POPULARITY
Order of Service: - Prelude - Hymn 207 - Seek Where Ye May - The Versicles (pp. 120-121) - The Gloria Patri (p. 121) - Matthew 20:1-16 - Homily - The Versicle (p. 122) - The Canticle (p. 123) - The Kyrie (p. 124) - The Lord's Prayer (p. 125) - The Collect (pp. 125-127) - Hymn 210 - Lord, Take My Hand and Lead Me - Postlude Service Participants: Chaplain Don Moldstad (Preacher), Nathan Nikoley (Organist)
Send us a textPrecious Lord Take My Hand Precious Promises From GodThank you for listening, our heart's prayer is for you and I to walk daily with Jesus, our joy and peace aimingforjesus.com YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@aimingforjesus5346 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/aiming_for_jesus/ Threads https://www.threads.com/@aiming_for_jesus X https://x.com/AimingForJesus Tik Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@aiming.for.jesus
We are Traci and Ellie, two bookish friends who read in any spare minute that we have. This week, we are sharing with you our Top 11-20 Books from 2024! This is an episode that previously was just available for our Patreon Supporters. If you are interested in our Top 11-20 Books of 2025, we would love to have you join us at From the Bookstacks of Literally Reading! To shop the books listed in this episode, visit our shop at bookshop.org. Ellie: The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman Betting on You by Lynn Painter Happy Go Lucky by David Sedaris Be Ready when the Luck Happens by Ina Garten The Painter's Daughters by Emily Howes Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera Dinner for Vampires by Bethany Joy Lenz The Rachel Incident Caroline O'Donoghue The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter Traci: All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker What Does it Feel Like by Sophie Kinsella P.S. I Hate You by Lauren Connolly Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane Dinner with Vampires by Bethany Joy Lenz Funny Story by Emily Henry Kill for Me, Kill for You by Steve Cavanagh Worst Case Scenario by T.J. Newman Ready or Not by Cara Bastone
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En esta entrega os voy a contar la historia de Dinah Washington, una de las reinas del jazz y blues, cuya estela se ha ido desvaneciendo con el tiempo pero que bien merece avivar la llama de su recuerdo. Playlist: * What a Diff'rence a Day Makes, Ike Quebec; * Precious Lord, Take My Hand, Mavis Staples; * Evil Gal Blues, Dinah Washington; * Baby Get Lost, Dinah Washington; * Am I Asking Too Much, Dinah Washington; * Long John Blues, Dinah Washington; * Teach Me Tonight, Dinah Washington; * You Go To My Head (feat. Clifford Brown), Dinah Washington; * Cold Cold Heart (feat. Nook Shrier Orchestra), Dinah Washington; * What a Diff'rence a Day Makes, Dinah Washington; * Baby, You've Got What It Takes, Dinah Washington and Brook Benton; * September in the Rain, Dinah Washington; * This Bitter Earth, Dinah Washington; * Mad About the Boy, Dinah Washington; * This Bitter Earth / On The Nature Of Daylight, Dinah Washington and Max Richter.
We are Traci and Ellie, two bookish friends who read in any spare minute that we have. This week, we are sharing some of our favorite scary books. To shop the books listed in this episode, visit our shop at bookshop.org. Care to join us on Patreon with even more content? We would love to have you join us at From the Bookstacks of Literally Reading! Literally Reading: Alchemised by SenLinYu (Traci) Crack the Book Open: The Butcher by Jennifer Hillier (Ellie) Bird Box by Josh Malerman (Traci) The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris (Ellie) Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane (Traci) 56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard (Ellie) The Stand by Stephen King (Traci) The Push by Ashley Audrain (Ellie) I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara (Traci)
In this final installment of my interview with Dolan Perkins Valdez, the New York Times bestselling author of “Wench,” “Bomb,” “Take My Hand,” and most recently, Happyland, we get a peek at where her personal throughline is leading her next and hear her answers to my fast final five questions about what she's currently reading, listening to, and dreaming of eating.We covered:The visual artists who are currently inspiring her, some living, some deadHer favorite historical fiction authorsThe AMAZING sounding historical fiction writers conference that cemented her path as a historical fiction authorHow she's re-thinking how she spends her time now that her older daughter is going off to collegeThe romance novel she stayed up too late reading and the Netflix series about high school girls she watched with her daughterThe music she listens to when her energy flagsConnect with Dolen on Instagram @dolenperkinsvaldezFor full show notes with links to everything we discuss, plus bonus photos!, visit katehanley.substack.com.Thank you for listening!And thanks to this week's sponsor, Air Doctor Pro. Visit airdoctorpro.com and use code KATE to save 30% off an amazing indoor air filter *and* receive a free three-year warranty (an $84 value). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dolan Perkins Valdez, multiple award-winning author of “Wench,” “Bomb,” and “Take My Hand.” Her newest book, “Happyland,” is inspired by the true story of a secret community of formerly enslaved people in Appalachia.In this episode, we get into the nitty gritty of the ideas, thought processes, and beliefs that fuel her work, including:The part of writing a novel that can make her feel like “the book is taking years off my life”The surprising number of drafts it takes to get to a publishable manuscriptHow to elicit feedback that is actually helpful from early readersIdentifying your “good readers”The research habit that can bite her in the buttThe part of the writing process where her writerly demons tend to pop up the mostBuilding your day around when your brain is at its bestWhy she writes every book as if it's her lastWhy she views all writing as politicalWriting what's in your heart, not what you think will sellThe question she asks herself when she's writing things that scare herConnect with Dolen on Instagram @dolenperkinsvaldezFor full show notes with links to everything we discuss, plus bonus photos!, visit katehanley.substack.com.Thank you for listening!And thanks to this week's sponsor, Air Doctor Pro. Visit airdoctorpro.com and use code KATE to save 30% off an amazing indoor air filter *and* receive a free three-year warranty (an $84 value). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
My guest this week is Dolan Perkins-Valdez, the New York Times bestselling author of the novels “Wench,” “Bomb,” “Take My Hand,” and most recently, “Happyland.” Her books are all inspired by fascinating facets of American history that are in danger of being forgotten. They have earned awards from the NAACP, the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and the American Bar Association. And they've been named best books of the year by Goodreads users and Amazon editors. Dolan is a three-time nominee for a United States Artists Fellowship and an associate professor in the literature department at American University.We covered:Why she goes to the special archives in the library in any town she visitsWhy emails from readers are the best giftHow she recovers from book tourWhat teaching offers her (beyond benefits and a 401K)Her specific writing processThe handicraft that makes her “most at peace”Her pre-writing morning routineHow she measures her writing process (hint: it's not word count)Connect with Dolen on Instagram @dolenperkinsvaldezFor full show notes with links to everything we discuss, plus bonus photos!, visit katehanley.substack.com.Thank you for listening!And thanks to this week's sponsor, Aqua Tru. Visit aquatru.com and use code KATE to save 20% off a great countertop reverse osmosis water filter that I have been using and loving for years now. Comes with a 1-year warranty and a 30-day money back guarantee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
I used the song "Drowning Man" by U2 to show the profound difference between Christendom, which is some Dialectical System of Principles which have made accommodation with the world, versus Christ, the God-Man, who offers us His Hand and His Peace.
Time to talk righteous violence! S.A. Cosby is a writer on a meteoric rise. After the insane success of Razorblade Tears, and the Gothic horrors of All the Sinners Bleed, he's back with a fresh crime epic of titanic brutality. King of Ashes is the tale of a family under threat from criminal forces, and the shocking depths they will go to in their fight back. It's a challenging book, full of unexpected character arcs, Shakespearean intrigue, and a candid exploration of kink. It's also bloody, very damn bloody. The crematorium at the story's centre gets well fed!! We talk about all of that, as well as the strange commonalities of our small town lives, and the influence of violent men. Enjoy! Other books mentioned: All The Sinners Bleed (2023), by S.A. Cosby Razorblade Tears (2021), by S.A. Cosby Blacktop Wasteland (2020), by S.A. Cosby A Thousand Acres (1991), by Jane Smiley “The Dog Park,” (1983), by Dennis Etchinson Darkness, Take My Hand (1996), by Dennis Lehane Gone, Baby, Gone (1998) by Dennis Lehane Jar of Hearts (2018), by Jennifer Hillier Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Bluesky @talkscaredpod.bsky.social on Instagram/Threads, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dolen Perkins-Valdez shares the riveting history behind her new book, Happy Land, the research surprises she uncovered, and how urgency drives her storytelling.In today's Book Gang episode, New York Times bestselling author Dolen Perkins-Valdez joins me to discuss Happy Land, a transporting novel inspired by the true story of a lost kingdom built by freed people in the hills of North Carolina. This dual-timeline story explores land, lineage, and the courage it takes to reclaim what is yours. Dolen's excavation process informs this sweeping novel—even uncovering a few historical inaccuracies along the way. The result is a stunning celebration of Black heritage and a poignant reclamation of overlooked American history that has captivated her readers.In this moving conversation, Dolen and I discuss:Why Dolen feels an urgency behind each book she writes—and how it drives her to shape her manuscriptsThe immersive research that brought the Kingdom community to life, including conversations with local historians and surprising archival discoveries.How the concept of royalty and reclamation shaped the story—and why the roles of Black women in these communities are long overdue for deeper recognition.BONUS BOOK LIST: This week, I'm sharing a companion list of 27 Historical Fiction Book Club Books to Check Out Now, featuring new releases and timeless backlist picks that will spark incredible conversations within your book club.Meet Dolen Perkins-ValdezDolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Wench, Balm, Take My Hand, and her newest novel, Happy Land. Her work has earned honors from the NAACP, the American Bar Association, and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, and she's been recognized as one of the most vital voices chronicling American historical life.In addition to her writing, Dolen is an associate professor of literature at American University. She has introduced modern editions of Twelve Years a Slave and Behind the Scenes, bringing an unflinching dedication to uncovering hidden histories and amplifying overlooked Black stories. She lives in Washington, DC, with her family. Mentioned in this episode:Browse the 2025 MomAdvice Summer Reading Guide (with ads) or download the 48-page reading guide ($7) to support our show. If you are a show patron, please check your inbox for your copy as part of your member benefits. Thank you for supporting my small business! Download Today's Show TranscriptJoin the June Book Club Chat (The Reckless Oath We Made)BONUS BOOK LIST: 27 Historical Fiction Book Club Books For Your Next MeetingHappy Land by Dolen Perkins-ValdezTake My Hand by Dolen Perkins-ValdezTake My Hand Book Club Discussion on PatreonOcean VuongBlack History Research CommitteeSadie Smathers PattonThe Black Utopians by Aaron RobertsonBlue Ridge Archive Web ExhibitTranscendent Kingdom by Yaa GyasiGood Dirt by Charmaine WilkersonThe Queen of Sugar Hill by Rashonda TateBookshop.org pays a 10% commission on every sale and matches 10% to independent bookstores!Connect With Us:Join the Book Gang PatreonConnect with Dolen on Instagram or her WebsiteConnect with Amy on Instagram, TikTok, or MomAdviceGet My Happy List NewsletterGet the Daily Kindle Deals NewsletterBuy Me a Coffee (for a one-time donation)
Join us for an inspiring episode of the "When Words Fail, Music Speaks Podcast" as we welcome back the talented duo, Mission Road, featuring Christina Alexander and Elliot Simon. In this episode, we dive into their journey of fighting depression with the power of music, their recent nominations, and their exciting plans for the future.Key Highlights:Sponsor: A special thank you to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode. BetterHelp offers affordable online therapy that fits into your busy schedule. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/musicspeaks.Guest Introduction: Meet Mission Road, the dynamic duo of Christina Alexander and Elliot Simon, who are making waves in the music industry with their heartfelt country music.Award Nominations: Discover the impressive list of nominations Mission Road has received, including Entertainer, Vocalist, Rising Star, and more at the International New Songwriters Association and the Josie Music Awards.New Music: Learn about their latest song, "Take My Hand," and the inspiration behind it. Christina and Elliot share their personal stories and the creative process that brought this song to life.Musical Journey: Christina and Elliot discuss their evolution as artists, the formation of their backing band, and their experiences in the music industry.Upcoming Projects: Get a sneak peek into their future plans, including a potential Christmas album and their next EP release.Personal Insights: The duo shares their musical influences, favorite artists, and the impact of music on their lives.Connect with Mission Road:Website: MissionRoadMusic.comEmail: missionroadduo@gmail.comSocial Media: @MissionRoadDuo on all platformsClosing Remarks:Thank you for tuning in to this episode of "When Words Fail, Music Speaks Podcast." Remember, when words fail, music speaks. Stay connected with us for more inspiring stories and music insights.
