Podcasts about mohammed ali

Kenny and Mark explore the part that no one sees in the soaring (and strange) anthem from Rebel Heart. Topics include being in an “era”, current slang, mite bites, Mike Tyson Mysteries, Head of the Class, Mohammed Ali, Robin Givens, Jay-Z, Amy Schumer, Chance the Rapper, Save Money, icons and gods as examples, Avicii's cinematic choices, and a deep dive into the endurance and character of Mike Tyson. Plus, Madonna goes to see Big Top Pee Wee! “Good morning Ironic."

In this powerful After Maghrib episode, Sayed Mohammed Ali Rizvi reflects on the life and legacy of Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq — the revered teacher of the founders of the four Sunni madhabs: Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali. Despite his vast influence, why is Imam al-Sadiq nearly absent from Sunni hadith collections like Sahih Bukhari? Was it fear of Shi'a association? Discover the forgotten impact of his teachings on Islamic thought and the stark contrast between famous history and the real truth. A moving tribute to a giant of knowledge who still shapes minds, yet rarely gets his due.

Platon has made over 20 Time magazine covers with his portraits of people like Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, George Clooney, Silvio Berlusconi, Mohammed Ali, Adele and Sinead O'Connor. But he has also photographed people who are the opposite of famous and powerful - and recently published a book called The Defenders: Heroes of the Global Fight for Human Rights - which contains work done over 15 years around the world telling the stories of refugees and other oppressed people. He tells us what makes a true leader, and how the meaning of a photograph can change over time, and depending on who is looking at it. About this episode:  Platon is a World Economic Forum Cultural Leader Transcript:    Related Podcasts: Meet The Leader - Adam Grant: Future leaders won't succeed without this key trait Ballerina Misty Copeland: Unlocking potential and a leader's most ‘vital' role:  

If you were to match up sports all stars - in their prime - against each other, who would win? Lebron James vs Michael Jordan, Mike Tyson vs Mohammed Ali, Serena Williams vs Billie Jean King....who wins? Michael ponders this with an out-of-the-box poll question today at Smerconish.com, based on the talk of President Trump trying to run for a third term as President (currently prohibited under the Constitution, of course): Just for sh*ts and giggles, who would win this race in 2028: Barack Obama vs Donald Trump? Listen here to Michael's take, then vote at Smerconish.com, and please leave a rating and review of this podcast! The Daily Poll Question is a thought-provoking query each day at Smerconish.com on a political, social, or other human interest issue. Entirely non-scientific, it always begins a great conversation. Michael talks about it in this podcast each weekday.

When Chantal Theriault was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson's disease at age 37, two names came to mind — Mohammed Ali and Michael J. Fox. Despite the shocking news, she faced it head-on, relying on specialized care at The Ottawa Hospital and immersing herself in leading-edge clinical trials to help others like her. She's also added in a little bit of humour along the way. (23:51)

When life seems to overwhelm you, how do you pick yourself up, so you can live to fight another day? For Black History Month, we are proud to bring back our 4-part Love Series titled, “Relationships That Matter”. In this week's episode, we are joined by Motivational Entertainer, Kevin Bracy also known as Coach Greatness! Born, raised and educated in Sacramento, California, Kevin joins us to remind us all about the most important relationship we will ever have, the one we have with ourselves. As he takes us through his powerful journey of self-love and discovery, find out his four-step method to “winning the day” no matter what you're going through and how to live your dreams with your eyes wide open! Don't miss his incredible Mohammed Ali tribute at the end! Kevin is the Executive Producer of Greatness Talk- an album of affirmations for youth; Speaking Coach of his online course First Steps for Speakers, and the author of ‘Scared Great: Steer Your Fear Towards Greatness.' Over his 28-year career, Kevin has been privileged to speak to millions of people across America. For the past 12 years he has been actively changing the culture and climate of California school campuses with positive energy and a Greatness State of Mind. Through his story, he encourages those who work in education to keep on keeping on and to remember their why. He infuses the audience with magnetic energy, a great playlist, and deep gratitude for the parts they play in the lives of the young people they encounter. As Sacramento's top educational speaker, character coach, and the voice of KDEE's motivational segment, "Minute To Win It!”, he has made it his mission to “dream globally, but focus locally.” He invests his time with family, his fitness, and mentoring youth for the future. To learn more about Kevin and his work, connect with him on IG @iamkevinbracy.

When you think about pursuing a career, do you also consider how it may impact your community? In this week's episode, we are joined by Mohammed Ali, a graduating senior at Northern Kentucky University. Mohammed is majoring in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, while also serving as an Auto Repair Technician for his own business. Born and raised in Uganda, Mohammed knew at a young age that he wanted to help his family get out of poverty and uplift his community. Find out why this first-generation student founded the first Muslim Student Association (MSA) on his campus and why it is important to be a powerful influence on your campus. Mohammed is currently completing his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at Northern Kentucky University. As a Mechanical Engineer Coop at Cincinnati Automation and a private business owner, he plans to build a career in manufacturing automobiles. Mohammed will be the first in his family to graduate from college and he looks forward to helping his community better understand the use of its resources. He is also a member of TRIO and credits NKU R.O.C.K.S. (Responsibility, Opportunity, Community, Knowledge and Success), an African American Student Initiative signature program for his successful transition from high school into college. To learn more about Mohammed, connect with him on IG @muh_ali_champ or visit him on LinkedIn.

The charity organization HelpingACT, based in Canberra, is running a donation and charity campaign for those in need this Christmas holiday. Volunteers from Pakistani, Indian, Afghan, and Australian backgrounds work together to assist those in need. Key volunteers include coordinator Mohammed Ali, Manar Ahmad, Basil La Brooy, and Sana Sadyar. Their collaboration reflects the multicultural unity in Australia and highlights the role of migrants in volunteering to help others. - کینبرا میں قائیم چیریٹی تنظیم ہیلپنگ اے سی ٹی HelpingACT کرسمس کی ان چھٹیوں میں ضرورت مندوں کے لئے عطیاتی اور خیراتی مہم چلا رہی ہے، اس تنظیم کے رضاکاروں میں دیگر کمیونیٹیز کے افراد کے ساتھ پاکستانی، ہندوستانی، افغانی اور آسٹریلین رضاکار ضرورت مندوں کی مدد کے لیے شانہ بشانہ کام کر رہے ہیں۔اہم رضاکاروں میں معاون کار رضاکار محمد علی ، منار احمد، باسل لا بروئے، اور ثنا سدیار شامل ہیں،جانئے یہ کثیر الثقافتی اشتراک آسٹریلیا میں دوسروں کی رضاکارانہ مدد کرنے میں تارکینِ وطن کے کردار کو کس طرح اجاگر کرتا ہے۔

Lessons from the Trench - Ml Mohammed Ali Desai by Radio Islam

Optimism From The Seerah - Ml Mohammed Ali Desai by Radio Islam

In this episode, Eric sits down with pioneering video artist, performing artist and painter Anthony Ramos. They discuss his background - being raised in Providence, Rhode Island and tracing his ancestor's journey to America from Cape Verde. How he discovered his love for making art at a young age and how his mother and father encouraged his interests. How he cultivated his artistic abilities. How he began his studies as a Political Science Major… to converting to art — studying painting at Southern Illinois University, where he was a graduate assistant to Allan Kaprow and eventually received an M.F.A. from CalArts. Having a video studio in New York. A conscientious objector of the Vietnam war… being jailed for draft evasion… and how all of these experiences have shaped his life. The artists that have inspired him and the many exciting adventures he has had - while traveling widely in Europe, Africa, China and the Middle East during the 1970s and 1980s. Documenting the end of Portugal's colonial rule in Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. They discuss how his work has evolved through the years… being known as “The Grandfather Video" — to his passion for painting which is now his primary medium. Why he left the United States to now — living in the South of France and the exciting projects he has in store..! Guest Bio: Performance and media artist Anthony Ramos was among the earliest video artists to use the medium as a tool for mass media critiques and cultural documentation, and to examine media presentations of "truth." In his powerful but rarely seen video works of the 1970s, Ramos sought to combine art and activism, giving agency to marginalized individuals and communities. In his earliest black-and-white video pieces, Ramos engaged in forceful, direct performances for the camera, often using physical endurance and actions to confront political issues.Ramos has traveled widely in Europe, Africa, China and the Middle East. He videotaped the end of Portugal's colonial rule of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau, Teheran during the 1980 hostage crisis, and Beijing just prior to the Tiananmen Square massacre. Ramos produced a number of video works that critique the media through deconstruction and appropriation, and explore the relation of mass cultural imagery, African-American identity, and the politics of race in America. In the late 1980s he turned to painting as his primary medium.Ramos was born in 1944 in Providence, Rhode Island. He received an M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts, where he was assistant to Allan Kaprow. Among his awards are a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship and a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. In the 1970s Ramos was a video consultant for the United Nations and the National Council of Churches. In the 1980s, he lived in Paris where he was a Professor at the American Center, and oversaw the television cabling of ten blocks of Paris for the first time. He has also taught at Rhode Island School of Design, New York University, and the University of California at San Diego. Ramos lives in Eyguieres, France.For more on Eric's Perspective, visit www.ericsperspective.com#ERICSPERSPECTIVE #AFRICANAMERICAN #ARTSUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/2vVJkDnConnect with us ONLINE: Visit Eric's Perspective website: https://bit.ly/2ZQ41x1Facebook: https://bit.ly/3jq5fXPInstagram: https://bit.ly/39jFZxGX: https://bit.ly/2OMTikTok: https://bit.ly/4cv8zfg

La visite de trois jours du président français, Emmanuel Macron, au royaume chérifien, s'achève ce mercredi 30 octobre 2024. Pour L'Opinion, on assiste à un « nouveau chapitre franco-marocain »: la relation entre les deux pays « n'a jamais paru aussi franche, aussi sincère, mais surtout aussi prometteuse qu'elle ne l'est aujourd'hui ». Emmanuel Macron « récolte aujourd'hui, poursuit l'édito, les fruits de sa position claire et sans ambages sur la marocanité du Sahara ». En effet, mardi 29 octobre 2024, le chef d'État français a réaffirmé la « souveraineté » du royaume sur le Sahara occidental, territoire disputé. Les médias marocains développent aussi les différents partenariats signés entre Paris et Rabat. « Veolia construira à Rabat la plus grande station de dessalement d'eau de mer en Afrique », s'exclame par exemple Telquel. La signature de partenariats économiques n'ont pas échappé au journal Le Pays, au Burkina Faso. « Le Maroc est la première destination des investisseurs français en Afrique », rappelle l'édito, qui commente « comme quoi, seuls les intérêts guident les pas ». Des contrats « d'autant plus importants », grince Le Pays, « qu'après avoir perdu le Sahel [...], ce qui a créé un manque à gagner pour certaines entreprises française, la France ne peut pas se permettre le luxe de perdre un partenaire comme le Maroc ».  En Guinée, la junte dissout et suspend la moitié des formations politiquesPour Aujourd'hui au Faso, c'est la « fin du pagailleux multipartisme et le début de Doumbouya-le-démocrate ». Le site voit, dans ces dissolutions, « une œuvre de salubrité politique ». « Que ce soit en Guinée, au Burkina ou ailleurs, a-t-on besoin de 200 programmes politiques pour développer un pays ? » conclut l'édito. Au contraire, pour Wakat Sera, la décision de Doumbouya est « la continuation de sa marche résolue vers la confiscation du pouvoir ». « Les Guinéens », regrette le site, « assistent, impuissant[s], à la disparition progressive de l'espace d'expression, [...], à l'absence de la liberté tout court ».Au Sénégal, la presse raconte la campagne des législatives anticipées « Pastef poursuit sa caravane à l'intérieur du pays », écrit le quotidien 24 Heures, dans laquelle se trouve le Premier ministre, Ousmane Sonko, vêtu d'orange sur les photos, avec son éternelle casquette.Jeune Afrique, de son côté, analyse « comment Ousmane Sonko et Pastef ont révolutionné le financement en politique ». Le journal rappelle que le parti fait payer le public pour venir à ses meetings. Une stratégie « étonnante, dans un pays où les militants n'y assistent que s'ils y sont financièrement incités », note l'article. Lors d'un meeting de levée de fonds à Dakar, le 19 octobre, le parti au pouvoir dit avoir levé, « en quatre heures », « près de 500 millions de francs CFA ». Jeune Afrique démontre que le Pastef a toujours eu recours aux « cagnottes en ligne », pour financer des élections législatives ou présidentielles, souvent grâce à la diaspora sénégalaise. Un « marketing politique savamment orchestré », analyse le mensuel. « Pastef tient à montrer à ses adversaires qu'il jouit d'une bonne popularité au sein de l'opinion, et qu'il y est solidement enraciné ». Ali-Foreman, la plus célèbre série de crochets de l'HistoireUne combinaison de crochet, puis un direct du droit de Mohammed Ali entrés dans la légende. Il y a 50 ans, le 30 octobre 1974 à Kinshasa, le boxeur américain battait son compatriote George Foreman lors du « combat du siècle ». Un événement que beaucoup aimeraient revivre, dans la capitale de RDC. « Kinshasa attend de pouvoir fêter dignement cet anniversaire sur fond de rivalités entre promoteurs », raconte Jeune Afrique. La RDC espère organiser, en 2025, le « Fight for Peace » et ainsi « alerter l'opinion internationale sur la guerre en cours dans l'est ». Plusieurs boxeurs ont déjà fait part de leur envie d'être sur le ring à Kinshasa, comme l'Américain Anthony Joshua ou le congolais Martin Bakole ... mais ce projet reste pour l'instant « un combat de gros sous et de réseau politique », conclut Jeune Afrique. À lire aussiBoxe: George Foreman-Mohamed Ali, retour sur un combat de légende

La visite de trois jours du président français, Emmanuel Macron, au royaume chérifien, s'achève ce mercredi 30 octobre 2024. Pour L'Opinion, on assiste à un « nouveau chapitre franco-marocain »: la relation entre les deux pays « n'a jamais paru aussi franche, aussi sincère, mais surtout aussi prometteuse qu'elle ne l'est aujourd'hui ». Emmanuel Macron « récolte aujourd'hui, poursuit l'édito, les fruits de sa position claire et sans ambages sur la marocanité du Sahara ». En effet, mardi 29 octobre 2024, le chef d'État français a réaffirmé la « souveraineté » du royaume sur le Sahara occidental, territoire disputé. Les médias marocains développent aussi les différents partenariats signés entre Paris et Rabat. « Veolia construira à Rabat la plus grande station de dessalement d'eau de mer en Afrique », s'exclame par exemple Telquel. La signature de partenariats économiques n'ont pas échappé au journal Le Pays, au Burkina Faso. « Le Maroc est la première destination des investisseurs français en Afrique », rappelle l'édito, qui commente « comme quoi, seuls les intérêts guident les pas ». Des contrats « d'autant plus importants », grince Le Pays, « qu'après avoir perdu le Sahel [...], ce qui a créé un manque à gagner pour certaines entreprises française, la France ne peut pas se permettre le luxe de perdre un partenaire comme le Maroc ».  En Guinée, la junte dissout et suspend la moitié des formations politiquesPour Aujourd'hui au Faso, c'est la « fin du pagailleux multipartisme et le début de Doumbouya-le-démocrate ». Le site voit, dans ces dissolutions, « une œuvre de salubrité politique ». « Que ce soit en Guinée, au Burkina ou ailleurs, a-t-on besoin de 200 programmes politiques pour développer un pays ? » conclut l'édito. Au contraire, pour Wakat Sera, la décision de Doumbouya est « la continuation de sa marche résolue vers la confiscation du pouvoir ». « Les Guinéens », regrette le site, « assistent, impuissant[s], à la disparition progressive de l'espace d'expression, [...], à l'absence de la liberté tout court ».Au Sénégal, la presse raconte la campagne des législatives anticipées « Pastef poursuit sa caravane à l'intérieur du pays », écrit le quotidien 24 Heures, dans laquelle se trouve le Premier ministre, Ousmane Sonko, vêtu d'orange sur les photos, avec son éternelle casquette.Jeune Afrique, de son côté, analyse « comment Ousmane Sonko et Pastef ont révolutionné le financement en politique ». Le journal rappelle que le parti fait payer le public pour venir à ses meetings. Une stratégie « étonnante, dans un pays où les militants n'y assistent que s'ils y sont financièrement incités », note l'article. Lors d'un meeting de levée de fonds à Dakar, le 19 octobre, le parti au pouvoir dit avoir levé, « en quatre heures », « près de 500 millions de francs CFA ». Jeune Afrique démontre que le Pastef a toujours eu recours aux « cagnottes en ligne », pour financer des élections législatives ou présidentielles, souvent grâce à la diaspora sénégalaise. Un « marketing politique savamment orchestré », analyse le mensuel. « Pastef tient à montrer à ses adversaires qu'il jouit d'une bonne popularité au sein de l'opinion, et qu'il y est solidement enraciné ». Ali-Foreman, la plus célèbre série de crochets de l'HistoireUne combinaison de crochet, puis un direct du droit de Mohammed Ali entrés dans la légende. Il y a 50 ans, le 30 octobre 1974 à Kinshasa, le boxeur américain battait son compatriote George Foreman lors du « combat du siècle ». Un événement que beaucoup aimeraient revivre, dans la capitale de RDC. « Kinshasa attend de pouvoir fêter dignement cet anniversaire sur fond de rivalités entre promoteurs », raconte Jeune Afrique. La RDC espère organiser, en 2025, le « Fight for Peace » et ainsi « alerter l'opinion internationale sur la guerre en cours dans l'est ». Plusieurs boxeurs ont déjà fait part de leur envie d'être sur le ring à Kinshasa, comme l'Américain Anthony Joshua ou le congolais Martin Bakole ... mais ce projet reste pour l'instant « un combat de gros sous et de réseau politique », conclut Jeune Afrique. À lire aussiBoxe: George Foreman-Mohamed Ali, retour sur un combat de légende

