for mosh pits–briefly. As he tells the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles in this episode of the Modern Law Library, one exposure to a Seattle grunge concert had him packing his bags to return to New York City. But Jackson didn't leave Microsoft—where he now serves as an associate general counsel—and a major focus of his career at the company has been to increase the tech giant's diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. In Never Far From Home: My Journey from Brooklyn to Hip Hop, Microsoft, and the Law, Jackson reflects on the people and programs that made his own career possible, and is unflinching about the dangers he faced, the racism he encountered, and the mistakes he made in his personal life as he pursued professional success. Jackson tells Rawles that before demanding others share their stories with us, it important to tell our truths as well. In this episode of the podcast, Jackson shares how his childhood love of musical theater dovetailed with his skill at accountancy and tax law while representing his clients in the hip-hop music scene. He discusses his top tips for improving the diversity pipeline within organizations, and reflects on finding commonality with people from entirely different backgrounds to his own.

Now What? With Carole Zimmer
A Conversation with Bruce Jackson

Now What? With Carole Zimmer

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 1, 2023 44:49


Bruce Jackson grew up in a public housing project in Manhattan and got arrested when he was 10.  Some of his friends became drug dealers but Jackson went on to become the first person in his family to go to college. After earning a law degree from Georgetown, Jackson represented hip hop figures like LL Cool J, Heavy D and Busta Rhymes before leaving music behind to take a high-powered corporate job at Microsoft. We talk about Jackson's book Never Far from Home and what it means to grow up African American and poor in New York City, striving to grab the brass ring on the carousel that means you've arrived. “Now What?” is produced with help from Steve Zimmer, James Napoli and Andreea Coscai. Audio production is by Nick Ciavatta.

AreWeHereYetPodcast
Bruce Jackson

AreWeHereYetPodcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 16, 2023 31:36


On this episode of The Jazz Room we meet, drummer Bruce Jackson. We chat about his CD "Don't Step on Your Dreams" Bruce talks about being a Bandleader and the emotions that go into creating a CD. Also we talk about our mutual experiences with Singing legend Joyce Bryant.

The Small Business Radio Show
#727 How Bruce Jackson Went from the “NYC Projects” to Microsoft Counsel

The Small Business Radio Show

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 13, 2023 53:01


SEGMENT‌ ‌1 with Bruce Jackson,‌ ‌‌starting‌ ‌at‌ ‌0:00‌:‌ ‌ Have you ever sat back and been surprised about where you ended up professionally in life when you consider where you started? Our next guest seems to be on a journey similar to many of us. Bruce Jackson shares his journey from growing up in government housing across from the famous Lincoln Center to working as general counsel at Microsoft.SEGMENT‌ ‌2 with ‌Michael Wagner,‌ ‌‌starting‌ ‌at 33:00‌:‌ When we broke ground for my new home in Scottsdale at the beginning of the pandemic in February 2020, I remember calling my pool company asking for a discount since I thought mine would be the last pool they would install for a few years…boy was I wrong! Michael Wagner is here to share the current state of the pool services industry.Sponsored by Truly Financial.Visit Barry's Blog for complete show notes.

The Chris Voss Show
The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Never Far from Home: My Journey from Brooklyn to Hip Hop, Microsoft, and the Law by Bruce Jackson

The Chris Voss Show

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 10, 2023 36:00


Never Far from Home: My Journey from Brooklyn to Hip Hop, Microsoft, and the Law by Bruce Jackson Microsoft's associate general counsel shares this story that is “as nuanced as it is hopeful” (Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Leader) about his rise from childhood poverty in pre-gentrified New York City to a stellar career at the top of the technology and music industries in this stirring true story of grit and perseverance. For fans of Indra Nooyi's My Life in Full and Viola Davis's Finding Me. As an accomplished Microsoft executive, Bruce Jackson handles billions of dollars of commerce as its associate general counsel while he plays a crucial role in the company's corporate diversity efforts. But few of his colleagues can understand the weight he carries with him to the office each day. He kept his past hidden from sight as he ascended the corporate ladder but shares it in full for the first time here. Born in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Jackson moved to Manhattan's Amsterdam housing projects as a child, where he had already been falsely accused and arrested for robbery by the age of ten. At the age of fifteen, he witnessed the homicide of his close friend. Taken in by the criminal justice system, seduced by a burgeoning drug trade, and burdened by a fractured, impoverished home life, Jackson stood on the edge of failure. But he was saved by an offer. That offer set him on a better path, off the streets and eventually on the way to Georgetown Law, but not without hard knocks along the way. But even as he racked up professional accomplishments, Jackson is still haunted by the unchanged world outside his office. From public housing to working for Microsoft's president, Brad Smith, and its founder, Bill Gates, to advising some of the biggest stars in music, Bruce Jackson's Never Far from Home reveals the ups and downs of an incredible journey, how he overcame many obstacles and the valuable lessons learned along the way.

Le Batard & Friends Network
MOCO: Episode 47: Renaissance

Le Batard & Friends Network

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 9, 2023 64:59


Coming up on Montgomery & Co., You won't Break Her Soul! The crew discusses Beyoncé making history at the Grammys yet losing AOTY…again. Super Bowl weekend is here and we have Super Bowl champ Will Blackmon on to give us his take on this year's match up. Plus, a true Renaissance man, Microsoft's Bruce Jackson joins us to talk about his new book, “Never Far from Home: My Journey from Brooklyn to Hip Hop, Microsoft, and the Law.”  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Remotely Renee
Episode 47: Renaissance

Remotely Renee

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 9, 2023 61:14


Coming up on Montgomery & Co., You won't Break Her Soul! The crew discusses Beyoncé making history at the Grammys yet losing AOTY…again. Super Bowl weekend is here and we have Super Bowl champ Will Blackmon on to give us his take on this year's match up. Plus, a true Renaissance man, Microsoft's Bruce Jackson joins us to talk about his new book, “Never Far from Home: My Journey from Brooklyn to Hip Hop, Microsoft, and the Law.”  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Remotely Renee
Episode 47: Renaissance

Remotely Renee

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 9, 2023 64:59


Coming up on Montgomery & Co., You won't Break Her Soul! The crew discusses Beyoncé making history at the Grammys yet losing AOTY…again. Super Bowl weekend is here and we have Super Bowl champ Will Blackmon on to give us his take on this year's match up. Plus, a true Renaissance man, Microsoft's Bruce Jackson joins us to talk about his new book, “Never Far from Home: My Journey from Brooklyn to Hip Hop, Microsoft, and the Law.”  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recruiting Future with Matt Alder
Ep 495: Results Not Noise

Recruiting Future with Matt Alder

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 8, 2023 28:31


Building more diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplaces is an ongoing challenge for many organizations. There is still a disconnect between the amount of noise generated around DE&I and the results achieved. So how can employers do better, and what lessons can be learned from other organizations? My guest this week is Bruce Jackson, Associate General Counsel & Managing Director, Strategic Partnerships at Microsoft. Bruce has just published a new book, "Never Far From Home", which documents his personal journey from a housing project in Manhattan to becoming a lawyer who represented Pete Rock and LL Cool J and ultimately worked for the President of Microsoft. In our conversation, he shares his insights into the developing DE&I strategies at Microsoft, and the role employers can play in improving social mobility. In the interview, we discuss: Bruce's journey and dealing with obstacles The overwhelming influence the environment you grew up in has on your prospects. What should employers do to improve diversity and inclusion? Practical incentives to help law firms be more diverse Improving evaluation and accountability The role employers can play in improving social mobility Cybersecurity programs in community colleges The critical importance of not losing another generation of great brave minds. Listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts.

Better Innovation
Season 6, Ep. 4- Never Far from Home: Bruce Jackson's Poignant Story of Reinvention and Perseverance

Better Innovation

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 8, 2023 66:59


What comes to mind when you think of innovation? Maybe it's the latest development in artificial intelligence, or what's on the horizon for Web3. In this episode, Jeff sits down with Bruce Jackson, Associate General Counsel at Microsoft, to explore a type of innovation frequently overlooked . . . self-innovation, often in response to life's greatest challenges.  Bruce is the author of Never Far from Home, his personal memoirs recounting an inspiring life story, including his rise from childhood poverty in pre-gentrified New York City to a stellar career at the very top of the tech and music industries. Bruce opens up to Jeff about his unfathomable life hardships, requiring extraordinary grit, perseverance, and an ability to reinvent oneself, repeatedly, to survive - and ultimately, thrive.  For more on Bruce's memoirs, Never Far from Home: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Never-Far-from-Home/Bruce-Jackson/9781982191153 

Bernie and Sid
Bruce Jackson: Associate General Council of Microsoft | 02-03-23

Bernie and Sid

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 3, 2023 18:13


The Associate General Council of Microsoft Bruce Jackson joins Sid to talk about his inspiring story from the streets of Brooklyn to an executive at one of the most powerful companies on the planet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bernie and Sid
Up | 02-03-23

Bernie and Sid

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 3, 2023 175:07


On this Friday edition of Sid & Friends in the Morning, we're reminded of the great animated motion picture Up after it's reported from the Pentagon that a giant Chinese "spy balloon" is hovering along the west coast skies. Common sense tells us that shooting down the Chinese spy balloon would be the best course of action, but not according to the feeble President Joe Biden, who has said he'll be leaving the balloon afloat. What kind of message does that send to the Chinese? One that says America is weaker than ever. In other news of the day, Rep. Ilhan Omar gets thrown off the foreign affairs committee by Speaker Kevin McCarthy, yielding outrage from her fellow squad members in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, Sid says an entire month to celebrate black history is far too much, the search continues for a killer in New Jersey following the murder of New Jersey Councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour, former President Trump's current standing as it relates to his classified document fiasco, more searches undergoing at various Biden residences for his own personal stash of classified documents, and Super Bowl LVII from a sports gambling perspective. Curtis Sliwa, Darren Rovell, Jineea Butler, Gordon Chang, Joe Tacopina, Dov Hikind and Bruce Jackson join the program, and as always make sure you don't miss out on the "Football Friday" installment of The Peerless Boilers Sid's Take Contest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

NZ Tech Podcast
Robots and coding with KaiBot creator Bruce Jackson

NZ Tech Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 31, 2023 37:54


Paul Spain is joined by Bruce Jackson Founder of Kai's Education, as they discuss how the award winning KaiBot is helping Children to learn coding, as well as looking into self-driving and the 3d printing industry.

Live Greatly
Defying the Odds, Achieving Success & Supporting Diversity & Inclusion with Bruce Jackson, Author of "Never Far From Home: My Journey from Brooklyn to Hip Hop, Microsoft, and the Law"

Live Greatly

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 24, 2023 30:54


Are you looking for inspiration to overcome whatever obtacles life throws at you as well as insights into success, diversity and inclusion?   On this episode of the Live Greatly Podcast Kristel Bauer sat down with Bruce Jackson, author of NEVER FAR FROM HOME: My Journey from Brooklyn to Hip Hop, Microsoft, and the Law.  Bruce is an Associate General Counsel for Microsoft and a former entertainment and tax attorney who represented hip hop royalty including LL Cool J, Heavy D, Busta Rhymes, M.C. Lyte, Jazzy Jeff, and Little Kim. Bruce provides a look into his journey out of poverty and what helped him get and stay motivated to go after a bigger vision for his life.  Bruce also provides his take on the key ingredients for success and happiness as well as a look into how companies can support diversity and inclusion. Tune in now! Key Takeaways from This Episode: Bruce's journey growing up in pre-gentrified New York City How Bruce got out of poverty and into entertainment law representing hip hop royalty A look into Bruce's book NEVER FAR FROM HOME: My Journey from Brooklyn to Hip Hop, Microsoft, and the Law.  Big life lessons from Bruce's journey Bruce's ideas for supporting diversity and inclusion in the workplace and in the world Importance of leadership for diversity A look into diversity and inclusion within Microsoft Bruce's take on the ingredients for success and happiness What helped Bruce defy the odds Order Bruce's Book HERE About Bruce Jackson: Bruce Jackson is the Associate General Counsel for Microsoft and a former entertainment and tax attorney.  In his stirring memoir of grit and perseverance NEVER FAR FROM HOME: My Journey from Brooklyn to Hip Hop, Microsoft, and the Law (Atria Books; Hardcover; February 7, 2023; $28.00; ISBN: 9781982191153), by Bruce Jackson -- with a Foreword by Microsoft's Vice Chair and President, Brad Smith – is his inspirational story of his rise from childhood poverty in pre-gentrified New York City to a stellar career at the top of the technology and music industries. However, this is not a “corporate memoir,” but rather the memoir of a Black man from meager origins and an imperfect background who reached great heights in corporate America. Born in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Bruce moved to the infamous NYCHA projects -- Amsterdam Houses -- in Manhattan, as a teenager, where he was harassed by street cops and seduced by drug dealers. He found a way out, graduated from Hofstra University then Georgetown Law School, and cut his teeth working in entertainment law. As an entertainment attorney he represented hip hop royalty including LL Cool J, Heavy D, Busta Rhymes, M.C. Lyte, Jazzy Jeff, and Little Kim. Jackson transitioned from entertainment into a wildly successful corporate law career. The book offers lessons on life but also lessons in business. NEVER FAR FROM HOME reveals the ups and downs of an incredible journey, the obstacles overcome, and valuable business and life lessons learned along the way. Order Bruce's Book HERE Website: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Never-Far-from-Home/Bruce-Jackson/9781982191153  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruce-jackson-8121142/  About the Host of the Live Greatly podcast, Kristel Bauer: Kristel, the Founder of Live Greatly, is on a mission to help people thrive personally and professionally while promoting vibrant company cultures. Kristel is a corporate wellness expert, Integrative Medicine Fellow, Top Keynote Speaker, TEDx speaker & contributing writer for Entrepreneur.  Kristel brings her expertise & extensive experience in Corporate Wellness, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Mindset, Resilience, Self-Care, and Stress Management to in-person and virtual events as Professional Keynote Speaker.  If you are looking for a motivational speaker to inspire and empower your audience to reclaim their well-being, inner motivation and happiness,  Kristel would be happy to discuss partnering with you to make your next event one to remember!  Speaking Topics can be tailored to fit the needs of your group. To Book Kristel as a speaker for your next event, click here. Website: www.livegreatly.co  Follow Kristel Bauer on: Instagram: @livegreatly_co  LinkedIn: Kristel Bauer Twitter: @livegreatly_co Facebook: @livegreatly.co Youtube: Live Greatly, Kristel Bauer To Watch Kristel Bauer's TEDx talk of Redefining Work/Life Balance in a COVID-19 World click here. Disclaimer: The contents of this podcast are intended for informational and educational purposes only. Always seek the guidance of your physician for any recommendations specific to you or for any questions regarding your specific health, your sleep patterns changes to diet and exercise, or any medical conditions.  Always consult your physician before starting any supplements or new lifestyle programs. All information, views and statements shared on the Live Greatly podcast are purely the opinions of the authors, and are not medical advice or treatment recommendations.  They have not been evaluated by the food and drug administration.  Opinions of guests are their own and Kristel Bauer & this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests.  Neither Kristel Bauer nor this podcast takes responsibility for possible health consequences of a person or persons following the information in this educational content.  Always consult your physician for recommendations specific to you.

OCR Unedited Podcast
OCR Unedited welcome Bruce Jackson

OCR Unedited Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 13, 2023 37:48


OCR Unedited is excited to welcome Bruce Jackson. Bruce talks to us about how he got started in athletics, how he discovered OCR, DEKA and HYROX, his experience on achieving great success in DEKA & HYROX, and SO MUCH MORE!