Episode 10: Caves How does CGI help the cave sets? Where does the Klingon High Council have their meetings in each era? How did L'Rell get such an amazing house? How many scenes are FaceTiming half in the cave? How have the Talosian and Trill caves changed? Join Ashlyn and Rhianna as we jump into Discovery Caves! This is the tenth episode of the Caves series, where Ashlyn and Rhianna talk about the caves episode in every Star Trek show, discussing every Star Trek series. SPOILER WARNING: Discovery Next time, we'll get stuck in the Lower Decks Caves! DISCLAIMER: We do not own any of the rights to Star Trek or its affiliations. This content is for review only. Our intro and outro is by Jerry Goldsmith. Rule of Acquisition Rule #16: “A deal is a deal.” Please check out our Patreon and donate any $1, $6, $10, or $20 per month to access exclusive episodes of trivia, documentary review, and reviews of every episode of The Animated Series, Lower Decks and the Short Treks. Head to https://www.patreon.com/thedurassisterspodcast for all this and more!
With Mirror Georgiou at the helm of the plan to end the Klingon war once and for all, the USS Discovery crew struggles to fathom and tolerate her hostile tactics. Memories of past hardships are rekindled within Burnham. (Season finale)#StarTrekDiscovery #StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds #starTrektheoriginalseries #TOS #TNGJoin our patreon before #TrekLongIsland and win an xl stargazer / captainsquadrant
The Abundance Journey: Accelerating Revenue With An Abundance Mindset
What if abundance isn't something you chase — but something you embody? In this soul-stirring conversation, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Laura Sawosko, shares how her journey through struggle, faith, authenticity, and resilience became the fuel for her creative fire — and how you can do the same.Discover:- Why your authenticity is the most powerful form of abundance you can offer.- How even your greatest challenges can become your biggest gifts.- How living with gratitude, vulnerability, and faith opens new doors you never imagined.- Why real success isn't one giant door — it's a thousand tiny windows.- Simple daily practices to reclaim your power and reignite your dreams.Laura's story will inspire you to stop waiting, stop hiding, and start living your truth — right now. About the Guest, Laura Sawasko: Laura Sawasko is a Nashville-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Her sixth album called Not What I Do, released in April 2025. Laura is a storyteller through song, creating music that combines raw vocals with relatable and vivid imagery. She's a member of the National Songwriters Association International and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. She was one of the chosen qualifiers for the Tennessee Songwriters Series. Her career includes performances at iconic venues like the Blue Bird Cafe, The Listening Room. She's opened for major artists: Edwin McBane, Sara Buxton, Michelle Branch. Laura lives her life to fully express who she is. Laura has a passion and a commitment to vulnerably share her truth in a way that enriches others. Laura Sawasko Social Media Links:http://www.instagram.com/laurasawoskohttp://www.facebook.com/laurasawosko1 https://www.youtube.com/@laurasawosko6004 Free Gift: Song, Take My Hand, from her new album, Not What I Do. (https://youtu.be/J8aMvQV5c1A?si=kcYxRCOTddxWv2wf)Song, The Songwriters, that I found so moving. (https://youtu.be/d3pM72Sl3Z0?si=Dld4wd7gH27G6DHP)What We Can Do For Laura:Follow Laura on Instagram and YouTube. Please like and share her videos too!About the Host, Elaine Starling: (bio, personal links, resource links)Elaine Starling, The Abundance Ambassador and Host of The Abundance Journey Show, empowers successful individuals to move beyond financial achievements and discover deeper fulfillment by aligning their lives with their true purpose. As an international speaker, TEDx presenter, and best-selling author, Elaine guides spiritual seekers to cultivate a profound connection with The Divine, enabling them to restore flow and manifest their dreams. Through her Activate Abundance Process, Elaine combines business strategies with spiritual insights, helping you unlock unlimited abundance and create a life of true alignment and joy.Free Gift: Get a book excerpt from “5 Steps to Activate Your Abundance” (https://amzn.to/3Zh9kVq)How to Support: Please share this episode with everyone you love and admire. Let them know that they are receiving this lovely energy too!Elaine Starling Social Media Links:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elaine.abundance Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elainestarling/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3eXgwdMYYzLicCEcB1DdrgTEDx Talk, “Abundance Is a Choice” https://youtu.be/tMQ0D4sfEysWebsite: www.TheAbundanceJourney.com5 Steps to Activate Your Abundance Book: https://amzn.to/3vjKjft Thanks for listening!Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this...
WOAFM99 – Season 29, Episode 14 features incredible independent music and a deep-dive interview with Oliver Sean and Silent Stranger®. You may have caught the highlights on the Oliver YouTube channel (YouTube.com/oliversean) but now's your chance to hear the full story. Featured tracks include: Playing with Fire by The Gambinis, a classic rock song reminiscent of Soul Asylum, Love is Home by Van Vernon, showcasing strong singer-songwriter musicianship with a standout double bass, Blame It All on Garth Brooks by B. Thomas, an old-school barroom country track that feels like it belongs in a Clint Eastwood film, I Don't Think I Love You (Anymore) by Uncle Watson's Widow, blending southern rock, country rock, and classic rock with two unique voices, To Be Free by Clark Clipson, an acoustic stadium rock song with an inspiring message. Followed by the exclusive interview featuring Silent Stranger®. Additional breakthrough tracks include: Cranberry Juice by Jazzmosax, one of our favourite Jazz tracks this week! Dancing Gods by Nauci Gold, a worldbeat track with an African feel reminiscent of Youssou N'Dour, No No No by Criarde, an edgy electronic pop song, Take My Hand by Wasted Major, a stellar live band performance, and Life Changes by Robert Nix, bringing garage rock energy. From rock and country to electronic and worldbeat, this episode celebrates diverse sounds and raw talent. Turn it up and let the music take you on a journey. Artists can submit music for consideration for Season 30 of the WOAFM99 Show coming soon. Submit music at woaentertainment.com/store www.woaentertainment.com
We are delighted to welcome Dr. Dolen Perkins Valdez back to the program today. Dolen is an associate professor of English literature at American University, but our listeners better know her as an award-winning, critically-acclaimed novelist. Her previous works are Wench, Balm, and Take My Hand. Today we'll be discussing her latest release, Happy Land, which is published by Berkley.
Pacific St Blues & AmericanaApril 20, 2025Musical Ecclectricity!Support our Show and get the word out by wearin' our gear20. Stevie Ray Vaughan / Willie the Wimp21. Stanley Jordan / Riveria Paradise 22. Hank Ballard / Look at Little Sister23. Tony Holiday / Woman Named TroubleWhat's the Common Thread, The Music Trivia Game24. Eddie 9v / Love You All the Way Down 25. Mike Farris / Precious Lord, Take My Hand 26. Chris O'Leary Band / You Break It, You Bought It 27. Blackberry Winter / You Got Lucky 28. Clarence Tilton / Friant 29. Bywater Call / Sweet Maria 30. Larkin Poe / If God is a Woman 31. Beth Hart / Good Day to Cry 32. Chris Cain / Blues for My Dad 33. Samatha Fisher / Kill or Be Kind Catch our Spotlights Shows
Do you know the true story of the Kingdom of the Happy Land? Tune in for an inspiring discussion with Dolen Perkins-Valdez on her new book Happy Land. Moments with Marianne airs in the Southern California area on KMET1490AM & 98.1 FM, an ABC Talk News Radio affiliate! Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Take My Hand. Dolen is an Associate Professor of Literature at American University, a graduate of Harvard, and a former University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA. https://dolenperkinsvaldez.com For more show information visit: www.MariannePestana.com
Pacific Street Blues & AmericanaApril 6, 2025Support our Show and get the word out by wearin' our gear Musical Ecclectricity! 1. Keb Mo / What's Happening Brother2. Josh White / The House I Live In 3. Lightin' Hopkins / Blues for My Cookie 4. Johnny Johnson / Tanqueary 5. T Bone Burnett / Sometimes I Wonder6. Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings / Empty Trainload of Sky7. Norah Jones / American Anthem Spotlights Shows8. Charles Brown / Crying Mercy 9. Piper & the Hard Times / Hard Times10. Galatic & Irma Thomas / Where I Belong 11. Aretha Franklin / Why I Sing the Blues12. Mike Farris / Precious Lord, Take My Hand 13. Beth Hart & Joe Bonamassa / Sunday Kind of Love 14. Etta James / I Got You Babe15. Bonnie Raitt / Something to Talk About 16. John Mellencamp / To Washington What's the Common Thread, The Music Trivia Game17. Ray Charles / Yesterday18. Fats Domino / Lady Madonna19. Emmylou Harris / Here, There, & Everywhere20. Jeff Healey Come Together
Episode #365 of BGMania: A Video Game Music Podcast. This week on the show, Bryan and Bedroth from RPGera take a trip out to the green to talk about and listen to some Golf games! Email the show at bgmaniapodcast@gmail.com with requests for upcoming episodes, questions, feedback, comments, concerns, or whatever you want! Special thanks to our Executive Producers: Jexak, Xancu, & Jeff. EPISODE PLAYLIST AND CREDITS Intro from Sensible Golf [Richard Joseph & Jon Hare feat. Jacky Read, 1995] Hole 3 from Waialae Country Club: True Golf Classics [Kiyoe Ohashi, 1998] BGM 4 from Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf [Tokuhiko Uwabo, 1989] Coffee Break from True Golf Classics: Pebble Beach Golf Links [Yumi Kinoshita, 1992] Title Music from PGA Tour Golf [Rob Hubbard, 1991] Title Screen from Nick Faldo's Championship Golf [Andi McGinty, 1993] Intro/Attract Mode from Mini Golf Plus [Richard van de Veen, 1988] Main Menu from True Golf Classics: Waialae Country Club [Yumi Satake, 1991] Japan Course from Big Tournament Golf [Takushi Hiyamuta, 1996] Caddy's Shack from Cursed to Golf [Mark Sparling, 2022] Clap Your Hands -Main Theme- from Everybody's Golf [Owl City, 2017] Bonny Greens from Mario Golf: Super Rush [Motoi Sakuraba, 2021] Take My Hand from Golf Club: Nostalgia [Shane Berry feat. Ana Curcin, 2018] Title Screen from Family Computer Golf: U.S. Course [Yumiko Kanki & Akito Nakatsuka, 1987] SUPPORT US Patreon: https://patreon.com/rpgera Thanks to our Patrons: Jexak, Xancu, Prof-Jeff, and Adam CONTACT US Website: https://rpgera.com Discord: https://discord.gg/cC73Heu Twitch: https://twitch.tv/therpgera Twitter: https://twitter.com/OriginalLDG Instagram: https://instagram.com/bryan.ldg/ Facebook: https://facebook.com/leveldowngaming RPGERA PODCAST NETWORK Very Good Music: A VGM Podcast Listening Religiously
New York Times bestselling author of "Take My Hand" and associate professor of literature at American University, Dolen Perkins-Valdez takes us inside her book "Happy Land" about the true story of the Kingdom of Appalachia. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/tavis-smiley--6286410/support.
Take My Hand.. I will help you fly *New Acoustic Mix
Order of Service: - Prelude - Hymn 207 - Seek Where Ye May - The Versicles (pp. 120-121) - Psalm 23 (p. 177; Tone 2): All sing in unison - Homily - The Versicle (p. 122) - The Canticle (p. 123) - The Magnificat (p. 123) - The Kyrie (p. 124) - The Lord's Prayer (p. 125) - Hymn 584 - Grant Peace, We Pray, in Mercy, Lord - The Collect (pp. 125-127) - The Lord's Prayer (p. 125) - The Benedicamus (p. 127) - The Benediction (p. 127) - Hymn 210 - Lord, Take My Hand and Lead Me - Postlude Service Participants: Chaplain Don Moldstad (Preacher), Rev. Prof. Mark DeGarmeaux (Organist)
Thomas Dorsey and African American musician and composer who wrote over 3000 songs including his famous song Precious Lord Take My Hand. Scripture, Micah Chapter 3, 9-12. We're praying for the family of those who passed in California Fires and Airplane Crashes. We are also praying for President Trump.
My Christmas gift to my son DeV'n Duncan was to record one of his songs. “Take My Hand” but if feels like passing the torch to the next generation. If you don't think his vocal is loud enough yer probably my age. This is a new gen approach to music.