Jumu'ah Khutbah recorded at Green Lane Masjid, Birmingham, UK.https://www.greenlanemasjid.org

Voici l'histoire d'une soirée incroyable qui a marqué les congolais à jamais. L'histoire d'un combat de boxe entre Mohammed Ali et Georges Foreman, le combat du siècle, le combat des titans : le Rumble in the jungle. Un combat payé par le Maréchal Mobutu et qui a allumé Kinshasa et tout le Zaïre en 1974. Invités: Barly Baruti, dessinateur de BD belgo-congolais et Benoit Feyt, journaliste à la rédaction internationale de la RTBF Présentation : Bertrand Henne et Hélène Maquet Réalisation : Bao-Anh DinhMerci pour votre écouteL'Histoire Continue c'est également en direct tous les samedis de 9h à 10h sur www.rtbf.be/lapremiere Retrouvez l'ensemble des épisodes de l'Histoire Continue sur notre plateforme Auvio.behttps://auvio.rtbf.be/emission/l-histoire-continue-19690 Et si vous avez apprécié ce podcast, n'hésitez pas à nous donner des étoiles ou des commentaires, cela nous aide à le faire connaître plus largement. Intéressés par l'histoire ? Vous pourriez également aimer nos autres podcasts : Un jour dans l'Histoire : https://audmns.com/gXJWXoQL'heure H : https://audmns.com/YagLLiKEt sa version à écouter en famille : La Mini Heure H https://audmns.com/YagLLiKVous pourriez également apprécier ces podcasts de la RTBF: Un jour dans le sport : https://audmns.com/decnhFkAinsi que nos séries historiques :Chili, le Pays de mes Histoires : https://audmns.com/XHbnevhD-Day : https://audmns.com/JWRdPYIJoséphine Baker : https://audmns.com/wCfhoEwLa folle histoire de l'aviation : https://audmns.com/xAWjyWCLes Jeux Olympiques, l'étonnant miroir de notre Histoire : https://audmns.com/ZEIihzZMarguerite, la Voix d'une Résistante : https://audmns.com/zFDehnENapoléon, le crépuscule de l'Aigle : https://audmns.com/DcdnIUnSous le sable des Pyramides : https://audmns.com/rXfVppvN'oubliez pas de vous y abonner pour ne rien manquer.Et si vous avez apprécié ce podcast, n'hésitez pas à nous donner des étoiles ou des commentaires, cela nous aide à le faire connaître plus largement.

Aujourd'hui je suis avec Cédric Doumbé. En faisant venir Cédric sur le podcast, mon objectif était avant tout de mettre en avant une personnalité hors norme : D'abord par une éthique du travail et de l'effort qui force le respect. Cédric nous décrit au début de l'épisode son quotidien, millimétré, pour atteindre ses objectifs. Vous verrez que la demi mesure n'est pas une option.Deuxièmement, une confiance en lui, en son destin, qui n'est pas sans rappeler l'attitude d'un Mohammed Ali.Rendez-vous ce lundi pour la suite de l'épisode !Vous pouvez consulter notre politique de confidentialité sur https://art19.com/privacy ainsi que la notice de confidentialité de la Californie sur https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Daily Quiz - Sports and Leisure Today's Questions: Question 1: What sport would you associate with The Kentucky Derby? Question 2: What is the term for fishing bait that is made from ground-up fish? Question 3: Which of these is a soccer team based in Montreal? Question 4: Who was the first African-American female to win a Wimbledon Tennis event? Question 5: What is the nickname of the English football team Preston North End? Question 6: With which sport is Manny Pacquiao associated? Question 7: What is the nickname of the English football team Manchester United? Question 8: Who was the only boxer to knock out Mohammed Ali? This podcast is produced by Klassic Studios Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you talk to George Franklin he'll be the first to tell you that lobbyists have a bad rap. Ask him and he will emphasize that integrity and building trust with those around you is what make a good lobbyist, and those things are not often the image that's depicted on screen and online. In this special episode of Spur of the Moment, you will hear a conversation between Kristin Kirkpatrick, Managing Director of CSU Spur Partnerships and Advancement, and George Franklin, author, speaker, long-time lawyer, lobbyist, and former Vice President of Government Relations for the Kellogg Company. George has written numerous books, both fiction and non-fiction, that draw on his experience working in Washington, including “Raisin Bran and Other Cereal Wars” and “So You Think You Want to Run for Congress.”Hear some colorful stories from George's illustrious career, including big antitrust lawsuits and traveling with Mohammed Ali, and get an inside look at what the life of a lobbyist actually looks like — it's not quite what you remember from “Thank You for Smoking.” George Franklin's WebsiteConnect with George on LinkedIn

In this episode of Tiger Milf, Jiaoying talks with her bestie Godfrey. Godfrey talks to Jiaoying about her interview with Shannon Lee. Jiaoying and Godfrey talk about Bruce Lee and Racism. They also talk about the 60's and important figures like Mohammed Ali. Jiaoying and Godfrey talk about some of the Film Legends to come out of Hong Kong. Godfrey teaches Jiaoying how to be like Bruce Lee. Follow Jiaoying Summers on social media and get tickets for Tiger Milf Tour! Tour Dates & Tickets

In this knockout episode of "The Coop with Kit," Kit goes toe-to-toe with former professional boxer and champion Laila Ali. Ali steps into the Coop to discuss her illustrious career, her legendary father Muhammad Ali, and her dynamic life as a mother and wife. She shares her championship mindset, offering tips on how to apply a fighter's mentality to every aspect of life.Ali opens up about her journey to finding freedom and happiness in her forties, delivering powerful punches of wisdom about the importance of surrounding yourself with a positive corner crew and mastering the art of saying "no" to anything that doesn't serve you. Get ready for a ringside seat to Ali's story of resilience, authenticity, and her unwavering passion for living life to the fullest. This episode is sure to leave you feeling energized and ready to step into the ring of your own life with renewed vigor!--Follow us on social media @thecoopwithkithoover or behind the scenes content, teasers and updates.Keep up with Laila Ali on Instagram @thereallailaali or at  www.lailaali.com.This episode was produced by Kit Hoover and Harper McDonald. Our Technical Producer is Christian Brown, and this episode was edited by Christian Brown. Business Development by Casey Ladd.--To learn more about our sponsors:Blue Delta JeansCustom fit jeans for you. Use Blue Delta's easy measurement process and get in the best jeans you've ever owned.  bluedeltajeans.com (https://www.bluedeltajeans.com/)  code: COOP20 for 20% off.BUBS NaturalsStart you day with all the amazing BUBS Naturals products for added focus and stamina. Living Better Longer. bubsnaturals.com  (https://www.bubsnaturals.com/) code: COOP20 for 20% off.LOHLA SportLook sharp on and off the golf course in LOHLA Sport. European design for the American Sporting Lifestyle. lohlasport.com (https://lohlasport.com/)  code: COOP20 for 20% off.Follow The Coop with Kit on Instagram @thecoopwithkithooverFollow The Coop with Kit on Instagram @thecoopwithkithoover

Mohammed Ali of “Book For Your Business” is today's guest on the show, and we discuss the strategies for writing a book without the time and stress that it usually takes. If you've been struggling with getting your book out into the world, you'll want to check this episode out! What You'll Hear In This Episode:    - The big “ah-ha's” that Mohammed realized after going to Bali and investing hundreds of hours into finally writing the book that he wanted to complete for a decade   - The importance of structure in the writing process   - How he created a process that allows individuals to write their book in a shorter time frame, without sacrificing the quality of the content   - The importance of creating a clear framework for the book before adding content, and how book writing is mapping out a specific journey   - His team's process, which involves a strong human element and a refined system, which allows them to produce high-quality books very quickly   - How to choose the best title for your book, and when to do it!       

Mohammed Ali delar också en gripande berättelse om när han själv blev offer för polisvåld. Minimix på FacebookMinimix på InstagramMinimix på Göteborg stads hemsidaBranden i Hammarkullen: Klättrar in för att rädda kvinnaDiskutera avsnittet med andra på Koranpodden Chatt.Besök gärna vår hemsida: www.koranpodden.se.Stöd KoranpoddenOm du finner någon glädje eller värde i vad jag gör, snälla överväg att donera ett valfritt belopp. Alla donationer går till att utveckla och marknadsföra Koranpodden. Swisha ett frivilligt belopp till swish 123 669 10 18 (Support Koranpodden) eller via bankgiro 5271-8053.Bli månadsgivare! Klicka här.Följ vårt arbetefacebook.com/koranpoddeninstagram.com/koranpodden/

Jumu'ah Khutbah recorded at Green Lane Masjid, Birmingham, UK.https://www.greenlanemasjid.org

Bienvenue dans le Kentucky Un État qui a la forme d'un chicken wing, oui oui d'une aile de poulet. Dans lequel on croise Mohammed Ali, Fort Knox, des chevaux, BEAUCOUP de chevaux, du bourbon et un gâteau d'anniversaire. Mais aussi, beaucoup d'amis de Donald Trump. Voix et réalisation : Guillaume Hennette. Invité : Grégory Philipps.

Nahjul Balagha by Mohammed Ali Al Haj Salmin is the most famous collection of sermons, letters, tafsirs and narrations attributed to Imam Ali (AS), cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad (AS). Compiled more than 1,000 years ago, it is considered a literary masterpiece and, by the Shia Muslims, the most valuable text after the Holy Qur'an. Sermons of Ali - Peak of Eloquence "Nahjul Balagha" by Mohammed Ali Al Haj Salmin - Book PReview Book of the Week - BOTW - Season 7 Book 8 Buy the book on Amazon https://amzn.to/3SRBnGj GET IT. READ :) #sermons #islam #awareness  FIND OUT which HUMAN NEED is driving all of your behavior http://6-human-needs.sfwalker.com/ Human Needs Psychology + Emotional Intelligence + Universal Laws of Nature = MASTER OF LIFE AWARENESS https://www.sfwalker.com/master-life-awareness --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sfwalker/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sfwalker/support

Today on The Neil Haley Show, Neil Haley and Greg Hanna interview John Barbour. A Canadian high school dropout at 15, and deported at 17, John Barbour is recognized as ‘The Godfather Of Reality TV' as the creator-Producer, Co-Host, and Writer of the trend setting hit ‘Real People.' He won the first of his 5 Emmys as the original Host of ‘AM LA' in 1970 where he interviewed controversial anti-war guests like Mohammed Ali, Cesar Chavez and Jane Fonda. He was the first in America to do film reviews on the News, winning 3 more consecutive Emmys as KNBC's ‘Critic-At-Large.' And ten years as Los Angeles Magazine's most widely read and quoted controversial critic. Prior to that he was a successful topical stand-up comedian, appearing on ‘The Dean Martin Show,' ‘The Tonight Show,' and others; and in Las Vegas opening for Robert Goulet and Bobby Darin. Comedian-activist Dick Gregory did the liner notes for his first album, ‘It's Tough To Be white,' and Play-write Neil Simon did them for his second album, ‘I Met A Man I Didn't Like!' In 1992 he wrote and Directed the award-winning ‘The Garrison Tapes,' which Director Oliver Stone heralded as ‘The perfect companion piece to my movie ‘JFK.' 25 years later, in 2017 he wrote and Directed Part 2 called: ‘The American Media and The 2nd assassination Of President John F. Kennedy,' which leading researchers applaud as ‘The definitive film on JFK and the rise of Fake News'. which plagues America to this day. John said, ‘I am not a conspiracy theorist. Just a storyteller.

The 1977 theme song for a film about Mohammed Ali, "The Greatest Love of All," was written and composed by Michael Masser, with lyrics by Linda Creed, and sung by George Benson. The beginning lyrics lay the perfect introduction to this week's Frankly Speaking radio show discussion, Were it Not for Those Who Care. "I believe that children are our future    Teach them well and let them lead the way        Show them all the beauty they possess inside                                                                     Give them a sense of pride to make it easier                                                                         Let the children's laughter remind us of how we used to be." This is the ideal life we would like all of our children to experience, However, The World Health Organization reports that an estimated 1 Billion children between the ages of 2-17 in the world have experienced physical, mental, and sexual abuse in the last year. What time is it on the clock for our children's safety, achievement, and happiness? How can we reach, teach, and love those children who are left out, left behind, and leftover that what happens to them is different than who they were created to be? How can we help them discover and walk in their worthiness? This week, we learned about a national non-profit[1] organization, that is doing just that. Girls on the Run (GOTR) designs programming that strengthens third to eighth-grade girls' social, emotional, physical, and behavioral skills to navigate life experiences successfully. The program's intentional curriculum places an emphasis on developing competence, confidence, connection, character, caring, and contribution in young girls through lessons that incorporate running and other physical activities. The life skills curriculum is delivered by caring and competent coaches who are trained to teach lessons as intended. Ashleigh Conrad, GOTR Northern Virginia Program Engagement Manager, gets us excited about the secret sauce of the girls, their coaches, the annual 5K, and the proven positive impact that is changing life's clock on the happiness of the girls in the program. Take a listen, be inspired, share, and subscribe. 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girls_on_the_Run.    

REDIFF - Ce mardi, nouvelle plongée à travers les États américains, avec le Kentucky : l'État de KFC, de la légende de la boxe Mohammed Ali, mais aussi du bluegrass, une variation locale de la musique country. L'État est aussi celui d'un sénateur, pilier de la présidence Trump et aujourd'hui son meilleur ennemi, son obstacle vers 2024 : Mitch Mcconnell. Chaque semaine, le mardi, Lionel Gendron nous adresse une lettre d'Amérique. Un podcast sous forme de courrier audio, posté depuis Manhattan, à New York. Une carte-postale sonore pour nous aider à mieux comprendre cette Amérique à la fois si familière et parfois totalement déconcertante.

On this episode of the podcast, we have Marc Bernardin, the writer of Messenger: The Legend of Mohammed Ali, a biographical graphic novel about the iconic boxer. Known for his work in TV and as the co-host of the Fatman Beyond podcast with Kevin Smith, Bernardin talks about the challenge of presenting the story of the greatest of all time in graphic novel form. Bernardin also discusses how working in journalism, TV and film, comics, and video games has inspired his creativity.

Today we have a BONUS episode of "Morning Coffee w/ the Weishaupts!" ONLY FOR SUPPORTERS! Josie sounds off on Wokesters! A Mohammed Ali video sparked thoughts on using therapy language, TikTok drama, making provocative content, Hollywood's woke hypocrisy, origin of 'cowboy', black and white thinking, victim mentality, dead baby jokes and how we can solve the world's problems is finally decided!FULL SHOW NOW UP ONLY ON THE AD-FREE SUPPORTER FEEDS: Patreon.com/BreakingSocialNorms and Apple Podcast Premium!—You can now sign up for our commercial-free version of the show with a Patreon exclusive bonus show called “Morning Coffee w/ the Weishaupts” at Patreon.com/BreakingSocialNorms OR subscribe on the Apple Podcasts app to get all the same bonus “Morning Coffee” episodes AD-FREE with early access! (*Patreon is also NOW enabled to connect with Spotify! https://rb.gy/r34zj)-Check out the index of all supporter ad-free episodes here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/55009895This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/4824851/advertisement

For our 500th show we explore buying nothing, Mohammed Ali stealing the Mona Lisa and hiding it overnight in the Eiffel Tower, and how aliens use punctuation. You know... regular stuff.

This week Jeff and Dave talk about Milo of Croton, by all accounts the most accomplished athlete of antiquity. This incredible individual was the winner of multiple Olympiads, strongman, wrestler, supposedly deadlifting a stone of more than 1100lbs. The ancients like Pausania, Galen, Strabo, Cicero and more were fascinated not only by his tremendous physical prowess, but equally by his enormous appetite for food and drink. Did he really eat an entire heifer in one sitting? Along the way we look at the Olympic Games, have a short travelogue to Olympia and Nemea, discuss Mohammed Ali, Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps, Flo Jo, and more. It's summer, get out, be active, and take AdNavseam along on your workout. You won't regret it. Maybe if you do enough reps you can snap your headband, like Milo, just by flexing the blood vessels in your head!?