Journal du Rock
Les scandales et procès qui ont émergé en 2022

Journal du Rock

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 27, 2022 3:23


2022 a encore été une année tendue, marqué par de nombreux scandales et procès, je vous propose aujourd'hui d'en résumer certains. Marilyn Manson, d'abord, continue de faire l'objet de multiples accusations et de poursuites pour abus psychologiques et sexuels. L'artiste s'est d'ailleurs dit menacé de mort et déplore que sa carrière soit au point mort depuis l'affaire. Même type de souci pour Bob Dylan qui s'est vu accusé à son tour d'agression sexuelle par une femme situant les faits 60 ans plus tôt, ce qui est apparu impossible, Dylan étant en tournée à l'époque présumée des faits. La plainte a donc été abandonnée, malgré une tentative ultérieure de ses avocats d'obtenir des dommages et intérêts. Dylan a par contre fait amende honorable suite à l'affaire des fausses signatures. En effet, alors qu'il vendait son dernier livre dédicacé pour 600 dollars, certains fans ont réalisé que la signature n'était pas manuscrite. Il a évoqué des problèmes de vertiges pour se dédouaner. Le hashtag #metoo a aussi été évoqué par cinq jeunes personnes à l'encontre de Win Butler d'Arcade Fire. Le musicien est accusé de comportement déplacé et d'avoir abusé de son influence sur ces plaignants. L'extrait "Sad Motherfuckin Parade" de Jeff Beck et Johnny Depp, sur l'album 18, a été accusé de plagiat au niveau des paroles. On les soupçonne d'avoir volé le poème " Hobo " signé par Bruce Jackson en 1974, ce qu'ils ont démenti. On en saura plus après le procès en cours. Par contre, après trois ans d'attente, Ed Sheeran avec enfin fixé à propos de son titre " Shape of You ". La justice a décidé qu'il n'avait pas plagié " How Why " de Sami Chokri et Ross O'Donogue. Quand on parle de scandale, on sait que Neil Young et Roger Waters sont dans les premiers à lever le poing. Ce fût chose faite pour Neil Young face à Spotify. Un réseau de streaming qu'il a quitté suite à la diffusion du podcast de Joe Rogan. L'artiste accusait la plateforme de désinformation par rapport au covid 19 et à la vaccination. Il sera suivi par Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash et bien d'autres. Roger Waters, de son côté, a qualifié le président américain Joe Biden de "criminel de guerre" avant de tenir d'autres propos engagés sur l'invasion en Ukraine. Il a écrit à la fois à Vladimir Poutine et à l'épouse de Volodimir Zelenski, lui demandant de faire pression sur son mari pour qu'il " mette fin au massacre ". Plusieurs concerts de Roger Waters ont été annulés dans la foulée et il est à présent persona non grata dans divers pays dont la Pologne. Au même moment, Pink Floyd sortait pourtant " Hey Hey, rise up ", un single en soutien aux Ukrainiens. Il s'agissait du premier titre original enregistré depuis The Division Bell en 1994 et la première sortie depuis The Endless River en 2014. L'affaire Roger Waters a mis en suspend la vente du catalogue de Pink Floyd, qui se négociait alors à plus de 470 millions de dollars. Peter Frampton, par contre, a conclu un accord et rejoint la longue liste d'artistes qui ont vendu leur catalogue, avec cette année, Neil Diamond, Leonard Cohen, Elvis Presley, Sting, John Lee Hooker, Genesis, et Phil Collins, mais aussi David Bowie. Dans l'épisode de demain, nous saluerons la mémoire de ceux qui nous ont quittés cette année.

One Giant Leap Radio
Artemis, Gateway and more with Bruce Jackson

One Giant Leap Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 26, 2022 37:57


In this episode we are joined by Bruce Jackson from Air Informatics® to discuss some of the highlights of his incredible career PLUS we look ahead to the launch of Artemis 1.

Defocus Media
The 2020 Podcast: Dry Eye with Dr. Bruce Jackson

Defocus Media

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 5, 2022


The 20/20 Podcast
Episode 79 - Pharmaceuticals In Dry Eye With Dr. Bruce Jackson

The 20/20 Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 28, 2022 53:22


July is Dry Eye Awareness Month! To commemorate and help raise awareness for the disease, Harbir Sian is joined by no other than Dr. Bruce Jackson. Dr. Jackson has a long list of accolades with his research interests covering bacterial and viral infections of the external eye, new antibiotics, antivirals, and ocular surface disease, especially dry eye disease. In this episode, he educates us on the history of the condition and the development of the different treatments for it. Dr. Jackson also discusses the different diagnoses associated with the disease and how to approach them with your doctor to develop a dry eye plan that works for you. Tune in for a very insightful and informative episode.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review & share! http://www.aboutmyeyes.com/podcast/

Teaching Hard History: American Slavery
Criminalizing Blackness: Prisons, Police and Jim Crow – w/ Robert T. Chase and Brandon T. Jett

Teaching Hard History: American Slavery

Play Episode Listen Later May 16, 2022 109:05 Very Popular


After emancipation, aspects of the legal system were reshaped to maintain control of Black lives and labor. Historian Robert T. Chase outlines the evolution of convict leasing in the prison system. And Historian Brandon T. Jett explores the commercial factors behind the transition from extra-legal lynchings to police enforcement of the color line. We examine the connections between these early practices and the more familiar apparatuses of today's justice system—from policing to penitentiaries.  Learning for Justice has great tools for teaching about criminal justice during Jim Crow and after, like this article “Teaching About Mass Incarceration: From Conversation to Civic Action”.  Here's the song “Jody” that Dr. Chase describes using in the classroom (from Bruce Jackson's Wake Up Dead Man). To learn how coerced labor evolves after Jim Crow, you can read his book, We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners' Rights in Postwar America. Check out Lynching in LaBelle, an amazing digital history project that Dr. Jett created with his students. And to learn more about the evolution of policing, you can read his book, Race, Crime, and Policing in the Jim Crow South. For even more classroom resources about the history of convict leasing, policing and mass incarceration during the Jim Crow era, be sure to visit the enhanced episode transcript. And educators! Get a professional development certificate for listening to this episode—issued by Learning for Justice. Listen for the code word, then visit learningforjustice.org/podcastpd.

Rock N Roll Bedtime Stories
Episode 93 – Bob Dylan vs the motorcycle

Rock N Roll Bedtime Stories

Play Episode Listen Later May 11, 2022 42:24 Very Popular


Greg writes the show to find out if there was anything fishy about Dylan's famous auto mishap - and the guys dig deep and form some theories of their own. Today's episode brought to you by Athletic Greens; Get a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/EMERGING SHOW NOTES: Songs used in this episode: "The Man in Me" by Say Anything and "The Man in Me" by The Clash Howard Sounes book: https://www.amazon.com/Down-Highway-Life-Bob-Dylan/dp/0802145523 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/05/arts/music/bob-dylan-center-tulsa.html https://fanbuzz.com/motorcycles/bob-dylan-motorcycle-accident/#:~:text=Bob%20Dylan%20had%20a%20mysterious,n'%20roll%20music%20changed%20completely. Dylan at Newport dispute: https://web.archive.org/web/20080223005652/http://buffaloreport.com/020826dylan.html The Bruce Jackson book: https://tupress.temple.edu/book/0239 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan https://ultimateclassicrock.com/bob-dylan-motorcycle-accident/ https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/johnny-cash-bob-dylan-amphetamines-backstage-performance-1966/ https://www.openculture.com/2022/01/bob-dylans-famous-televised-press-conference-after-he-went-electric-1965.html https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/bob-dylans-1966-motorcycle-crash-real-or-fake.90284/ https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/25/richard-farina-lost-genius-bridged-gap-beats-hippies

Australian Investors Podcast

When I (Owen) started my investing journey I was so privileged to be surrounded by great writers who doubled as great analysts, at The Motley Fool. The likes of Bruce Jackson, Joe Magyer, Matt Joass, Claude Walker, Andrew Page, Mike King, Scott Phillips, Ryan Newman…For the record, growing up I was never a reader. Never. Ever. Pick up a book and read? No, thanks!I stayed that way until I discovered investing in my late teens/early 20s. So it was here, during my time at the Motley Fool, that I developed an insatiable appetite not only for investment research but reading and writing. Fortunately for you, the investing world has changed for the better since I started.New investor newsletters and websites have emerged to help their authors -- and you -- invest better.Here is a list of Raymond and my favourite investing newsletters and/or websites for aspiring analysts.

Australian Investors Podcast

When I (Owen) started my investing journey I was so privileged to be surrounded by great writers who doubled as great analysts, at The Motley Fool. The likes of Bruce Jackson, Joe Magyer, Matt Joass, Claude Walker, Andrew Page, Mike King, Scott Phillips, Ryan Newman… For the record, growing up I was never a reader. Never. Ever. Pick up a book and read? No, thanks! I stayed that way until I discovered investing in my late teens/early 20s. So it was here, during my time at the Motley Fool, that I developed an insatiable appetite not only for investment research but reading and writing. Fortunately for you, the investing world has changed for the better since I started. New investor newsletters and websites have emerged to help their authors -- and you -- invest better.Here is a list of Raymond and my favourite investing newsletters and/or websites for aspiring analysts.

Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine
Beth Ann Dodds' Passion for Helping Parents to Powerfully Claim their Voices

Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 27, 2022 28:28


Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine – Weekly Radio ShowNative Lights is a weekly, half-hour radio program hosted by Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe members and siblings, Leah Lemm and Cole Premo. Native Lights is a space for people in Native communities around Mni Sota Mkoce -- a.k.a. Minnesota -- to tell their stories about finding their gifts and sharing them with the community.Native Lights – Beth Ann Dodds' Passion for Helping Parents to Powerfully Claim their VoicesOn today's show, we talk with musician Beth Ann Dodds, a first-generation descendant of the White Earth Nation. Beth Ann is the Project Coordinator for the Indigenous Parent Leadership Initiative, a training program from the Native-led organization, Indigenous Visioning. The program guides parents from White Earth Nation and Red Lake Nation to become leading advocates for children using a cultural lens.We hear how Beth Ann's own path brought her to her current work.  When her music and life partner, Bruce Jackson, received a terminal diagnosis, the couple embraced self-love and reflection throughout his remaining years.  After his passing, Beth Ann sought the quiet of the North woods was inspired to learn more about her Ojibwe culture.Now, through her role with the Indigenous Parent Leadership Initiative, a 21-week course for parents that integrates child development, leadership, democracy skills, and Ojibwe culture, Beth Ann is helping others to find, claim, and powerfully use their voices. Miigwech Beth Ann for your sharing your gifts!Learn more about the Indigenous Parent Leadership Initiative on Facebook or go online to: https://www.indigenousvisioning.com/Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine is produced by Minnesota Native News and Ampers, Diverse Radio for Minnesota's Communities with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage fund. Online at https://minnesotanativenews.org/

Social Proof Podcast
The Epoxy Entrepreneur - Episode #185 w/ Bruce Jackson

Social Proof Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 30, 2021 54:32


Epoxy, Moulding, Arts & Crafts… As A Lucrative Business? Yes! Bruce Jackson has mastered the game and he is here to share with us how we can do it too! Bruce, a hardcore crafter, has been able to turn what was once only a hobby into a million dollar revenue generating opportunity. He is now teaching others the power of this under the radar business model. In this episode we discuss : How he was able to sell glitter and other accessories earning $153,000 in a month. The therapeutic power of making tumblers and other crafts. Why the holiday season is one of the most opportune times to start your epoxy/moulding business. When he knew it was time to tap into the wholesaling sector of the glitter industry. The power of building a FAMILY BUSINESS with Epoxy as the centerpiece. Where to source your materials to make your masterpieces. And so much more!**Grab In The ARTS, CRAFTS & CASH COURSE with this link***https://www.artscraftscash.com/course*** Join the PODCASTERS BLUEPRINT TODAY***http://www.podcastersblueprint.com and enter SOCIALPROOF for 20% off !Become a part of our Patreon Family : https://www.patreon.com/DavidNeverSleeps⁣⁣Join David's Morning Meetup For Just $1⁣http://www.themorningmeetup.com⁣Follow Bruce on IG : https://www.instagram.com/backfistcustomsglitter/David on IG http://www.instagram.com/sleepis4suckersSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/social-proof-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacyAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On the Way Moments
On the Way with Fr. Bruce Jackson

On the Way Moments

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 3, 2021 26:23


Host Will Strong sits down with Fr. Bruce Jackson, the Interim Rector at St. Anthony on the Desert. Fr. Jackson has lived quite the life -  from growing up in NYC, to being a high school and collegiate athlete, working in a prison to being a very successful NY lawyer. So how did he find his way to St. Anthony? And what does he see in his future and ours? Tune in to find out.

I AM A SPARTAN! OCR PODCAST
EPISODE 103 WITH SARAH HERNANDEZ!!

I AM A SPARTAN! OCR PODCAST

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 30, 2021 94:03


On this Episode, I talk to Sarah Hernandez. Sarah is an up and coming Age Group racer who has been doing good in the season so far. We talk about her life growing up in the South. She tells us about being struck by a car, and how she recovered from that. I also got her to tell us about how she and Bruce Jackson met ( Bruce was on Episode 50 and 75). We talk about her last few races including her Charlotte Sprint race where she was less than a half a second from placing 3rd in her AG, and how she came back the next day and crushed it! I love having friends on the show, and this was a great chat you don't want to miss.

The Weekend Warriors Home Improvement Show
Masterseal Construction sealants

The Weekend Warriors Home Improvement Show

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 21, 2021 79:41


Tony & Corey talk to Bruce Jackson sales rep for Masterseal/BASF products about the basics of sealants. How to use them properly and how they perform.

The Jeremy Mills Podcast
BlackTop SmackTalk Podcast w/ Adam Jose, Sano Kader, & Bruce Jackson

The Jeremy Mills Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 12, 2020 71:03


12/14/20- Adam Jose, Sano Kader, & Bruce Jackson of the, ‘BlackTop SmackTalk Podcast', join the show to talk about taking their sports banter as friends and turn it into a podcast. The Jeremy Mills Podcast Episode #236. Everything You Need: https://linktr.ee/jeremyjoemills Website: www.jeremymillspodcast.com; Twitter & Instagram @jeremyjoemills; Email: jeremymillspodcast@gmail.com. Theme Song: Jeremy Mills Podcast - Don Dishes & M3_Beats

Spilling the DPTea
Taking off the Training Wheels with Dr. Ryan McConnell

Spilling the DPTea

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 18, 2020 43:23


This episode is hosted by Alex Crabill and Hunter Pickens with collaboration from Bruce Jackson and Gabby Perez. In this episode, we interview Ryan McConnell PT, DPT, OCS, COMT, FAAOMPT, assistant professor at Belmont University and former clinic director with BenchMark Physical Therapy in Franklin, TN. We discuss what he has seen from students and CI’s in the past. We focus on full time clinical rotation experiences from the perspective of a student, a CI, and the director of a clinic. Information gathered from polls we presented in our class Groupme showed that while most of our classmates had good experiences and thought highly of their CI’s, there is still room for improvement and that the amount of freedom given by CI’s to their students varies considerably. From the perspective of a CI, we sought to gain insight into what CI’s do, or should do, in order to best serve their students. We also are looking to have Ryan explain what are some of the benefits of taking on the role of a CI and explain why it is worth a PT’s time and effort to commit to having a student. Lastly, we want to know what the director’s role is in this process and how they can manage this situation to provide a good learning experience for students and ensure that their PT’s are able to grow as clinicians by taking on a new role of being a CI.Based on a small survey from within the Belmont University Physical Therapy class, we concluded that on average students felt they had an 8.5/10 rating satisfaction with their clinical experience and on average had a 7.9/10 rating satisfaction with their clinical instructor. The lowest satisfactory scores were both 4 out of 10. We sought to dive further into how to maximize the experience and satisfaction from both the students perspective and from the clinical instructor perspective to make clinical rotations betterSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/SpillingtheDPTea)

Arkansas Farm Bureau Podcast
Arkansas AgCast for Aug. 27, 2020

Arkansas Farm Bureau Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 27, 2020 51:26


This week, weather takes center stage. We hear from a National Weather Service Senior Forecaster John Lewis, Ag Extension Rice Agronomist Jarrod Hardke and Sevier County livestock and poultry grower Bruce Jackson about how excessive winds and rainfall from Hurricane Laura could impact Arkansas agriculture. We also get some tips and information for Arkansas small meat and poultry processors interested in the state’s new $5 million grant program for expanding processing capacity.