Rachel's Recommendations Favorite 2024: What's Not Mine by Nora Decter Non-2024 book: Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez 2024 book no one read: Dead in Long Beach, California by Venita Blackburn Most anticipated 2025 by a Chicago author: Original Sins by Eve L. Ewing Most anticipated by an author with a long gap since last book: Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Small press titles: The Gloomy Girl Variety Show by Freda Epum Leave: A Postpartum Account by Shayne Terry No Offense: A Memoir in Essays by Jackie Domenus Friends might think you're nuts but sorry not sorry: The Harder I Fight the More I Love You by Neko Case Greg's Recommendations Favorite 2024: There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, by Hanif Abdurraqib Non-2024 Book: Bunny, by Mona Awad 2024 Book No One Read: Familiaris, by David Wroblewski Most Anticipated Chicago: All the Water in the World, by Eiren Caffall Most Anticipated after long gap: Dream Count, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Most Anticipated Small Press: A Forty-Year Kiss, by Nickolas Butler Friends Might Think I'm Nuts: Great Big Beautiful Life, by Emily Henry ... Mark Twain, by Ron Chernow Mike's Recommendations Street Fight by Anne Morrissy The Overstory by Richard Powers Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism by Eve L. Ewing People of Means by Nancy Johnson Vanishing Daughters by Cynthia Pelayo True Failure by Alex Higley All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall The El by Theodore C. Van Alst Jr The Antidote by Karen Russell Stag Dance by Torrey Peters Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity by Sarah Schulman Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature by Adam Morgan Waterline by Aram Mrjoian
We are Traci and Ellie, two bookish friends who read in any spare minute that we have. This week we are looking back on our year of reading. To shop the books listed in this episode, visit our shop at bookshop.org. Care to join us on Patreon with even more content? We would love to have you join us at From the Bookstacks of Literally Reading! Literally Reading: Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness (Ellie) Smitten Kitchen Keepers: A Kitchen Counter Conversation by Deb Perelman (Traci) Crack the Book Open: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis (Ellie) Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling (Traci) The Wedding People by Allison Espach (Ellie) Sandwich by Catherine Newman (Ellie) We are the Brennans by Tracey Lange (Ellie) A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes (Traci) The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center (Ellie) The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han (Traci) Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris (Ellie) Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane (Traci) The Women by Kristin Hannah (Ellie) It End With Us by Colleen Hoover (Traci) The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Ellie) The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt (Traci) Absolution by Alice McDermott (Ellie) All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker (Traci) House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J. Maas (Ellie) Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (Traci) What Happened to the McCrays by Tracey Lange (Ellie) Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yaarros (Ellie) Beg, Borrow, or Steal by Sarah Adams (Ellie) Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Traci)
We close out the year with this mix from our friend Mark Mimmo. It will take you on an immersive journey through diverse electronic landscapes, blending energetic breakbeats, deep house grooves, and melodic techno with touches of synth-pop and downtempo. Featuring tracks like DJ Icey's dynamic “Vibe Syren” and EXZAKT's standout electro gem “Don't Know How to Forget,” the mix is both floor-ready and emotionally engaging. Highlights include the dreamy soundscapes of Lastlings' “Take My Hand,” the atmospheric rhythms of Tal Fussman's “Truth,” and Overmono's innovative “Ruthven,” showcasing experimental sound design and intricate beats. Closing with Madben's powerful “The Ending Track” and Dubtribe's soulful “Sound of Silence,” this mix captures the essence of modern & old school electronic music, blending emotive melodies and pulsating energy to create an unforgettable experience. Dj Icey - Vibe syren EXZAKT - Don't know how to forget Mack Loenz - Dance with me (Club mix) Tal Fussman - Truth Lastlings - Take my hand Minds & Machines - September Overmono - Ruthven Franky Wah - Stolen Glances Jeremy Olander - Zanzibar Artemas - If you think I'm pretty Madben - The ending track Dubtribe - Sound of silence
Performed By Sis. Beth Vallance
Download Bios: https://we.tl/t-uMVpjQolrM 00.00 Jakub Fijak ‘Message From Above' (Eternal Moments Remix) (album Changing Colours) www.jakubfijak.bandcamp.com 07.03 Rudolf Heimann ‘Track & Field' (album Trancefusion) www.mellowjet.de 13.05 Erik Wollo ‘Journey' (album Silver Beach) www.projekt.com 18.47 Kl(aus) ‘Shurnarkabtishashutu' (album Kl(aus) 2) https://only1klaus.bandcamp.com 31.28 Robert Schroeder ‘The Message' (album Timewaves) *** http://www.news-music.de/index_e.html 43.12 Ron Boots ‘A Sense Of Turmoil ‘ (album Once The Dust Settles) *** www.groove.nl 53.46 The S.E.T.I. Project ‘Done And Dusted' (album We Lack Dreams) www.thesetiproject.bandcamp.com 01.07.19 Computerchemist ‘Timethorns' (album Icon One) www.computerchemist.bandcamp.com 01.16.00 Forest Fires 'Strong Winds, JV Remix' (EP Strong Winds / Climate Change, Remixes (João Vairinhos) www.regulatorrec.bandcamp.com 01.23.23 Adrian Beasley ‘MC1' (album Machine Code) *** www.adrianbeasley.bandcamp.com 01.36.33 Caterina Barbieri ‘Immersive Modular Live Set | Boiler Room x Genelec' https://caterinabarbieri.com 01.46.00 Lisa Bella Donna ‘Morning Snows of Mishawaka' (album Take My Hand, Come With Me) *** www.lisabelladonna.bandcamnp.com 01.58.45 Jim Ottaway ‘Searching for Paradise' (album Ambient Aid For Australia, Various) www.ambientaidforaustralia.bandcamp.com 02.06.07 Keith Richie ‘Distant Vision' (single) http://music.krichie.com 02.12.36 Mihail Doman 'Neptune II/lll' (album Neptune) www.mihaildoman.bandcamp.com 02.18.27 Spyra feat- Rocksana ‘Zietstaub' (album inSPYRAtion) *** www.groove.nl 02.31.38 Peru ‘Valley' (album Klem compilation 1989) 02.38.14 Ian Boddy 'Shrine' (Altair) www.DiN.org.com 02.46.14 Biome ‘Ryuku' (album The Shores Of Temenos) www.biomemusic.bandcamp.com 02.54.39 Cornel Hecht ‘Ranger Things 2' (EP Ranger Things) www.cornelhecht.bandcamp.com 02.58.00 Derek Nigell ‘The Anthem Of The Great Waves' (single https://uscm.bandcamp.com 03.02.07 Jos D'Almeida ‘Eta Carinae' (album Aspheres) www.josdalmeida.bandcamp.com 03.10.43 Mark Dwane ‘Monoliths Of Mars' (album Martian Apparitions) www.markedwane.bandcamp.com 03.15.55 Wolfgang Nachahmer ‘Geisterwald' (album Synchromystik) www.wolfgangnachahmer.bandcamp.com 03.23.19 Andy Pickford ‘Mirage' (album Objects & Expressions 1) www.andypickford.bandcamp.com 03.34.46 Anhidema ‘Inferno' (album The Lamb's Book Of Life) www.anhidemaspace.bandcamp.com 03.45.27 Jesper Sorensen ‘Preparations' (album Skyrider: remastered) www.jespersorensen.bandcamp.com 03.49.59 Little Star ‘Ocean' (Monogahela Remix)' (album Celestine The Remixes Vol 1) www.littlestarmusic.bandcamp.com 03.57.21 Stan Dart ‘Magic Of LIght' (album Murinsel Vol 2) www.syngate.net 04.03.56 Thomas Lemmer & Christoph Sebastian Pabst ‘Gezeitenkraefte'(album Meerblick) www.sine-music.com 04.08.16 Xelomen ‘You're The Poison' https://soundcloud.com/soniamusic/you-re-the-poison' 04.13.55 Neuland 'Moons Ago' (album Neuland) www.neuland.bandcamp.com 04.19.52 Eagle ‘Spectrum Of Possibilities' (album Eagle Live @ESE 2018) 04.28.34 Thaneco ‘They Harvest Energy From The Sun' (album Alien Species) www.thaneco.bandcamp.com 04.40.26 Stefan Erbe ‘No More Limits' (album Breath) https://stefanerbe.bandcamp.com/album/breathe 04.45.43 Axess ‘Meditation' (album Zen) https://axess.bandcamp.com 04.55.20 Digital Horizons ‘Empire' (album Retronome) www.digitalhorizons.bandcamp.com 05.04.07 Damian Tangram ‘I Need You' www.3dtangram.com Edit ***
Welcome back to another amazing episode of your favorite paranormal show, glad to have you back as always. For this episode I am being joined by a master of her craft, my guest is Jayne Sanders, Master Scientific Hand Analyst. Jayne has been doing this practice for years and is eerily accurate in her readings. Come join us as we have an amazing scientifically paranormal conversation. Jayne's Website: https://www.purposewhisperer.com/ Uncensored, Untamed & Unapologetic U^3 Podcast Collective: https://www.facebook.com/groups/545827736965770/?ref=share Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@juggalobastardpodcasts?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8xJ2KnRBKlYvyo8CMR7jMg
We are Traci and Ellie, two bookish friends who read in any spare minute that we have. This week we are looking back on our summer reading! To shop the books listed in this episode, visit our shop at bookshop.org. Care to join us on Patreon with even more content? We would love to have you join us at From the Bookstacks of Literally Reading! Crack the Book Open: Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane (Traci) The Wedding People by Alison Espach (Ellie) Funny Story by Emily Henry (Traci) Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris (Ellie) One Star Romance by Laura Hankin (Traci) Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell (Ellie) The Rule Book by Sarah Adams (Traci) One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware (Ellie)
We're on TikTac now: @HashtagJustSayin In this episode we discuss - a BLT with no T, a musician saves someone and Joe got his Beetlejuice Please don't forget to check out our Youtube Channel, where we post the first 20-30 mins of the show…for free. You can't beat free. We'd be forever in your debt if you could jump over to our Youtube channel and Subscribe - and tell a friend. If you haven't got a friend, we'll be happy to be your friend, After you subscribe. You can also follow us on social media on Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter. That's all of them, correct? Does anyone read this far down? Email us: HashtagJustSayinPodcast@gmail.com
Join Jake and Stephen on the next episode of the ToosDay Crue as they welcome a special guest, Matthew Hurski. Matthew is an Army Veteran and former Law Enforcement Professional, now dedicated to supporting the mental health and wellbeing of first responders through his Take My Hand Foundation, based in Knoxville. About Matthew Hurski and the Take My Hand Foundation: Mental health and mental health-related injuries are often overlooked in our society, particularly within first responder departments. While support for preventative and post-incident treatment has improved, it remains insufficient. The Take My Hand Foundation aims to create a robust support system, providing post-incident mental health support, especially for those first responders lacking financial resources for treatment. Additionally, they are building a network of first responders for peer support. The foundation also offers a t-shirt line to raise funds for its programs, ensuring that first responders throughout East Tennessee receive the support they need. If you're interested in becoming a peer support person, being interviewed on their podcast, or want to learn more, visit their website: The Take My Hand Foundation. https://thetakemyhandfoundation.com/ A Call to Action: Your support is crucial to keep The MisFitNation moving forward. Show your support through donation or sponsorship at Ko-fi. https://ko-fi.com/themisfitnationpodcast Join the Conversation: Become a part of The MisFitNation community today! Visit our website and follow us on social media: Website: Https://www.themisfitnation.com Facebook: Rich LaMonica and MisFitNation Podcast Instagram: The MisFitNation Twitter: @richlamonica YouTube: The MisFitNation LinkedIn: Rich LaMonica Twitch: the_misfitnation #ToosDayCrue #MatthewHurski #TakeMyHandFoundation #MentalHealth #FirstResponders #ArmyVeteran #LawEnforcement #PeerSupport #MentalHealthAwareness #SupportFirstResponders #PodcastInterview #TheMisFitNation #RichLaMonica #VeteranSupport #CommunitySupport #MentalWellbeing #EastTennessee #Knoxville #VeteranStories #MentalHealthMatters #VeteranCommunity #ParanormalInvestigation #MilitaryVeterans #DonateSupport #HMG Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Most of us know Medicare as health insurance for Americans who are 65 or older, but when they qualify for Social Security disability benefits, people younger than 65 automatically qualify for Medicare. Today, between 25 and 30% of the people living with MS are Medicare beneficiaries. Whether you already have Medicare or you'll be signing up for Medicare in the future, getting the right coverage requires making some important choices. Licensed Medicare Advisor Laquel Thomas joins me with tips, strategies, and explanations for successfully navigating Medicare and getting the coverage you need. We're explaining the good news in the results from a Phase 3 clinical trial for Tolebrutinib, Sanofi's experimental oral BTK inhibitor. The trial showed that, compared to placebo, Tolebrutinib met the primary endpoint, delaying the onset of confirmed disability progression in people with non-relapsing secondary progressive MS. Take My Hand is an Australian film based on the true story of Claire Jensz, a mother of three living in London who is diagnosed with MS at the peak of her high-powered career. Be sure to catch my conversation with Claire, Radha Mitchell, the film's star, and John Raftopoulos, the film's director. We're sharing the details of a study that may have uncovered an underlying cause of MS and, perhaps, all autoimmune diseases. We'll tell you about the results of a stem cell study that show MS may involve more than just immune cells. And we'll give you what may be surprising details of a study that focused on how MS impacts the quality of life of fully ambulatory people living with mild MS symptoms. We have a lot to talk about! Are you ready for RealTalk MS??! This Week: Making the right Medicare choices :22 There's good news about the results of the Phase 3 clinical trial for Tolebrutinib 1:41 My conversation with the director, star, and woman whose story about living with MS is the real-life basis for the new film, Take My Hand 4:28 Have researchers at Yale discovered an underlying cause of MS? 14:11 Newly published results of a stem cell study show that MS may also be driven by brain cells 17:19 Study results show how MS impacts the quality of life among fully ambulatory people with mild MS symptoms 19:15 Licensed Medicare Advisor, Laquel Thomas, explains all the variables you want to consider in making choices about your Medicare coverage 22:12 Share this episode 33:40 Have you downloaded the free RealTalk MS app? 34:01 SHARE THIS EPISODE OF REALTALK MS Just copy this link & paste it into your text or email: https://realtalkms.com/366 ADD YOUR VOICE TO THE CONVERSATION I've always thought about the RealTalk MS podcast as a conversation. And this is your opportunity to join the conversation by sharing your feedback, questions, and suggestions for topics that we can discuss in future podcast episodes. Please shoot me an email or call the RealTalk MS Listener Hotline and share your thoughts! Email: jon@realtalkms.com Phone: (310) 526-2283 And don't forget to join us in the RealTalk MS Facebook group! LINKS If your podcast app doesn't allow you to click on these links, you'll find them in the show notes in the RealTalk MS app or at www.RealTalkMS.com TRAILER: Take My Hand https://youtu.be/PdNMb7-AeEs STUDY: An Autoimmune Transcriptional Circuit Drives FOXP3+ Regulatory T-Cell Dysfunction https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.adp1720 STUDY: Patient iPSC Models Reveal Glia-Intrinsic Phenotypes in Multiple Sclerosis https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1934590924002881 STUDY: Determinants of Self-Perceived Quality of Life in Mildly Disabled Multiple Sclerosis Patients: A Cross-Sectional Study https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38526763 Join the RealTalk MS Facebook Group https://facebook.com/groups/realtalkms Download the RealTalk MS App for iOS Devices https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/realtalk-ms/id1436917200 Download the RealTalk MS App for Android Deviceshttps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=tv.wizzard.android.realtalk Give RealTalk MS a rating and review http://www.realtalkms.com/review Follow RealTalk MS on Twitter, @RealTalkMS_jon, and subscribe to our newsletter at our website, RealTalkMS.com. RealTalk MS Episode 366 Guest: Claire Jensz, John Raftopolous, Radha Mitchell, Laquel Thomas Privacy Policy