Oscar winning makeup artist Kevin Haney joined me to discuss growing up in Cinncinnati; watching monster movies but not being a fan of gore; working with Rick Baker and seeing Tom Savini while at Letterman; getting busted walking the streets as Frankenstein as a teenager; being cast in The Wizard of Oz but being enthralled by the old age makeup more than acting; reading Dick Smith's makeup book; being the makeup man his senior year of high school; doing makeup for the Ohio State production of Ghost Dance gets him noticed for "Altered States" at same time he was working on "Basket Case"; gets a job at NBC; is assigned to SNL; Barbara Armstrong is head of makeup; difference between white and black actors makeup; given Harry Shearer to appy makeup to; Lorne was against prosthetics; Doumanian takes over and he is assigned Gilbert Gottfried; makes him up to look like Master Po from Kung Fu; becomes department head in 1981; assigned to Joe Piscopo does Reagan, Sinatra, Nimoy & Iacocca makeup; creates, with Annette Bianco a Joe Piscopo wig; on camera in a Chinese Donahue sketch in April 1984; works on Piscopo's HBO specials; making up Eddie Murphy to look like Mohammed Ali; coaxed back for season 10 and hits it off with Martin Short; working with Dave Thomas; working on "Coccoon" and "Dick Tracy"; winning an Oscar for aging Dan Aykroyd in "Driving Miss Daisy"; Dustin Hoffman shot his "Dick Tracy" scenes later; working on Christopher Lloyd as Uncle Fester in "The Addams Family"; what it is like in a makeup chair; getting criticized for the aging in "Shawshank Redemption"; his work on beaten up Boggs not seen on camera; working on Friends flashback and Russ episodes; how "fat Monica' makeup was used to create Jiminy Glick; being retired; proud of his "Guardians of the Galaxy" crew; still best known for "Basket Case"

Lloyd ‘Bullwackie' Barnes and his legendary Wackie's institution has been at the heart of the dub and reggae scene since the 1970s. Starting out as a tailor to reggae's brightest stars, Bullwackie quickly started working as an engineer at Treasure Isle and Studio One studios in Kingston, Jamaica. On moving to New York with his family he became immersed in the burgeoning reggae and dub scene briefly running his own soundsystem. Bullwackie opened up the first reggae studio in New York, Wackie's House of Music. Since Wackie's was founded in 1976, Bullwackie has produced and released records with the likes of Sugar Minnott, Lee Scratch Perry, The Love Joys, Horace Andy, Max Romeo, Dennis Brown, and - as Zakia discovers - even impromptu sessions with the likes of Mohammed Ali. After enjoying a resurgence of interest in more recent times, following a reissue series via Mark Ernestus and Moritz von Oswald's Basic Channel dub techno label, Wackie's today enjoys multi-generational cult status.In this podcast Zakia and Bullwackie reflect on his life and career, and the exciting discovery of his stolen archive of unreleased Wackie's recordings that Lloyd has recently recovered, and is now in the process of mastering, in some cases nearly 50 years after they were first recorded. Check out the NTS Guide To Wackie'sPresenter - Zakia Sewell, Producer - Lizzy King, Sound Recording - Josh Farmer & Zara Wladawsky, Editing - Femi Oriogun-Williams, Mastering - Felix Stock, Composer - Jennifer Walton, Talent & Outreach - Samuel Strang. This is an NTS Podcast, discover more at www.nts.live. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The three of us are back together! Celebrating National Martini Day, and also Juneteenth.Drink picks:Ivy - Suntory Roku gin with ginger beer. Terri - Glendalough Rose Gin in a lavender martiniMeg - Chattanooga whiskey Scotch cask finished, because it's rainy and chilly in Tennessee.HERE WE GOOOOOOO!Right off the bat, the hosts are unanimous in our dislike for the new Sinead O'Connor theme song. Worse than season4. Still waiting for Starz execs to call us for notes.Speaking of notes...WTF was that opening scene? Cruel. That's what it was, cruel.Did not like the echoes of past episodes.Ivy has a request: violent JAMMF. New kink -- unlocked.Was the episode rushed or was it just the timeline overall that was shortened?What was going on with Roger quoting Mohammed Ali? This might be the wildest show-only invention. Where the heck would Roger have heard about that?Ivy and Megan take one position on Roger's quandary; Terri takes a more long-range view. But we can agree to disagree. Or at least, we can agree that we love discussing these types of issues with each other.And by the way, Ivy: it's Wen-di-go. *Wendigo* Donner.Aaannnddd...shots fired back. Pew pew!!Inconsistencies galore! Exhibit A: what was Claire gonna do with potassium nitrate??Try rewatching episode 701 as if it was episode 609, season finale of Season 6. It'll change your life. Terri analyzes Tom's character arc in that vein. Somebody nominate Mark Lewis Jones for an award, STAT.Check out Glitch on Netflix: https://tinyurl.com/5em9dd4r Something is off with Jamie & Claire's chemistry.The demise of Richard Brown.Ivy appreciates what the Christies brought to the Ridge. That would be Drama.Brace yourself for another abrupt ending.Please rate us on your podcast platform! If you like our pod, give us 5 stars so others can find us as well. Like & share our podcast with friends, and follow us on social media.IG: @outlanderwithfriendsFB: Outlander With Friends PodcastTW: @OutlanderwfrenzYouTube: @OutlanderwithfriendsLet us know what you think! Email us: outlanderwithfriends@gmail.com

Dans ce dernier épisode de notre série sur les athlètes qui ont marqué l'histoire du sport, Andréa Brusque va vous parler d'un homme qui a inspiré des millions de personnes. Dans une Amérique blanche déchirée par la ségrégation, sa carrière sportive et sa personnalité hors du commun ont passionné les foules. Connu pour ses prises de position politiques, son talent de boxeur et ses punchlines, cet homme insoumis a marqué l'histoire. Son nom : Mohamed Ali. De sa carrière sportive à son militantisme, il a combattu sur tous les fronts. (Re)découvrez sa True Story. Mohammed Ali, qui dans sa jeunesse s'appelait Cassius Clay, est né en 1942 à Louisville dans le Kentucky, en pleine ségrégation. Malgré le fait qu'il venait d'une famille modeste, ses parents ont toujours pu lui offrir une bonne éducation. Mohamed n'a jamais cessé de questionner le monde dans lequel il vivait et comprend très jeune que de nombreuses barrières vont se dresser sur son chemin. Ces barrières, il va rapidement les renverser en croyant en son talent et en se lançant corps et âme dans la boxe, tout en faisant preuve d'un certain franc-parler. Effronté, il n'a jamais sa langue dans sa poche : il est connu pour avoir une rhétorique aussi explosive que ses poings. Il a montré au monde entier que personne ne peut le soumettre. Date de première diffusion : 12 janvier 2023 Pour découvrir d'autres récits passionnants, cliquez ci-dessous : Le Triangle du Dragon, la zone du Pacifique aux phénomènes paranormaux Isadora Duncan, la danseuse qui a envoûté le monde entier Louise Weiss, la pionnière méconnue de l'Europe Un podcast Bababam Originals Ecriture : Clémence Setti Voix : Andréa Brusque Production : Bababam (montage Célia Brondeau, Antoine Berry Roger) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are very saddened by the news of the passing of Jim Brown. Brown was 87 years old and was an American icon that influenced both sports and social issues. His memory will never be forgotten as a great football player, but as an actor, his impact was seen in the social world. Who's can say that they have had an impact on the football and lacrosse fields, television and movie screens, the historical summit with Mohammed Ali and Martin Luther King in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1967, and a calming effect and influence on rival gangs in Los Angeles between the Bloods and Crips in the mid 80's. No one but Jim Brown! He was an amazing American hero who had his own issues, but don't we all. I'm proud to say that he was a football God! That never missed a game in his historical nine years in the NFL. This was a VERY CHALLENGING WEEK! But the GURU made it! Also, we discussed the same old Philly Sixers and their inability to advance ONCE AGAIN! THE GURU IS ALWAYS RIGHT AGAIN AND AGAIN! I TOLD YOU PHILLY, IT ALWAYS COME BACK TO BITE YOU IN THE A$^$!!! Thanks for listening, subscribing, and downloading this episode and all episodes on the Spreaker website. We will be back next week (Memorial Day weekend), with Episode 170. The GURU'S staff would like to send out our deepest condolences to the Brown,Blue, and Gibert families on their loss and hope for healing during this time. God bless you all and always pray for peace in this world. Take care and enjoy the rest of your Sports Weekend. Check us out next week. The GURU will see you real soon.

Your Mother's Not a Virgin!: The Bumpy Life and Times of the Canadian Dropout who changed the Face of American TV!A high school dropout at 15, and deported from Canada at 17, John Barbour is recognized as "the godfather of reality TV" for his role as the creator, producer, co-host, and writer of the trendsetting hit Real People. He won the first of his five Emmys as the original host of AM LA in 1970, where he interviewed controversial anti-war guests like Mohammed Ali, Cesar Chavez, and Jane Fonda. He was the first in America to do film reviews on the news, winning three more consecutive Emmys as KNBC's Critic-At-Large. He spent ten years as Los Angeles Magazine's most widely read and quoted critic and early in his career, he made stand-up comedy appearances on The Dean Martin Show, The Tonight Show, and others. In 1992 he wrote and directed the award-winning The Garrison Tapes, which Director Oliver Stone heralded as "the perfect companion piece to my movie, JFK." In 2017 he wrote and directed part two: The American Media and the Second Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which was applauded as "the definitive film on JFK and the rise of Fake News." In this highly entertaining, deeply informative autobiography, readers will discover what a multifaceted storyteller Barbour is.Part 2 Dave Marlon Candidate for Las Vegas City Council Ward 1Dave Marlon founded and built one of the most successful addiction recovery centers in the country in the heart of Southern Nevada. The 30-year Las Vegas resident, after successfully addressing his own struggles with substance abuse, realized that he was uniquely suited to help others confronting addiction.Dave has been consistently recognized by his peers as a leader in his field. He is the President of the Southern Nevada Association of Addiction Professionals (SNAAP) and the 2018 National Advocacy Award from NAADAC, the Association for Addiction Professionals. Locally, he has been recognized as a graduate of the Leadership Las Vegas program, with the Mayor's Commendation, and received the Community Counseling Center of Southern Nevada's Vanguard Award. He has served on the Governor's Substance Abuse Working Group. Dave's work in the recovery sector earned him the Inspired Excellence Award from Las Vegas HEALS.He founded The CARE Coalition and The Solutions Foundation, both of which combat substance abuse in Southern Nevada and help raise awareness about addictive behavior and its consequences. Dave serves on the board of HELP of Southern Nevada and the Las Vegas Rescue Mission, He has also helped establish the first recovery high school in the nation.Altogether, Dave has more than 30 years of health care experience in both recovery and insurance. He earned a Bachelor's Degree in Economics from the State University of New York and holds a Master's in Business Administration and Master's in Counseling from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.4 years ago #barbour, #candidate, #city, #council, #dave, #ed, #john, #lv, #marlon, #mother's, #not, #opperman, #report, #virgin!, #your

When was the last time you cleaned out your subconscious? What if when we were growing up, our mother asked us that along with 'did you clean your room?' The subconscious is the storehouse of memory, programs, beliefs and conditioning -- in other words, karma. Karma is the burden of the past, everything that weighs heavily on us and makes life feel hard. Inner Alchemy is the transformation and dissolution of karma, through which we rediscover our original innocence and incorruptibility, as fresh and ever-new as springtime. In today's episode, you'll discover... the alchemical key that frees you from the burden of the past in you how to recapture your child-like innocence, that sweet freedom and trust in life, but with the added dimension of wisdom how to recognize 'buildup' in your subconscious storehouse why you are perfectly designed, exactly as you are, to transcend all your limitations, and the simple cleaning tool that does the work for you the subtle negativity that clouds your life and how to peel away this deadening layer that mutes your aliveness And much more, including Mohammed Ali and Howard Cosell, childhood belching contests, and what I learned about spiritual hygiene from my cousin and the true story of his house sliding down a hill. Ever so slowly. I also open up the floor for questions that have come up during this series (see the link below to submit yours), to which I will devote an entire future episode! Submit your questions and leave an email for Q&A episodes: https://www.clairelautier.com/q-a-page ___________________________________________________________________________________ Bonus Links! As a Spiritual Coach, Certified Life Mastery Consultant, and Certified Teacher of Kundalini Yoga, I provide impactful, transformational coaching through a variety of powerful programs.Work with me. Learn The 3 Biggest Mistakes Most Artists Make That Sabotage Success, Impact and Livelihood (and how to avoid them)! Follow me on social:InstagramFacebook

Over a century ago, in 1881, the city of Birmingham purchased a copy of Shakespeare's first folio. It was to be the crown jewel of their new Shakespeare library, the brainchild of the first librarian George Dawson. From the outset it was to be the People's Folio, the property of the city's Free library. You can find the evidence stamped in red ink on many of the pages. That might seem like a defacement to some, but to Shakespeare scholar Islam Issa and members of the city's 'Everything to Everybody' project, it shows a profound commitment. In this feature Islam draws together the passion and belief of George Dawson and his fellow city fathers - Birmingham became a city in 1889 - with the voices and opinions of Birmingham today as expressed by people like the internationally acclaimed street artist Mohammed Ali. He's produced two school murals that have the Folio at the heart of the city's sense of itself. In the afterglow of the Commonwealth Games and the realisation that Birmingham's strength lies in its multi-cultural population, Islam points out that rather than some distant evidence of an elite and unfamiliar past, the time has come for the Folio to be celebrated from Sparkbrook to the Bullring and beyond. Producer: Tom Alban

Hakeem Al-Zayyidi is an Islamic motivational and inspirational speaker. Hakeem is a graduate of Royal Roads University in Victoria, BC.It took Hakeem ten years to obtain his four-year undergraduate degree in Business and Sustainability.His heroes and those who have motivated him to succeed include Malcolm X, LeBron James, Mohammed Ali, and Elyn Saks.Hakeem has been dealing with schizophrenia since his early 20s.The path he has chosen is to highlight the plight, stigma, and stories of himself and others who have mental illness.His fascination with all that is basketball mirrors his quest to take shot after shot in his mission to speak to the uniqueness of mental illness in this world.Questions:Before you share your story, can you tell us what you most want our listeners to learn from you today?What is your mission?Tell us your story - about 10 minutes (we may ask questions as you go)What are your 5 basketballs?Does your Islamic faith help with your inspiration?What do you most want to inspire people to do?Links:https://hakeeminspires.comfacebook: https://www.facebook.com/kareem.alzayyidi.96Instagram/twitter - Hakeem Inspires!Hakeem interactive speechhttps://youtu.be/Lbw8NrlBKRUMake A Change Canada Success storyhttps://youtu.be/YQLsZIp9oehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Sd4xm-gudMMindy and her book: https://mindygreiling.com/Randye and her book: https://randyekaye.com/Miriam and her book: https://www.miriam-feldman.com/Hosts:Who:Randye Kaye - was a morning Radio Personality bringing humor to CT families when her own son was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Now she is still a Broadcaster, Actress, Voice Talent, Speaker, and Author (Ben Behind his Voices, Happier Made Simple)Miriam Feldman -  is an artist, writer, and the mother of an adult son with schizophrenia. Her book, He Came in With It chronicles her family's story and was released to rave reviews on July 21st, 2020.Mindy Greiling - Mindy Greiling was a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives for twenty years. She helped found the nation's first state mental health caucus, which successfully lobbied for a significant increase in Minnesota's mental health funding Her acclaimed memoir is Fix What You Can.

The bells that are (1) on all Good Humor trucks, (2) marked the rounds between Mohammed Ali's iconic boxing matches, (3) gave Clarence his wings at the end of It's a Wonderful Life, and (4) open and close trading on the New York Stock Exchange each day all have one thing in common – they were made by Bevin Bells in East Hampton, CT. East Hampton – or “Bell Town” as they call themselves – has been the center of U.S. bell manufacturing for the past two centuries. Bevin Bells is the last bell manufacturer left. Hear their history – and literally hear the difference in tone that shape, material, and size make – in this unique episode, featuring company Chief Operating Officer Cici Bevin.