Reel Mindset
BV.14 Black Love & More feat. Prof. Bruce Jackson & Jerry Scruggs

Reel Mindset

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 13, 2020 37:34


This week on The Black Voice we are joined Prof. Jackson of Wake Forest University and Jerry Scruggs. In this episode we discussed interracial couples, LGBTQ within the Black community, emotional awareness, and Election Year 2020.  Call-ins are highly encouraged to enhance this conversation. Visit anchor.fm/blackvoicejay and hit ‘message'. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jclarkreel/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jclarkreel/support

Beyond Crafting: Creating Your Most Inspired Life.
Meet Bruce Jackson: Having the Hard Conversations

Beyond Crafting: Creating Your Most Inspired Life.

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 22, 2020 57:45


If you have been following me for a while, you know that I use my platforms to speak for those that feel they have no voice. Shattering stigmas around mental health, anxiety and depression, and body image. I have never been known to be an activist, but an advocate.In the recent weeks, I’ve found there’s another topic that I have to include as the basis of this podcast. Black Lives Matter. Today, yesterday, tomorrow, and every day after.One of the hardest aspects of this movement is finding out about white privilege. What made it even harder... was discovering that I have white privilege. It’s important to know that white privilege and racism is not the same.The last few weeks I’ve not been sleeping. After seeing the brutal death of George Floyd, and then researching to find many other deaths, I knew it was more than important to help others understand what our Black community is going through. I bear a heavy heart for what has been in front of me my entire life, and not seeing or understanding. More importantly.. not helping.But this is not new for the Black community. Thankfully, it is coming to light, and helping people like myself realize that people need more understanding.. so that we can continue to stand for humanity.This week I’m bringing in Bruce Jackson. He’s owner and master of operations at Backfist Customs, a glitter company I have loved and used for about 3 years now.Support the show (http://patreon.com/hollimostella)

A History Of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs
Episode 76: “Stagger Lee” by Lloyd Price

A History Of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 31, 2020


Episode seventy-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Stagger Lee” by Lloyd Price, and how a barroom fight 125 years ago led to a song performed by everyone from Ma Rainey to Neil Diamond. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “That Crazy Feeling” by Kenny Rogers. I have also beeped out some expletives in the song excerpts this week, so as not to be censored by some podcast aggregators, and so I’ve uploaded an unbeeped version for backers. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/  —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. The bulk of the information in this episode came from Stagolee Shot Billy, by Cecil Brown, the person who finally identified Lee Shelton as the subject of the song. I also got some information from Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me: African-American Narrative Poetry from the Oral Tradition by Bruce Jackson, Unprepared to Die by Paul Slade, and Yo’ Mama!: New Raps, Toasts, Dozens, Jokes and Children’s Rhymes from Urban Black America edited by Onwuchekwa Jemie. Lloyd Price has written a few books. His autobiography is out of print and goes for silly money (and don’t buy the “Kindle edition” at that link, because it’s just the sheet music to the song, which Amazon have mislabelled) but he’s also written a book of essays with his thoughts on race, some of which shed light on his work. The Lloyd Price songs here can be found on The Complete Singles As & Bs 1952-62 . And you can get the Snatch and the Poontangs album on a twofer with Johnny Otis’ less explicit album Cold Shot. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before we start today’s episode, a brief note. Firstly, this episode contains a description of a murder, so if you’re squeamish about that sort of thing, you may want to skip it. Secondly, some of the material I’m dealing with in this episode is difficult for me to deal with in a podcast, for a variety of reasons. This episode will look at a song whose history is strongly entwined both with American racism and with black underworld culture. The source material I’ve used for this therefore contains several things that for different reasons are difficult for me to say on here. There is frequent use of a particular racial slur which it is not okay under any circumstances for me as a white man to say; there are transcripts of oral history which are transcribed in rather patronising attempts at replicating African-American Vernacular English, which even were those transcripts themselves acceptable would sound mocking coming out of my English-accented mouth; and there is frequent use of sexual profanity, which I personally have no problem with at all, but would get this podcast an explicit rating on several of the big podcast platforms. There is simply no way to tell this story while avoiding all of those things, so I’ve come up with the best compromise I can. I will not use, even in quotes, that slur. I will minimise the use of transcripts, but when I have to use them, I will change them from being phonetic transcripts of AAVE into being standard written English, and I will include the swearing where it comes in the recordings I want to use but will beep it out of the version that goes up on the main podcast feed. I’ll make an unexpurgated version available for my Patreon backers, and I’ll put the unbleeped recordings on Mixcloud. The story we’re going to tell goes back to Christmas Day 1895, but we’re going to start our story in the mid 1950s, with Lloyd Price. [Excerpt: Lloyd Price, “Stagger Lee”] You may remember us looking at Lloyd Price way back in episode twelve, from Christmas 2018, but if you don’t, Price was a teenager in 1952, when he wandered into Cosimo Matassa’s studio in New Orleans, at the invitation of his acquaintance Dave Bartholomew, who had produced, co-written, and arranged most of Fats Domino’s biggest hits. Price had a song, “Lawdy Miss Clawdy”, which was loosely based around the same basic melody as Domino’s earlier hit “The Fat Man”, and they recorded it with Bartholomew producing, Domino on piano, and the great Earl Palmer on drums: [Excerpt: Lloyd Price, “Lawdy Miss Clawdy”] That was one of the first R&B records put out on Specialty Records, the label that would later bring Little Richard, Larry Williams, Sam Cooke and others to prominence, and it went to number one on the R&B charts. Price had a couple more big R&B hits, but then he got drafted, and when he got back the musical landscape had changed enough that he had no hits for several years. But then both Elvis Presley and Little Richard cut cover versions of “Lawdy Miss Clawdy”, and that seemed to bring Price enough extra attention that in 1957 he got a couple of songs into the lower reaches of the Hot One Hundred, and one song, “Just Because” went to number three on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Lloyd Price, “Just Because”] But it wasn’t until 1958 that Price had what would become his biggest hit, a song that would kickstart his career, and which had its roots in a barroom brawl in St. Louis on Christmas Day 1895: [Excerpt: Lloyd Price, “Stagger Lee”] The Lee Line was a line of steamboats that went up and down the Mississippi, run by the Lee family. Their line was notorious, even by Mississippi riverboat standards, for paying its staff badly, but also for being friendly to prostitution and gambling. This meant that some people, at least, enjoyed working on the ships despite the low pay. There is a song, whose lyrics were quoted in an article from 1939, but which seems to have been much older, whose lyrics went (I’ve changed these into standard English, as I explained at the start): Reason I like the Lee Line trade Sleep all night with the chambermaid She gimme some pie, and she gimme some cake And I give her all the money that I ever make The Lee Line was one of the two preferred steamboat lines to work on for that reason, and it ended up being mentioned in quite a few songs, like this early version of the song that’s better known as “Alabamy Bound”, but was here called “Don’t You Leave Me Here”: [Excerpt: Little Harvey Hull and Long Cleve Reed, “Don’t You Leave Me Here”] The line, “If the boat don’t sink and the Stack don’t drown” refers to one of the boats on the Lee Line, the Stack Lee, a boat that started service in 1902. But the boat was named, as many of the Lee Line ships were, after a member of the Lee family, in this case one Stack Lee, who was the captain in the 1880s and early 90s of a ship named after his father, James Lee, the founder of the company. In 1948 the scholar Shields McIlwayne claimed that the captain, and later the boat, were popular enough among parts of the black community that there were “more colored kids named Stack Lee than there were sinners in hell”. But it was probably the boats’ reputation for prostitution that led to a thirty-year-old pimp in St. Louis named Lee Shelton taking on the name “Stack Lee”, at some time before Christmas Day 1895. On that Christmas Day, a man named Bill Lyons entered the Bill Curtis Saloon. Before he entered the saloon, he stopped to ask his friend to give him a knife, because the saloon was the roughest in the whole city, and he didn’t want any trouble. Bill Lyons was known as “Billy the Bully”, but bully didn’t quite, or didn’t only, mean what it means today. A “bully”, in that time and place, was a term that encompassed both being a pimp and being a bagman for a political party. There was far more overlap in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries between politics and organised crime than many now realise, and the way things normally operated in many areas was that there would be a big man in organised crime whose job it would be to raise money for the party, get people out to vote, and tell them which way to vote. Lyons was not a popular man, but he was an influential man, and he was part of a rich family — one of the richest black families in St. Louis. He was, like his family, very involved with the Republican Party. Almost all black people in the US were Republicans at that time, as it was only thirty years since the end of the Civil War, when the Republican President Lincoln had been credited with freeing black people from slavery, and the Bridgewater Saloon, owned by Lyons’ rich brother-in-law Henry Bridgewater, was often used as a meeting place for local Republicans. Lyons had just ordered a drink when Lee Shelton walked into the bar. Shelton was a pimp, and seems to have made a lot of money from it. Shelton was also a Democrat, which in this time and place meant that he was essentially a member of a rival gang. [Excerpt: Duke Ellington, “Stack-A-Lee Blues”] Shelton was very big in the local Democratic party, and from what we can tell was far more popular among the black community than Lyons was. While the Democrats were still the less popular of the two major parties among black people in the area, some were starting to feel like the Republicans talked a good game but were doing very little to actually help black people, and were considering taking their votes elsewhere. He was also a pimp who seems to have had a better reputation than most among the sex workers who worked for him, though like almost everything in this story it’s difficult to know for certain more than a hundred and twenty years later. When he walked into the bar, he was wearing mirror-toed shoes, a velvet waistcoat, an embroidered shirt, and gold rings, and carrying an ebony cane with a gold top. He had a slightly crossed left eye, and scars on his face. And he was wearing a white Stetson. Lee asked the crowd, “Who’s treating?” and they pointed to Lyons. There was allegedly some bad blood between Lyons and Shelton, as Lyons’ step-brother had murdered Shelton’s friend a couple of years earlier, in the Bridgewater Saloon. But nonetheless, the two men were, according to the bartenders working there, who had known both men for decades, good friends, and they were apparently drinking and laughing together for a while, until they started talking about politics. They started slapping at each other’s hats, apparently playfully. Then Shelton grabbed Lyons’ hat and broke the rim, so Lyons then snatched Shelton’s hat off his head. Shelton asked for his hat back, and Lyons said he wanted six bits — seventy-five cents — for a new hat. Shelton replied that you could buy a box of those hats for six bits, and he wasn’t going to give Lyons any money. Lyons refused to hand the hat back until Shelton gave him the money, and Shelton pulled out his gun, and told Lyons to give him the hat. Lyons refused, and Shelton hit him on the head with the gun. He then threatened to kill Lyons if he didn’t hand the hat over. Lyons pulled out the knife his friend had given him, and said “You cock-eyed son of a bitch, I’m going to *make* you kill me” and came at Shelton, who shot Lyons. Lyons staggered and clutched on to the bar, and dropped the hat. Shelton addressed Lyons using a word I am not going to say, and said “I told you to give me my hat”, picked it up, and walked out. Lyons died of his wounds a few hours later. [Excerpt: Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians, “Stack O’ Lee Blues”] Shelton was arrested, and let go on four thousand dollars bail — that’s something like a hundred and twenty thousand in today’s money, to give you some idea, though by the time we go that far back comparisons of the value of money become fairly meaningless. Shelton hired himself the best possible lawyer — a man named Nat Dryden, who was an alcoholic and opium addict, but was also considered a brilliant trial lawyer. Dryden had been the first lawyer in the whole of Missouri to be able to get a conviction for a white man murdering a black man. Shelton was still at risk, though, simply because of the power of Henry Bridgewater in local politics — a mob of hundreds of people swamped the inquest trying to get to Shelton, and the police had to draw their weapons before they would disperse. But something happened between Shelton’s arrest and the trial that meant that Bridgewater’s political power waned somewhat. Shelton was arraigned by Judge David Murphy, who was regarded by most black people in the city as on their side, primarily because he was so against police brutality that when a black man shot a policeman, claiming self defence because the policeman was beating him up at the time, Murphy let the man off. Not only that, when a mob of policemen attacked the defendant outside the court in retribution, Murphy had them jailed. This made him popular among black people, but less so among whites. [Excerpt: Frank Westphal and his Orchestra, “Stack O’Lee Blues”] The 1896 Republican National Convention was held in St. Louis, and one of the reasons it was chosen was that the white restaurants had promised the party that if they held