Loki chats with literary activist E. Ethelbert Miller about activism in prose, the legacy of James Baldwin (and other notable activists in literature), and how music intersects this tradition. Loki also shares his thoughts on the upcoming presidential election. **This opus is made possible, in part, by Bucklesweet.E. Ethelbert MillerStudent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)Upcoming Lecture on James Baldwin by E. Ethelbert Miller"Sonny's Blues" by Milt Jackson"Precious Lord, Take My Hand" perf. James Baldwin ★ Support this podcast ★
Order of Service: - Prelude - Hymn 210 - Lord, Take My Hand and Lead Me - John 14:4-6: And where I go you know, and the way you know.” Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. - Devotion - Prayer - Hymn 206 - I Am Trusting Thee, Lord Jesus - Blessing - Postlude Service Participants: Dr. Gene Pfeifer (Preacher), Hannah Caauwe (Organist)
Order of Service: - Prelude - Hymn 210 - Lord, Take My Hand and Lead Me - John 14:4-6: And where I go you know, and the way you know.” Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. - Devotion - Prayer - Hymn 206 - I Am Trusting Thee, Lord Jesus - Blessing - Postlude Service Participants: Dr. Gene Pfeifer (Preacher), Hannah Caauwe (Organist)
Order of Service: - Prelude - Hymn 210 - Lord, Take My Hand and Lead Me - John 14:4-6: And where I go you know, and the way you know.” Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. - Devotion - Prayer - Hymn 206 - I Am Trusting Thee, Lord Jesus - Blessing - Postlude Service Participants: Dr. Gene Pfeifer (Preacher), Hannah Caauwe (Organist)
Join us every week!We talk passionately about the ever changing real estate market!This week we chat about affordable housing? What is it? Why are folks screaming for more?This and so much more real estate!www.jointhebrokerage.comMusic by:9-5 Dolly PartonDon't You Want Me - The Human League, Purple Disco MachineFast Car - Jones Blue, DakotaDancing in the Moonlight - La View, KatjuschaTake My Hand - 5 Seconds of SummerGood Luck - Mabel, Jax Jones, Galantis My Pony - R3HAB Good Day - Nappy RootsFind more episodes on:www.pattysplayhouse.comIf you want to search for a home in Tallahassee, www.PattyandScott.comPatty's Playhouse we talk about real estate and life in the small southern town.The conversations are consumer driven inviting entrepreneurs, real estate professionals and interesting people who make up our world of real estate. We talk real estate with some interesting and fun facts... Its like house porn! We talk lifestyle, staging tips, home buying selling and investing... all with a happy ending...House Talk with a Happy Ending... Each & Every Time! Get bonus content on Patreon Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/pattysplayhouse https://plus.acast.com/s/pattysplayhouse. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Toni Rose is joined by Katie Caster to discuss her work at Edifying Teachers and the importance of curiosity and reflection for teachers. Show Notes Edifying Teachers (https://edifyingteachers.com/) Teachers College at Columbia University (https://www.tc.columbia.edu/) Bank Street College of Education (https://www.bankstreet.edu/) Dr. Django Paris (https://education.uw.edu/about/directory/django-paris) Take My Hand (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/676198/take-my-hand-by-dolen-perkins-valdez/), by Dolen Perkins-Valdez Connect with Katie by email at katie@edifyingteachers.com (mailto:katie@edifyingteachers.com) and follow Edifying Teachers on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/edifyteachers/), Twitter (X) (https://twitter.com/edifyteachers), and LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/edifying-teachers/) Contact us, follow us online, and learn more: Email us questions and feedback at: podcast@modernclassrooms.org (mailto:podcast@modernclassrooms.org) Send us an audio note (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSffmqSsaaU7M0MTXowApIOt-wace2tD6LPct73oEQOlaFp4vQ/viewform?usp=sf_link) and we'll include it on a future episode! Modern Classrooms: @modernclassproj (https://twitter.com/modernclassproj) on Twitter and facebook.com/modernclassproj (https://www.facebook.com/modernclassproj) (remember you can tweet us questions by using the hashtag #askMCP) Kareem: @kareemfarah23 (https://twitter.com/kareemfarah23) on Twitter Toni Rose: @classroomflex (https://twitter.com/classroomflex) on Twitter and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/classroomflex/?hl=en) The Modern Classroom Project (https://www.modernclassrooms.org) Modern Classrooms Online Course (https://learn.modernclassrooms.org) Take our free online course, or sign up for our mentorship program to receive personalized guidance from a Modern Classrooms mentor as you implement your own modern classroom! The Modern Classrooms Podcast is edited by Zach Diamond: @zpdiamond (https://twitter.com/zpdiamond) on Twitter and Learning to Teach (https://www.learningtoteach.co/)
For this month's book club pick, we are headed into 1970's Montgomery, Alabama. Based on a true story, Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez is an unflinching exploration of accountability and redemption through an era that was plagued with bias and coercion. The central character, Civil Townsend, is a complicated heroine fresh out of nursing school with a deep desire to make a difference in her Black community at the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic. During her first week on the job, Civil encounters two young girls who have their agency usurped by the current government authority which mandates that because they Black, poor, and disabled, the girls' ability to have children should be curbed. Years later, Civil Townsend must reconcile her role and complicity in a story that must not be forgotten.What unfolds is a shocking and heartbreaking expose of how girls and women have had their agency taken away in ways that echo for generations. Inspired by true events, Dolen recounts her research process and how she wanted to write “bruised characters” that evoke outrage and empathy. Jen and Dolen dive into Dolen's history as a writer, the context of what was happening in 1973 when the case that this story is based broke into the public sphere, and all the themes of this book that make it impossible to put down. This is a story that must not be forgotten and Dolen writes it so you won't ever forget. * * * Guest's Links: Dolen's Website Dolen's Facebook Dolen's Twitter Dolen's Instagram Books & Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez Relp v. Weinberger Case Roe v. Wade Case Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb Happiness Falls by Angie Kim Connect with Jen! Jen's website - http://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen's Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker Jen's Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/ Jen's Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenhatmaker Jen's YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/JenHatmaker?sub_confirmation=1 The For the Love Podcast is a production of Four Eyes Media, presented by Audacy. Four Eyes Media: https://www.iiiimedia.com/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Improve your storytelling, interviewing, writing, producing, hosting and guesting skills! Sign up for new Sound Judgment workshops today at www.podcastallies.com/workshops. On this episode, Emily Silverman and host Elaine Appleton Grant discuss: — Why she thought starting a live storytelling event for physicians should be her next step as she was coming to terms with being in the wrong career while also searching for her biological parents and considering becoming a mother.— How leaving the full-time practice of medicine felt like an "identity death" to Emily — and how journalists and podcasters navigating media in 2024 are also experiencing identity death, and — How Emily found her way to a new career through her love of theater and storytelling, and how bringing the arts to medicine is serving the Nocturnists' goal of shattering the myth of the physician God and humanizing medicine. Emily and Elaine break down two episodes of The Nocturnists:"Pass/Fail," Episode 4 of the 10-part documentary series Shame in Medicine: The Lost Forest, takes listeners into the stressful world of medical students taking an exam that has the power to dictate the rest of their lives. Put yourself in the shoes of students wondering if this one test will prevent them from becoming a doctor — or if it will bar them from pursuing their passion for their specialty? Emily gives us some lessons on getting listeners to contribute personal stories — and how her team weaves them together in heart-stopping fashion. We also examine the the power of novels to help us deeply understand the harmful consequences of medicine practiced for the wrong reasons, and how art can help us empathize in a way that journalistic accounts of history do not. In "Conversations: Dolen Perkins-Valdez" Emily learns more about the 1973 case of the Relf sisters, who were forcibly sterilized at a Montgomery, Alabama health clinic. We discuss strategies for how to hold intimate, revealing interviews — and when you should break the rules. Plus: Emily shares the single most important key to producing sound-rich, highly produced longform audio stories. Emily Silverman, MD is an internal medicine physician at UCSF, writer, and creator/host of The Nocturnists, an award-winning medical storytelling organization that has uplifted the voices of 450+ healthcare workers since 2016 through its podcast and sold-out live performances.The Nocturnists' work has been presented on CBS This Morning and NPR's Morning Edition, and at Pop Up Magazine and South By Southwest (SXSW). In 2020, its "Stories from a Pandemic" documentary podcast series was acquired by the U.S. Library of Congress for historic preservation. The Nocturnists has been honored by the Webby Awards, Anthem Awards, Ambie Awards, and more.Dr. Silverman's writing has been supported by MacDowell and published in The New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, JAMA, CHEST, and McSweeneys. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and daughter.Follow the show on Instagram @Thenocturnistsand on Facebook and LinkedIn at The Nocturnists Improve your storytelling Check out our popular workshops on interviewing, story editing, story structure, longform narrative, audience engagement, scriptwriting and more. Hire Elaine to speak at your conference or company. Subjects include: Communicating for Leaders; Communicating about Change; Mastering the Art of the Interview; Storytelling Skills; How to Build Relationships through Storytelling, and more. Discover our strategic communication services and coaching for thought leaders using storytelling tools to make the world a better place. Serving writers, podcasters, public speakers, and others in journalism & public media, climate change, health care, policy, and higher education. Visit us at www.podcastallies.com. Subscribe to Sound Judgment, the Newsletter, our twice-monthly newsletter about creative choices in audio storytelling. Connect:Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram✉️ Email Elaine at allies@podcastallies.com
Episode 169 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Piece of My Heart" and the short, tragic life of Janis Joplin. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a half-hour bonus episode available, on "Spinning Wheel" by Blood, Sweat & Tears. 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/ Resources There are two Mixcloud mixes this time. As there are so many songs by Big Brother and the Holding Company and Janis Joplin excerpted, and Mixcloud won't allow more than four songs by the same artist in any mix, I've had to post the songs not in quite the same order in which they appear in the podcast. But the mixes are here — one, two . For information on Janis Joplin I used three biographies -- Scars of Sweet Paradise by Alice Echols, Janis: Her Life and Music by Holly George-Warren, and Buried Alive by Myra Friedman. I also referred to the chapter '“Being Good Isn't Always Easy": Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Dusty Springfield, and the Color of Soul' in Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination by Jack Hamilton. Some information on Bessie Smith came from Bessie Smith by Jackie Kay, a book I can't really recommend given the lack of fact-checking, and Bessie by Chris Albertson. I also referred to Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday by Angela Y. Davis And the best place to start with Joplin's music is this five-CD box, which contains both Big Brother and the Holding Company albums she was involved in, plus her two studio albums and bonus tracks. 