Annie Duke, who gained expertise in quitting from her successful career as a professional poker player on the world stage, advocates for quitting things more frequently. In our interview, she delves into the science of quitting and teaches us how to overcome our obstacles and develop the ability to quit when it's necessary. We discuss her latest book: Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. Annie Duke and I Explore How You Get Good at Quitting In our interview, Annie Duke imparts the skills necessary to become proficient at quitting. She cites examples from the experiences of accomplished individuals such as elite athletes like Mohammed Ali, leaders of major companies like Stewart Butterfield, the CEO of Slack, and successful entertainers like Dave Chappelle. Duke argues that quitting is crucial to success and offers techniques for deciding when to persevere and when to abandon a pursuit to save time, energy, and money. Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://passionstruck.com/annie-duke-on-how-you-get-good-at-quitting/  Brought to you by ZocDoc, Shopify, and Fabric. --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! --► Prefer to watch this interview: https://youtu.be/Qf9s9OypF-s --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnRMiles Want to find your purpose in life? I provide my six simple steps to achieving it - passionstruck.com/5-simple-steps-to-find-your-passion-in-life/ Want to hear my best interviews from 2022? Check out episode 233 on intentional greatness and episode 234 on intentional behavior change. ===== FOLLOW ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m  Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/ 

The word "iconic" gets thrown around pretty loosely these days, but there are some figures who truly earn the descriptor. Micheal Jordan and Mohammed Ali are icons because they truly transcended their sport. In the same way Harry Houdini is bigger than magic. Houdini is easily the best remembered performer in the history of stage magic. Despite his enduring fame his life story remains clouded by myth. Houdini was a professional liar, but he also considered himself to be deeply moral. He took other performers to task for their deceptions, while also cultivating a rich tapestry of legend around his life and career. Was Houdini a hypocrite or is there such a thing as a "moral lie"? Tune-in and find out how raw meat injuries, bullet-catch catastrophes, and a rabbi-for-hire all play a role in the story. 

My guest this week is Ramon Hervey II, who's worked as a highly regarded entertainment manager, brand consultant, and public relations specialist with a diverse and impressive roster of entertainers that encompass a wide spectrum of contemporary music genres, ranging from pop/rock, rhythm & blues, hip-hop, jazz, and gospel.  The list includes Richard Pryor, Bette Midler, Little Richard Lenny Kravitz, Don Cornelius, Paul McCartney, Herb Alpert, Vanessa Williams, Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds, Peter Frampton, Andrae Crouch, Nick Nolte, and James Caan, and many more.  He has also served as an Executive Producer for several films, television and live events, including the Peabody Award-winning documentary, "Chisholm '72: Unbought & Unbossed," the anniversary album, "NBA AT 50," and was a Music Supervisor for the NAACP Award-winning film "Free Angela and All Political Prisoners. Ramon recently wrote about his experiences in a book entitled “The Fame Game: An Insider's Playbook For Earning Your 15 Minutes.” During the interview we spoke about promoting the great Motown acts, managing Little Richard, working with Mohammed Ali, what it takes to be successful in the entertainment business, dealing with celebrity egos, and much more. I spoke with Ramon from his office in New York via zoom. On the intro I'll take a look at why you can't rely on social media as your online presence, and dancing more when there's more very low frequencies. var podscribeEmbedVars = { epId: 84224726, backgroundColor: 'white', font: undefined, fontColor: undefined, speakerFontColor: undefined, height: '600px', showEditButton: false, showSpeakers: true, showTimestamps: true };

It's been exciting and it's been overwhelming. It's exciting to see people are rising, to see the amount of bravery on the streets, how these young women and men will stand up against the armored police with bare hands. It's been inspiring.Mohammad Ali KadivarBecome a Patron!Make a one-time Donation to Democracy Paradox.A full transcript is available at www.democracyparadox.com.Mohammad Ali Kadivar is an assistant professor of sociology and international studies at Boston College. He is the author of the book Popular Politics and the Path to Durable Democracy.Key HighlightsIntroduction - 0:38Democratization Examples: Egypt and South Africa - 3:20Democratization and Durable Democracy - 11:12Nonviolence and Democratization - 23:33Part 2: The Iranian Protests - 38:49Key LinksPopular Politics and the Path to Durable Democracy by Mohammed Ali Kadivar"Sticks, Stones, and Molotov Cocktails: Unarmed Collective Violence and Democratization " by Mohammed Ali Kadivar and Neil Ketchley in Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic WorldLearn more about Mohammed Ali KadivarDemocracy Paradox PodcastMichael Coppedge on Why Democracies Emerge, Why They Decline, and Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem)Mark Beissinger on Urban Civic RevolutionsMore Episodes from the PodcastMore InformationDemocracy GroupApes of the State created all MusicEmail the show at jkempf@democracyparadox.comFollow on Twitter @DemParadox, Facebook, Instagram @democracyparadoxpodcast100 Books on DemocracyDemocracy Paradox is part of the Amazon Affiliates Program and earns commissions on items purchased from links to the Amazon website. All links are to recommended books discussed in the podcast or referenced in the blog.Support the show

Elvis Mitchell, longtime host of KCRW's “The Treatment”, and producer of “The Black List”, joins Mike to discuss his new documentary “Is that Black Enough for You?”  The film recounts an explosion of Black Film which occurred mainly in the period of 1968-1978, placing it within the context of both the prior failure of Hollywood to provide real representation of Black characters, as well as a strand of chiefly independent African American-produced film that Elvis traces back to as early as the 1910s and 1920s.   Elvis tells Mike how the movies affected his grandmother's (literal) dreams, as well as how they drove the (figurative) dreams and fantasy life of his stellar cast.  Elvis explains to Mike his nuanced view of the legacies of such luminaries as Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, and Orson Welles.  What role did Mohammed Ali play for Black filmmakers?  And how did Diane Sands embody the promise of this era?  Mike and Elvis also discuss his process–narration first, clips second–and why he passed on the declamatory “They call me Mr. Tibbs” moments in favor of clips which demonstrate the interiority and development of characters. And, of course, Elvis and Mike had to talk about the music:  Isaac Hayes; Earth, Wind & Fire; Curtis Mayfield… and Alessandro Alessandroni!? “Is the Black Enough for You” streams on Netflix starting Friday, November 11th.   Hidden Gem: Portrait of Jason   Follow on Twitter: @ElvisMitchell @topdocspod   The presenting sponsor of “Top Docs” is Netflix.

In this age of increasingly complex NFT projects, the concept of DYODR also becomes more important.  Many projects are now launching with partners in place that may be responsible for aspects such as the minting process, the marketplace, marketing plans, or influencer collaborations.  Some examples include Disney, BudLite, Buildabear, and the NFL, all with their unique partnership collaborations.  Engaging in an NFT project and betting on them now also means engaging with and betting on their partners.  Some partnerships are going to work well, while some otherwise great projects are going to select the wrong partners.  There is a risk you can get to the point of no return with your NFT investment.  As a holder and investor, it's time to demand transparency and uphold accountability. As mentioned in this episode: NFL + Ticketmaster + NFLall Day @buildabear + @sweet @TheNextLegends + @altstatemachine @NF_Labs @budlight + @dapperlabs Featured NFT from the #mint365 collection (#321/365):: Mohammed Ali, The Next Legends - Boxing @TheNextLegends ______________________________________________________________ Learn more about the NFT365 Podcast