the convention there, they would allow black people into the restaurants, so the black caucus within the party approved of the idea. But when the convention actually happened, the restaurants changed their minds, and the party did nothing. This infuriated many black delegates to the convention, who had seen for years how the system of backhanders and patronage on which American politics ran never got so far as to give anything to black people, who were expected just to vote for the Republicans. James Milton Turner, one of the leaders of the radical faction of the Republicans, and the first ever black US ambassador, who was a Missouri local and one of the most influential black politicians in the state, loudly denounced the Republican party for the way it was treating black voters. Shortly afterwards, the party had its local convention. Judge Murphy was coming up for reelection, and the black delegates voted for him to be the Republican nominee again. The white delegates, on the other hand, voted against him. This was the last straw. In 1896, ninety percent of black voters in Missouri voted Democrat, for the first time. Shelton’s faction was now in the ascendant. Because Murphy wasn’t reselected, Shelton’s trial wasn’t held by him, but Nat Dryden did an excellent job in front of the new judge, arguing that Shelton had been acting in self-defence, because Lyons had pulled out a knife. There was a hung jury, and it went to a retrial. Sadly for Shelton, though, Dryden wasn’t going to be representing him in the second trial. Dryden had hidden his alcoholism from his wife, and she had offered him a glass of sherry. That had triggered a relapse, he’d gone on a binge, and died. At his next trial, in late 1897, Shelton was convicted, and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison — presumably the influence of his political friends stopped him from getting the death penalty, just as it got him paroled twelve years later. Two years after that, though, Shelton was arrested again, for assault and robbery, and this time he died in prison. But even before his trial — just before Dryden’s death, in fact — a song called “Stack-A-Lee” was mentioned in the papers as being played by a ragtime pianist in Kansas City. The story gets a bit hazy here, but we know that Shelton was friends with the ragtime pianist Tom Turpin. Ragtime had become popular in the US as a result of Scott Joplin’s performance at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair — the same fair, incidentally, that introduced the belly dancers known as “Little Egypt” who we talked about in the episode on the Coasters a few weeks back. But a year before that, Turpin, who was a friend of Joplin’s, had written “Harlem Rag”, which was published in 1897, and became the first ragtime tune written by a black man to be published: [Excerpt: Ragtime Dorian Henry, “Harlem Rag”] Turpin was another big man in St. Louis politics, and he was one of those who signed petitions for Shelton’s release. While we can’t know for sure, it seems likely that the earliest, ragtime, versions of the “Stagger Lee” song were written by Turpin. It’s been suggested that he based the song on “Bully of the Town”, a popular song written two years earlier, and itself very loosely based on a real murder case from New Orleans. That song was popularised by May Irwin, in a play which is also notable for having a love scene filmed by Edison in 1897, making it possibly the first ever love scene to be filmed. Irwin recorded her version in 1909, but she uses a racial slur, over and over again, which I am not going to allow on this podcast, so here’s a 1920s version by Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers: [Excerpt: Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers, “Bully of the Town”] That song, in its original versions, is about someone who goes out and kills a bully — in the same sense that Billy Lyons was a bully — and so becomes the biggest bully himself. It’s easy to see how Turpin could take that basic framework and add in some details about how his friend had done the same thing, and turn it into a new song. By 1910, the song about Stack Lee had spread all across the country. The folklorist and song collector John Lomax collected a version that year that went “Twas a Christmas morning/The hour was about ten/When Stagalee shot Billy Lyons/And landed in the Jefferson pen/O lordy, poor Stagalee”. In 1924, two white songwriters copyrighted a version of it, called “Stack O’Lee Blues”, and we’ve heard instrumental versions of that, from 1923 and 24, earlier in this episode — that’s what those instrumental breaks were. Lovie Austin recorded a song called “Skeg-A-Lee Blues” in 1924, but that bears little lyrical resemblance to the Stagger Lee we know about: [Excerpt: Ford & Ford, “Skeg-A-Lee Blues”] The first vocal recording of the song that we would now recognise as being Stagger Lee was by Ma Rainey, in 1925. In her version, the melody and some of the words come from “Frankie and Johnny”, another popular song about a real-life murder in St. Louis in the 1890s: [Excerpt: Ma Rainey, “Stack O’Lee Blues”] According to Wikipedia, Louis Armstrong is playing cornet on that song. It doesn’t sound like him to me, and I can’t find any other evidence for that except other sites which get their information from Wikipedia. Sites I trust more say it was Joe Smith, and they also say that Coleman Hawkins and Fletcher Henderson are on the track. By 1927, the song was being recorded in many different variants. Long Cleve Reed and Little Harvey Hull recorded a version that clearly owes something to “the Bully of the Town”: [Excerpt: Long Cleve Reed and Little Henry Hull — Down Home Boys, “Original Stack O’Lee Blues”] And in possibly the most famous early version, Mississippi John Hurt asks why the police can’t arrest that bad man Stagger Lee: [Excerpt: Mississippi John Hurt, “Stack O’Lee (1928 version)”] By this point, all connection with the real Lee Shelton had been lost, and it wouldn’t be until the early nineties that the writer Cecil Brown would finally identify Shelton as the subject of the song. During the thirties and forties, the song came to be recorded by all sorts of musicians, almost all of them either folk musicians like Woody Guthrie, blues musicians like Ivory Joe Hunter, or field recordings, like the singer known as “Bama” who recorded this for the Lomaxes: [Excerpt: Bama, “Stackerlee”] None of these recorded versions was a major hit, but the song became hugely well known, particularly among black musicians around Louisiana. It was a song in everyone’s repertoire, and every version of the song followed the same basic structure to start with — Stagger Lee told Billy Lyons he was going to kill him over a hat that had been lost in a game of craps, Billy begged for his life, saying he had a wife and children, and Stagger Lee killed him anyway. Often the bullet would pass right through Billy and break the bartender’s glass. From there, the story might change — in some versions, Lee would go free — sometimes because they couldn’t catch him and sometimes because crowds of women implored the judge to let him off. In other versions, he would be locked up in jail, and in yet other versions he would be sentenced to death. Sometimes he would survive execution through magical powers, sometimes he would be killed, and crowds of women would mourn him, all dressed in red. In the versions where he was killed, he would often descend to Hell, where he would usurp the Devil, because the Devil wasn’t as bad as Stagger Lee. There were so many versions of this song that the New Orleans pianist Doctor John was, according to some things I’ve read, able to play “Stagger Lee” for three hours straight without repeating a verse. Very few of these recordings had any commercial success, but one that did was a 1950 New Orleans version of the song, performed by “Archibald and His Orchestra”: [Excerpt: Archibald and His Orchestra, “Stack A’Lee”] That version of the song was the longest ever recorded up to that point, and took up both sides of a seventy-eight record. It was released on Imperial Records, the same label that Fats Domino was on, in 1950, and was recorded at Cosimo Matassa’s studio. It went top ten on the Billboard R&B charts, and was Archibald’s only hit. That’s the version that, eight years later, inspired Lloyd Price to record this: [Excerpt: Lloyd Price, “Stagger Lee”] That became a massive, massive hit. It went to number one on both the Hot One Hundred and the R&B charts — which incidentally makes Lloyd Price the earliest solo artist to have a number one hit on the Hot One Hundred and still be alive today. Price’s career was revitalised — and “Stagger Lee” was brought properly into the mainstream of American culture. Over the next few decades, the song — in versions usually based on Price’s — became a standard among white rock musicians. Indeed, it seems to have been recorded by some of the whitest people in music history, like Huey Lewis and the News: [Excerpt: Huey Lewis and the News, “Stagger Lee”] Mike Love of the Beach Boys: [Excerpt: Mike Love, “Stagger Lee”] and Neil Diamond: [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, “Stagger Lee”] But while the song had hit the white mainstream, the myth of Stagger Lee had an altogether different power among the black community. You see, up to this point all we’ve been able to look at are versions of the song that have seen commercial release, and they all represent what was acceptable to be sold in shops at the time. But as you may have guessed from the stuff about the Devil I mentioned earlier, Stagger Lee had become a folkloric figure of tremendous importance among many black Americans. He represented the bad man who would never respect any authority — a trickster figure, but one who was violent as well. He represented the angry black man, but a sort of righteous anger, even if that anger was chaotic. Any black man who was not respected by white society would be thought of as a Stagger Lee figure, at least by some — I’ve seen the label applied to everyone from O.J. Simpson to Malcolm X. Bobby Seale, the leader of the Black Panther Party, named his son Malik Nkrumah Stagolee Seale, and was often known to recite a version of “Stagger Lee” at parties. In an interview, later, Seale said “Now I transformed Stagolee, more or less in my own mind, into brothers standing on the block and all of the illegitimate activity. In effect, they were the lumpen proletariat in a high-tech social order, different from how ‘lumpen’ had been described historically. My point is this; that Malcolm X at one time was an illegitimate hustler. Later in life, Malcolm X grows to have the most profound political consciousness as far as I’m concerned. To me, this brother was really getting ready to move. So symbolically, at one time he was Stagolee.” The version of Stagger Lee that Seale knew is the one that came from something called “toasts”. Toasting is a form of informal storytelling in black American culture, usually rhyming, and usually using language and talking about subjects that would often be considered obscene. Toasting is now generally considered one of the precursors of rapping, and the style and subject matter are often very similar. Many of the stories told in toasts are very well known, including the story of the Signifying Monkey (which has been told in bowdlerised forms in many blues songs, including Chuck Berry’s “Jo Jo Gunne”), and the story of Shine, the black cook on the Titanic, who swims for safety and refuses to help the Captain’s daughter even after she offers sex in return for his help. Shine outswims the sharks who try to eat him, and arrives back on land before anyone there even knew the ship was sinking. Shine is, of course, another Stagger Lee style figure. These toasts remained largely unknown outside of the less respectable parts of the black community, until the scholar Bruce Jackson published his seminal book “Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me: African-American Poetry from Oral Tradition”, whose title is taken from a version of the story of Shine and the Titanic. Jackson’s field recordings, mostly recorded in prisons, have more recently been released on CD, though without the names of the performers attached. Here’s the version of Stagger Lee he collected — there will be several beeps in this, and the next few recordings, if you’re listening to the regular version of this podcast: [Excerpt: Unknown field recording, “Stagger Lee”] After Jackson’s book, but well before the recordings came out, Johnny Otis preserved many of these toasts in musical form on his Snatch and the Poontangs album, including “The Great Stack-A-Lee”, which clearly has the same sources as the version Jackson recorded: [Excerpt: Snatch and the Poontangs, “The Great Stack-A-Lee”] That version was used as the basis for the most well-known recentish version of the song, the 1995 version by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: [Excerpt: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “Stagger Lee”] Cave has later said in interviews that they improvised the music and used the lyrics from Jackson’s book, but the melody is very, very, close to the Johnny Otis version. And there’s more evidence of Cave basing his version on the Johnny Otis track. There’s this line: [Excerpt: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “Stagger Lee”] That’s not in the versions of the toast in Jackson’s book, but it *is* in a different song on the Snatch and the Poontangs album, “Two-Time Slim”: [Excerpt: Snatch and the Poontangs, “Two-Time Slim”] This is the Stagger Lee of legend, the Stagger Lee who is the narrator of James Baldwin’s great poem “Stagolee Wonders”, a damning indictment of racist society: [Excerpt: James Baldwin, reading an excerpt from “Stagolee Wonders” on “Poems for a Listener”,] Baldwin’s view of Stagger Lee was, to quote from the interview from which that reading is also excerpted, “a black folk hero, a singer essentially, who actually truly comes out of the auction block, by way of the cotton field, into the beginning of the black church. And Stagger Lee’s roots are there, and Stagger Lee’s often been a preacher. He’s one who conveys the real history.” It’s a far cry from one pimp murdering another on Christmas Day 1895. And it’s a mythos that almost everyone listening to Lloyd Price’s hit version will have known nothing of. As a result of “Stagger Lee”, Lloyd Price went on to have a successful career, scoring several more hits in 1959 and 1960, including the song for which he’s now best known, “Personality”: [Excerpt: Lloyd Price, “Personality”] Price also moved into other areas, including boxing promotion — he was the person who got Don King, another figure who has often been compared to Stagger Lee, the chance to work with Mohammed Ali, and he later helped King promote the famous “Rumble in the Jungle” fight. Lloyd Price is eighty-seven years old, now, and released his most recent album in 2016. He still tours — indeed, his most recent live show was earlier this month, just before the current coronavirus outbreak meant live shows had to stop. He opened his show, as he always does, with “Stagger Lee”, and I hope that when we start having live shows again, he will continue to do so for a long, long time.