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 contains discussion of drug addiction and overdose, alcoholism, mental illness, domestic abuse, child abandonment, and racism. If those subjects are likely to cause you upset, you may want to check the transcript or skip this one rather than listen. Also, a subject I should probably say a little more about in this intro because I know I have inadvertently caused upset to at least one listener with this in the past. When it comes to Janis Joplin, it is *impossible* to talk about her without discussing her issues with her weight and self-image. The way I write often involves me paraphrasing the opinions of the people I'm writing about, in a mode known as close third person, and sometimes that means it can look like I am stating those opinions as my own, and sometimes things I say in that mode which *I* think are obviously meant in context to be critiques of those attitudes can appear to others to be replicating them. At least once, I have seriously upset a fat listener when talking about issues related to weight in this manner. I'm going to try to be more careful here, but just in case, I'm going to say before I begin that I think fatphobia is a pernicious form of bigotry, as bad as any other form of bigotry. I'm fat myself and well aware of how systemic discrimination affects fat people. I also think more generally that the pressure put on women to look a particular way is pernicious and disgusting in ways I can't even begin to verbalise, and causes untold harm. If *ANYTHING* I say in this episode comes across as sounding otherwise, that's because I haven't expressed myself clearly enough. Like all people, Janis Joplin had negative characteristics, and at times I'm going to say things that are critical of those. But when it comes to anything to do with her weight or her appearance, if *anything* I say sounds critical of her, rather than of a society that makes women feel awful for their appearance, it isn't meant to. Anyway, on with the show. On January the nineteenth, 1943, Seth Joplin typed up a letter to his wife Dorothy, which read “I wish to tender my congratulations on the anniversary of your successful completion of your production quota for the nine months ending January 19, 1943. I realize that you passed through a period of inflation such as you had never before known—yet, in spite of this, you met your goal by your supreme effort during the early hours of January 19, a good three weeks ahead of schedule.” As you can probably tell from that message, the Joplin family were a strange mixture of ultraconformism and eccentricity, and those two opposing forces would dominate the personality of their firstborn daughter for the whole of her life. Seth Joplin was a respected engineer at Texaco, where he worked for forty years, but he had actually dropped out of engineering school before completing his degree. His favourite pastime when he wasn't at work was to read -- he was a voracious reader -- and to listen to classical music, which would often move him to tears, but he had also taught himself to make bathtub gin during prohibition, and smoked cannabis. Dorothy, meanwhile, had had the possibility of a singing career before deciding to settle down and become a housewife, and was known for having a particularly beautiful soprano voice. Both were, by all accounts, fiercely intelligent people, but they were also as committed as anyone to the ideals of the middle-class family even as they chafed against its restrictions. Like her mother, young Janis had a beautiful soprano voice, and she became a soloist in her church choir, but after the age of six, she was not encouraged to sing much. Dorothy had had a thyroid operation which destroyed her singing voice, and the family got rid of their piano soon after (different sources say that this was either because Dorothy found her daughter's singing painful now that she couldn't sing herself, or because Seth was upset that his wife could no longer sing. Either seems plausible.) Janis was pushed to be a high-achiever -- she was given a library card as soon as she could write her name, and encouraged to use it, and she was soon advanced in school, skipping a couple of grades. She was also by all accounts a fiercely talented painter, and her parents paid for art lessons. From everything one reads about her pre-teen years, she was a child prodigy who was loved by everyone and who was clearly going to be a success of some kind. Things started to change when she reached her teenage years. Partly, this was just her getting into rock and roll music, which her father thought a fad -- though even there, she differed from her peers. She loved Elvis, but when she heard "Hound Dog", she loved it so much that she tracked down a copy of Big Mama Thornton's original, and told her friends she preferred that: [Excerpt: Big Mama Thornton, "Hound Dog"] Despite this, she was still also an exemplary student and overachiever. But by the time she turned fourteen, things started to go very wrong for her. Partly this was just down to her relationship with her father changing -- she adored him, but he became more distant from his daughters as they grew into women. But also, puberty had an almost wholly negative effect on her, at least by the standards of that time and place. She put on weight (which, again, I do not think is a negative thing, but she did, and so did everyone around her), she got a bad case of acne which didn't ever really go away, and she also didn't develop breasts particularly quickly -- which, given that she was a couple of years younger than the other people in the same classes at school, meant she stood out even more. In the mid-sixties, a doctor apparently diagnosed her as having a "hormone imbalance" -- something that got to her as a possible explanation for why she was, to quote from a letter she wrote then, "not really a woman or enough of one or something." She wondered if "maybe something as simple as a pill could have helped out or even changed that part of me I call ME and has been so messed up.” I'm not a doctor and even if I were, diagnosing historical figures is an unethical thing to do, but certainly the acne, weight gain, and mental health problems she had are all consistent with PCOS, the most common endocrine disorder among women, and it seems likely given what the doctor told her that this was the cause. But at the time all she knew was that she was different, and that in the eyes of her fellow students she had gone from being pretty to being ugly. She seems to have been a very trusting, naive, person who was often the brunt of jokes but who desperately needed to be accepted, and it became clear that her appearance wasn't going to let her fit into the conformist society she was being brought up in, while her high intelligence, low impulse control, and curiosity meant she couldn't even fade into the background. This left her one other option, and she decided that she would deliberately try to look and act as different from everyone else as possible. That way, it would be a conscious choice on her part to reject the standards of her fellow pupils, rather than her being rejected by them. She started to admire rebels. She became a big fan of Jerry Lee Lewis, whose music combined the country music she'd grown up hearing in Texas, the R&B she liked now, and the rebellious nature she was trying to cultivate: [Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis, "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On"] When Lewis' career was derailed by his marriage to his teenage cousin, Joplin wrote an angry letter to Time magazine complaining that they had mistreated him in their coverage. But as with so many people of her generation, her love of rock and roll music led her first to the blues and then to folk, and she soon found herself listening to Odetta: [Excerpt: Odetta, "Muleskinner Blues"] One of her first experiences of realising she could gain acceptance from her peers by singing was when she was hanging out with the small group of Bohemian teenagers she was friendly with, and sang an Odetta song, mimicking her voice exactly. But young Janis Joplin was listening to an eclectic range of folk music, and could mimic more than just Odetta. For all that her later vocal style was hugely influenced by Odetta and by other Black singers like Big Mama Thornton and Etta James, her friends in her late teens and early twenties remember her as a vocal chameleon with an achingly pure soprano, who would more often than Odetta be imitating the great Appalachian traditional folk singer Jean Ritchie: [Excerpt: Jean Ritchie, "Lord Randall"] She was, in short, trying her best to become a Beatnik, despite not having any experience of that subculture other than what she read in books -- though she *did* read about them in books, devouring things like Kerouac's On The Road. She came into conflict with her mother, who didn't understand what was happening to her daughter, and who tried to get family counselling to understand what was going on. Her father, who seemed to relate more to Janis, but who was more quietly eccentric, put an end to that, but Janis would still for the rest of her life talk about how her mother had taken her to doctors who thought she was going to end up "either in jail or an insane asylum" to use her words. From this point on, and for the rest of her life, she was torn between a need for approval from her family and her peers, and a knowledge that no matter what she did she couldn't fit in with normal societal expectations. In high school she was a member of the Future Nurses of America, the Future Teachers of America, the Art Club, and Slide Rule Club, but she also had a reputation as a wild girl, and as sexually active (even though by all accounts at this point she was far less so than most of the so-called "good girls" – but her later activity was in part because she felt that if she was going to have that reputation anyway she might as well earn it). She also was known to express radical opinions, like that segregation was wrong, an opinion that the other students in her segregated Texan school didn't even think was wrong, but possibly some sort of sign of mental illness. Her final High School yearbook didn't contain a single other student's signature. And her initial choice of university, Lamar State College of Technology, was not much better. In the next town over, and attended by many of the same students, it had much the same attitudes as the school she'd left. Almost the only long-term effect her initial attendance at university had on her was a negative one -- she found there was another student at the college who was better at painting. Deciding that if she wasn't going to be the best at something she didn't want to do it at all, she more or less gave up on painting at that point. But there was one positive. One of the lecturers at Lamar was Francis Edward "Ab" Abernethy, who would in the early seventies go on to become the Secretary and Editor of the Texas Folklore Society, and was also a passionate folk musician, playing double bass in string bands. Abernethy had a great collection of blues 78s. and it was through this collection that Janis first discovered classic blues, and in particular Bessie Smith: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Black Mountain Blues"] A couple of episodes ago, we had a long look at the history of the music that now gets called "the blues" -- the music that's based around guitars, and generally involves a solo male vocalist, usually Black during its classic period. At the time that music was being made though it wouldn't have been thought of as "the blues" with no modifiers by most people who were aware of it. At the start, even the songs they were playing weren't thought of as blues by the male vocalist/guitarists who played them -- they called the songs they played "reels". The music released by people like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Son House, Robert Johnson, Kokomo Arnold and so on was thought of as blues music, and people would understand and agree with a phrase like "Lonnie Johnson is a blues singer", but it wasn't the first thing people thought of when they talked about "the blues". Until relatively late -- probably some time in the 1960s -- if you wanted to talk about blues music made by Black men with guitars and only that music, you talked about "country blues". If you thought about "the blues", with no qualifiers, you thought about a rather different style of music, one that white record collectors started later to refer to as "classic blues" to differentiate it from what they were now calling "the blues". Nowadays of course if you say "classic blues", most people will think you mean Muddy Waters or John Lee Hooker, people who were contemporary at the time those white record collectors were coming up with their labels, and so that style of music gets referred to as "vaudeville blues", or as "classic female blues": [Excerpt: Mamie Smith, "Crazy Blues"] What we just heard was the first big blues hit performed by a Black person, from 1920, and as we discussed in the episode on "Crossroads" that revolutionised the whole record industry when it came out. The song was performed by Mamie Smith, a vaudeville performer, and was originally titled "Harlem Blues" by its writer, Perry Bradford, before he changed the title to "Crazy Blues" to get it to a wider audience. Bradford was an important figure in the vaudeville scene, though other than being the credited writer of "Keep A-Knockin'" he's little known these days. He was a Black musician and grew up playing in minstrel shows (the history of minstrelsy is a topic for another day, but it's more complicated than the simple image of blackface that we are aware of today -- though as with many "more complicated than that" things it is, also the simple image of blackface we're aware of). He was the person who persuaded OKeh records that there would be a market for music made by Black people that sounded Black (though as we're going to see in this episode, what "sounding Black" means is a rather loaded question). "Crazy Blues" was the result, and it was a massive hit, even though it was marketed specifically towards Black listeners: [Excerpt: Mamie Smith, "Crazy Blues"] The big stars of the early years of recorded blues were all making records in the shadow of "Crazy Blues", and in the case of its very biggest stars, they were working very much in the same mould. The two most important blues stars of the twenties both got their start in vaudeville, and were both women. Ma Rainey, like Mamie Smith, first performed in minstrel shows, but where Mamie Smith's early records had her largely backed by white musicians, Rainey was largely backed by Black musicians, including on several tracks Louis Armstrong: [Excerpt: Ma Rainey, "See See Rider"] Rainey's band was initially led by Thomas Dorsey, one of the most important men in American music, who we've talked about before in several episodes, including the last one. He was possibly the single most important figure in two different genres -- hokum music, when he, under the name "Georgia Tom" recorded "It's Tight Like That" with Tampa Red: [Excerpt: Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, "It's Tight Like That"] And of course gospel music, which to all intents and purposes he invented, and much of whose repertoire he wrote: [Excerpt: Mahalia Jackson, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord"] When Dorsey left Rainey's band, as we discussed right back in episode five, he was replaced by a female pianist, Lil Henderson. The blues was a woman's genre. And Ma Rainey was, by preference, a woman's woman, though she was married to a man: [Excerpt: Ma Rainey, "Prove it on Me"] So was the biggest star of the classic blues era, who was originally mentored by Rainey. Bessie Smith, like Rainey, was a queer woman who had relationships with men but was far more interested in other women. There were stories that Bessie Smith actually got her start in the business by being kidnapped by Ma Rainey, and forced into performing on the same bills as her in the vaudeville show she was touring in, and that Rainey taught Smith to sing blues in the process. In truth, Rainey mentored Smith more in stagecraft and the ways of the road than in singing, and neither woman was only a blues singer, though both had huge success with their blues records. Indeed, since Rainey was already in the show, Smith was initially hired as a dancer rather than a singer, and she also worked as a male impersonator. But Smith soon branched out on her own -- from the beginning she was obviously a star. The great jazz clarinettist Sidney Bechet later said of her "She had this trouble in her, this thing that would not let her rest sometimes, a meanness that came and took her over. But what she had was alive … Bessie, she just wouldn't let herself be; it seemed she couldn't let herself be." Bessie Smith was signed by Columbia Records in 1923, as part of the