Last time we spoke, Lin Zexu had brought the foreign barbarians to their knees and Elliot was forced to hand over 20,000 chests of opium. Lin zexu destroyed the illicit substance riding his nation of its filth. Elliot made a terrible error when he told the opium merchants the British government would compensate them for the confiscated contraband. This would all lead to Captain Henry Smith of the Volage firing the first shot of the First Opium War. Britain was in a financial bind, they needed their tea fix and China was closing off trade to them. How was Britain going to compensate the opium merchants and open up China to keep the tea flowing? That is when Thomas Macaulay made the suggestion to Lord Palmerston, a rather out of the box idea. Why not make China pay for it all. This episode is the First Opium War Part 1   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on the history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.   Lin Zexu's attempt to send a letter to Queen Victoria proved to be a failure, no one cared. But back in China Lin Zexu's war against Opium earned him a promotion. He went from high commissioner to taking Deng Tingzhen's title as Governor-General. This seems to have bolstered Lin Zexu's resolve to deal with the foreign barbarians as he wrote at the time “Only by knowing their strengths and their weaknesses can we find the right to restrain them”. Lin Zexu shared his countrymens contempt for the foreigners, but he knew he had to learn more about this enemy in order to defeat them. Lin Zexu was a scholar and had a practical mindset for how to go about the task. Lin Zexu began by buying the British warship Cambridge for use to the Chinese navy and anchored it around the mouth of the Canton River. The only problem was that Elliot made sure to order all of Cambridge's cannons removed before it was sold and the Chinese sailors were unable to properly sail the vessel, thus it was literally towed to the canton river.  By spring of 1840, there were only a few small limited battles between the Chinese junks and some British vessels still attempting to smuggle opium into canton. Elliot decided the first course of action was to map the Yangtze river so he could provide good intelligence to the incoming British force. He sent a ship from Jardine Matheson & Co called the Hellas, unbeknownst to Elliot, Matheson told its captain Frederick Jauncey to try and sell opium while they navigated the Yangtze to hedge his profits. The Hellas ran into trouble on May 22nd of 1840 when Captain Jauncey ran into what he originally thought were just a few Chinese merchant ships, but were in fact 8 war junks. They opened fire on Hellas and attempted to ram and board her, but Hellas was able to keep the fire fight at a distance until some strong wind picked up allowing Hellas to make an escape. Captain Jauncey earned a broken jaw and almost lost an eye during the battle and a few of his crew were hurt, but there were no fatalities. By the end of May the Hellas limped back to Macao for some medical treatment. On June the 8th, a Chinese fleet of fireships loaded to the brim with gunpowder were sent into the British ships anchored at Capsingmum some 45 miles east of Macao. Many of the British vessels fled for their lives, but the warships, Volage, Druid and Hyacinth rushed forward to stop the fireship attack. They used grappling hooks to tie up the fireships from a distance and towed them away from the rest of the British flotilla thus saving them all. The next day, the long awaited British force Palmerston promised finally arrived in Chinese waters. There was a scarcity of sailors hindering what could be amassed for hte China expeditionary force, due to the ongoing wars and other operations against the French in the mediterranean sea and the forces of Mohammed Ali in Egypt. By the end of June 17 men of war had assembled including 3 line of battle ships, the Wellesley, Melville and Blenheim. The East India Company also lent a hand providing 4 armed merchantmen steamers, the Enterprize, Madagascar, Atalanta and Queen. Following behind the force was 27 troopships carrying the 18th Royal Irish, the 49th Bengal Volunteers, the 26th Cameronians,a corps of Bengal engineers, and another corps of Madras sappers and miners. On its way to catch up to this force was British most devastating weapon, a brand new ocean-going Iron warship, the first of its kind named Nemesis. She was launched in 1839 and deployed to China as her first operation. She was powered by 2 60 horsepower Forrester engines and armed with 2 pivot mounted 32 pounders and 6 6pounder guns. She had watertight bulkhead, the first to be used for a warship at the time enabling her to survive a lot of hull damage. It goes without saying this one warship will have a daunting part to play in this story and the Chinese would nickname her “devil ship”.  The British armada did not just bring military assistance, it also was secretly carrying more opium, because of course why not. Over 10 thousand chests were snuck away aboard the ships ready to flood the Chinese market. The large British naval presence would allow the smugglers to offload their opium at Lintin during broad daylight with impunity. The armada gathered itself at Singapore to devise a strategy going forward. There in Singapore, the marines practiced amphibious assaults while Chinese war junks in the distance observed from a distance. By June 1 of 1840 enough warships had gathered at Singapore to launch the invasion of the Qing dynasty. So on June 16 the first ship, a steamer named Madagascar entered the Gulf of Canton followed a bit later by a large part of the armada. Aboard the Wellesley, captain Elliot met with the commander of the expeditionary force, Commodore Sir J. J Gordon Bremer and they discussed strategy. Jardine had made a proposal, to commit some warships to blockade the entire eastern and southern coasts of China and seize the island of Chusan. Jardine argued they should also blockade the mouth of the Bei He River which flowed into the Yangtze, the waterway for food and other shipments directly to Beijing. Chusan island was a critical depot for the Qing, more than a quarter million ton of grain pass through it to go to Beijing to feed the capital. Depriving the capital of a major food source and revenue would bring the Chinese to a peace settlement and thus a British victory.  The British Admiralty's Sir John Barrow thought Jardine's proposal was too much, threatening the Qing capital would just result in the Chinese digging in deeper to defend themselves and not bring them to the peace table. Barrow argued they should focus around the gulf of canton, shell the city and seize Hong Kong. Charles Elliot argued a middle ground: take Canton then sail up the Bei He river to threaten Beijing. Elliot also argued they could instead attack Shanghai because attacking such a prominent city would make the Qing lose face and intimidate them. Another man who had just arrived was Elliot's cousin, Admiral Sir George Elliot who had been given co-plenipotentiary powers. He brought with him a peace treaty with orders to make the Qing government agree to every article of it and to continue the way until it was done. Sir George Elliot arrived in the later part of 1840 and ordered a blockade of the Gulf of Canton using 5 warships while he and the rest of the armada sailed north. The British merchants were disappointed, they expected a direct assault upon Canton, they had hoped to open the city back up for trade. Both Elliot's got aboard the Wellesley as the armada made its approach towards Chusan. George Elliot also had with him a letter from Palmerston to inform the emperor Britain intended to blockade and seize various Chinese ports as a response to the Qing siege of the Canton factories. Palmerston also cheekily added that if the Emperor wanted to stop the opium trade he should probably convince his people to stop smoking opium. At the end of the letter Palmerston added that to avoid “unpleasantness” the Emperor was invited to send a delegation to a shipboard meeting with the two Elliots who most likely would park their warships at the mouth of the Bei He River. The Elliots gave the letter to a Captain named Thomas Bourchier whom went ashore with a white flag at Namoy just 300 miles north of Canton. As Thomas entered the harbor some Qing officials came aboard. Thomas explained to them that the armada meant to bombard the city if they did not respect the white flag. As he explained this to them, along the coast a ton of Chinese began to form a crowd near his boat so he sailed off. With his ship a few hundreds yards away from the shore he waited to see what the Chinese would do. Then Thomas noticed cannons being mounted on a nearby fort. Thomas sent his translator named Robert Thom on a small raft with a large placard repeating what retaliation the Chinese could expect if they fired upon his ship. Thom also began to shout the orders at the crowd along the beach, but they simply screamed insults in return. Then some of the people on the beach began to swim out towards Thom's boat and some arrows and gunshots were fired at him. Suddenly one of the cannons from the fort fired and some nearby chinese junks joined them all aiming for poor Thom. Thom dashed back to Captain Thomas and reported to him what had happened. Captain Thomas responded by sending another letter explaining that the British government had no quarrel with the Chinese people, only their emperor. He sent the letter with a courier in another small raft and as it approached the shore the mob rose up yet again and soon gunfire was going off. It is alleged after this Captain Thomas literally threw a message in a bottle before sailing off towards Canton.  By July 1st the armada anchored in the harbor of Dinghai on Chusan Island. Dinghai held around 40,000 inhabitants within a 5 sided 22 feet high wall city. It held many towers and was surrounded on all 4 sides by a canal. The city had 16 hundred defenders, but in reality they were all just some fishermen, sailors and quickly raised up militiamen armed with spears, bows and some matchlocks. There were also 12 chinese war junks that had followed the British armada keeping a safe distance. The British noticed one of the Chinese war junks had a banner indicated a high Qing official was aboard and they signaled they wanted to talk. The Chinese war junks invited a British delegation aboard their flagship. Commodore Bremer went aboard with his interpreter and met with the Qing commander of the Chusan garrison. Bremer did not mash words he was quite blunt demanding the “surrender Chusan or face the consequences”. The Qing host was not intimidated however and sent the British back to their boats. When the British were back aboard their vessels, instead of blasting the chinese war junks, well they simply invited the Chinese aboard the Wellesley to wine and dine them. In the 1997 movie “the opium war” this scene is quite well done, I highly recommend watching it. So the Qing officials dined and one Qing officer even analyzed some of the 74 guns aboard Wellesley. That officer was quoted to say “it is very true you are strong and I am weak. Still I must fight”. After dinner, Commodore Bremer demanded their surrender again and gave them 24 hours to comply. The Chinese in the meantime ran ashore and began to stuff a ton of sandbags with rice and other things to strengthen the defenses around Dinghai's walls. The 24 hours passed and Bremer brought the Wellesley closer to the shore, but he had to wait for some more reinforcements to arrive to launch an amphibious assault. By 2pm on July 5th, 6 British warships arrived to the scene and Bremer fired a single cannon targeting a tower on a small fort. The Qing fired a single cannon in response, which led Bremer to start shooting volley's every 10 minutes. As the maelstrom was going on, Lt Colonel George Burrell led the 18th Brigade in an amphibious landing. Suddenly the Chinese stop firing just as the 18th brigade landed ashore. The British took the situation by storm and began bombarding the Chinese war junks to pieces and Dingshai's fort towers. Lord Jocelyn, a military secretary said of the scene. “The Crashing of timber, falling houses and groans of men resounded from the shore. Even after the bombardment ceased, a few shots were still heard from the unscathed junks. We landed on a deserted beach, a few dead bodies, bows and arrows; broken spears and guns remaining the sole occupants of the field”. The 18th brigade found no resistance on the beach. The Qing defenders had fled almost as soon as the first cannons had gone off. A Qing commander on scene, Brigadier Zhang had refused to give up the fight, but had both his legs blown off by cannonade and had to be whisked away on a litter. The local magistrate and some of his subordinates watched in horror as the defenders departed and they all committed suicide.  A detachment of the 18th brigade set up 8 9 pounder artillery pieces and some howitzers on a hill which had a vantage point overlooking the city of Dinghai. They then began to shell the now defenseless inhabitants forcing countless to flee for their lives. The British reported not a single casualty during the volley exchange nor the beach assault. Lord Jocelyn described the planting of the Union Jack by the Joss house in Dinghai “the first European banner that has floated as conqueror over the flowery land”.  The city of Dinghai was a mile from the shoreline and Colonel Burell slowly marched his men to its formidable walls as artillery rained hell upon them. The residents of Dinghai responded with their own artillery forcing Colonel Burrell to hold back his men from a distance and wait it out until the next day to assault the city. During that lull the British soldiers found some samshu in a local fishing village and proceeded to get drunk as hell and looted the fishing village during the night. An Indian soldier said of the incident “A more complete pillage could not be conceived. The plunder ceased only when there was nothing to take or destroy”. The artillery was going on throughout the night and at around midnight of British 9 pounders hit a gunpowder deposit inside Dinghai turning the city into an inferno. The next morning the British saw most of the defenders were fleeing and sent a detachment of 12 men to approach the south wall to prod it. There was no resistance so the men began to climb the rice bag defenses that had been piled almost 2 stories high in front of the wall. Within minutes they were over the top and could see the city that once held 40,000 people was all but deserted. Lord Jocelyn said of the city “The main street was nearly deserted, except here and there, where the frightened people were performing the kow-tow as we passed. On most of the houses was placarded "Spare our lives;" and on entering the jos-houses were seen men, women, and children, on their knees, burning incense to the gods; and although protection was promised [to] them, their dread appeared in no matter relieved.”  The British reported that perhaps 2000 Chinese died, which is complete nonsense, the Chinese state something like 25 died so the actual number is somewhere in between, quite a large range I know. The British themselves might have lost up to 19 men. They found a ton of antiquated weapons and armor as they looted the city such as padded cotton jackets which displayed the disparity between the 2 forces. Robert Thom who witnesses the looting said “No one has been killed in cold blood that I am aware of, and only one or two cases of rape occurred perpetrated it is said by the sepoys”. By the way a lot of the primary sources for this war will lay blame on the Indian soldiers for misconduct and take it was a grain of salt. I am not saying it did not happen, it most certainly did, but the idea that the British redcoats were not taking part in such ventures seems dubious.  By Jul 11th, Jardine and Matheson reached Chusan and found out Admiral Elliot was forbidding their opium ships from landing on the island. Yet they pressed their team of smugglers to persist and against Elliots wishes unloaded opium. Chusan would become a storehouse for opium and by November of 1840 43 opium smuggling ships were using Chusan as an offloading point. 12,000 chests of opium would be brought to Chusan by the end of the year.  Chusan island would also bring quite a lot of misery to the British. Colonel Burrell refused to allow his troops to occupy the abandoned city of Dinghai fearing repercussions from the Chinese and instead kept his men in a particularly malaria infested paddy field. With the scorching heat and an order that all men keep their top buttons on their uniforms fastened almost 500 men would die to malaria and dysentery. A lot of variables were at work, bad provisions, too much Samshu, stagnant water and the most evil culprit, malaria invested mosquitos took a heavy toll on the British. By October, only 2036 out of 3650 troops would be fit for duty.  By december more than 5000 men were admitted to hospitals and 448 deaths would occur. If anyone knows the story of Japan's invasion of Taiwan in the 19th century, it really reminds me of that ordeal. Taking an island by force and with incredible ease, only to fall victim to brutal mother nature. On july 27th, Elliot had gathered many warships at Dinghai and felt he had enough firepower to proceed 500 miles north to Beijing. A week after Dinghai fell, Beijing got the word. However this is where a large problem would emerge for the Qing dynasty. The Emperor was given word through Qing officials, and if the news was bad, the officials would fear enraging the Emperor and more often than naught falsify what they told him. In this case the officials downplayed the severity of the incursion. They told him of alleged weaknesses of the foreign invaders. The governor of Jiangsu Province lying at the mouth of the Yangtze River, Yukien told the Emperor “take our fort at Woosung. From the bottom upward there is the stone base, then the clay base, and finally the fort itself. It is even elevation far above the level of the barbarian ships. If they shoot upward, their bullet will go down and consequently lose force. Moreover the barbarians are stiff and their legs straight. The latter, further bound with cloth, can scarcely stretch at will. Once fallen down, they cannot again stand up. It is fatal to fighting on land”. Yukien would also make remarks about how the barbarians lacked bows and arrows. While this might come off as humorous, I bring it up for important reasons. The Emperor will continuously be given these sort of reports, downplaying of events such as battles, made up stories about victories over the British and much more. The Emperor will be reacting accordingly based on the information he is given and this will be quite the crux of the entire war.  The British armada approached the mouth of the Bei He River in a course of 10 days and was only 75 miles southwest of Beijing. However at the mouth of the Bei He River lied one of the Qing dynasty's most formidable defenses, known as the Dagu forts. 2 Dagu forts guarded the mouth, though to Elliot they looked pretty decrepit and deserted. Elliot was still trying to find a Qing official who would take Palmerstons letter to the Emperor and at the mouth he saw several Chinese war junks. Elliot sent a man with the letter to the war junks and the commander of the warships replied that he would send the letter to a higher ranking Qing official who was only a short distance away. Thus Elliot waited to see what would occur and it turned out the Qing official was Qishan, the governor of Chihli province. Qishan sent word to Elliot that his letter was sent directly to the Emperor, but that Elliot would need to wait for a reply.  On May 13 of 1840, one of Qishans subordinates came aboard the Wellesley providing the British with food and water and this was followed up for several days with more gifts. Then Elliot was told the Emperor had officially received the letter, but it would be regretfully another 10 days or so for the Qing court to discuss with the Emperor the letters contents. Do not forget, the story I spoke of about the malaria and dysentery outbreak on Chusan was raging by this point and thus Elliot decided it best to scatter the armada in search of cleaner water because the Chusan wells seemed to be the culprit at the time. Some of the ships went hundreds of miles away in search of water and as this all occurred, 10 days had come and gone. When all of the armada regrouped with their fresh water reserves, Elliot decided they needed to speed up the Qing courts process. Elliot ordered the warships Madagascar and Modeste to begin firing at some forts on Chusans outskirts, but before the shelling could begin a messenger from Qishan suddenly appeared. Elliot was invited to meet with Qishan in 3 days time. The meeting would be on july 30th and the location was a fort in southern Chusan. Qishan brought gifts and food with him for the British and had a flotilla built up so the British would not have to walk in mud to the fort. Elliot, Qishan and Jocelyn had a large dinner and then they discussed the Palmerston letter for over 6 hours. Qishan during the meeting made a mention of the precedent set by the Macartney and Amherst missions, that of the tributary system. Elliot insisted both men were not tributaries, but ambassadors holding equal status to the Emperor. Qishan could feel the tension in the room and changed the subject, he pointed out that the occupation of Chusan island was unacceptable for the Emperor. Elliot understood and said the British occupation was temporary, they were merely using it as a base of operations. Then the largest looming subject emerged, Opium. Qishan demanded a promise from Queen Victoria that Britain would stop exporting opium to China. Similar to Lin Zexu, the Qing had a difficult time understanding the representatives of authority for other nations and assumed Queen Victoria held a similar position to their Emperor. Elliot said plainly that he did not have the authority to grant such a concession and then made the remark “if the Chinese wanted the opium trade to end, they should stop using it”. Elliot also made a remark that most of the Opium was coming from other sources outside British influence, but he had little evidence to support this. Qishan swallowed this resentfully but did not quibble over it. Instead Qishan moved to the subject of reparations as Palmerston had demanded compensation for the 20,000 seized opium chests and for war reparations for Britain who was invading China! Qishan flat out called these demands ludicrous, when he said this, Elliot began to write something on Palmerstons letter and when Qishan asked him what he was writing Elliot replied “I am writing what is your opinion on the matter, because many of the Emperor other officials might have differing ones”.  Qishan then began to explain to Elliot that Lin Zexu had fallen out of favor with the Qing court and that Qishan agreed with the British that Lin Zexu had mistreated them and employed unnecessary violence. Qishan made a remark that the Emperor was most likely going to fire Lin Zexu and punish him. It seems Qishan was hinting to Elliot that he might be replacing Lin Zexu as his successor and with it plenipotentiary powers. So you get the idea here, Qishan is basically hinting while nothing can be done right now, perhaps when he is in charge he will help the British out. Qishan also kept stating that the British should go to Canton, as it was the center of foreign trade and a much more logical and practical place for them to go to further negotiations. But both Elliot and Qishan knew why he was stating this repeatedly, he wanted the British to get as far away from the Emperor as possible.  George Elliot informed Charles Elliot that he felt the armada was quite vulnerable sitting in Bei He Bay and urged him to end the negotiations and leave. Likewise upon hearing the news that Lin Zexu was going to be dismissed soon, Charles Elliot agreed and they too the armada and sailed away. This rather abrupt partie however gave the Chinese the impression the barbarians were done with the war all together. As you can imagine many Qing officials began telling Beijing this. As you can also imagine the British departure was only temporary. By September of 1840 the British armada re-emerged at the mouth of the Bei He River. The Elliots had order the armada to up the pressure on the Qing and Charles Elliot had written a note to Palmerston at this time “It is notorious that the Daoguang Emperor entertains the utmost dread of our enterprising spirit”. What he meant by this, was by sending periodic naval patrols he was trying to scare the shit out of Beijing. Back over in Canton, despite the incredible efforts of Lin Zexu, the opium trade was still rearing its ugly head. Since Jardine & Matheson were now able to shove their contraband on Chusan island it began to flood right back into the Canton market. By the fall of 1840 6500 chests had gotten through the Canton trade from Jardine & Matheson Co alone. Many hundreds of others were flooding in from the other independent smugglers and despite the severity of punishment for using the substance, there was still an enormous demand. The Elliots of course banned the trade of opium on Chusan, but they were not morons, they knew it was simply going to Canton in the end. Of course they were allowing the trade to go on, they were after all quite broke. The Elliots had no other way of raising money to continue the war effort other than relying on the sale of opium. Both Elliots understood the fiscal dependency they had on the opium smugglers and the prohibition of its sale on the island of Chusan was merely symbolic, a way of keeping face, so typically british. Thus vessels were allowed to offload opium near Chusan with zero interference from the British armada, which in turn was patrolling the waters thus protecting the opium dealers in the end. The hope in the end was by symbolically banning the substance at Chusan, perhaps this would alleviate the Emperor while simultaneously allowing the condonation of revenue for the war effort by allowing its trade to ports like Canton.  Over in Beijing, Emperor Daoguang hesitated over Lin Zexu, he was not yet comfortable dismissing him. This embolden Lin Zexu, whom began to crack down even more so on the Chinese opium consumers. Lin Zexu put out an edict limiting the amount of time opium addicts had to wean themselves off the drug “while the period is not yet closed, you are living victims. When it shall have expired, then you will be dead victims”. Yet despite his efforts Lin Zexu could do little against the opium vessels which were being protected by the British armada making patrols in the Gulf of Canton, Amoy, Chusan and the Mouths of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers. Then to the horror of the Chinese the British began seizing Chinese ships along the coast and taking their cargo to sell and finance the war effort. Imagine how cash strapped a nation has to be to start performing this sort of looting. Between June and July of 1840 the British armada had seized 7 large trading vessels plundering their cargo. In retaliation the Chinese raised a price for the heads of any British military personnel at 100$ for a soldier taken alive, 20$ for a corpse, $5000 for a British captain and for a British ship 10,000$, cha ching. Things got out of hand quite quickly, Chinese desperate to make some coin turned to attacking European and American civilians such a missionaries. Gangs of Chinese would hunt them down beating them nearly to death. On August the 5th, Vincent Stanton a tutor of a British merchants children alongside a missionary named David Abeel made the terrible decision to go swimming in Macao' bay. Stanton was kidnapped and brought to Canton. Until this point Macao was seen as the last safe spot in China for foreigners, but the kidnapping of Stanton broke that. Adding to everyone's fears, 8 Chinese war junks docked at Macao sending the Portuguese colony into a frenzy.  It turns out Stanton's kidnapping was masterminded by Lin Zexu, it was psychological warfare. He was not able to go after the British warships, but he was able to target anyone on land. The Governor general of Macao, Pinto pleaded with Lin Zexu to return the man, but it came to nothing. The British felt they had lost face, Stanton was one of theirs and they had even tried allowing the Portuguese aid the situation to no avail. 2 weeks after Stantons kidnapping the British had had enough. 4 British warships from the Armada were sent to Macaos Casilha Bay alongside 400 soldiers. The British warships opened fire upon the Chinese war junks whom returned fire. However the Chinese war junks cannons were old and obsolete, they could not match the range the British were firing from. The Chinese crews began to panic when their return fire was literally only matching half the distance of the British and soon jumped ship. Meanwhile the british warships simply continued to rain hell upon the war junks. As noted by British officer “The [Chinese] junks, which were aground in the inner harbour, were utterly useless, for none of their guns could be brought to bear, though several of the thirty-two pound shots of the ships found their way over the bank, much to the consternation of the occupants of the junks." The Chinese crews tried to establish a defense on the coast, but the British soldiers overwhelmed them with musket fire. The Chinese war junks still intact made a break for it, as the rest of the Chinese fled into the fortifications. The British warships battered the walls of Macaos fortifications until their batteries stopped returning fire and the British and Indian soldiers soon scaled the walls. By 5pm the Chinese routed inside the Macao fortifications as the British set fire to multiple barracks. In the end the Chinese suffered upto 60 dead with 120 wounded and the British reported only 4 wounded, but take the number with a grain of salt. In Beijing Qing officials told Emperor Daoguang there had been a major victory at Macao and that many British were dead and multiple British warships laid at the bottom of Casilha Bay. These Qing officials were court officials who were received false reports from the military at Macao. Its sort of like the game broken telephone, where every link embellishes the story to make it more and more positive. All the Chinese soldiers began to abandon Macao and no more Chinese War junks came to its harbor. In the eyes of the Portuguese and British they had saved Macao, in the eyes of poor Stanton…well he was imprisoned in Canton.  The Stanton kidnapping distressed the foreign community in China, but there was another incident that scared the shit out of them. A french missionary named Father Jean Gabriel Perboyre was illegally operating in Hubei Province and got captured in September of 1839. He was tortured and interrogated for over a year and on September 11th of 1840 he was executed publicly at Wuchang. The priest was killed by strangulation, but the Qing authorities decided to place his body on a cross after his death. This set a panic into the foreign community as others were likewise captured and killed and the British on Chusan island were falling victim to malaria, dysentery and starvation, because all the food on Chusan had dried up. They began to eat moldy rice from Chusans stockpiles and bread made from worm ridden flour stuck aboard their ships for quite a long time. It is alleged that the pickled beets and pork on the British warships was so rancid even the iron-stomachs of the British couldn't tolerate it. The drinking water likewise was a source of disease, contaminated by the local sewers. The interpreter Thom wrote a letter to Matheson stating “even the natives hold their noses because of the waters smell. Unless we can manage to get the canal and town cleared out, I fear that we shall be getting some contagious distemper among us. The climate moreover is moist and mosquitoes swarm in amazing numbers. Let no man come here without mosquito curtains else he will bitterly repent of it”. The British did not realize the mosquitoes were the culprit of their malaria nightmare as the belief at the time for europeans was that malaria came from rotten vegetables. The dysentry killed more people than the malaria however, coming from the horrid food and water situation. 12 soldiers died in August, the next month 24, while 250 were hospitalized and by mid september a third of the force was too sick to fight. Being a specialist in the Pacific War I do have to say what amazing parallels this will play out for the Japanese and Americans in the island hoping warfare. Not fun to battle the elements, malaria and a terrible provision situation.  Then there was horrible incident when a commercial ship called the Kite ran aground on a sandbank on september 15th. The Captain named John Nobles lost his 5 month year old baby, and he, his wife and 26 crew members clinging to the boats wreckage until a Chinese war junk captured them. All of them were put in chains and imprisoned at Ningbo. They were placed in wooden cage, the wife of John Nobles stated “mine was scarcely a yard high, a little more than three quarters of a yard long, and a little more than half a yard broad. The door opened from the top. Into these we were lifted, the chain around our necks being locked to the cover. THey put a long piece of bamboo through the middle, a man took either end, and in this manner we were jolted from city to city to suffer the insults of the rabble, the cries from whom were awful”. Some of captured crew were beat to death, 3 men died of dysentery and those who were Indian amongst them were treated extra harshly. One of the English prisoners believed the Chinese treated the Indians worse, because they ate their rice with their fingers which angered them.  When Charles Elliot heard the news of the captives from the Kite he was mortified, particularly because one of the prisoners was a woman! He went to Ningbo aboard the Atalanta to negotiation their release and was immediately told, all the prisoners could go if the British gave back Chusan. The British did not say no, but did nothing to indicate they would hand over Chusan, so the Chinese began to threaten to kill the prisoners. This prompted the Charles Elliot to demand a meeting with Qishan at Chinhai only 10 miles away from the prison at Ningbo. Elliot stated to Qishan if the prisoners were not handed over he would end the peace talks outright. Qishan played some hard ball demanding Chusan returned, but eventually a compromise was made. Elliot agreed to stop British ships from seizing Chinese vessels and blockading the ports and in return the Chinese would still hold the prisoners, but they would improve their living conditions. To show good faith, Qishan released poor old Stanton from his prison in Canton and handed him over to Elliot. The situation did not satisfy the British, but while they danced around with diplomacy, more and more troops from India were being brought to Chusan and the most fearsome weapon Britain had at its disposal had just arrived, the Nemesis.    I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  Lin Zexu's efforts against opium were not going well enough and was losing favor with Emperor Daoguang, the British were winning battles and taking territory. How will the Qing Dynasty rid themselves of the invaders? Join us next time to find out. 