A History Of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs
Episode 76: "Stagger Lee" by Lloyd Price

A History Of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 31, 2020 45:25


Episode seventy-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Stagger Lee" by Lloyd Price, and how a barroom fight 125 years ago led to a song performed by everyone from Ma Rainey to Neil Diamond. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "That Crazy Feeling" by Kenny Rogers. I have also beeped out some expletives in the song excerpts this week, so as not to be censored by some podcast aggregators, and so I've uploaded an unbeeped version for backers. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/  ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. The bulk of the information in this episode came from Stagolee Shot Billy, by Cecil Brown, the person who finally identified Lee Shelton as the subject of the song. I also got some information from Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me: African-American Narrative Poetry from the Oral Tradition by Bruce Jackson, Unprepared to Die by Paul Slade, and Yo' Mama!: New Raps, Toasts, Dozens, Jokes and Children's Rhymes from Urban Black America edited by Onwuchekwa Jemie. Lloyd Price has written a few books. His autobiography is out of print and goes for silly money (and don't buy the "Kindle edition" at that link, because it's just the sheet music to the song, which Amazon have mislabelled) but he's also written a book of essays with his thoughts on race, some of which shed light on his work. The Lloyd Price songs here can be found on The Complete Singles As & Bs 1952-62 . And you can get the Snatch and the Poontangs album on a twofer with Johnny Otis' less explicit album Cold Shot. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before we start today's episode, a brief note. Firstly, this episode contains a description of a murder, so if you're squeamish about that sort of thing, you may want to skip it. Secondly, some of the material I'm dealing with in this episode is difficult for me to deal with in a podcast, for a variety of reasons. This episode will look at a song whose history is strongly entwined both with American racism and with black underworld culture. The source material I've used for this therefore contains several things that for different reasons are difficult for me to say on here. There is frequent use of a particular racial slur which it is not okay under any circumstances for me as a white man to say; there are transcripts of oral history which are transcribed in rather patronising attempts at replicating African-American Vernacular English, which even were those transcripts themselves acceptable would sound mocking coming out of my English-accented mouth; and there is frequent use of sexual profanity, which I personally have no problem with at all, but would get this podcast an explicit rating on several of the big podcast platforms. There is simply no way to tell this story while avoiding all of those things, so I've come up with the best compromise I can. I will not use, even in quotes, that slur. I will minimise the use of transcripts, but when I have to use them, I will change them from being phonetic transcripts of AAVE into being standard written English, and I will include the swearing where it comes in the recordings I want to use but will beep it out of the version that goes up on the main podcast feed. I'll make an unexpurgated version available for my Patreon backers, and I'll put the unbleeped recordings on Mixcloud. The story we're going to tell goes back to Christmas Day 1895, but we're going to start our story in the mid 1950s, with Lloyd Price. [Excerpt: Lloyd Price, “Stagger Lee”] You may remember us looking at Lloyd Price way back in episode twelve, from Christmas 2018, but if you don't, Price was a teenager in 1952, when he wandered into Cosimo Matassa's studio in New Orleans, at the invitation of his acquaintance Dave Bartholomew, who had produced, co-written, and arranged most of Fats Domino's biggest hits. Price had a song, "Lawdy Miss Clawdy", which was loosely based around the same basic melody as Domino's earlier hit "The Fat Man", and they recorded it with Bartholomew producing, Domino on piano, and the great Earl Palmer on drums: [Excerpt: Lloyd Price, "Lawdy Miss Clawdy"] That was one of the first R&B records put out on Specialty Records, the label that would later bring Little Richard, Larry Williams, Sam Cooke and others to prominence, and it went to number one on the R&B charts. Price had a couple more big R&B hits, but then he got drafted, and when he got back the musical landscape had changed enough that he had no hits for several years. But then both Elvis Presley and Little Richard cut cover versions of "Lawdy Miss Clawdy", and that seemed to bring Price enough extra attention that in 1957 he got a couple of songs into the lower reaches of the Hot One Hundred, and one song, "Just Because" went to number three on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Lloyd Price, "Just Because"] But it wasn't until 1958 that Price had what would become his biggest hit, a song that would kickstart his career, and which had its roots in a barroom brawl in St. Louis on Christmas Day 1895: [Excerpt: Lloyd Price, "Stagger Lee"] The Lee Line was a line of steamboats that went up and down the Mississippi, run by the Lee family. Their line was notorious, even by Mississippi riverboat standards, for paying its staff badly, but also for being friendly to prostitution and gambling. This meant that some people, at least, enjoyed working on the ships despite the low pay. There is a song, whose lyrics were quoted in an article from 1939, but which seems to have been much older, whose lyrics went (I've changed these into standard English, as I explained at the start): Reason I like the Lee Line trade Sleep all night with the chambermaid She gimme some pie, and she gimme some cake And I give her all the money that I ever make The Lee Line was one of the two preferred steamboat lines to work on for that reason, and it ended up being mentioned in quite a few songs, like this early version of the song that's better known as "Alabamy Bound", but was here called "Don't You Leave Me Here": [Excerpt: Little Harvey Hull and Long Cleve Reed, "Don't You Leave Me Here"] The line, "If the boat don't sink and the Stack don't drown" refers to one of the boats on the Lee Line, the Stack Lee, a boat that started service in 1902. But the boat was named, as many of the Lee Line ships were, after a member of the Lee family, in this case one Stack Lee, who was the captain in the 1880s and early 90s of a ship named after his father, James Lee, the founder of the company. In 1948 the scholar Shields McIlwayne claimed that the captain, and later the boat, were popular enough among parts of the black community that there were "more colored kids named Stack Lee than there were sinners in hell". But it was probably the boats' reputation for prostitution that led to a thirty-year-old pimp in St. Louis named Lee Shelton taking on the name "Stack Lee", at some time before Christmas Day 1895. On that Christmas Day, a man named Bill Lyons entered the Bill Curtis Saloon. Before he entered the saloon, he stopped to ask his friend to give him a knife, because the saloon was the roughest in the whole city, and he didn't want any trouble. Bill Lyons was known as "Billy the Bully", but bully didn't quite, or didn't only, mean what it means today. A "bully", in that time and place, was a term that encompassed both being a pimp and being a bagman for a political party. There was far more overlap in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries between politics and organised crime than many now realise, and the way things normally operated in many areas was that there would be a big man in organised crime whose job it would be to raise money for the party, get people out to vote, and tell them which way to vote. Lyons was not a popular man, but he was an influential man, and he was part of a rich family -- one of the richest black families in St. Louis. He was, like his family, very involved with the Republican Party. Almost all black people in the US were Republicans at that time, as it was only thirty years since the end of the Civil War, when the Republican President Lincoln had been credited with freeing black people from slavery, and the Bridgewater Saloon, owned by Lyons' rich brother-in-law Henry Bridgewater, was often used as a meeting place for local Republicans. Lyons had just ordered a drink when Lee Shelton walked into the bar. Shelton was a pimp, and seems to have made a lot of money from it. Shelton was also a Democrat, which in this time and place meant that he was essentially a member of a rival gang. [Excerpt: Duke Ellington, "Stack-A-Lee Blues"] Shelton was very big in the local Democratic party, and from what we can tell was far more popular among the black community than Lyons was. While the Democrats were still the less popular of the two major parties among black people in the area, some were starting to feel like the Republicans talked a good game but were doing very little to actually help black people, and were considering taking their votes elsewhere. He was also a pimp who seems to have had a better reputation than most among the sex workers who worked for him, though like almost everything in this story it's difficult to know for certain more than a hundred and twenty years later. When he walked into the bar, he was wearing mirror-toed shoes, a velvet waistcoat, an embroidered shirt, and gold rings, and carrying an ebony cane with a gold top. He had a slightly crossed left eye, and scars on his face. And he was wearing a white Stetson. Lee asked the crowd, "Who's treating?" and they pointed to Lyons. There was allegedly some bad blood between Lyons and Shelton, as Lyons' step-brother had murdered Shelton's friend a couple of years earlier, in the Bridgewater Saloon. But nonetheless, the two men were, according to the bartenders working there, who had known both men for decades, good friends, and they were apparently drinking and laughing together for a while, until they started talking about politics. They started slapping at each other's hats, apparently playfully. Then Shelton grabbed Lyons' hat and broke the rim, so Lyons then snatched Shelton's hat off his head. Shelton asked for his hat back, and Lyons said he wanted six bits -- seventy-five cents -- for a new hat. Shelton replied that you could buy a box of those hats for six bits, and he wasn't going to give Lyons any money. Lyons refused to hand the hat back until Shelton gave him the money, and Shelton pulled out his gun, and told Lyons to give him the hat. Lyons refused, and Shelton hit him on the head with the gun. He then threatened to kill Lyons if he didn't hand the hat over. Lyons pulled out the knife his friend had given him, and said "You cock-eyed son of a bitch, I'm going to *make* you kill me" and came at Shelton, who shot Lyons. Lyons staggered and clutched on to the bar, and dropped the hat. Shelton addressed Lyons using a word I am not going to say, and said "I told you to give me my hat", picked it up, and walked out. Lyons died of his wounds a few hours later. [Excerpt: Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians, "Stack O' Lee Blues"] Shelton was arrested, and let go on four thousand dollars bail -- that's something like a hundred and twenty thousand in today's money, to give you some idea, though by the time we go that far back comparisons of the value of money become fairly meaningless. Shelton hired himself the best possible lawyer -- a man named Nat Dryden, who was an alcoholic and opium addict, but was also considered a brilliant trial lawyer. Dryden had been the first lawyer in the whole of Missouri to be able to get a conviction for a white man murdering a black man. Shelton was still at risk, though, simply because of the power of Henry Bridgewater in local politics -- a mob of hundreds of people swamped the inquest trying to get to Shelton, and the police had to draw their weapons before they would disperse. But something happened between Shelton's arrest and the trial that meant that Bridgewater's political power waned somewhat. Shelton was arraigned by Judge David Murphy, who was regarded by most black people in the city as on their side, primarily because he was so against police brutality that when a black man shot a policeman, claiming self defence because the policeman was beating him up at the time, Murphy let the man off. Not only that, when a mob of policemen attacked the defendant outside the court in retribution, Murphy had them jailed. This made him popular among black people, but less so among whites. [Excerpt: Frank Westphal and his Orchestra, "Stack O'Lee Blues"] The 1896 Republican National Convention was held in St. Louis, and one of the reasons it was chosen was that the white restaurants had promised the party that if they held the convention there, they would allow black people into the restaurants, so the black caucus within the party approved of the idea. But when the convention actually happened, the restaurants changed their minds, and the party did nothing. This infuriated many black delegates to the convention, who had seen for years how the system of backhanders and patronage on which American politics ran never got so far as to give anything to black people, who were expected just to vote for the Republicans. James Milton Turner, one of the leaders of the radical faction of the Republicans, and the first ever black US ambassador, who was a Missouri local and one of the most influential black politicians in the state, loudly denounced the Republican party for the way it was treating black voters. Shortly afterwards, the party had its local convention. Judge Murphy was coming up for reelection, and the black delegates voted for him to be the Republican nominee again. The white delegates, on the other hand, voted against him. This was the last straw. In 1896, ninety percent of black voters in Missouri voted Democrat, for the first time. Shelton's faction was now in the ascendant. Because Murphy wasn't reselected, Shelton's trial wasn't held by him, but Nat Dryden did an excellent job in front of the new judge, arguing that Shelton had been acting in self-defence, because Lyons had pulled out a knife. There was a hung jury, and it went to a retrial. Sadly for Shelton, though, Dryden wasn't going to be representing him in the second trial. Dryden had hidden his alcoholism from his wife, and she had offered him a glass of sherry. That had triggered a relapse, he'd gone on a binge, and died. At his next trial, in late 1897, Shelton was convicted, and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison -- presumably the influence of his political friends stopped him from getting the death penalty, just as it got him paroled twelve years later. Two years after that, though, Shelton was arrested again, for assault and robbery, and this time he died in prison. But even before his trial -- just before Dryden's death, in fact -- a song called "Stack-A-Lee" was mentioned in the papers as being played by a ragtime pianist in Kansas City. The story gets a bit hazy here, but we know that Shelton was friends with the ragtime pianist Tom Turpin. Ragtime had become popular in the US as a result of Scott Joplin's performance at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair -- the same fair, incidentally, that introduced the belly dancers known as "Little Egypt" who we talked about in the episode on the Coasters a few weeks back. But a year before that, Turpin, who was a friend of Joplin's, had written "Harlem Rag", which was published in 1897, and became the first ragtime tune written by a black man to be published: [Excerpt: Ragtime Dorian Henry, "Harlem Rag"] Turpin was another big man in St. Louis politics, and he was one of those who signed petitions for Shelton's release. While we can't know for sure, it seems likely that the earliest, ragtime, versions of the "Stagger Lee" song were written by Turpin. It's been suggested that he based the song on "Bully of the Town", a popular song written two years earlier, and itself very loosely based on a real murder case from New Orleans. That song was popularised by May Irwin, in a play which is also notable for having a love scene filmed by Edison in 1897, making it possibly the first ever love scene to be filmed. Irwin recorded her version in 1909, but she uses a racial slur, over and over again, which I am not going to allow on this podcast, so here's a 1920s version by Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers: [Excerpt: Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers, "Bully of the Town"] That song, in its original versions, is about someone who goes out and kills a bully -- in the same sense that Billy Lyons was a bully -- and so becomes the biggest bully himself. It's easy to see how Turpin could take that basic framework and add in some details about how his friend had done the same thing, and turn it into a new song. By 1910, the song about Stack Lee had spread all across the country. The folklorist and song collector John Lomax collected a version that year that went "Twas a Christmas morning/The hour was about ten/When Stagalee shot Billy Lyons/And landed in the Jefferson pen/O lordy, poor Stagalee". In 1924, two white songwriters copyrighted a version of it, called "Stack O'Lee Blues", and we've heard instrumental versions of that, from 1923 and 24, earlier in this episode -- that's what those instrumental breaks were. Lovie Austin recorded a song called "Skeg-A-Lee Blues" in 1924, but that bears little lyrical resemblance to the Stagger Lee we know about: [Excerpt: Ford & Ford, "Skeg-A-Lee Blues"] The first vocal recording of the song that we would now recognise as being Stagger Lee was by Ma Rainey, in 1925. In her version, the melody and some of the words come from "Frankie and Johnny", another popular song about a real-life murder in St. Louis in the 1890s: [Excerpt: Ma Rainey, "Stack O'Lee Blues"] According to Wikipedia, Louis Armstrong is playing cornet on that song. It doesn't sound like him to me, and I can't find any other evidence for that except other sites which get their information from Wikipedia. Sites I trust more say it was Joe Smith, and they also say that Coleman Hawkins and Fletcher Henderson are on the track. By 1927, the song was being recorded in many different variants. Long Cleve Reed and Little Harvey Hull recorded a version that clearly owes something to "the Bully of the Town": [Excerpt: Long Cleve Reed and Little Henry Hull -- Down Home Boys, "Original Stack O'Lee Blues"] And in possibly the most famous early version, Mississippi John Hurt asks why the police can't arrest that bad man Stagger Lee: [Excerpt: Mississippi John Hurt, "Stack O'Lee (1928 version)"] By this point, all connection with the real Lee Shelton had been lost, and it wouldn't be until the early nineties that the writer Cecil Brown would finally identify Shelton as the subject of the song. During the thirties and forties, the song came to be recorded by all sorts of musicians, almost all of them either folk musicians like Woody Guthrie, blues musicians like Ivory Joe Hunter, or field recordings, like the singer known as "Bama" who recorded this for the Lomaxes: [Excerpt: Bama, "Stackerlee"] None of these recorded versions was a major hit, but the song became hugely well known, particularly among black musicians around Louisiana. It was a song in everyone's repertoire, and every version of the song followed the same basic structure to start with -- Stagger Lee told Billy Lyons he was going to kill him over a hat that had been lost in a game of craps, Billy begged for his life, saying he had a wife and children, and Stagger Lee killed him anyway. Often the bullet would pass right through Billy and break the bartender's glass. From there, the story might change -- in some versions, Lee would go free -- sometimes because they couldn't catch him and sometimes because crowds of women implored the judge to let him off. In other versions, he would be locked up in jail, and in yet other versions he would be sentenced to death. Sometimes he would survive execution through magical powers, sometimes he would be killed, and crowds of women would mourn him, all dressed in red. In the versions where he was killed, he would often descend to Hell, where he would usurp the Devil, because the Devil wasn't as bad as Stagger Lee. There were so many versions of this song that the New Orleans pianist Doctor John was, according to some things I've read, able to play "Stagger Lee" for three hours straight without repeating a verse. Very few of these recordings had any commercial success, but one that did was a 1950 New Orleans version of the song, performed by "Archibald and His Orchestra": [Excerpt: Archibald and His Orchestra, "Stack A'Lee"] That version of the song was the longest ever recorded up to that point, and took up both sides of a seventy-eight record. It was released on Imperial Records, the same label that Fats Domino was on, in 1950, and was recorded at Cosimo Matassa's studio. It went top ten on the Billboard R&B charts, and was Archibald's only hit. That's the version that, eight years later, inspired Lloyd Price to record this: [Excerpt: Lloyd Price, "Stagger Lee"] That became a massive, massive hit. It went to number one on both the Hot One Hundred and the R&B charts -- which incidentally makes Lloyd Price the earliest solo artist to have a number one hit on the Hot One Hundred and still be alive today. Price's career was revitalised -- and "Stagger Lee" was brought properly into the mainstream of American culture. Over the next few decades, the song -- in versions usually based on Price's -- became a standard among white rock musicians. Indeed, it seems to have been recorded by some of the whitest people in music history, like Huey Lewis and the News: [Excerpt: Huey Lewis and the News, "Stagger Lee"] Mike Love of the Beach Boys: [Excerpt: Mike Love, "Stagger Lee"] and Neil Diamond: [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, “Stagger Lee”] But while the song had hit the white mainstream, the myth of Stagger Lee had an altogether different power among the black community. You see, up to this point all we've been able to look at are versions of the song that have seen commercial release, and they all represent what was acceptable to be sold in shops at the time. But as you may have guessed from the stuff about the Devil I mentioned earlier, Stagger Lee had become a folkloric figure of tremendous importance among many black Americans. He represented the bad man who would never respect any authority -- a trickster figure, but one who was violent as well. He represented the angry black man, but a sort of righteous anger, even if that anger was chaotic. Any black man who was not respected by white society would be thought of as a Stagger Lee figure, at least by some -- I've seen the label applied to everyone from O.J. Simpson to Malcolm X. Bobby Seale, the leader of the Black Panther Party, named his son Malik Nkrumah Stagolee Seale, and was often known to recite a version of "Stagger Lee" at parties. In an interview, later, Seale said "Now I transformed Stagolee, more or less in my own mind, into brothers standing on the block and all of the illegitimate activity. In effect, they were the lumpen proletariat in a high-tech social order, different from how 'lumpen' had been described historically. My point is this; that Malcolm X at one time was an illegitimate hustler. Later in life, Malcolm X grows to have the most profound political consciousness as far as I'm concerned. To me, this brother was really getting ready to move. So symbolically, at one time he was Stagolee." The version of Stagger Lee that Seale knew is the one that came from something called "toasts". Toasting is a form of informal storytelling in black American culture, usually rhyming, and usually using language and talking about subjects that would often be considered obscene. Toasting is now generally considered one of the precursors of rapping, and the style and subject matter are often very similar. Many of the stories told in toasts are very well known, including the story of the Signifying Monkey (which has been told in bowdlerised forms in many blues songs, including Chuck Berry's "Jo Jo Gunne"), and the story of Shine, the black cook on the Titanic, who swims for safety and refuses to help the Captain's daughter even after she offers sex in return for his help. Shine outswims the sharks who try to eat him, and arrives back on land before anyone there even knew the ship was sinking. Shine is, of course, another Stagger Lee style figure. These toasts remained largely unknown outside of the less respectable parts of the black community, until the scholar Bruce Jackson published his seminal book "Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me: African-American Poetry from Oral Tradition", whose title is taken from a version of the story of Shine and the Titanic. Jackson's field recordings, mostly recorded in prisons, have more recently been released on CD, though without the names of the performers attached. Here's the version of Stagger Lee he collected -- there will be several beeps in this, and the next few recordings, if you're listening to the regular version of this podcast: [Excerpt: Unknown field recording, "Stagger Lee"] After Jackson's book, but well before the recordings came out, Johnny Otis preserved many of these toasts in musical form on his Snatch and the Poontangs album, including "The Great Stack-A-Lee", which clearly has the same sources as the version Jackson recorded: [Excerpt: Snatch and the Poontangs, "The Great Stack-A-Lee"] That version was used as the basis for the most well-known recentish version of the song, the 1995 version by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: [Excerpt: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, "Stagger Lee"] Cave has later said in interviews that they improvised the music and used the lyrics from Jackson's book, but the melody is very, very, close to the Johnny Otis version. And there's more evidence of Cave basing his version on the Johnny Otis track. There's this line: [Excerpt: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, "Stagger Lee"] That's not in the versions of the toast in Jackson's book, but it *is* in a different song on the Snatch and the Poontangs album, "Two-Time Slim": [Excerpt: Snatch and the Poontangs, "Two-Time Slim"] This is the Stagger Lee of legend, the Stagger Lee who is the narrator of James Baldwin's great poem "Stagolee Wonders", a damning indictment of racist society: [Excerpt: James Baldwin, reading an excerpt from "Stagolee Wonders" on "Poems for a Listener",] Baldwin's view of Stagger Lee was, to quote from the interview from which that reading is also excerpted, "a black folk hero, a singer essentially, who actually truly comes out of the auction block, by way of the cotton field, into the beginning of the black church. And Stagger Lee's roots are there, and Stagger Lee's often been a preacher. He's one who conveys the real history.” It's a far cry from one pimp murdering another on Christmas Day 1895. And it's a mythos that almost everyone listening to Lloyd Price's hit version will have known nothing of. As a result of "Stagger Lee", Lloyd Price went on to have a successful career, scoring several more hits in 1959 and 1960, including the song for which he's now best known, "Personality": [Excerpt: Lloyd Price, "Personality"] Price also moved into other areas, including boxing promotion -- he was the person who got Don King, another figure who has often been compared to Stagger Lee, the chance to work with Mohammed Ali, and he later helped King promote the famous "Rumble in the Jungle" fight. Lloyd Price is eighty-seven years old, now, and released his most recent album in 2016. He still tours -- indeed, his most recent live show was earlier this month, just before the current coronavirus outbreak meant live shows had to stop. He opened his show, as he always does, with "Stagger Lee", and I hope that when we start having live shows again, he will continue to do so for a long, long time.