rush to find and record as many Black women blues singers as possible. Her first recording session produced "Downhearted Blues", which became, depending on which sources you read, either the biggest-selling blues record since "Crazy Blues" or the biggest-selling blues record ever, full stop, selling three quarters of a million copies in the six months after its release: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Downhearted Blues"] Smith didn't make royalties off record sales, only making a flat fee, but she became the most popular Black performer of the 1920s. Columbia signed her to an exclusive contract, and she became so rich that she would literally travel between gigs on her own private train. She lived an extravagant life in every way, giving lavishly to her friends and family, but also drinking extraordinary amounts of liquor, having regular affairs, and also often physically or verbally attacking those around her. By all accounts she was not a comfortable person to be around, and she seemed to be trying to fit an entire lifetime into every moment. From 1923 through 1929 she had a string of massive hits. She recorded material in a variety of styles, including the dirty blues: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Empty Bed Blues] And with accompanists like Louis Armstrong: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith with Louis Armstrong, "Cold in Hand Blues"] But the music for which she became best known, and which sold the best, was when she sang about being mistreated by men, as on one of her biggest hits, "'Tain't Nobody's Biz-Ness if I Do" -- and a warning here, I'm going to play a clip of the song, which treats domestic violence in a way that may be upsetting: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "'Tain't Nobody's Biz-Ness if I Do"] That kind of material can often seem horrifying to today's listeners -- and quite correctly so, as domestic violence is a horrifying thing -- and it sounds entirely too excusing of the man beating her up for anyone to find it comfortable listening. But the Black feminist scholar Angela Davis has made a convincing case that while these records, and others by Smith's contemporaries, can't reasonably be considered to be feminist, they *are* at the very least more progressive than they now seem, in that they were, even if excusing it, pointing to a real problem which was otherwise left unspoken. And that kind of domestic violence and abuse *was* a real problem, including in Smith's own life. By all accounts she was terrified of her husband, Jack Gee, who would frequently attack her because of her affairs with other people, mostly women. But she was still devastated when he left her for a younger woman, not only because he had left her, but also because he kidnapped their adopted son and had him put into a care home, falsely claiming she had abused him. Not only that, but before Jack left her closest friend had been Jack's niece Ruby and after the split she never saw Ruby again -- though after her death Ruby tried to have a blues career as "Ruby Smith", taking her aunt's surname and recording a few tracks with Sammy Price, the piano player who worked with Sister Rosetta Tharpe: [Excerpt: Ruby Smith with Sammy Price, "Make Me Love You"] The same month, May 1929, that Gee left her, Smith recorded what was to become her last big hit, and most well-known song, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out": [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out"] And that could have been the theme for the rest of her life. A few months after that record came out, the Depression hit, pretty much killing the market for blues records. She carried on recording until 1931, but the records weren't selling any more. And at the same time, the talkies came in in the film industry, which along with the Depression ended up devastating the vaudeville audience. Her earnings were still higher than most, but only a quarter of what they had been a year or two earlier. She had one last recording session in 1933, produced by John Hammond for OKeh Records, where she showed that her style had developed over the years -- it was now incorporating the newer swing style, and featured future swing stars Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden in the backing band: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Gimme a Pigfoot"] Hammond was not hugely impressed with the recordings, preferring her earlier records, and they would be the last she would ever make. She continued as a successful, though no longer record-breaking, live act until 1937, when she and her common-law husband, Lionel Hampton's uncle Richard Morgan, were in a car crash. Morgan escaped, but Smith died of her injuries and was buried on October the fourth 1937. Ten thousand people came to her funeral, but she was buried in an unmarked grave -- she was still legally married to Gee, even though they'd been separated for eight years, and while he supposedly later became rich from songwriting royalties from some of her songs (most of her songs were written by other people, but she wrote a few herself) he refused to pay for a headstone for her. Indeed on more than one occasion he embezzled money that had been raised by other people to provide a headstone. Bessie Smith soon became Joplin's favourite singer of all time, and she started trying to copy her vocals. But other than discovering Smith's music, Joplin seems to have had as terrible a time at university as at school, and soon dropped out and moved back in with her parents. She went to business school for a short while, where she learned some secretarial skills, and then she moved west, going to LA where two of her aunts lived, to see if she could thrive better in a big West Coast city than she did in small-town Texas. Soon she moved from LA to Venice Beach, and from there had a brief sojourn in San Francisco, where she tried to live out her beatnik fantasies at a time when the beatnik culture was starting to fall apart. She did, while she was there, start smoking cannabis, though she never got a taste for that drug, and took Benzedrine and started drinking much more heavily than she had before. She soon lost her job, moved back to Texas, and re-enrolled at the same college she'd been at before. But now she'd had a taste of real Bohemian life -- she'd been singing at coffee houses, and having affairs with both men and women -- and soon she decided to transfer to the University of Texas at Austin. At this point, Austin was very far from the cultural centre it has become in recent decades, and it was still a straitlaced Texan town, but it was far less so than Port Arthur, and she soon found herself in a folk group, the Waller Creek Boys. Janis would play autoharp and sing, sometimes Bessie Smith covers, but also the more commercial country and folk music that was popular at the time, like "Silver Threads and Golden Needles", a song that had originally been recorded by Wanda Jackson but at that time was a big hit for Dusty Springfield's group The Springfields: [Excerpt: The Waller Creek Boys, "Silver Threads and Golden Needles"] But even there, Joplin didn't fit in comfortably. The venue where the folk jams were taking place was a segregated venue, as everywhere around Austin was. And she was enough of a misfit that the campus newspaper did an article on her headlined "She Dares to Be Different!", which read in part "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levi's to class because they're more comfortable, and carries her Autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break out into song it will be handy." There was a small group of wannabe-Beatniks, including Chet Helms, who we've mentioned previously in the Grateful Dead episode, Gilbert Shelton, who went on to be a pioneer of alternative comics and create the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, and Shelton's partner in Rip-Off Press, Dave Moriarty, but for the most part the atmosphere in Austin was only slightly better for Janis than it had been in Port Arthur. The final straw for her came when in an annual charity fundraiser joke competition to find the ugliest man on campus, someone nominated her for the "award". She'd had enough of Texas. She wanted to go back to California. She and Chet Helms, who had dropped out of the university earlier and who, like her, had already spent some time on the West Coast, decided to hitch-hike together to San Francisco. Before leaving, she made a recording for her ex-girlfriend Julie Paul, a country and western musician, of a song she'd written herself. It's recorded in what many say was Janis' natural voice -- a voice she deliberately altered in performance in later years because, she would tell people, she didn't think there was room for her singing like that in an industry that already had Joan Baez and Judy Collins. In her early years she would alternate between singing like this and doing her imitations of Black women, but the character of Janis Joplin who would become famous never sang like this. It may well be the most honest thing that she ever recorded, and the most revealing of who she really was: [Excerpt: Janis Joplin, "So Sad to Be Alone"] Joplin and Helms made it to San Francisco, and she started performing at open-mic nights and folk clubs around the Bay Area, singing in her Bessie Smith and Odetta imitation voice, and sometimes making a great deal of money by sounding different from the wispier-voiced women who were the norm at those venues. The two friends parted ways, and she started performing with two other folk musicians, Larry Hanks and Roger Perkins, and she insisted that they would play at least one Bessie Smith song at every performance: [Excerpt: Janis Joplin, Larry Hanks, and Roger Perkins, "Black Mountain Blues (live in San Francisco)"] Often the trio would be joined by Billy Roberts, who at that time had just started performing the song that would make his name, "Hey Joe", and Joplin was soon part of the folk scene in the Bay Area, and admired by Dino Valenti, David Crosby, and Jerry Garcia among others. She also sang a lot with Jorma Kaukonnen, and recordings of the two of them together have circulated for years: [Excerpt: Janis Joplin and Jorma Kaukonnen, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out"] Through 1963, 1964, and early 1965 Joplin ping-ponged from coast to coast, spending time in the Bay Area, then Greenwich Village, dropping in on her parents then back to the Bay Area, and she started taking vast quantities of methamphetamine. Even before moving to San Francisco she had been an occasional user of amphetamines – at the time they were regularly prescribed to students as study aids during exam periods, and she had also been taking them to try to lose some of the weight she always hated. But while she was living in San Francisco she became dependent on the drug. At one point her father was worried enough about her health to visit her in San Francisco, where she managed to fool him that she was more or less OK. But she looked to him for reassurance that things would get better for her, and he couldn't give it to her. He told her about a concept that he called the "Saturday night swindle", the idea that you work all week so you can go out and have fun on Saturday in the hope that that will make up for everything else, but that it never does. She had occasional misses with what would have been lucky breaks -- at one point she was in a motorcycle accident just as record labels were interested in signing her, and by the time she got out of the hospital the chance had gone. She became engaged to another speed freak, one who claimed to be an engineer and from a well-off background, but she was becoming severely ill from what was by now a dangerous amphetamine habit, and in May 1965 she decided to move back in with her parents, get clean, and have a normal life. Her new fiance was going to do the same, and they were going to have the conformist life her parents had always wanted, and which she had always wanted to want. Surely with a husband who loved her she could find a way to fit in and just be normal. She kicked the addiction, and wrote her fiance long letters describing everything about her family and the new normal life they were going to have together, and they show her painfully trying to be optimistic about the future, like one where she described her family to him: "My mother—Dorothy—worries so and loves her children dearly. Republican and Methodist, very sincere, speaks in clichés which she really means and is very good to people. (She thinks you have a lovely voice and is terribly prepared to like you.) My father—richer than when I knew him and kind of embarrassed about it—very well read—history his passion—quiet and very excited to have me home because I'm bright and we can talk (about antimatter yet—that impressed him)! I keep telling him how smart you are and how proud I am of you.…" She went back to Lamar, her mother started sewing her a wedding dress, and for much of the year she believed her fiance was going to be her knight in shining armour. But as it happened, the fiance in question was described by everyone else who knew him as a compulsive liar and con man, who persuaded her father to give him money for supposed medical tests before the wedding, but in reality was apparently married to someone else and having a baby with a third woman. After the engagement was broken off, she started performing again around the coffeehouses in Austin and Houston, and she started to realise the possibilities of rock music for her kind of performance. The missing clue came from a group from Austin who she became very friendly with, the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, and the way their lead singer Roky Erickson would wail and yell: [Excerpt: The 13th Floor Elevators, "You're Gonna Miss Me (live)"] If, as now seemed inevitable, Janis was going to make a living as a performer, maybe she should start singing rock music, because it seemed like there was money in it. There was even some talk of her singing with the Elevators. But then an old friend came to Austin from San Francisco with word from Chet Helms. A blues band had formed, and were looking for a singer, and they remembered her from the coffee houses. Would she like to go back to San Francisco and sing with them? In the time she'd been away, Helms had become hugely prominent in the San Francisco music scene, which had changed radically. A band from the area called the Charlatans had been playing a fake-Victorian saloon called the Red Dog in nearby Nevada, and had become massive with the people who a few years earlier had been beatniks: [Excerpt: The Charlatans, "32-20"] When their residency at the Red Dog had finished, several of the crowd who had been regulars there had become a collective of sorts called the Family Dog, and Helms had become their unofficial leader. And there's actually a lot packed into that choice of name. As we'll see in a few future episodes, a lot of West Coast hippies eventually started calling their collectives and communes families. This started as a way to get round bureaucracy -- if a helpful welfare officer put down that the unrelated people living in a house together were a family, suddenly they could get food stamps. As with many things, of course, the label then affected how people thought about themselves, and one thing that's very notable about the San Francisco scene hippies in particular is that they are some of the first people to make a big deal about what we now call "found family" or "family of choice". But it's also