Episode 149 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Respect", and the journey of Aretha Franklin from teenage gospel singer to the Queen of Soul. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode available, on "I'm Just a Mops" by the Mops. 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/ Also, people may be interested in a Facebook discussion group for the podcast, run by a friend of mine (I'm not on FB myself) which can be found at https://www.facebook.com/groups/293630102611672/ Errata I say "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby to a Dixie Melody" instead of "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody". Also I say Spooner Oldham co-wrote "Do Right Woman". I meant Chips Moman. Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Aretha Franklin. My main biographical source for Aretha Franklin is Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin by David Ritz, and this is where most of the quotes from musicians come from. I also relied heavily on I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You by Matt Dobkin. Information on C.L. Franklin came from Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America by Nick Salvatore. Rick Hall's The Man From Muscle Shoals: My Journey from Shame to Fame contains his side of the story. Country Soul by Charles L Hughes is a great overview of the soul music made in Muscle Shoals, Memphis, and Nashville in the sixties. Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom is possibly less essential, but still definitely worth reading. And the I Never Loved a Man album is available in this five-album box set for a ludicrously cheap price. But it's actually worth getting this nineteen-CD set with her first sixteen Atlantic albums and a couple of bonus discs of demos and outtakes. There's barely a duff track in the whole nineteen discs. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start this episode,  I have to say that there are some things people may want to be aware of before listening to this. This episode has to deal, at least in passing, with subjects including child sexual abuse, intimate partner abuse, racism, and misogyny. I will of course try to deal with those subjects as tactfully as possible, but those of you who may be upset by those topics may want to check the episode transcript before or instead of listening. Those of you who leave comments or send me messages saying "why can't you just talk about the music instead of all this woke virtue-signalling?" may also want to skip this episode. You can go ahead and skip all the future ones as well, I won't mind. And one more thing to say before I get into the meat of the episode -- this episode puts me in a more difficult position than most other episodes of the podcast have. When I've talked about awful things that have happened in the course of this podcast previously, I have either been talking about perpetrators -- people like Phil Spector or Jerry Lee Lewis who did truly reprehensible things -- or about victims who have talked very publicly about the abuse they've suffered, people like Ronnie Spector or Tina Turner, who said very clearly "this is what happened to me and I want it on the public record". In the case of Aretha Franklin, she has been portrayed as a victim *by others*, and there are things that have been said about her life and her relationships which suggest that she suffered in some very terrible ways. But she herself apparently never saw herself as a victim, and didn't want some aspects of her private life talking about. At the start of David Ritz's biography of her, which is one of my main sources here, he recounts a conversation he had with her: "When I mentioned the possibility of my writing an independent biography, she said, “As long as I can approve it before it's published.” “Then it wouldn't be independent,” I said. “Why should it be independent?” “So I can tell the story from my point of view.” “But it's not your story, it's mine.” “You're an important historical figure, Aretha. Others will inevitably come along to tell your story. That's the blessing and burden of being a public figure.” “More burden than blessing,” she said." Now, Aretha Franklin is sadly dead, but I think that she still deserves the basic respect of being allowed privacy. So I will talk here about public matters, things she acknowledged in her own autobiography, and things that she and the people around her did in public situations like recording studios and concert venues. But there are aspects to the story of Aretha Franklin as that story is commonly told, which may well be true, but are of mostly prurient interest, don't add much to the story of how the music came to be made, and which she herself didn't want people talking about. So there will be things people might expect me to talk about in this episode, incidents where people in her life, usually men, treated her badly, that I'm going to leave out. That information is out there if people want to look for it, but I don't see myself as under any obligation to share it. That's not me making excuses for people who did inexcusable things, that's me showing some respect to one of the towering artistic figures of the latter half of the twentieth century. Because, of course, respect is what this is all about: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Respect"] One name that's come up a few times in this podcast, but who we haven't really talked about that much, is Bobby "Blue" Bland. We mentioned him as the single biggest influence on the style of Van Morrison, but Bland was an important figure in the Memphis music scene of the early fifties, which we talked about in several early episodes. He was one of the Beale Streeters, the loose aggregation of musicians that also included B.B. King and Johnny Ace, he worked with Ike Turner, and was one of the key links between blues and soul in the fifties and early sixties, with records like "Turn on Your Love Light": [Excerpt: Bobby "Blue" Bland, "Turn on Your Love Light"] But while Bland was influenced by many musicians we've talked about, his biggest influence wasn't a singer at all. It was a preacher he saw give a sermon in the early 1940s. As he said decades later: "Wasn't his words that got me—I couldn't tell you what he talked on that day, couldn't tell you what any of it meant, but it was the way he talked. He talked like he was singing. He talked music. The thing that really got me, though, was this squall-like sound he made to emphasize a certain word. He'd catch the word in his mouth, let it roll around and squeeze it with his tongue. When it popped on out, it exploded, and the ladies started waving and shouting. I liked all that. I started popping and shouting too. That next week I asked Mama when we were going back to Memphis to church. “‘Since when you so keen on church?' Mama asked. “‘I like that preacher,' I said. “‘Reverend Franklin?' she asked. “‘Well, if he's the one who sings when he preaches, that's the one I like.'" Bland was impressed by C.L. Franklin, and so were other Memphis musicians. Long after Franklin had moved to Detroit, they remembered him, and Bland and B.B. King would go to Franklin's church to see him preach whenever they were in the city. And Bland studied Franklin's records. He said later "I liked whatever was on the radio, especially those first things Nat Cole did with his trio. Naturally I liked the blues singers like Roy Brown, the jump singers like Louis Jordan, and the ballad singers like Billy Eckstine, but, brother, the man who really shaped me was Reverend Franklin." Bland would study Franklin's records, and would take the style that Franklin used in recorded sermons like "The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest": [Excerpt: C.L. Franklin, "The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest"] And you can definitely hear that preaching style on records like Bland's "I Pity the Fool": [Excerpt: Bobby "Blue" Bland, "I Pity the Fool"] But of course, that wasn't the only influence the Reverend C.L. Franklin had on the course of soul music. C.L. Franklin had grown up poor, on a Mississippi farm, and had not even finished grade school because he was needed to work behind the mule, ploughing the farm for his stepfather. But he had a fierce intelligence and became an autodidact, travelling regularly to the nearest library, thirty miles away, on a horse-drawn wagon, and reading everything he could get his hands on. At the age of sixteen he received what he believed to be a message from God, and decided to become an itinerant preacher. He would travel between many small country churches and build up audiences there -- and he would also study everyone else preaching there, analysing their sermons, seeing if he could anticipate their line of argument and get ahead of them, figuring out the structure. But unlike many people in the conservative Black Baptist churches of the time, he never saw the spiritual and secular worlds as incompatible. He saw blues music and Black church sermons as both being part of the same thing -- a Black culture and folklore that was worthy of respect in both its spiritual and secular aspects. He soon built up a small circuit of local churches where he would preach occasionally, but wasn't the main pastor at any of them. He got married aged twenty, though that marriage didn't last, and he seems to have been ambitious for a greater respectability. When that marriage failed, in June 1936, he married Barbara Siggers, a very intelligent, cultured, young single mother who had attended Booker T Washington High School, the best Black school in Memphis, and he adopted her son Vaughn. While he was mostly still doing churches in Mississippi, he took on one in Memphis as well, in an extremely poor area, but it gave him a foot in the door to the biggest Black city in the US. Barbara would later be called "one of the really great gospel singers" by no less than Mahalia Jackson. We don't have any recordings of Barbara singing, but Mahalia Jackson certainly knew what she was talking about when it came to great gospel singers: [Excerpt: Mahalia Jackson, "Precious Lord, Take My Hand"] Rev. Franklin was hugely personally ambitious, and he also wanted to get out of rural Mississippi, where the Klan were very active at this time, especially after his daughter Erma was born in 1938. They moved to Memphis in 1939, where he got a full-time position at New Salem Baptist Church, where for the first time he was able to earn a steady living from just one church and not have to tour round multiple churches. He soon became so popular that if you wanted to get a seat for the service at noon, you had to turn up for the 8AM Sunday School or you'd be forced to stand. He also enrolled for college courses at LeMoyne College. He didn't get a degree, but spent three years as a part-time student studying theology, literature, and sociology, and soon developed a liberal theology that was very different from the conservative fundamentalism he'd grown up in, though still very much part of the Baptist church. Where he'd grown up with a literalism that said the Bible was literally true, he started to accept things like evolution, and to see much of the Bible as metaphor. Now, we talked in the last episode about how impossible it is to get an accurate picture of the lives of religious leaders, because their life stories are told by those who admire them, and that's very much the case for C.L. Franklin. Franklin was a man who had many, many, admirable qualities -- he was fiercely intelligent, well-read, a superb public speaker, a man who was by all accounts genuinely compassionate towards those in need, and he became one of the leaders of the civil rights movement and inspired tens of thousands, maybe even millions, of people, directly and indirectly, to change the world for the better. He also raised several children who loved and admired him and were protective of his memory. And as such, there is an inevitable bias in the sources on Franklin's life. And so there's a tendency to soften the very worst things he did, some of which were very, very bad. For example in Nick Salvatore's biography of him, he talks about Franklin, in 1940, fathering a daughter with someone who is described as "a teenager" and "quite young". No details of her age other than that are given, and a few paragraphs later the age of a girl who was then sixteen *is* given, talking about having known the girl in question, and so the impression is given that the girl he impregnated was also probably in her late teens. Which would still be bad, but a man in his early twenties fathering a child with a girl in her late teens is something that can perhaps be forgiven as being a different time. But while the girl in question may have been a teenager when she gave birth, she was *twelve years old* when she became pregnant, by C.L. Franklin, the pastor of her church, who was in a position of power over her in multiple ways. Twelve years old. And this is not the only awful thing that Franklin did -- he was also known to regularly beat up women he was having affairs with, in public. I mention this now because everything else I say about him in this episode is filtered through sources who saw these things as forgivable character flaws in an otherwise admirable human being, and I can't correct for those biases because I don't know the truth. So it's going to sound like he was a truly great man. But bear those facts in mind. Barbara stayed with Franklin for the present, after discovering what he had done, but their marriage was a difficult one, and they split up and reconciled a handful of times. They had three more children together -- Cecil, Aretha, and Carolyn -- and remained together as Franklin moved on first to a church in Buffalo, New York, and then to New Bethel Church, in Detroit, on Hastings Street, a street which was the centre of Black nightlife in the city, as immortalised in John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillun": [Excerpt: John Lee Hooker, "Boogie Chillen"] Before moving to Detroit, Franklin had already started to get more political, as his congregation in Buffalo had largely been union members, and being free from the worst excesses of segregation allowed him to talk more openly about civil rights, but that only accelerated when he moved to Detroit, which had been torn apart just a couple of years earlier by police violence against Black protestors. Franklin had started building a reputation when in Memphis using radio broadcasts, and by the time he moved to Detroit he was able to command a very high salary, and not only that, his family were given a mansion by the church, in a rich part of town far away from most of his congregation. Smokey Robinson, who was Cecil Franklin's best friend and a frequent visitor to the mansion through most of his childhood, described it later, saying "Once inside, I'm awestruck -- oil paintings, velvet tapestries, silk curtains, mahogany cabinets filled with ornate objects of silver and gold. Man, I've never seen nothing like that before!" He made a lot of money, but he also increased church attendance so much that he earned that money. He had already been broadcasting on the radio, but when he started his Sunday night broadcasts in Detroit, he came up with a trick of having his sermons run long, so the show would end before the climax. People listening decided that they would have to start turning up in person to hear the end of the sermons, and soon he became so popular that the church would be so full that crowds would have to form on the street outside to listen. Other churches rescheduled their services so they wouldn't clash with Franklin's, and most of the other Black Baptist ministers in the city would go along to watch him preach. In 1948 though, a couple of years after moving to Detroit, Barbara finally left her husband. She took Vaughn with her and moved back to Buffalo, leaving the four biological children she'd had with C.L. with their father.  But it's important to note that she didn't leave her children -- they would visit her on a regular basis, and stay with her over school holidays. Aretha later said "Despite the fact that it has been written innumerable times, it is an absolute lie that my mother abandoned us. In no way, shape, form, or fashion did our mother desert us." Barbara's place in the home was filled by many women -- C.L. Franklin's mother moved up from Mississippi to help him take care of the children, the ladies from the church would often help out, and even stars like Mahalia Jackson would turn up and cook meals for the children. There were also the women with whom Franklin carried on affairs, including Anna Gordy, Ruth Brown, and Dinah Washington, the most important female jazz and blues singer of the fifties, who had major R&B hits with records like her version of "Cold Cold Heart": [Excerpt: Dinah Washington, "Cold Cold Heart"] Although my own favourite record of hers is "Big Long Slidin' Thing", which she made with arranger Quincy Jones: [Excerpt: Dinah Washington, "Big Long Slidin' Thing"] It's about a trombone. Get your minds out of the gutter. Washington was one of the biggest vocal influences on young Aretha, but the single biggest influence was Clara Ward, another of C.L. Franklin's many girlfriends. Ward was the longest-lasting of these, and there seems to have been a lot of hope on both her part and Aretha's that she and Rev. Franklin would marry, though Franklin always made it very clear that monogamy wouldn't suit him. Ward was one of the three major female gospel singers of the middle part of the century, and possibly even more technically impressive as a vocalist than the other two, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Mahalia Jackson. Where Jackson was an austere performer, who refused to perform in secular contexts at all for most of her life, and took herself and her music very seriously, and Tharpe was a raunchier, funnier, more down-to-earth performer who was happy to play for blues audiences and even to play secular music on occasion, Ward was a *glamorous* performer, who wore sequined dresses and piled her hair high on her head. Ward had become a singer in 1931 when her mother had what she later talked about as a religious epiphany, and decided she wasn't going to be a labourer any more, she was going to devote her life to gospel music. Ward's mother had formed a vocal group with her two daughters, and Clara quickly became the star and her mother's meal ticket -- and her mother was very possessive of that ticket, to the extent that Ward, who was a bisexual woman who mostly preferred men, had more relationships with women, because her mother wouldn't let her be alone with the men she was attracted to. But Ward did manage to keep a relationship going with C.L. Franklin, and Aretha Franklin talked about the moment she decided to become a singer, when she saw Ward singing "Peace in the Valley" at a funeral: [Excerpt: Clara Ward, "Peace in the Valley"] As well as looking towards Ward as a vocal influence, Aretha was also influenced by her as a person -- she became a mother figure to Aretha, who would talk later about watching Ward eat, and noting her taking little delicate bites, and getting an idea of what it meant to be ladylike from her. After Ward's death in 1973, a notebook was found in which she had written her opinions of other singers. For Aretha she wrote “My baby Aretha, she doesn't know how good she is. Doubts self. Some day—to the moon. I love that girl.” Ward's influence became especially important to Aretha and her siblings after their mother died of a heart attack a few years after leaving her husband, when Aretha was ten, and Aretha, already a very introverted child, became even more so. Everyone who knew Aretha said that her later diva-ish reputation came out of a deep sense of insecurity and introversion -- that she was a desperately private, closed-off, person who would rarely express her emotions at all, and who would look away from you rather than make eye contact. The only time she let herself express emotions was when she performed music. And music was hugely important in the Franklin household. Most preachers in the Black church at that time were a bit dismissive of gospel music, because they thought the music took away from their prestige -- they saw it as a necessary evil, and resented it taking up space when their congregations could have been listening to them. But Rev. Franklin was himself a rather good singer, and even made a few gospel records himself in 1950, recording for Joe Von Battle, who owned a record shop on Hastings Street and also put out records by blues singers: [Excerpt: C.L. Franklin, "I Am Climbing Higher Mountains" ] The church's musical director was James Cleveland, one of the most important gospel artists of the fifties and sixties, who sang with groups like the Caravans: [Excerpt: The Caravans, "What Kind of Man is This?" ] Cleveland, who had started out in the choir run by Thomas Dorsey, the writer of “Take My Hand Precious Lord” and “Peace in the Valley”, moved in with the Franklin family for a while, and he gave the girls tips on playing the piano -- much later he would play piano on Aretha's album Amazing Grace, and she said of him “He showed me some real nice chords, and I liked his deep, deep sound”. Other than Clara Ward, he was probably the single biggest musical influence on Aretha. And all the touring gospel musicians would make appearances at New Bethel Church, not least of them Sam Cooke, who first appeared there with the Highway QCs and would continue to do so after joining the Soul Stirrers: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, "Touch the Hem