A History Of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs
Episode 76: “Stagger Lee” by Lloyd Price

A History Of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 31, 2020


Episode seventy-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Stagger Lee” by Lloyd Price, and how a barroom fight 125 years ago led to a song performed by everyone from Ma Rainey to Neil Diamond. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “That Crazy Feeling” by Kenny Rogers. I have also beeped out some expletives in the song excerpts this week, so as not to be censored by some podcast aggregators, and so I’ve uploaded an unbeeped version for backers. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/  —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. The bulk of the information in this episode came from Stagolee Shot Billy, by Cecil Brown, the person who finally identified Lee Shelton as the subject of the song. I also got some information from Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me: African-American Narrative Poetry from the Oral Tradition by Bruce Jackson, Unprepared to Die by Paul Slade, and Yo’ Mama!: New Raps, Toasts, Dozens, Jokes and Children’s Rhymes from Urban Black America edited by Onwuchekwa Jemie. Lloyd Price has written a few books. His autobiography is out of print and goes for silly money (and don’t buy the “Kindle edition” at that link, because it’s just the sheet music to the song, which Amazon have mislabelled) but he’s also written a book of essays with his thoughts on race, some of which shed light on his work. The Lloyd Price songs here can be found on The Complete Singles As & Bs 1952-62 . And you can get the Snatch and the Poontangs album on a twofer with Johnny Otis’ less explicit album Cold Shot. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before we start today’s episode, a brief note. Firstly, this episode contains a description of a murder, so if you’re squeamish about that sort of thing, you may want to skip it. Secondly, some of the material I’m dealing with in this episode is difficult for me to deal with in a podcast, for a variety of reasons. This episode will look at a song whose history is strongly entwined both with American racism and with black underworld culture. The source material I’ve used for this therefore contains several things that for different reasons are difficult for me to say on here. There is frequent use of a particular racial slur which it is not okay under any circumstances for me as a white man to say; there are transcripts of oral history which are transcribed in rather patronising attempts at replicating African-American Vernacular English, which even were those transcripts themselves acceptable would sound mocking coming out of my English-accented mouth; and there is frequent use of sexual profanity, which I personally have no problem with at all, but would get this podcast an explicit rating on several of the big podcast platforms. There is simply no way to tell this story while avoiding all of those things, so I’ve come up with the best compromise I can. I will not use, even in quotes, that slur. I will minimise the use of transcripts, but when I have to use them, I will change them from being phonetic transcripts of AAVE into being standard written English, and I will include the swearing where it comes in the recordings I want to use but will beep it out of the version that goes up on the main podcast feed. I’ll make an unexpurgated version available for my Patreon backers, and I’ll put the unbleeped recordings on Mixcloud. The story we’re going to tell goes back to Christmas Day 1895, but we’re going to start our story in the mid 1950s, with Lloyd Price. [Excerpt: Lloyd Price, “Stagger Lee”] You may remember us looking at Lloyd Price way back in episode twelve, from Christmas 2018, but if you don’t, Price was a teenager in 1952, when he wandered into Cosimo Matassa’s studio in New Orleans, at the invitation of his acquaintance Dave Bartholomew, who had produced, co-written, and arranged most of Fats Domino’s biggest hits. Price had a song, “Lawdy Miss Clawdy”, which was loosely based around the same basic melody as Domino’s earlier hit “The Fat Man”, and they recorded it with Bartholomew producing, Domino on piano, and the great Earl Palmer on drums: [Excerpt: Lloyd Price, “Lawdy Miss Clawdy”] That was one of the first R&B records put out on Specialty Records, the label that would later bring Little Richard, Larry Williams, Sam Cooke and others to prominence, and it went to number one on the R&B charts. Price had a couple more big R&B hits, but then he got drafted, and when he got back the musical landscape had changed enough that he had no hits for several years. But then both Elvis Presley and Little Richard cut cover versions of “Lawdy Miss Clawdy”, and that seemed to bring Price enough extra attention that in 1957 he got a couple of songs into the lower reaches of the Hot One Hundred, and one song, “Just Because” went to number three on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Lloyd Price, “Just Because”] But it wasn’t until 1958 that Price had what would become his biggest hit, a song that would kickstart his career, and which had its roots in a barroom brawl in St. Louis on Christmas Day 1895: [Excerpt: Lloyd Price, “Stagger Lee”] The Lee Line was a line of steamboats that went up and down the Mississippi, run by the Lee family. Their line was notorious, even by Mississippi riverboat standards, for paying its staff badly, but also for being friendly to prostitution and gambling. This meant that some people, at least, enjoyed working on the ships despite the low pay. There is a song, whose lyrics were quoted in an article from 1939, but which seems to have been much older, whose lyrics went (I’ve changed these into standard English, as I explained at the start): Reason I like the Lee Line trade Sleep all night with the chambermaid She gimme some pie, and she gimme some cake And I give her all the money that I ever make The Lee Line was one of the two preferred steamboat lines to work on for that reason, and it ended up being mentioned in quite a few songs, like this early version of the song that’s better known as “Alabamy Bound”, but was here called “Don’t You Leave Me Here”: [Excerpt: Little Harvey Hull and Long Cleve Reed, “Don’t You Leave Me Here”] The line, “If the boat don’t sink and the Stack don’t drown” refers to one of the boats on the Lee Line, the Stack Lee, a boat that started service in 1902. But the boat was named, as many of the Lee Line ships were, after a member of the Lee family, in this case one Stack Lee, who was the captain in the 1880s and early 90s of a ship named after his father, James Lee, the founder of the company. In 1948 the scholar Shields McIlwayne claimed that the captain, and later the boat, were popular enough among parts of the black community that there were “more colored kids named Stack Lee than there were sinners in hell”. But it was probably the boats’ reputation for prostitution that led to a thirty-year-old pimp in St. Louis named Lee Shelton taking on the name “Stack Lee”, at some time before Christmas Day 1895. On that Christmas Day, a man named Bill Lyons entered the Bill Curtis Saloon. Before he entered the saloon, he stopped to ask his friend to give him a knife, because the saloon was the roughest in the whole city, and he didn’t want any trouble. Bill Lyons was known as “Billy the Bully”, but bully didn’t quite, or didn’t only, mean what it means today. A “bully”, in that time and place, was a term that encompassed both being a pimp and being a bagman for a political party. There was far more overlap in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries between politics and organised crime than many now realise, and the way things normally operated in many areas was that there would be a big man in organised crime whose job it would be to raise money for the party, get people out to vote, and tell them which way to vote. Lyons was not a popular man, but he was an influential man, and he was part of a rich family — one of the richest black families in St. Louis. He was, like his family, very involved with the Republican Party. Almost all black people in the US were Republicans at that time, as it was only thirty years since the end of the Civil War, when the Republican President Lincoln had been credited with freeing black people from slavery, and the Bridgewater Saloon, owned by Lyons’ rich brother-in-law Henry Bridgewater, was often used as a meeting place for local Republicans. Lyons had just ordered a drink when Lee Shelton walked into the bar. Shelton was a pimp, and seems to have made a lot of money from it. Shelton was also a Democrat, which in this time and place meant that he was essentially a member of a rival gang. [Excerpt: Duke Ellington, “Stack-A-Lee Blues”] Shelton was very big in the local Democratic party, and from what we can tell was far more popular among the black community than Lyons was. While the Democrats were still the less popular of the two major parties among black people in the area, some were starting to feel like the Republicans talked a good game but were doing very little to actually help black people, and were considering taking their votes elsewhere. He was also a pimp who seems to have had a better reputation than most among the sex workers who worked for him, though like almost everything in this story it’s difficult to know for certain more than a hundred and twenty years later. When he walked into the bar, he was wearing mirror-toed shoes, a velvet waistcoat, an embroidered shirt, and gold rings, and carrying an ebony cane with a gold top. He had a slightly crossed left eye, and scars on his face. And he was wearing a white Stetson. Lee asked the crowd, “Who’s treating?” and they pointed to Lyons. There was allegedly some bad blood between Lyons and Shelton, as Lyons’ step-brother had murdered Shelton’s friend a couple of years earlier, in the Bridgewater Saloon. But nonetheless, the two men were, according to the bartenders working there, who had known both men for decades, good friends, and they were apparently drinking and laughing together for a while, until they started talking about politics. They started slapping at each other’s hats, apparently playfully. Then Shelton grabbed Lyons’ hat and broke the rim, so Lyons then snatched Shelton’s hat off his head. Shelton asked for his hat back, and Lyons said he wanted six bits — seventy-five cents — for a new hat. Shelton replied that you could buy a box of those hats for six bits, and he wasn’t going to give Lyons any money. Lyons refused to hand the hat back until Shelton gave him the money, and Shelton pulled out his gun, and told Lyons to give him the hat. Lyons refused, and Shelton hit him on the head with the gun. He then threatened to kill Lyons if he didn’t hand the hat over. Lyons pulled out the knife his friend had given him, and said “You cock-eyed son of a bitch, I’m going to *make* you kill me” and came at Shelton, who shot Lyons. Lyons staggered and clutched on to the bar, and dropped the hat. Shelton addressed Lyons using a word I am not going to say, and said “I told you to give me my hat”, picked it up, and walked out. Lyons died of his wounds a few hours later. [Excerpt: Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians, “Stack O’ Lee Blues”] Shelton was arrested, and let go on four thousand dollars bail — that’s something like a hundred and twenty thousand in today’s money, to give you some idea, though by the time we go that far back comparisons of the value of money become fairly meaningless. Shelton hired himself the best possible lawyer — a man named Nat Dryden, who was an alcoholic and opium addict, but was also considered a brilliant trial lawyer. Dryden had been the first lawyer in the whole of Missouri to be able to get a conviction for a white man murdering a black man. Shelton was still at risk, though, simply because of the power of Henry Bridgewater in local politics — a mob of hundreds of people swamped the inquest trying to get to Shelton, and the police had to draw their weapons before they would disperse. But something happened between Shelton’s arrest and the trial that meant that Bridgewater’s political power waned somewhat. Shelton was arraigned by Judge David Murphy, who was regarded by most black people in the city as on their side, primarily because he was so against police brutality that when a black man shot a policeman, claiming self defence because the policeman was beating him up at the time, Murphy let the man off. Not only that, when a mob of policemen attacked the defendant outside the court in retribution, Murphy had them jailed. This made him popular among black people, but less so among whites. [Excerpt: Frank Westphal and his Orchestra, “Stack O’Lee Blues”] The 1896 Republican National Convention was held in St. Louis, and one of the reasons it was chosen was that the white restaurants had promised the party that if they held the convention there, they would allow black people into the restaurants, so the black caucus within the party approved of the idea. But when the convention actually happened, the restaurants changed their minds, and the party did nothing. This infuriated many black delegates to the convention, who had seen for years how the system of backhanders and patronage on which American politics ran never got so far as to give anything to black people, who were expected just to vote for the Republicans. James Milton Turner, one of the leaders of the radical faction of the Republicans, and the first ever black US ambassador, who was a Missouri local and one of the most influential black politicians in the state, loudly denounced the Republican party for the way it was treating black voters. Shortly afterwards, the party had its local convention. Judge Murphy was coming up for reelection, and the black delegates voted for him to be the Republican nominee again. The white delegates, on the other hand, voted against him. This was the last straw. In 1896, ninety percent of black voters in Missouri voted Democrat, for the first time. Shelton’s faction was now in the ascendant. Because Murphy wasn’t reselected, Shelton’s trial wasn’t held by him, but Nat Dryden did an excellent job in front of the new judge, arguing that Shelton had been acting in self-defence, because Lyons had pulled out a knife. There was a hung jury, and it went to a retrial. Sadly for Shelton, though, Dryden wasn’t going to be representing him in the second trial. Dryden had hidden his alcoholism from his wife, and she had offered him a glass of sherry. That had triggered a relapse, he’d gone on a binge, and died. At his next trial, in late 1897, Shelton was convicted, and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison — presumably the influence of his political friends stopped him from getting the death penalty, just as it got him paroled twelve years later. Two years after that, though, Shelton was arrested again, for assault and robbery, and this time he died in prison. But even before his trial — just before Dryden’s death, in fact — a song called “Stack-A-Lee” was mentioned in the papers as being played by a ragtime pianist in Kansas City. The story gets a bit hazy here, but we know that Shelton was friends with the ragtime pianist Tom Turpin. Ragtime had become popular in the US as a result of Scott Joplin’s performance at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair — the same fair, incidentally, that introduced the belly dancers known as “Little Egypt” who we talked about in the episode on the Coasters a few weeks back. But a year before that, Turpin, who was a friend of Joplin’s, had written “Harlem Rag”, which was published in 1897, and became the first ragtime tune written by a black man to be published: [Excerpt: Ragtime Dorian Henry, “Harlem Rag”] Turpin was another big man in St. Louis politics, and he was one of those who signed petitions for Shelton’s release. While we can’t know for sure, it seems likely that the earliest, ragtime, versions of the “Stagger Lee” song were written by Turpin. It’s been suggested that he based the song on “Bully of the Town”, a popular song written two years earlier, and itself very loosely based on a real murder case from New Orleans. That song was popularised by May Irwin, in a play which is also notable for having a love scene filmed by Edison in 1897, making it possibly the first ever love scene to be filmed. Irwin recorded her version in 1909, but she uses a racial slur, over and over again, which I am not going to allow on this podcast, so here’s a 1920s version by Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers: [Excerpt: Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers, “Bully of the Town”] That song, in its original versions, is about someone who goes out and kills a bully — in the same sense that Billy Lyons was a bully — and so becomes the biggest bully himself. It’s easy to see how Turpin could take that basic framework and add in some details about how his friend had done the same thing, and turn it into a new song. By 1910, the song about Stack Lee had spread all across the country. The folklorist and song collector John Lomax collected a version that year that went “Twas a Christmas morning/The hour was about ten/When Stagalee shot Billy Lyons/And landed in the Jefferson pen/O lordy, poor Stagalee”. In 1924, two white songwriters copyrighted a version of it, called “Stack O’Lee Blues”, and we’ve heard instrumental versions of that, from 1923 and 24, earlier in this episode — that’s what those instrumental breaks were. Lovie Austin recorded a song called “Skeg-A-Lee Blues” in 1924, but that bears little lyrical resemblance to the Stagger Lee we know about: [Excerpt: Ford & Ford, “Skeg-A-Lee Blues”] The first vocal recording of the song that we would now recognise as being Stagger Lee was by Ma Rainey, in 1925. In her version, the melody and some of the words come from “Frankie and Johnny”, another popular song about a real-life murder in St. Louis in the 1890s: [Excerpt: Ma Rainey, “Stack O’Lee Blues”] According to Wikipedia, Louis Armstrong is playing cornet on that song. It doesn’t sound like him to me, and I can’t find any other evidence for that except other sites which get their information from Wikipedia. Sites I trust more say it was Joe Smith, and they also say that Coleman Hawkins and Fletcher Henderson are on the track. By 1927, the song was being recorded in many different variants. Long Cleve Reed and Little Harvey Hull recorded a version that clearly owes something to “the Bully of the Town”: [Excerpt: Long Cleve Reed and Little Henry Hull — Down Home Boys, “Original Stack O’Lee Blues”] And in possibly the most famous early version, Mississippi John Hurt asks why the police can’t arrest that bad man Stagger Lee: [Excerpt: Mississippi John Hurt, “Stack O’Lee (1928 version)”] By this point, all connection with the real Lee Shelton had been lost, and it wouldn’t be until the early nineties that the writer Cecil Brown would finally identify Shelton as the subject of the song. During the thirties and forties, the song came to be recorded by all sorts of musicians, almost all of them either folk musicians like Woody Guthrie, blues musicians like Ivory Joe Hunter, or field recordings, like the singer known as “Bama” who recorded this for the Lomaxes: [Excerpt: Bama, “Stackerlee”] None of these recorded versions was a major hit, but the song became hugely well known, particularly among black musicians around Louisiana. It was a song in everyone’s repertoire, and every version of the song followed the same basic structure to start with — Stagger Lee told Billy Lyons he was going to kill him over a hat that had been lost in a game of craps, Billy begged for his life, saying he had a wife and children, and Stagger Lee killed him anyway. Often the bullet would pass right through Billy and break the bartender’s glass. From there, the story might change — in some versions, Lee would go free — sometimes because they couldn’t catch him and sometimes because crowds of women implored the judge to let him off. In other versions, he would be locked up in jail, and in yet other versions he would be sentenced to death. Sometimes he would survive execution through magical powers, sometimes he would be killed, and crowds of women would mourn him, all dressed in red. In the versions where he was killed, he would often descend to Hell, where he would usurp the Devil, because the Devil wasn’t as bad as Stagger Lee. There were so many versions of this song that the New Orleans pianist Doctor John was, according to some things I’ve read, able to play “Stagger Lee” for three hours straight without repeating a verse. Very few of these recordings had any commercial success, but one that did was a 1950 New Orleans version of the song, performed by “Archibald and His Orchestra”: [Excerpt: Archibald and His Orchestra, “Stack A’Lee”] That version of the song was the longest ever recorded up to that point, and took up both sides of a seventy-eight record. It was released on Imperial Records, the same label that Fats Domino was on, in 1950, and was recorded at Cosimo Matassa’s studio. It went top ten on the Billboard R&B charts, and was Archibald’s only hit. That’s the version that, eight years later, inspired Lloyd Price to record this: [Excerpt: Lloyd Price, “Stagger Lee”] That became a massive, massive hit. It went to number one on both the Hot One Hundred and the R&B charts — which incidentally makes Lloyd Price the earliest solo artist to have a number one hit on the Hot One Hundred and still be alive today. Price’s career was revitalised — and “Stagger Lee” was brought properly into the mainstream of American culture. Over the next few decades, the song — in versions usually based on Price’s — became a standard among white rock musicians. Indeed, it seems to have been recorded by some of the whitest people in music history, like Huey Lewis and the News: [Excerpt: Huey Lewis and the News, “Stagger Lee”] Mike Love of the Beach Boys: [Excerpt: Mike Love, “Stagger Lee”] and Neil Diamond: [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, “Stagger Lee”] But while the song had hit the white mainstream, the myth of Stagger Lee had an altogether different power among the black community. You see, up to this point all we’ve been able to look at are versions of the song that have seen commercial release, and they all represent what was acceptable to be sold in shops at the time. But as you may have guessed from the stuff about the Devil I mentioned earlier, Stagger Lee had become a folkloric figure of tremendous importance among many black Americans. He represented the bad man who would never respect any authority — a trickster figure, but one who was violent as well. He represented the angry black man, but a sort of righteous anger, even if that anger was chaotic. Any black man who was not respected by white society would be thought of as a Stagger Lee figure, at least by some — I’ve seen the label applied to everyone from O.J. Simpson to Malcolm X. Bobby Seale, the leader of the Black Panther Party, named his son Malik Nkrumah Stagolee Seale, and was often known to recite a version of “Stagger Lee” at parties. In an interview, later, Seale said “Now I transformed Stagolee, more or less in my own mind, into brothers standing on the block and all of the illegitimate activity. In effect, they were the lumpen proletariat in a high-tech social order, different from how ‘lumpen’ had been described historically. My point is this; that Malcolm X at one time was an illegitimate hustler. Later in life, Malcolm X grows to have the most profound political consciousness as far as I’m concerned. To me, this brother was really getting ready to move. So symbolically, at one time he was Stagolee.” The version of Stagger Lee that Seale knew is the one that came from something called “toasts”. Toasting is a form of informal storytelling in black American culture, usually rhyming, and usually using language and talking about subjects that would often be considered obscene. Toasting is now generally considered one of the precursors of rapping, and the style and subject matter are often very similar. Many of the stories told in toasts are very well known, including the story of the Signifying Monkey (which has been told in bowdlerised forms in many blues songs, including Chuck Berry’s “Jo Jo Gunne”), and the story of Shine, the black cook on the Titanic, who swims for safety and refuses to help the Captain’s daughter even after she offers sex in return for his help. Shine outswims the sharks who try to eat him, and arrives back on land before anyone there even knew the ship was sinking. Shine is, of course, another Stagger Lee style figure. These toasts remained largely unknown outside of the less respectable parts of the black community, until the scholar Bruce Jackson published his seminal book “Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me: African-American Poetry from Oral Tradition”, whose title is taken from a version of the story of Shine and the Titanic. Jackson’s field recordings, mostly recorded in prisons, have more recently been released on CD, though without the names of the performers attached. Here’s the version of Stagger Lee he collected — there will be several beeps in this, and the next few recordings, if you’re listening to the regular version of this podcast: [Excerpt: Unknown field recording, “Stagger Lee”] After Jackson’s book, but well before the recordings came out, Johnny Otis preserved many of these toasts in musical form on his Snatch and the Poontangs album, including “The Great Stack-A-Lee”, which clearly has the same sources as the version Jackson recorded: [Excerpt: Snatch and the Poontangs, “The Great Stack-A-Lee”] That version was used as the basis for the most well-known recentish version of the song, the 1995 version by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: [Excerpt: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “Stagger Lee”] Cave has later said in interviews that they improvised the music and used the lyrics from Jackson’s book, but the melody is very, very, close to the Johnny Otis version. And there’s more evidence of Cave basing his version on the Johnny Otis track. There’s this line: [Excerpt: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “Stagger Lee”] That’s not in the versions of the toast in Jackson’s book, but it *is* in a different song on the Snatch and the Poontangs album, “Two-Time Slim”: [Excerpt: Snatch and the Poontangs, “Two-Time Slim”] This is the Stagger Lee of legend, the Stagger Lee who is the narrator of James Baldwin’s great poem “Stagolee Wonders”, a damning indictment of racist society: [Excerpt: James Baldwin, reading an excerpt from “Stagolee Wonders” on “Poems for a Listener”,] Baldwin’s view of Stagger Lee was, to quote from the interview from which that reading is also excerpted, “a black folk hero, a singer essentially, who actually truly comes out of the auction block, by way of the cotton field, into the beginning of the black church. And Stagger Lee’s roots are there, and Stagger Lee’s often been a preacher. He’s one who conveys the real history.” It’s a far cry from one pimp murdering another on Christmas Day 1895. And it’s a mythos that almost everyone listening to Lloyd Price’s hit version will have known nothing of. As a result of “Stagger Lee”, Lloyd Price went on to have a successful career, scoring several more hits in 1959 and 1960, including the song for which he’s now best known, “Personality”: [Excerpt: Lloyd Price, “Personality”] Price also moved into other areas, including boxing promotion — he was the person who got Don King, another figure who has often been compared to Stagger Lee, the chance to work with Mohammed Ali, and he later helped King promote the famous “Rumble in the Jungle” fight. Lloyd Price is eighty-seven years old, now, and released his most recent album in 2016. He still tours — indeed, his most recent live show was earlier this month, just before the current coronavirus outbreak meant live shows had to stop. He opened his show, as he always does, with “Stagger Lee”, and I hope that when we start having live shows again, he will continue to do so for a long, long time.