notable how often the hippie found families took their model from the only families these largely middle-class dropouts had ever known, and structured themselves around men going out and doing the work -- selling dope or panhandling or being rock musicians or shoplifting -- with the women staying at home doing the housework. The Family Dog started promoting shows, with the intention of turning San Francisco into "the American Liverpool", and soon Helms was rivalled only by Bill Graham as the major promoter of rock shows in the Bay Area. And now he wanted Janis to come back and join this new band. But Janis was worried. She was clean now. She drank far too much, but she wasn't doing any other drugs. She couldn't go back to San Francisco and risk getting back on methamphetamine. She needn't worry about that, she was told, nobody in San Francisco did speed any more, they were all on LSD -- a drug she hated and so wasn't in any danger from. Reassured, she made the trip back to San Francisco, to join Big Brother and the Holding Company. Big Brother and the Holding Company were the epitome of San Francisco acid rock at the time. They were the house band at the Avalon Ballroom, which Helms ran, and their first ever gig had been at the Trips Festival, which we talked about briefly in the Grateful Dead episode. They were known for being more imaginative than competent -- lead guitarist James Gurley was often described as playing parts that were influenced by John Cage, but was equally often, and equally accurately, described as not actually being able to keep his guitar in tune because he was too stoned. But they were drawing massive crowds with their instrumental freak-out rock music. Helms thought they needed a singer, and he had remembered Joplin, who a few of the group had seen playing the coffee houses. He decided she would be perfect for them, though Joplin wasn't so sure. She thought it was worth a shot, but as she wrote to her parents before meeting the group "Supposed to rehearse w/ the band this afternoon, after that I guess I'll know whether I want to stay & do that for awhile. Right now my position is ambivalent—I'm glad I came, nice to see the city, a few friends, but I'm not at all sold on the idea of becoming the poor man's Cher.” In that letter she also wrote "I'm awfully sorry to be such a disappointment to you. I understand your fears at my coming here & must admit I share them, but I really do think there's an awfully good chance I won't blow it this time." The band she met up with consisted of lead guitarist James Gurley, bass player Peter Albin, rhythm player Sam Andrew, and drummer David Getz. To start with, Peter Albin sang lead on most songs, with Joplin adding yelps and screams modelled on those of Roky Erickson, but in her first gig with the band she bowled everyone over with her lead vocal on the traditional spiritual "Down on Me", which would remain a staple of their live act, as in this live recording from 1968: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Down on Me (Live 1968)"] After that first gig in June 1966, it was obvious that Joplin was going to be a star, and was going to be the group's main lead vocalist. She had developed a whole new stage persona a million miles away from her folk performances. As Chet Helms said “Suddenly this person who would stand upright with her fists clenched was all over the stage. Roky Erickson had modeled himself after the screaming style of Little Richard, and Janis's initial stage presence came from Roky, and ultimately Little Richard. It was a very different Janis.” Joplin would always claim to journalists that her stage persona was just her being herself and natural, but she worked hard on every aspect of her performance, and far from the untrained emotional outpouring she always suggested, her vocal performances were carefully calculated pastiches of her influences -- mostly Bessie Smith, but also Big Mama Thornton, Odetta, Etta James, Tina Turner, and Otis Redding. That's not to say that those performances weren't an authentic expression of part of herself -- they absolutely were. But the ethos that dominated San Francisco in the mid-sixties prized self-expression over technical craft, and so Joplin had to portray herself as a freak of nature who just had to let all her emotions out, a wild woman, rather than someone who carefully worked out every nuance of her performances. Joplin actually got the chance to meet one of her idols when she discovered that Willie Mae Thornton was now living and regularly performing in the Bay Area. She and some of her bandmates saw Big Mama play a small jazz club, where she performed a song she wouldn't release on a record for another two years: [Excerpt: Big Mama Thornton, "Ball 'n' Chain"] Janis loved the song and scribbled down the lyrics, then went backstage to ask Big Mama if Big Brother could cover the song. She gave them her blessing, but told them "don't" -- and here she used a word I can't use with a clean rating -- "it up". The group all moved in together, communally, with their partners -- those who had them. Janis was currently single, having dumped her most recent boyfriend after discovering him shooting speed, as she was still determined to stay clean. But she was rapidly discovering that the claim that San Franciscans no longer used much speed had perhaps not been entirely true, as for example Sam Andrew's girlfriend went by the nickname Speedfreak Rita. For now, Janis was still largely clean, but she did start drinking more. Partly this was because of a brief fling with Pigpen from the Grateful Dead, who lived nearby. Janis liked Pigpen as someone else on the scene who didn't much like psychedelics or cannabis -- she didn't like drugs that made her think more, but only drugs that made her able to *stop* thinking (her love of amphetamines doesn't seem to fit this pattern, but a small percentage of people have a different reaction to amphetamine-type stimulants, perhaps she was one of those). Pigpen was a big drinker of Southern Comfort -- so much so that it would kill him within a few years -- and Janis started joining him. Her relationship with Pigpen didn't last long, but the two would remain close, and she would often join the Grateful Dead on stage over the years to duet with him on "Turn On Your Lovelight": [Excerpt: Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead, "Turn on Your Lovelight"] But within two months of joining the band, Janis nearly left. Paul Rothchild of Elektra Records came to see the group live, and was impressed by their singer, but not by the rest of the band. This was something that would happen again and again over the group's career. The group were all imaginative and creative -- they worked together on their arrangements and their long instrumental jams and often brought in very good ideas -- but they were not the most disciplined or technically skilled of musicians, even when you factored in their heavy drug use, and often lacked the skill to pull off their better ideas. They were hugely popular among the crowds at the Avalon Ballroom, who were on the group's chemical wavelength, but Rothchild was not impressed -- as he was, in general, unimpressed with psychedelic freakouts. He was already of the belief in summer 1966 that the fashion for extended experimental freak-outs would soon come to an end and that there would be a pendulum swing back towards more structured and melodic music. As we saw in the episode on The Band, he would be proved right in a little over a year, but being ahead of the curve he wanted to put together a supergroup that would be able to ride that coming wave, a group that would play old-fashioned blues. He'd got together Stefan Grossman, Steve Mann, and Taj Mahal, and he wanted Joplin to be the female vocalist for the group, dueting with Mahal. She attended one rehearsal, and the new group sounded great. Elektra Records offered to sign them, pay their rent while they rehearsed, and have a major promotional campaign for their first release. Joplin was very, very, tempted, and brought the subject up to her bandmates in Big Brother. They were devastated. They were a family! You don't leave your family! She was meant to be with them forever! They eventually got her to agree to put off the decision at least until after a residency they'd been booked for in Chicago, and she decided to give them the chance, writing to her parents "I decided to stay w/the group but still like to think about the other thing. Trying to figure out which is musically more marketable because my being good isn't enough, I've got to be in a good vehicle.” The trip to Chicago was a disaster. They found that the people of Chicago weren't hugely interested in seeing a bunch of white Californians play the blues, and that the Midwest didn't have the same Bohemian crowds that the coastal cities they were used to had, and so their freak-outs didn't go down well either. After two weeks of their four-week residency, the club owner stopped paying them because they were so unpopular, and they had no money to get home. And then they were approached by Bob Shad. (For those who know the film Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, the Bob Shad in that film is named after this one -- Judd Apatow, the film's director, is Shad's grandson) This Shad was a record producer, who had worked with people like Big Bill Broonzy, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, and Billy Eckstine over an eighteen-year career, and had recently set up a new label, Mainstream Records. He wanted to sign Big Brother and the Holding Company. They needed money and... well, it was a record contract! It was a contract that took half their publishing, paid them a five percent royalty on sales, and gave them no advance, but it was still a contract, and they'd get union scale for the first session. In that first session in Chicago, they recorded four songs, and strangely only one, "Down on Me", had a solo Janis vocal. Of the other three songs, Sam Andrew and Janis dueted on Sam's song "Call on Me", Albin sang lead on the group composition "Blindman", and Gurley and Janis sang a cover of "All Is Loneliness", a song originally by the avant-garde street musician Moondog: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "All is Loneliness"] The group weren't happy with the four songs they recorded -- they had to keep the songs to the length of a single, and the engineers made sure that the needles never went into the red, so their guitars sounded far more polite and less distorted than they were used to. Janis was fascinated by the overdubbing process, though, especially double-tracking, which she'd never tried before but which she turned out to be remarkably good at. And they were now signed to a contract, which meant that Janis wouldn't be leaving the group to go solo any time soon. The family were going to stay together. But on the group's return to San Francisco, Janis started doing speed again, encouraged by the people around the group, particularly Gurley's wife. By the time the group's first single, "Blindman" backed with "All is Loneliness", came out, she was an addict again. That initial single did nothing, but the group were fast becoming one of the most popular in the Bay Area, and almost entirely down to Janis' vocals and on-stage persona. Bob Shad had already decided in the initial session that while various band members had taken lead, Janis was the one who should be focused on as the star, and when they drove to LA for their second recording session it was songs with Janis leads that they focused on. At that second session, in which they recorded ten tracks in two days, the group recorded a mix of material including one of Janis' own songs, the blues track "Women is Losers", and a version of the old folk song "the Cuckoo Bird" rearranged by Albin. Again they had to keep the arrangements to two and a half minutes a track, with no extended soloing and a pop arrangement style, and the results sound a lot more like the other San Francisco bands, notably Jefferson Airplane, than like the version of the band that shows itself in their live performances: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Coo Coo"] After returning to San Francisco after the sessions, Janis went to see Otis Redding at the Fillmore, turning up several hours before the show started on all three nights to make sure she could be right at the front. One of the other audience members later recalled “It was more fascinating for me, almost, to watch Janis watching Otis, because you could tell that she wasn't just listening to him, she was studying something. There was some kind of educational thing going on there. I was jumping around like the little hippie girl I was, thinking This is so great! and it just stopped me in my tracks—because all of a sudden Janis drew you very deeply into what the performance was all about. Watching her watch Otis Redding was an education in itself.” Joplin would, for the rest of her life, always say that Otis Redding was her all-time favourite singer, and would say “I started singing rhythmically, and now I'm learning from Otis Redding to push a song instead of just sliding over it.” [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "I Can't Turn You Loose (live)"] At the start of 1967, the group moved out of the rural house they'd been sharing and into separate apartments around Haight-Ashbury, and they brought the new year in by playing a free show organised by the Hell's Angels, the violent motorcycle gang who at the time were very close with the proto-hippies in the Bay Area. Janis in particular always got on well with the Angels, whose drugs of choice, like hers, were speed and alcohol more than cannabis and psychedelics. Janis also started what would be the longest on-again off-again relationship she would ever have, with a woman named Peggy Caserta. Caserta had a primary partner, but that if anything added to her appeal for Joplin -- Caserta's partner Kimmie had previously been in a relationship with Joan Baez, and Joplin, who had an intense insecurity that made her jealous of any other female singer who had any success, saw this as in some way a validation both of her sexuality and, transitively, of her talent. If she was dating Baez's ex's lover, that in some way put her on a par with Baez, and when she told friends about Peggy, Janis would always slip that fact in. Joplin and Caserta would see each other off and on for the rest of Joplin's life, but they were never in a monogamous relationship, and Joplin had many other lovers over the years. The next of these was Country Joe McDonald of Country Joe and the Fish, who were just in the process of recording their first album Electric Music for the Mind and Body, when McDonald and Joplin first got together: [Excerpt: Country Joe and the Fish, "Grace"] McDonald would later reminisce about lying with Joplin, listening to one of the first underground FM radio stations, KMPX, and them playing a Fish track and a Big Brother track back to back. Big Brother's second single, the other two songs recorded in the Chicago session, had been released in early 1967, and the B-side, "Down on Me", was getting a bit of airplay in San Francisco and made the local charts, though it did nothing outside the Bay Area: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Down on Me"] Janis was unhappy with the record, though, writing to her parents and saying, “Our new record is out. We seem to be pretty dissatisfied w/it. I think we're going to try & get out of the record contract if we can. We don't feel that they know how