of his Garment"] Young Aretha and her older sister Erma both had massive crushes on Cooke, and there were rumours that he had an affair with one or both of them when they were in their teens, though both denied it. Aretha later said "When I first saw him, all I could do was sigh... Sam was love on first hearing, love at first sight." But it wasn't just gospel music that filled the house. One of the major ways that C.L. Franklin's liberalism showed was in his love of secular music, especially jazz and blues, which he regarded as just as important in Black cultural life as gospel music. We already talked about Dinah Washington being a regular visitor to the house, but every major Black entertainer would visit the Franklin residence when they were in Detroit. Both Aretha and Cecil Franklin vividly remembered visits from Art Tatum, who would sit at the piano and play for the family and their guests: [Excerpt: Art Tatum, "Tiger Rag"] Tatum was such a spectacular pianist that there's now a musicological term, the tatum, named after him, for the smallest possible discernible rhythmic interval between two notes. Young Aretha was thrilled by his technique, and by that of Oscar Peterson, who also regularly came to the Franklin home, sometimes along with Ella Fitzgerald. Nat "King" Cole was another regular visitor. The Franklin children all absorbed the music these people -- the most important musicians of the time -- were playing in their home, and young Aretha in particular became an astonishing singer and also an accomplished pianist. Smokey Robinson later said: “The other thing that knocked us out about Aretha was her piano playing. There was a grand piano in the Franklin living room, and we all liked to mess around. We'd pick out little melodies with one finger. But when Aretha sat down, even as a seven-year-old, she started playing chords—big chords. Later I'd recognize them as complex church chords, the kind used to accompany the preacher and the solo singer. At the time, though, all I could do was view Aretha as a wonder child. Mind you, this was Detroit, where musical talent ran strong and free. Everyone was singing and harmonizing; everyone was playing piano and guitar. Aretha came out of this world, but she also came out of another far-off magical world none of us really understood. She came from a distant musical planet where children are born with their gifts fully formed.” C.L. Franklin became more involved in the music business still when Joe Von Battle started releasing records of his sermons, which had become steadily more politically aware: [Excerpt: C.L. Franklin, "Dry Bones in the Valley"] Franklin was not a Marxist -- he was a liberal, but like many liberals was willing to stand with Marxists where they had shared interests, even when it was dangerous. For example in 1954, at the height of McCarthyism, he had James and Grace Lee Boggs, two Marxist revolutionaries, come to the pulpit and talk about their support for the anti-colonial revolution in Kenya, and they sold four hundred copies of their pamphlet after their talk, because he saw that the struggle of Black Africans to get out from white colonial rule was the same struggle as that of Black Americans. And Franklin's powerful sermons started getting broadcast on the radio in areas further out from Detroit, as Chess Records picked up the distribution for them and people started playing the records on other stations. People like future Congressman John Lewis and the Reverend Jesse Jackson would later talk about listening to C.L. Franklin's records on the radio and being inspired -- a whole generation of Black Civil Rights leaders took their cues from him, and as the 1950s and 60s went on he became closer and closer to Martin Luther King in particular. But C.L. Franklin was always as much an ambitious showman as an activist, and he started putting together gospel tours, consisting mostly of music but with himself giving a sermon as the headline act. And he became very, very wealthy from these tours. On one trip in the south, his car broke down, and he couldn't find a mechanic willing to work on it. A group of white men started mocking him with racist terms, trying to provoke him, as he was dressed well and driving a nice car (albeit one that had broken down). Rather than arguing with them, he walked to a car dealership, and bought a new car with the cash that he had on him. By 1956 he was getting around $4000 per appearance, roughly equivalent to $43,000 today, and he was making a *lot* of appearances. He also sold half a million records that year. Various gospel singers, including the Clara Ward Singers, would perform on the tours he organised, and one of those performers was Franklin's middle daughter Aretha. Aretha had become pregnant when she was twelve, and after giving birth to the child she dropped out of school, but her grandmother did most of the child-rearing for her, while she accompanied her father on tour. Aretha's first recordings, made when she was just fourteen, show what an astonishing talent she already was at that young age. She would grow as an artist, of course, as she aged and gained experience, but those early gospel records already show an astounding maturity and ability. It's jaw-dropping to listen to these records of a fourteen-year-old, and immediately recognise them as a fully-formed Aretha Franklin. [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "There is a Fountain Filled With Blood"] Smokey Robinson's assessment that she was born with her gifts fully formed doesn't seem like an exaggeration when you hear that. For the latter half of the fifties, Aretha toured with her father, performing on the gospel circuit and becoming known there. But the Franklin sisters were starting to get ideas about moving into secular music. This was largely because their family friend Sam Cooke had done just that, with "You Send Me": [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "You Send Me"] Aretha and Erma still worshipped Cooke, and Aretha would later talk about getting dressed up just to watch Cooke appear on the TV. Their brother Cecil later said "I remember the night Sam came to sing at the Flame Show Bar in Detroit. Erma and Ree said they weren't going because they were so heartbroken that Sam had recently married. I didn't believe them. And I knew I was right when they started getting dressed about noon for the nine o'clock show. Because they were underage, they put on a ton of makeup to look older. It didn't matter 'cause Berry Gordy's sisters, Anna and Gwen, worked the photo concession down there, taking pictures of the party people. Anna was tight with Daddy and was sure to let my sisters in. She did, and they came home with stars in their eyes.” Moving from gospel to secular music still had a stigma against it in the gospel world, but Rev. Franklin had never seen secular music as sinful, and he encouraged his daughters in their ambitions. Erma was the first to go secular, forming a girl group, the Cleo-Patrettes, at the suggestion of the Four Tops, who were family friends, and recording a single for Joe Von Battle's J-V-B label, "No Other Love": [Excerpt: The Cleo-Patrettes, "No Other Love"] But the group didn't go any further, as Rev. Franklin insisted that his eldest daughter had to finish school and go to university before she could become a professional singer. Erma missed other opportunities for different reasons, though -- Berry Gordy, at this time still a jobbing songwriter, offered her a song he'd written with his sister and Roquel Davis, but Erma thought of herself as a jazz singer and didn't want to do R&B, and so "All I Could Do Was Cry" was given to Etta James instead, who had a top forty pop hit with it: [Excerpt: Etta James, "All I Could Do Was Cry"] While Erma's move into secular music was slowed by her father wanting her to have an education, there was no such pressure on Aretha, as she had already dropped out. But Aretha had a different problem -- she was very insecure, and said that church audiences "weren't critics, but worshippers", but she was worried that nightclub audiences in particular were just the kind of people who would just be looking for flaws, rather than wanting to support the performer as church audiences did. But eventually she got up the nerve to make the move. There was the possibility of her getting signed to Motown -- her brother was still best friends with Smokey Robinson, while the Gordy family were close to her father -- but Rev. Franklin had his eye on bigger things. He wanted her to be signed to Columbia, which in 1960 was the most prestigious of all the major labels. As Aretha's brother Cecil later said "He wanted Ree on Columbia, the label that recorded Mahalia Jackson, Duke Ellington, Johnny Mathis, Tony Bennett, Percy Faith, and Doris Day. Daddy said that Columbia was the biggest and best record company in the world. Leonard Bernstein recorded for Columbia." They went out to New York to see Phil Moore, a legendary vocal coach and arranger who had helped make Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge into stars, but Moore actually refused to take her on as a client, saying "She does not require my services. Her style has already been developed. Her style is in place. It is a unique style that, in my professional opinion, requires no alteration. It simply requires the right material. Her stage presentation is not of immediate concern. All that will come later. The immediate concern is the material that will suit her best. And the reason that concern will not be easily addressed is because I can't imagine any material that will not suit her." That last would become a problem for the next few years, but the immediate issue was to get someone at Columbia to listen to her, and Moore could help with that -- he was friends with John Hammond. Hammond is a name that's come up several times in the podcast already -- we mentioned him in the very earliest episodes, and also in episode ninety-eight, where we looked at his signing of Bob Dylan. But Hammond was a legend in the music business. He had produced sessions for Bessie Smith, had discovered Count Basie and Billie Holiday, had convinced Benny Goodman to hire Charlie Christian and Lionel Hampton, had signed Pete Seeger and the Weavers to Columbia, had organised the Spirituals to Swing concerts which we talked about in the first few episodes of this podcast, and was about to put out the first album of Robert Johnson's recordings. Of all the executives at Columbia, he was the one who had the greatest eye for talent, and the greatest understanding of Black musical culture. Moore suggested that the Franklins get Major Holley to produce a demo recording that he could get Hammond to listen to. Major Holley was a family friend, and a jazz bassist who had played with Oscar Peterson and Coleman Hawkins among others, and he put together a set of songs for Aretha that would emphasise the jazz side of her abilities, pitching her as a Dinah Washington style bluesy jazz singer. The highlight of the demo was a version of "Today I Sing the Blues", a song that had originally been recorded by Helen Humes, the singer who we last heard of recording “Be Baba Leba” with Bill Doggett: [Excerpt: Helen Humes, "Today I Sing the Blues"] That original version had been produced by Hammond, but the song had also recently been covered by Aretha's idol, Sam Cooke: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Today I Sing the Blues"] Hammond was hugely impressed by the demo, and signed Aretha straight away, and got to work producing her first album. But he and Rev. Franklin had different ideas about what Aretha should do. Hammond wanted to make a fairly raw-sounding bluesy jazz album, the kind of recording he had produced with Bessie Smith or Billie Holiday, but Rev. Franklin wanted his daughter to make music that would cross over to the white pop market -- he was aiming for the same kind of audience that Nat "King" Cole or Harry Belafonte had, and he wanted her recording standards like "Over the Rainbow". This showed a lack of understanding on Rev. Franklin's part of how such crossovers actually worked at this point. As Etta James later said, "If you wanna have Black hits, you gotta understand the Black streets, you gotta work those streets and work those DJs to get airplay on Black stations... Or looking at it another way, in those days you had to get the Black audience to love the hell outta you and then hope the love would cross over to the white side. Columbia didn't know nothing 'bout crossing over.” But Hammond knew they had to make a record quickly, because Sam Cooke had been working on RCA Records, trying to get them to sign Aretha, and Rev. Franklin wanted an album out so they could start booking club dates for her, and was saying that if they didn't get one done quickly he'd take up that offer, and so they came up with a compromise set of songs which satisfied nobody, but did produce two R&B top ten hits, "Won't Be Long" and Aretha's version of "Today I Sing the Blues": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Today I Sing the Blues"] This is not to say that Aretha herself saw this as a compromise -- she later said "I have never compromised my material. Even then, I knew a good song from a bad one. And if Hammond, one of the legends of the business, didn't know how to produce a record, who does? No, the fault was with promotion." And this is something important to bear in mind as we talk about her Columbia records. Many, *many* people have presented those records as Aretha being told what to do by producers who didn't understand her art and were making her record songs that didn't fit her style. That's not what's happening with the Columbia records. Everyone actually involved said that Aretha was very involved in the choices made -- and there are some genuinely great tracks on those albums. The problem is that they're *unfocused*. Aretha was only eighteen when she signed to the label, and she loved all sorts of music -- blues, jazz, soul, standards, gospel, middle-of-the-road pop music -- and wanted to sing all those kinds of music. And she *could* sing all those kinds of music, and sing them well. But it meant the records weren't coherent. You didn't know what you were getting, and there was no artistic personality that dominated them, it was just what Aretha felt like recording. Around this time, Aretha started to think that maybe her father didn't know what he was talking about when it came to popular music success, even though she idolised him in most areas, and she turned to another figure, who would soon become both her husband and manager. Ted White. Her sister Erma, who was at that time touring with Lloyd Price, had introduced them, but in fact Aretha had first seen White years earlier, in her own house -- he had been Dinah Washington's boyfriend in the fifties, and her first sight of him had been carrying a drunk Washington out of the house after a party. In interviews with David Ritz, who wrote biographies of many major soul stars including both Aretha Franklin and Etta James, James had a lot to say about White, saying “Ted White was famous even before he got with Aretha. My boyfriend at the time, Harvey Fuqua, used to talk about him. Ted was supposed to be the slickest pimp in Detroit. When I learned that Aretha married him, I wasn't surprised. A lot of the big-time singers who we idolized as girls—like Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan—had pimps for boyfriends and managers. That was standard operating procedure. My own mother had made a living turning tricks. When we were getting started, that way of life was part of the music business. It was in our genes. Part of the lure of pimps was that they got us paid." She compared White to Ike Turner, saying "Ike made Tina, no doubt about it. He developed her talent. He showed her what it meant to be a performer. He got her famous. Of course, Ted White was not a performer, but he was savvy about the world. When Harvey Fuqua introduced me to him—this was the fifties, before he was with Aretha—I saw him as a super-hip extra-smooth cat. I liked him. He knew music. He knew songwriters who were writing hit songs. He had manners. Later, when I ran into him and Aretha—this was the sixties—I saw that she wasn't as shy as she used to be." White was a pimp, but he was also someone with music business experience -- he owned an unsuccessful publishing company, and also ran a chain of jukeboxes. He was also thirty, while Aretha was only eighteen. But White didn't like the people in Aretha's life at the time -- he didn't get on well with her father, and he also clashed with John Hammond. And Aretha was also annoyed at Hammond, because her sister Erma had signed to Epic, a Columbia subsidiary, and was releasing her own singles: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Hello Again"] Aretha was certain that Hammond had signed Erma, even though Hammond had nothing to do with Epic Records, and Erma had actually been recommended by Lloyd Price. And Aretha, while for much of her career she would support her sister, was also terrified that her sister might have a big hit before her and leave Aretha in her shadow. Hammond was still the credited producer on Aretha's second album, The Electrifying Aretha Franklin, but his lack of say in the sessions can be shown in the choice of lead-off single. "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody" was originally recorded by Al Jolson in 1918: [Excerpt: Al Jolson, "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody"] Rev. Franklin pushed for the song, as he was a fan of Jolson -- Jolson, oddly, had a large Black fanbase, despite his having been a blackface performer, because he had *also* been a strong advocate of Black musicians like Cab Calloway, and the level of racism in the media of the twenties through forties was so astonishingly high that even a blackface performer could seem comparatively OK. Aretha's performance was good, but it was hardly the kind of thing that audiences were clamouring for in 1961: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody"] That single came out the month after _Down Beat_ magazine gave Aretha the "new-star female vocalist award", and it oddly made the pop top forty, her first record to do so, and the B-side made the R&B top ten, but for the next few years both chart success and critical acclaim eluded her. None of her next nine singles would make higher than number eighty-six on the Hot One Hundred, and none would make the R&B charts at all. After that transitional second album, she was paired with producer Bob Mersey, who was precisely the kind of white pop producer that one would expect for someone who hoped for crossover success. Mersey was the producer for many of Columbia's biggest stars at the time -- people like Barbra Streisand, Andy Williams, Julie Andrews, Patti Page, and Mel Tormé -- and it was that kind of audience that Aretha wanted to go for at this point. To give an example of the kind of thing that Mersey was doing, just the month before he started work on his first collaboration with Aretha, _The Tender, the Moving, the Swinging Aretha Franklin_, his production of Andy Williams singing "Moon River" was released: [Excerpt: Andy Williams, "Moon River"] This was the kind of audience Aretha was going for when it came to record sales – the person she compared herself to most frequently at this point was Barbra Streisand – though in live performances she was playing with a small jazz group in jazz venues, and going for the same kind of jazz-soul crossover audience as Dinah Washington or Ray Charles. The strategy seems to have been to get something like the success of her idol Sam Cooke, who could play to soul audiences but also play the Copacabana, but the problem was that Cooke had built an audience before doing that -- she hadn't. But even though she hadn't built up an audience, musicians were starting to pay attention. Ted White, who was still in touch with Dinah Washington, later said “Women are very catty. They'll see a girl who's dressed very well and they'll say, Yeah, but look at those shoes, or look at that hairdo. Aretha was the only singer I've ever known that Dinah had no negative comments about. She just stood with her mouth open when she heard Aretha sing.” The great jazz vocalist Carmen McRea went to see Aretha at the Village Vanguard in New York around this time, having heard the comparisons to Dinah Washington, and met her afterwards. She later said "Given how emotionally she sang, I expected her to have a supercharged emotional personality like Dinah. Instead, she was the shyest thing I've ever met. Would hardly look me in the eye. Didn't say more than two words. I mean, this bitch gave bashful a new meaning. Anyway, I didn't give her any advice because she didn't ask for any, but I knew goddamn well that, no matter how good she was—and she was absolutely wonderful—she'd have to make up her mind whether she wanted to be Della Reese, Dinah Washington, or Sarah Vaughan. I also had a feeling she wouldn't have minded being Leslie Uggams or Diahann Carroll. I remember thinking that if she didn't figure out who she was—and quick—she was gonna get lost in the weeds of the music biz." So musicians were listening to Aretha, even if everyone else wasn't. The Tender, the Moving, the Swinging Aretha Franklin, for example, was full of old standards like "Try a Little Tenderness": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Try a Little Tenderness"] That performance inspired Otis Redding to cut his own version of that song a few years later: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Try a Little Tenderness"] And it might also have