Can Do with Bill Duncliffe
S4 E10 - Big Score with Bruce Jackson

Can Do with Bill Duncliffe

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 28, 2020 5:23


Bruce Jackson, who runs the Fair Hill Equine Therapy Center tells us about the first Big Score for the Center, when one of their graduates took down a Grade I event for the first time.

Been All Around This World
S2 E4 - "Making It In Hell": Parchman Farm, 1933–1969

Been All Around This World

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 7, 2020


Brutality and inhumanity were central to the Southern state prison farms, in their theory and their practice, and of them all, the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman Farm was the most brutal and inhuman. Both John A. and Alan Lomax made repeated visits to Parchman, recording — under the eye of the disinterested white captains, sergeants, and warden, and the guns of the "trusty" prisoner-guards — a body of American song unmatched in its depth, dignity, and power. 

Folklorist and prison documentarian Bruce Jackson once said that the group work songs sung by the black inmates of the Southern penitentiary farms were means of "making it in Hell." Alan Lomax, writing in 1947, said that: "In the pen itself, we saw that the songs, quite literally kept the men alive and normal.... These songs, coming out of the filthy darkness of the pen, touched with exquisite musicality, are a testimony to the love of truth and beauty which is a universal human trait." In this episode, spurred by the ongoing horrors being reported in the Mississippi Department of Corrections in general and at Parchman in particular, we listen back over the four decades of recordings made by the four white folklorists (the Lomaxes, Herbert Halpert, and William Ferris) who took the trouble to visit the place and document the singing of its prisoners: work songs for clearing ground, felling trees, picking cotton, or breaking rocks, as well as solo field hollers, spirituals, and blues.No one can mourn the passing of this song tradition and the system of black disenfranchisement and white supremacy that made it necessary to its singers. But, despite the 1971 class-auction lawsuit that forced federal reorganization of Parchman due to its epidemic use of "cruel and unusual punishment," it's only differently awful in 2020. In his harrowing "Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice," Michael Oshinsky provides a 1975 quote from a convict named Horace Carter, who’d been at Parchman for fifty years. What was missing in the “new” Parchman, Mr. Carter said, was “the feeling that work counted for something… awful bad as it was in most camps, that kept us tired and kept us together and made me feel better. I’m not looking to go backwards. I know the troubles at old Parchman better than any man alive. I’m 73 years old. But I look around today and see a place that makes me sad.”  

This episode was completed before the announcement that William Barr's Justice Department will open a civil rights investigation into conditions at Parchman. It's hard to imagine an administration with less sympathy for incarcerated people of color, but who knows, maybe, at last, Parchman Farm will be shuttered for good. 

“These songs are a vivid reminder of a system of social control and forced labor that has endured in the South for centuries, and I do not believe that the pattern of Southern life can be fundamentally reshaped until what lies behind these roaring, ironic choruses is understood.” —Alan Lomax, 1958For streaming audio of all of Alan Lomax's 1947, 1948, and 1959 Parchman Farm recordings, visit research.culturalequity.org.



PLAYLIST:[Bed music:] Unidentified ensemble, including Lonnie Robertson, guitar, and possibly "Black Eagle," cornet. Camp 1, April 1936. *Frank Devine and unidentified man: In the Bye and Bye. Unidentified camp, August 1933. *Bowlegs (real name unknown): Drink My Morning Tea. Camp 12, August 1933. *Unidentified men: He Never Said A Mumblin' Word. Unidentified camp, August 1933. *M.B. Barnes, Louella Dade, Passion Buckner, Alberta Turner, Bertha Riley, Lily Mallard, Christine Shannon, and Josephine Douglas: Oh Freedom. Women's camp, April 1936.*Big Charlie Butler: Diamond Joe. Unidentified camp, March 1937. [Bed music:] John Dudley: Cool Drink of Water Blues. Dairy camp, October 1959. 

*Mattie May Thomas: Workhouse Blues. Women's camp, May 1939.*"22" (Benny Will Richardson) and group: It Makes A Long Time Man Feel Bad. Camp B, November or December 1947.

*Ervin Webb and group: I'm Goin' Home. Dairy camp, October 1959. *Johnny Lee Moore, Henry Mason, Ed Lewis and James Carter: Tom Devil. Camp B, October 1959.[Bed music:] James Carter and group: Poor Lazarus. Camp B, October 1959. *Unidentified prisoners: Water Boy Drowned In the Mobile Bay. Unidentified camp, August 1968. *Heuston Earms: Ain't Been Able to Get Home No More / interview. Camp B, October 1959.

Been All Around This World
11 - "Making It In Hell": Parchman Farm, 1933–1969

Been All Around This World

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 7, 2020


Brutality and inhumanity were central to the Southern state prison farms, in their theory and their practice, and of them all, the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman Farm was the most brutal and inhuman. Both John A. and Alan Lomax made repeated visits to Parchman, recording — under the eye of the disinterested white captains, sergeants, and warden, and the guns of the "trusty" prisoner-guards — a body of American song unmatched in its depth, dignity, and power. Folklorist and prison documentarian Bruce Jackson once said that the group work songs sung by the black inmates of the Southern penitentiary farms were means of "making it in Hell." Alan Lomax, writing in 1947, said that: "In the pen itself, we saw that the songs, quite literally kept the men alive and normal.... These songs, coming out of the filthy darkness of the pen, touched with exquisite musicality, are a testimony to the love of truth and beauty which is a universal human trait." In this episode, spurred by the ongoing horrors being reported in the Mississippi Department of Corrections in general and at Parchman in particular, we listen back over the four decades of recordings made by the four white folklorists (the Lomaxes, Herbert Halpert, and William Ferris) who took the trouble to visit the place and document the singing of its prisoners: work songs for clearing ground, felling trees, picking cotton, or breaking rocks, as well as solo field hollers, spirituals, and blues.No one can mourn the passing of this song tradition and the system of black disenfranchisement and white supremacy that made it necessary to its singers. But, despite the 1971 class-auction lawsuit that forced federal reorganization of Parchman due to its epidemic use of "cruel and unusual punishment," it's only differently awful in 2020. In his harrowing "Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice," Michael Oshinsky provides a 1975 quote from a convict named Horace Carter, who'd been at Parchman for fifty years. What was missing in the “new” Parchman, Mr. Carter said, was “the feeling that work counted for something… awful bad as it was in most camps, that kept us tired and kept us together and made me feel better. I'm not looking to go backwards. I know the troubles at old Parchman better than any man alive. I'm 73 years old. But I look around today and see a place that makes me sad.” This episode was completed before the announcement that William Barr's Justice Department will open a civil rights investigation into conditions at Parchman. It's hard to imagine an administration with less sympathy for incarcerated people of color, but who knows, maybe, at last, Parchman Farm will be shuttered for good. “These songs are a vivid reminder of a system of social control and forced labor that has endured in the South for centuries, and I do not believe that the pattern of Southern life can be fundamentally reshaped until what lies behind these roaring, ironic choruses is understood.” —Alan Lomax, 1958For streaming audio of all of Alan Lomax's 1947, 1948, and 1959 Parchman Farm recordings, visit archive.culturalequity.org.PLAYLIST:[Bed music:] Unidentified ensemble, including Lonnie Robertson, guitar, and possibly "Black Eagle," cornet. Camp 1, April 1936. *Frank Devine and unidentified man: In the Bye and Bye. Unidentified camp, August 1933. *Bowlegs (real name unknown): Drink My Morning Tea. Camp 12, August 1933. *Unidentified men: He Never Said A Mumblin' Word. Unidentified camp, August 1933. *M.B. Barnes, Louella Dade, Passion Buckner, Alberta Turner, Bertha Riley, Lily Mallard, Christine Shannon, and Josephine Douglas: Oh Freedom. Women's camp, April 1936.*Big Charlie Butler: Diamond Joe. Unidentified camp, March 1937.[Bed music:] John Dudley: Cool Drink of Water Blues. Dairy camp, October 1959. *Mattie May Thomas: Workhouse Blues. Women's camp, May 1939.*"22" (Benny Will Richardson) and group: It Makes A Long Time Man Feel Bad. Camp B, November or December 1947. *Ervin Webb and group: I'm Goin' Home. Dairy camp, October 1959. *Johnny Lee Moore, Henry Mason, Ed Lewis and James Carter: Tom Devil. Camp B, October 1959.[Bed music:] James Carter and group: Poor Lazarus. Camp B, October 1959. *Unidentified prisoners: Water Boy Drowned In the Mobile Bay. Unidentified camp, August 1968. *Heuston Earms: Ain't Been Able to Get Home No More / interview. Camp B, October 1959.