inspired Aretha's friend and idol Sam Cooke to include the song in his own lounge sets. The Tender, the Moving, the Swinging Aretha Franklin also included Aretha's first original composition, but in general it wasn't a very well-received album. In 1963, the first cracks started to develop in Aretha's relationship with Ted White. According to her siblings, part of the strain was because Aretha's increasing commitment to the civil rights movement was costing her professional opportunities. Her brother Cecil later said "Ted White had complete sway over her when it came to what engagements to accept and what songs to sing. But if Daddy called and said, ‘Ree, I want you to sing for Dr. King,' she'd drop everything and do just that. I don't think Ted had objections to her support of Dr. King's cause, and he realized it would raise her visibility. But I do remember the time that there was a conflict between a big club gig and doing a benefit for Dr. King. Ted said, ‘Take the club gig. We need the money.' But Ree said, ‘Dr. King needs me more.' She defied her husband. Maybe that was the start of their marital trouble. Their thing was always troubled because it was based on each of them using the other. Whatever the case, my sister proved to be a strong soldier in the civil rights fight. That made me proud of her and it kept her relationship with Daddy from collapsing entirely." In part her increasing activism was because of her father's own increase in activity. The benefit that Cecil is talking about there is probably one in Chicago organised by Mahalia Jackson, where Aretha headlined on a bill that also included Jackson, Eartha Kitt, and the comedian Dick Gregory. That was less than a month before her father organised the Detroit Walk to Freedom, a trial run for the more famous March on Washington a few weeks later. The Detroit Walk to Freedom was run by the Detroit Council for Human Rights, which was formed by Rev. Franklin and Rev. Albert Cleage, a much more radical Black nationalist who often differed with Franklin's more moderate integrationist stance. They both worked together to organise the Walk to Freedom, but Franklin's stance predominated, as several white liberal politicians, like the Mayor of Detroit, Jerome Cavanagh, were included in the largely-Black March. It drew crowds of 125,000 people, and Dr. King called it "one of the most wonderful things that has happened in America", and it was the largest civil rights demonstration in American history up to that point. King's speech in Detroit was recorded and released on Motown Records: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "Original 'I Have a Dream' Speech”] He later returned to the same ideas in his more famous speech in Washington. During that civil rights spring and summer of 1963, Aretha also recorded what many think of as the best of her Columbia albums, a collection of jazz standards  called Laughing on the Outside, which included songs like "Solitude", "Ol' Man River" and "I Wanna Be Around": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Wanna Be Around"] The opening track, "Skylark", was Etta James' favourite ever Aretha Franklin performance, and is regarded by many as the definitive take on the song: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Skylark"] Etta James later talked about discussing the track with the great jazz singer Sarah Vaughan, one of Aretha's early influences, who had recorded her own version of the song: "Sarah said, ‘Have you heard of this Aretha Franklin girl?' I said, ‘You heard her do “Skylark,” didn't you?' Sarah said, ‘Yes, I did, and I'm never singing that song again.” But while the album got noticed by other musicians, it didn't get much attention from the wider public. Mersey decided that a change in direction was needed, and they needed to get in someone with more of a jazz background to work with Aretha. He brought in pianist and arranger Bobby Scott, who had previously worked with people like Lester Young, and Scott said of their first meeting “My first memory of Aretha is that she wouldn't look at me when I spoke. She withdrew from the encounter in a way that intrigued me. At first I thought she was just shy—and she was—but I also felt her reading me...For all her deference to my experience and her reluctance to speak up, when she did look me in the eye, she did so with a quiet intensity before saying, ‘I like all your ideas, Mr. Scott, but please remember I do want hits.'” They started recording together, but the sides they cut wouldn't be released for a few years. Instead, Aretha and Mersey went in yet another direction. Dinah Washington died suddenly in December 1963, and given that Aretha was already being compared to Washington by almost everyone, and that Washington had been a huge influence on her, as well as having been close to both her father and her husband/manager, it made sense to go into the studio and quickly cut a tribute album, with Aretha singing Washington's hits: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Cold Cold Heart"] Unfortunately, while Washington had been wildly popular, and one of the most important figures in jazz and R&B in the forties and fifties, her style was out of date. The tribute album, titled Unforgettable, came out in February 1964, the same month that Beatlemania hit the US. Dinah Washington was the past, and trying to position Aretha as "the new Dinah Washington" would doom her to obscurity. John Hammond later said "I remember thinking that if Aretha never does another album she will be remembered for this one. No, the problem was timing. Dinah had died, and, outside the black community, interest in her had waned dramatically. Popular music was in a radical and revolutionary moment, and that moment had nothing to do with Dinah Washington, great as she was and will always be.” At this point, Columbia brought in Clyde Otis, an independent producer and songwriter who had worked with artists like Washington and Sarah Vaughan, and indeed had written one of the songs on Unforgettable, but had also worked with people like Brook Benton, who had a much more R&B audience. For example, he'd written "Baby, You Got What It Takes" for Benton and Washington to do as a duet: [Excerpt: Brook Benton and Dinah Washington, "Baby, You Got What it Takes"] In 1962, when he was working at Mercury Records before going independent, Otis had produced thirty-three of the fifty-one singles the label put out that year that had charted. Columbia had decided that they were going to position Aretha firmly in the R&B market, and assigned Otis to do just that. At first, though, Otis had no more luck with getting Aretha to sing R&B than anyone else had. He later said "Aretha, though, couldn't be deterred from her determination to beat Barbra Streisand at Barbra's own game. I kept saying, ‘Ree, you can outsing Streisand any day of the week. That's not the point. The point is to find a hit.' But that summer she just wanted straight-up ballads. She insisted that she do ‘People,' Streisand's smash. Aretha sang the hell out of it, but no one's gonna beat Barbra at her own game." But after several months of this, eventually Aretha and White came round to the idea of making an R&B record. Otis produced an album of contemporary R&B, with covers of music from the more sophisticated end of the soul market, songs like "My Guy", "Every Little Bit Hurts", and "Walk on By", along with a few new originals brought in by Otis. The title track, "Runnin' Out of Fools", became her biggest hit in three years, making number fifty-seven on the pop charts and number thirty on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Runnin' Out of Fools"] After that album, they recorded another album with Otis producing, a live-in-the-studio jazz album, but again nobody involved could agree on a style for her. By this time it was obvious that she was unhappy with Columbia and would be leaving the label soon, and they wanted to get as much material in the can as they could, so they could continue releasing material after she left. But her working relationship with Otis was deteriorating -- Otis and Ted White did not get on, Aretha and White were having their own problems, and Aretha had started just not showing up for some sessions, with nobody knowing where she was. Columbia passed her on to yet another producer, this time Bob Johnston, who had just had a hit with Patti Page, "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte": [Excerpt: Patti Page, "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte"] Johnston was just about to hit an incredible hot streak as a producer. At the same time as his sessions with Aretha, he was also producing Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, and just after the sessions finished he'd go on to produce Simon & Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence album. In the next few years he would produce a run of classic Dylan albums like Blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding, and New Morning, Simon & Garfunkel's follow up Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme, Leonard Cohen's first three albums, and Johnny Cash's comeback with the Live at Folsom Prison album and its follow up At San Quentin. He also produced records for Marty Robbins, Flatt & Scruggs, the Byrds, and Burl Ives during that time period. But you may notice that while that's as great a run of records as any producer was putting out at the time, it has little to do with the kind of music that Aretha Franklin was making then, or would become famous with. Johnston produced a string-heavy session in which Aretha once again tried to sing old standards by people like Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern. She then just didn't turn up for some more sessions, until one final session in August, when she recorded songs like "Swanee" and "You Made Me Love You". For more than a year, she didn't go into a studio. She also missed many gigs and disappeared from her family's life for periods of time. Columbia kept putting out records of things she'd already recorded, but none of them had any success at all. Many of the records she'd made for Columbia had been genuinely great -- there's a popular perception that she was being held back by a record company that forced her to sing material she didn't like, but in fact she *loved* old standards, and jazz tunes, and contemporary pop at least as much as any other kind of music. Truly great musicians tend to have extremely eclectic tastes, and Aretha Franklin was a truly great musician if anyone was. Her Columbia albums are as good as any albums in those genres put out in that time period, and she remained proud of them for the rest of her life. But that very eclecticism had meant that she hadn't established a strong identity as a performer -- everyone who heard her records knew she was a great singer, but nobody knew what "an Aretha Franklin record" really meant -- and she hadn't had a single real hit, which was the thing she wanted more than anything. All that changed when in the early hours of the morning, Jerry Wexler was at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals recording a Wilson Pickett track -- from the timeline, it was probably the session for "Mustang Sally", which coincidentally was published by Ted White's publishing company, as Sir Mack Rice, the writer, was a neighbour of White and Franklin, and to which Aretha had made an uncredited songwriting contribution: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Mustang Sally"] Whatever the session, it wasn't going well. Percy Sledge, another Atlantic artist who recorded at Muscle Shoals, had turned up and had started winding Pickett up, telling him he sounded just like James Brown. Pickett *hated* Brown -- it seems like almost every male soul singer of the sixties hated James Brown -- and went to physically attack Sledge. Wexler got between the two men to protect his investments in them -- both were the kind of men who could easily cause some serious damage to anyone they hit -- and Pickett threw him to one side and charged at Sledge. At that moment the phone went, and Wexler yelled at the two of them to calm down so he could talk on the phone. The call was telling him that Aretha Franklin was interested in recording for Atlantic. Rev. Louise Bishop, later a Democratic politician in Pennsylvania, was at this time a broadcaster, presenting a radio gospel programme, and she knew Aretha. She'd been to see her perform, and had been astonished by Aretha's performance of a recent Otis Redding single, "Respect": [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Respect"] Redding will, by the way, be getting his own episode in a few months' time, which is why I've not covered the making of that record here. Bishop thought that Aretha did the song even better than Redding -- something Bishop hadn't thought possible. When she got talking to Aretha after the show, she discovered that her contract with Columbia was up, and Aretha didn't really know what she was going to do -- maybe she'd start her own label or something. She hadn't been into the studio in more than a year, but she did have some songs she'd been working on. Bishop was good friends with Jerry Wexler, and she knew that he was a big fan of Aretha's, and had been saying for a while that when her contract was up he'd like to sign her. Bishop offered to make the connection, and then went back home and phoned Wexler's wife, waking her up -- it was one in the morning by this point, but Bishop was accustomed to phoning Wexler late at night when it was something important. Wexler's wife then phoned him in Muscle Shoals, and he phoned Bishop back and made the arrangements to meet up. Initially, Wexler wasn't thinking about producing Aretha himself -- this was still the period when he and the Ertegun brothers were thinking of selling Atlantic and getting out of the music business, and so while he signed her to the label he was originally going to hand her over to Jim Stewart at Stax to record, as he had with Sam and Dave. But in a baffling turn of events, Jim Stewart didn't actually want to record her, and so Wexler determined that he had better do it himself. And he didn't want to do it with slick New York musicians -- he wanted to bring out the gospel sound in her voice, and he thought the best way to do that was with musicians from what Charles Hughes refers to as "the country-soul triangle" of Nashville, Memphis, and Muscle Shoals. So he booked a week's worth of sessions at FAME studios, and got in FAME's regular rhythm section, plus a couple of musicians from American Recordings in Memphis -- Chips Moman and Spooner Oldham. Oldham's friend and songwriting partner Dan Penn came along as well -- he wasn't officially part of the session, but he was a fan of Aretha's and wasn't going to miss this. Penn had been the first person that Rick Hall, the owner of FAME, had called when Wexler had booked the studio, because Hall hadn't actually heard of Aretha Franklin up to that point, but didn't want to let Wexler know that. Penn had assured him that Aretha was one of the all-time great talents, and that she just needed the right production to become massive. As Hall put it in his autobiography, "Dan tended in those days to hate anything he didn't write, so I figured if he felt that strongly about her, then she was probably going to be a big star." Charlie Chalmers, a horn player who regularly played with these musicians, was tasked with putting together a horn section. The first song they recorded that day was one that the musicians weren't that impressed with at first. "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)" was written by a songwriter named Ronnie Shannon, who had driven from Georgia to Detroit hoping to sell his songs to Motown. He'd popped into a barber's shop where Ted White was having his hair cut to ask for directions to Motown, and White had signed him to his own publishing company and got him to write songs for Aretha. On hearing the demo, the musicians thought that the song was mediocre and a bit shapeless: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You) (demo)"] But everyone there was agreed that Aretha herself was spectacular. She didn't speak much to the musicians, just went to the piano and sat down and started playing, and Jerry Wexler later compared her playing to Thelonius Monk (who was indeed one of the jazz musicians who had influenced her). While Spooner Oldham had been booked to play piano, it was quickly decided to switch him to electric piano and organ, leaving the acoustic piano for Aretha to play, and she would play piano on all the sessions Wexler produced for her in future. Although while Wexler is the credited producer (and on this initial session Rick Hall at FAME is a credited co-producer), everyone involved, including Wexler, said that the musicians were taking their cues from Aretha rather than anyone else. She would outline the arrangements at the piano, and everyone else would fit in with what she was doing, coming up with head arrangements directed by her. But Wexler played a vital role in mediating between her and the musicians and engineering staff, all of whom he knew and she didn't. As Rick Hall said "After her brief introduction by Wexler, she said very little to me or anyone else in the studio other than Jerry or her husband for the rest of the day. I don't think Aretha and I ever made eye contact after our introduction, simply because we were both so totally focused on our music and consumed by what we were doing." The musicians started working on "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)", and at first found it difficult to get the groove, but then Oldham came up with an electric piano lick which everyone involved thought of as the key that unlocked the song for them: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)"] After that, they took a break. Most of them were pleased with the track, though Rick Hall wasn't especially happy. But then Rick Hall wasn't especially happy about anything at that point. He'd always used mono for his recordings until then, but had been basically forced to install at least a two-track system by Tom Dowd, Atlantic's chief engineer, and was resentful of this imposition. During the break, Dan Penn went off to finish a song he and Spooner Oldham had been writing, which he hoped Aretha would record at the session: [Excerpt: Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man"] They had the basic structure of the song down, but hadn't quite finished the middle eight, and both Jerry Wexler and Aretha Franklin chipped in uncredited lyrical contributions -- Aretha's line was "as long as we're together baby, you'd better show some respect to me". Penn, Oldham, Chips Moman, Roger Hawkins, and Tommy Cogbill started cutting a backing track for the song, with Penn singing lead initially with the idea that Aretha would overdub her vocal. But while they were doing this, things had been going wrong with the other participants. All the FAME and American rhythm section players were white, as were Wexler, Hall, and Dowd, and Wexler had been very aware of this, and of the fact that they were recording in Alabama, where Aretha and her husband might not feel totally safe, so he'd specifically requested that the horn section at least contain some Black musicians. But Charlie Chalmers hadn't been able to get any of the Black musicians he would normally call when putting together a horn section, and had ended up with an all-white horn section as well, including one player, a trumpet player called Ken Laxton, who had a reputation as a good player but had never worked with any of the other musicians there -- he was an outsider in a group of people who regularly worked together and had a pre-existing relationship. As the two outsiders, Laxton and Ted White had, at first, bonded, and indeed had started drinking vodka together, passing a bottle between themselves, in a way that Rick Hall would normally not allow in a session -- at the time, the county the studio was in was still a dry county. But as Wexler said, “A redneck patronizing a Black man is a dangerous camaraderie,” and White and Laxton soon had a major falling out. Everyone involved tells a different story about what it was that caused them to start rowing, though it seems to have been to do with Laxton not showing the proper respect for Aretha, or even actually sexually assaulting her -- Dan Penn later said “I always heard he patted her on the butt or somethin', and what would have been wrong with that anyway?”, which says an awful lot about the attitudes of these white Southern men who thought of themselves as very progressive, and were -- for white Southern men in early 1967. Either way, White got very, very annoyed, and insisted that Laxton get fired from the session, which he was, but that still didn't satisfy White, and he stormed off to the motel, drunk and angry. The rest of them finished cutting a basic track for "Do Right Woman", but nobody was very happy with it. Oldham said later “She liked the song but hadn't had time to practice it or settle into it I remember there was Roger playing the drums and Cogbill playing the bass. And I'm on these little simplistic chords on organ, just holding chords so the song would be understood. And that was sort of where it was left. Dan had to sing the vocal, because she didn't know the song, in the wrong key for him. That's what they left with—Dan singing the wrong-key vocal and this little simplistic organ and a bass and a drum. We had a whole week to do everything—we had plenty of time—so there was no hurry to do anything in particular.” Penn was less optimistic, saying "But as I rem