NASPA Leadership Podcast
Episode 65 - Charlie Life And Leadership Academy In Partnership With ODK

NASPA Leadership Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 6, 2020 40:59


Episode 65 is brought to you in partnership with Omicron Delta Kappa. We’re going to be learning about the Charlie Life and Leadership Academy, an online tool that aims to build an emerging pipeline of 21st Century leaders who thrive individually, and in relationships, teams, organizations, and communities throughout the U.S. and the world. Our guest is the CEO of the Charlie Academy, Dr. Bruce Jackson. Executive Director C. Charles Jackson Foundation, CEO Charlie Academy/Institute of Applied Human Excellence: As a competitive athlete, Bruce has dedicated his career to the development of individuals, teams, organizations, and communities that seek to maximize influence, leadership, and change. 00:00 Intro 01:30 Foundations of the Charlie Academy 5:00 How to use the website 8:15 Leadership patterns across campuses and how Charlie Academy can help 18:00 The paradox of servant leadership and expert mindset 20:15 Leadership inspirations 29:30 How to get involved with Charlie Academy 40:00 Outro Email: bruce@charlieacademy.org Facebook: www.facebook.com/SALead; www.facebook.com/OmicronDeltaKappa Twitter: @naspaslpkc @johnmarkday @ODK1914 Instagram: NASPA_SLPKC; ODK_HQ Websites: www.charlieacademy.org

I AM A SPARTAN! OCR PODCAST
EPISODE 75 BRUCE JACKSON SPARTAN WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP!

I AM A SPARTAN! OCR PODCAST

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 1, 2019 62:35


On this episode my buddy Bruce Jackson tells us about the suffer fest that took place at Lake Tahoe for the Spartan World Championship!!

I AM A SPARTAN! OCR PODCAST
EPISODE 75 BRUCE JACKSON SPARTAN WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP!

I AM A SPARTAN! OCR PODCAST

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 1, 2019 62:35


On this episode my buddy Bruce Jackson tells us about the suffer fest that took place at Lake Tahoe for the Spartan World Championship!!

Aussie Wildlife Show
Bruce Jackson | Wildlife Conservationist

Aussie Wildlife Show

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 30, 2019 53:28


Bruce Jackson has over 30 years experience working with, and protecting Australian endangered animals such as numbats, bilbies, bettongs, pygmy possums, quolls, malleefowl and much more. Bruce worked alongside Dr John Walmsley to create 'Earth Sanctuaries', feral free havens for endangered species to thrive. Bruce currently consults privately on various conservation projects, works with Faunature and sits on the board for FAME, the Foundation for Australia's Most Endangered Species.   

Glitter & Doom
New Play Pays Homage to “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons”

Glitter & Doom

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 27, 2019 38:34


In 1965, Elektra Records released an LP called Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons recorded by the American folklorist and ethnographer, Bruce Jackson. This album is the foundation of a play being mounted by The Wooster Group at St. Ann's Warehouse. "The B-Side" opens on March 1, 2019, and to tell us more we're joined in the studio by director Kate Valk and Eric Berryman, main performer and conceiver of the project. And then, hear from Bruce Jackson himself.

American Rambler with Colin Woodward
Episode 114: Bruce Jackson Redux

American Rambler with Colin Woodward

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 24, 2018 67:38


Colin has New York author, photographer, filmmaker, folklorist, and English professor Bruce Jackson on for a second talk. This time, the conversation covers everything from prison punks to Star Wars and the power of myth. Bruce discusses his literary influences (especially Faulkner) and how his background in literature has informed his teaching of film and television (as in his past college course on Breaking Bad). Bruce also examines the rarity of successful academic couples, close shaves on death row, and his friendship with French philosopher Michel Foucault.

American Rambler with Colin Woodward
Episode 106: Bruce Jackson

American Rambler with Colin Woodward

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 27, 2018 86:01


Bruce Jackson has a had a long, varied, and brilliant career as a teacher, photographer, folklorist, writer, and filmmaker. Colin first encountered his work while researching the prisons in Arkansas. Bruce visited prisons in the 1960s and 70s, trips that produced photos for his books Killing Time, Cummins Wide, and Inside the Wire. Bruce was born in New York City, joined the Marines as the Korean War was ending, and studied in New Jersey and Indiana before winding up in the English Department at the University of Buffalo, where he still teaches. He also tried his hand at engineering and took the law exam before winning a Guggenheim and a fellowship from Harvard, both of which allowed him to travel to Arkansas to do his prison research.     During his career, Bruce has met everybody from Johnny Cash to Michel Foucault. Recently, he's worked with the Wooster Group, which has been home to actors as varied as Spalding Gray and Willem Dafoe. As he tells Colin, he calls himself "lucky." Thankfully, his somewhat accidental creative process has produced original and revealing work. 

Once Upon A Crime | True Crime
Episode 098: Written in Blood: Jack Abbott and Issei Sagawa

Once Upon A Crime | True Crime

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 6, 2018 43:10


In this series I detail crimes committed by authors or writers.  First up, two authors who became literary celebrities despite their criminal history....or even because of it.  #JackHenryAbbott #IsseiSagawa #NormanMailer #GaryGilmore #TheExecutionersSong #Japan #cannibalism  Several resources were used in the research for this episode including:  Sewell Chan, The New York Times, "Mailer and the Murderer," Nov 12, 2007.  Bruce Jackson, Buffalo Report, "Jack Henry Abbott, 58," Mar 1 2002.  M.A. Farber, The New York Times, "Freedom for Convict-Author: Complex and Conflicting Tale," 1981.  Katherine Ramsland, CrimeLibrary.com, "The Cannibal Celebrity: Issei Sagawa,".  Julian Ryall, Post Magazine, "Poetic Justice: is the Japanese cannibal finally paying a price?," Dec 7, 2013.  Social Media Links: www.instagram.com/onceuponacrimepod www.facebook.com/onceuponacrimepod www.patreon.com/onceuponacrime www.twitter.com/uponacrime  

The Create Your Own Life Show
311: Creation, Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition | Loren Daniels

The Create Your Own Life Show

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 20, 2017 34:19


Loren Daniels is a composer/lyricist, and has written music for a variety of settings.  Many of his original pieces are performed by the Loren Daniels Trio.  He has composed several highly successful musicals for elementary school students.  Loren collaborated with choreographers Joanne Koob and Susan Cherniak and composed new music for a series of modern dance performances that were reviewed in the New York Times.  Loren composed and arranged music for two original theatrical productions, “The Man Was King” by Lottie Porch and “A Watch on King” by Veona Thomas.  A suite of his choral pieces based on phrases from the Declaration of Independence recently had its premiere performance and the Teaneck Community Chorus has commissioned and performed several of his choral pieces including, “A Place At The Table” and “I Like Jazz”.  Loren has also composed, performed and recorded original soundtrack music which has been used on the Today Show and other NBC programs. Loren's professional experience as a jazz pianist/vocalist spans over 25 years.  He has performed with such notable musicians as Calvin Hill, Craig Harris, Milt Jackson, Rufus Reid, Makonda (Ken) McIntyre, Dan Willis, Warren Smith, Richard Harper, Fred Hendrix, Jim DeAngelis, David Demsey, Jimmy Owens, Andrei Strobert, Billy White, Jeff Sheloff, Alonzo Gardner, Reggie Pittman, Tim Horner, Eliot Zigmund, Lauren Hooker, Bradford Hayes, Mark Ivan Gross, David Robinson, Greg Searvance, Bruce Jackson, Bill Moring, Mike Richmond, Takashi Otsuka, Jackie Jones, Warren Batiste, Martin Wind, Joris Teepe, Joe Sharone, Dave Hessel, Dave Brown and Johnny Maestro.

The Create Your Own Life Show
311: Creation, Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition | Loren Daniels

The Create Your Own Life Show

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 20, 2017 34:19


Loren Daniels is a composer/lyricist, and has written music for a variety of settings.  Many of his original pieces are performed by the Loren Daniels Trio.  He has composed several highly successful musicals for elementary school students.  Loren collaborated with choreographers Joanne Koob and Susan Cherniak and composed new music for a series of modern dance performances that were reviewed in the New York Times.  Loren composed and arranged music for two original theatrical productions, “The Man Was King” by Lottie Porch and “A Watch on King” by Veona Thomas.  A suite of his choral pieces based on phrases from the Declaration of Independence recently had its premiere performance and the Teaneck Community Chorus has commissioned and performed several of his choral pieces including, “A Place At The Table” and “I Like Jazz”.  Loren has also composed, performed and recorded original soundtrack music which has been used on the Today Show and other NBC programs. Loren's professional experience as a jazz pianist/vocalist spans over 25 years.  He has performed with such notable musicians as Calvin Hill, Craig Harris, Milt Jackson, Rufus Reid, Makonda (Ken) McIntyre, Dan Willis, Warren Smith, Richard Harper, Fred Hendrix, Jim DeAngelis, David Demsey, Jimmy Owens, Andrei Strobert, Billy White, Jeff Sheloff, Alonzo Gardner, Reggie Pittman, Tim Horner, Eliot Zigmund, Lauren Hooker, Bradford Hayes, Mark Ivan Gross, David Robinson, Greg Searvance, Bruce Jackson, Bill Moring, Mike Richmond, Takashi Otsuka, Jackie Jones, Warren Batiste, Martin Wind, Joris Teepe, Joe Sharone, Dave Hessel, Dave Brown and Johnny Maestro.

Mobile Presence
New Ways To Connect With Consumers Around Content And Events They Love

Mobile Presence

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 15, 2016 32:02


Our hosts, Peggy Anne Salz and Shahab Zargari, catch up with Bruce Jackson -- the Chief Technology Officer of Myriad Group and the brains behind Versy, a new kind of interest-based social networking platform. We discuss where and how can marketers and events organizers get involved, and use the platform to address their audience in an environment where they can contribute to the natural flow of "conversation," not crash the party. We also explore Versy's key learnings and observations about Millennials, and learn Bruce's top tips for engaging with "Tribes" in a meaningful way.

Irish and Celtic Music Podcast
Irish & Celtic Music #231

Irish and Celtic Music Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 5, 2015 61:35


It's a Thursday in November. That means it's time for another great episode of Irish & Celtic music from Breabach, Bret Blackshear, Linda Relph/David Lovrien/Larry Fowler/Jed Marum, Beyond the Pale, George Papavgeris, Kennedy's Kitchen, Celia Ramsay, Faerydae, Patrick Clifford, Sligo Rags, An Triur, Paisley Close, Searson, Ockham's Razor, Emily Kellam. If you enjoy this podcast, then please rate the show on iTunes or your favorite podcatcher. Then subscribe to our Celtic Music Magazine. This is our free newsletter and your guide to the latest Celtic music and podcast news. Subscribe today to download 34 Celtic MP3s for free. Remember to support the artists who support this podcast: buy their CDs, download their MP3s, see their shows, and drop them an email to let them know you heard them on the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast. And remember to Vote in the Celtic Top 20. Your active voting will help define the Top 20 songs of 2015 at the end of the year.   Today's show is brought to you by Celtic Invasion Vacations Do you love Celtic music? Want to see the Celtic nations? Want to learn the truth about King Arthur and the Holy Grail? Join your podcast host, Marc Gunn, in 2016 as I lead a Celtic Invasion of Cornwall. We will explore Celtic culture and Arthurian legends. There’s still room available and you can save money if you sign up before the end of October 2015. Subscribe to the mailing list and join the invasion at CelticInvasion.com   Notes: * Thanks to the Patrons of the Podcast. Your kind and generous support keeps this show running every week. Become a Patron. Special thanks to our newest Patrons: Stuart and John * I think I fixed the RSS feed problem. I should know after this show goes live. But if your podcatcher is not downloading the latest show, please email me music@celticmusicpodcast.com. Let me know what app you are using. I'll help you get it back up and downloading. * My new band, Kilted Kings, are performing this weekend at the Louisiana Renaissance Festival. Kilted Kings feature me on autoharp and vocals and Randy Wothke of The Rogues on percussion. We have three shows daily. * I also released my second annual Celtic Halloween Music Special on YouTube. You can watch the performance for free on my website. * Find out about Jed Marum's "Calla's Waltz" recording project. * Join the Irish & Celtic Music Club on Facebook. * I WANT YOUR FEEDBACK: Email a written or audio comment at celticmusicpodcast.com to post a comment in the shownotes. What are you doing today while listening to the podcast? Send me pictures of what you're doing or picture of one of your travels to Ireland or Scotland.  This week: Bruce Jackson in El Salvador, John Pearson in Elmhurst, IL, and Jamie Eddy, a bagpiper from Alberta, Canada. Remember too, when you buy through our affiliates at Amazon or iTunes, you support the artists AND the podcast.   This Week in Celtic Music 0:26 - "The Full Booner" by Breabach from The Big Spree 5:24 - "The White Cockade/Slipped Disc Reel" by Bret Blackshear from Fingers, Frets, and Fire 7:55 - "The South Wind" by Linda Relph/David Lovrien/Larry Fowler/Jed Marum from The South Wind 12:33 - "Fred Finn's/Father Newman's/Frank's Reel" by Beyond the Pale from Queen of Skye 16:18 - "Circles in the Air" by George Papavgeris from Ordinary Heroes 21:13 - "The Barr of Chocolate/The Smashed Potatoes" by Kennedy's Kitchen from The Birds Upon the Trees 26:42 - Celtic Music News 27:38 - "Ned of the Hill" by Celia Ramsay from Songs of My Father's People 31:26 - "The Monighan/The Butterfly/Cooley's Reel" by Faerydae from Changeling 36:08 - "The Shores of Botany Bay" by Patrick Clifford from American Wake 39:05 - "Gallowglass Lament" by Sligo Rags from Roll Me Down the Mountain 41:21 - Celtic Feedback 44:33 - "Blue Car" by An Triur from Three People 47:41 - "Green Island" by Paisley Close from All On A Day 51:35 - "Footstomp" by Searson from Live 53:39 - "The Auld Triangle" by Ockham's Razor from Job's Comforter 57:51 - "Come & Be Welcome" by Emily Kellam from Waves on the Shore The Irish & Celtic Music Podcast was produced by Marc Gunn, The Celtfather. To subscribe, go to iTunes or to our website where you can become a Patron of the Podcast for as little as $1 per episode. You can post feedback in the shownotes or email me music@celticmusicpodcast.com.

Live on Purpose Radio
Finding Your Flow

Live on Purpose Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 18, 2014 31:35


In this episode of Live on Purpose Radio, Dr. Paul is joined by Dr. Bruce Jackson. Join in on the conversation as Dr. Paul and Dr. Jackson discuss the key to finding and reaching your purpose. Gain...

Diffusion Science radio
Gigabit wires and 3D Printers

Diffusion Science radio

Play Episode Listen Later May 28, 2012


In the news: Wikileaks on trial without charges. Fan Ng tells Ian Woolf how his invention makes plain old telephone wires carry gigabit broadband, Bruce Jackson and Dale Nichols from 3D Printer Systems talk with Ian Woolf about hot glue guns on steroids. Produced and presented by Ian Woolf