to promote or engineer a record & every time we recorded for them, they get all our songs, which means we can't do them for another record company. But then if our new record does something, we'd change our mind. But somehow, I don't think it's going to." The band apparently saw a lawyer to see if they could get out of the contract with Mainstream, but they were told it was airtight. They were tied to Bob Shad no matter what for the next five years. Janis and McDonald didn't stay together for long -- they clashed about his politics and her greater fame -- but after they split, she asked him to write a song for her before they became too distant, and he obliged and recorded it on the Fish's next album: [Excerpt: Country Joe and the Fish, "Janis"] The group were becoming so popular by late spring 1967 that when Richard Lester, the director of the Beatles' films among many other classics, came to San Francisco to film Petulia, his follow-up to How I Won The War, he chose them, along with the Grateful Dead, to appear in performance segments in the film. But it would be another filmmaker that would change the course of the group's career irrevocably: [Excerpt: Scott McKenzie, "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)"] When Big Brother and the Holding Company played the Monterey Pop Festival, nobody had any great expectations. They were second on the bill on the Saturday, the day that had been put aside for the San Francisco acts, and they were playing in the early afternoon, after a largely unimpressive night before. They had a reputation among the San Francisco crowd, of course, but they weren't even as big as the Grateful Dead, Moby Grape or Country Joe and the Fish, let alone Jefferson Airplane. Monterey launched four careers to new heights, but three of the superstars it made -- Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, and the Who -- already had successful careers. Hendrix and the Who had had hits in the UK but not yet broken the US market, while Redding was massively popular with Black people but hadn't yet crossed over to a white audience. Big Brother and the Holding Company, on the other hand, were so unimportant that D.A. Pennebaker didn't even film their set -- their manager at the time had not wanted to sign over the rights to film their performance, something that several of the other acts had also refused -- and nobody had been bothered enough to make an issue of it. Pennebaker just took some crowd shots and didn't bother filming the band. The main thing he caught was Cass Elliot's open-mouthed astonishment at Big Brother's performance -- or rather at Janis Joplin's performance. The members of the group would later complain, not entirely inaccurately, that in the reviews of their performance at Monterey, Joplin's left nipple (the outline of which was apparently visible through her shirt, at least to the male reviewers who took an inordinate interest in such things) got more attention than her four bandmates combined. As Pennebaker later said “She came out and sang, and my hair stood on end. We were told we weren't allowed to shoot it, but I knew if we didn't have Janis in the film, the film would be a wash. Afterward, I said to Albert Grossman, ‘Talk to her manager or break his leg or whatever you have to do, because we've got to have her in this film. I can't imagine this film without this woman who I just saw perform.” Grossman had a talk with the organisers of the festival, Lou Adler and John Phillips, and they offered Big Brother a second spot, the next day, if they would allow their performance to be used in the film. The group agreed, after much discussion between Janis and Grossman, and against the wishes of their manager: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Ball and Chain (live at Monterey)"] They were now on Albert Grossman's radar. Or at least, Janis Joplin was. Joplin had always been more of a careerist than the other members of the group. They were in music to have a good time and to avoid working a straight job, and while some of them were more accomplished musicians than their later reputations would suggest -- Sam Andrew, in particular, was a skilled player and serious student of music -- they were fundamentally content with playing the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore and making five hundred dollars or so a week between them. Very good money for 1967, but nothing else. Joplin, on the other hand, was someone who absolutely craved success. She wanted to prove to her family that she wasn't a failure and that her eccentricity shouldn't stop them being proud of her; she was always, even at the depths of her addictions, fiscally prudent and concerned about her finances; and she had a deep craving for love. Everyone who talks about her talks about how she had an aching need at all times for approval, connection, and validation, which she got on stage more than she got anywhere else. The bigger the audience, the more they must love her. She'd made all her decisions thus far based on how to balance making music that she loved with commercial success, and this would continue to be the pattern for her in future. And so when journalists started to want to talk to her, even though up to that point Albin, who did most of the on-stage announcements, and Gurley, the lead guitarist, had considered themselves joint leaders of the band, she was eager. And she was also eager to get rid of their manager, who continued the awkward streak that had prevented their first performance at the Monterey Pop Festival from being filmed. The group had the chance to play the Hollywood Bowl -- Bill Graham was putting on a "San Francisco Sound" showcase there, featuring Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, and got their verbal agreement to play, but after Graham had the posters printed up, their manager refused to sign the contracts unless they were given more time on stage. The next day after that, they played Monterey again -- this time the Monterey Jazz Festival. A very different crowd to the Pop Festival still fell for Janis' performance -- and once again, the film being made of the event didn't include Big Brother's set because of their manager. While all this was going on, the group's recordings from the previous year were rushed out by Mainstream Records as an album, to poor reviews which complained it was nothing like the group's set at Monterey: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Bye Bye Baby"] They were going to need to get out of that contract and sign with somewhere better -- Clive Davis at Columbia Records was already encouraging them to sign with him -- but to do that, they needed a better manager. They needed Albert Grossman. Grossman was one of the best negotiators in the business at that point, but he was also someone who had a genuine love for the music his clients made. And he had good taste -- he managed Odetta, who Janis idolised as a singer, and Bob Dylan, who she'd been a fan of since his first album came out. He was going to be the perfect manager for the group. But he had one condition though. His first wife had been a heroin addict, and he'd just been dealing with Mike Bloomfield's heroin habit. He had one absolutely ironclad rule, a dealbreaker that would stop him signing them -- they didn't use heroin, did they? Both Gurley and Joplin had used heroin on occasion -- Joplin had only just started, introduced to the drug by Gurley -- but they were only dabblers. They could give it up any time they wanted, right? Of course they could. They told him, in perfect sincerity, that the band didn't use heroin and it wouldn't be a problem. But other than that, Grossman was extremely flexible. He explained to the group at their first meeting that he took a higher percentage than other managers, but that he would also make them more money than other managers -- if money was what they wanted. He told them that they needed to figure out where they wanted their career to be, and what they were willing to do to get there -- would they be happy just playing the same kind of venues they were now, maybe for a little more money, or did they want to be as big as Dylan or Peter, Paul, and Mary? He could get them to whatever level they wanted, and he was happy with working with clients at every level, what did they actually want? The group were agreed -- they wanted to be rich. They decided to test him. They were making twenty-five thousand dollars a year between them at that time, so they got ridiculously ambitious. They told him they wanted to make a *lot* of money. Indeed, they wanted a clause in their contract saying the contract would be void if in the first year they didn't make... thinking of a ridiculous amount, they came up with seventy-five thousand dollars. Grossman's response was to shrug and say "Make it a hundred thousand." The group were now famous and mixing with superstars -- Peter Tork of the Monkees had become a close friend of Janis', and when they played a residency in LA they were invited to John and Michelle Phillips' house to see a rough cut of Monterey Pop. But the group, other than Janis, were horrified -- the film barely showed the other band members at all, just Janis. Dave Getz said later "We assumed we'd appear in the movie as a band, but seeing it was a shock. It was all Janis. They saw her as a superstar in the making. I realized that though we were finally going to be making money and go to another level, it also meant our little family was being separated—there was Janis, and there was the band.” [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Bye Bye Baby"] If the group were going to make that hundred thousand dollars a year, they couldn't remain on Mainstream Records, but Bob Shad was not about to give up his rights to what could potentially be the biggest group in America without a fight. But luckily for the group, Clive Davis at Columbia had seen their Monterey performance, and he was also trying to pivot the label towards the new rock music. He was basically willing to do anything to get them. Eventually Columbia agreed to pay Shad two hundred thousand dollars for the group's contract -- Davis and Grossman negotiated so half that was an advance on the group's future earnings, but the other half was just an expense for the label. On top of that the group got an advance payment of fifty thousand dollars for their first album for Columbia, making a total investment by Columbia of a quarter of a million dollars -- in return for which they got to sign the band, and got the rights to the material they'd recorded for Mainstream, though Shad would get a two percent royalty on their first two albums for Columbia. Janis was intimidated by signing for Columbia, because that had been Aretha Franklin's label before she signed to Atlantic, and she regarded Franklin as the greatest performer in music at that time. Which may have had something to do with the choice of a new song the group added to their setlist in early 1968 -- one which was a current hit for Aretha's sister Erma: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] We talked a little in the last episode about the song "Piece of My Heart" itself, though mostly from the perspective of its performer, Erma Franklin. But the song was, as we mentioned, co-written by Bert Berns. He's someone we've talked about a little bit in previous episodes, notably the ones on "Here Comes the Night" and "Twist and Shout", but those were a couple of years ago, and he's about to become a major figure in the next episode, so we might as well take a moment here to remind listeners (or tell those who haven't heard those episodes) of the basics and explain where "Piece of My Heart" comes in Berns' work as a whole. Bert Berns was a latecomer to the music industry, not getting properly started until he was thirty-one, after trying a variety of other occupations. But when he did get started, he wasted no time making his mark -- he knew he had no time to waste. He had a weak heart and knew the likelihood was he was going to die young. He started an association with Wand records as a songwriter and performer, writing songs for some of Phil Spector's pre-fame recordings, and he also started producing records for Atlantic, where for a long while he was almost the equal of Jerry Wexler or Leiber and Stoller in terms of number of massive hits created. His records with Solomon Burke were the records that first got the R&B genre renamed soul (previously the word "soul" mostly referred to a kind of R&Bish jazz, rather than a kind of gospel-ish R&B). He'd also been one of the few American music industry professionals to work with British bands before the Beatles made it big in the USA, after he became alerted to the Beatles' success with his song "Twist and Shout", which he'd co-written with Phil Medley, and which had been a hit in a version Berns produced for the Isley Brothers: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "Twist and Shout"] That song shows the two elements that existed in nearly every single Bert Berns song or production. The first is the Afro-Caribbean rhythm, a feel he picked up during a stint in Cuba in his twenties. Other people in the Atlantic records team were also partial to those rhythms -- Leiber and Stoller loved what they called the baion rhythm -- but Berns more than anyone else made it his signature. He also very specifically loved the song "La Bamba", especially Ritchie Valens' version of it: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, "La Bamba"] He basically seemed to think that was the greatest record ever made, and he certainly loved that three-chord trick I-IV-V-IV chord sequence -- almost but not quite the same as the "Louie Louie" one. He used it in nearly every song he wrote from that point on -- usually using a bassline that went something like this: [plays I-IV-V-IV bassline] He used it in "Twist and Shout" of course: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "Twist and Shout"] He used it in "Hang on Sloopy": [Excerpt: The McCoys, "Hang on Sloopy"] He *could* get more harmonically sophisticated on occasion, but the vast majority of Berns' songs show the power of simplicity. They're usually based around three chords, and often they're actually only two chords, like "I Want Candy": [Excerpt: The Strangeloves, "I Want Candy"] Or the chorus to "Here Comes the Night" by Them, which is two chords for most of it and only introduces a third right at the end: [Excerpt: Them, "Here Comes the Night"] And even in that song you can hear the "Twist and Shout"/"La Bamba" feel, even if it's not exactly the same chords. Berns' whole career was essentially a way of wringing *every last possible drop* out of all the implications of Ritchie Valens' record. And so even when he did a more harmonically complex song, like "Piece of My Heart", which actually has some minor chords in the bridge, the "La Bamba" chord sequence is used in both the verse: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] And the chorus: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] Berns co-wrote “Piece of My Heart” with Jerry Ragavoy. Berns and Ragavoy had also written "Cry Baby" for Garnet Mimms, which was another Joplin favourite: [Excerpt: Garnet Mimms, "Cry Baby"] And Ragavoy, with other collaborators
God took the real Thomas Dorsey on quite the journey to the composition of “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.” For sound designer Nathan Jones and singer Jamal Sarikoki, the production of the audio dramas felt almost as epic.
God took the real Thomas Dorsey on quite the journey to the composition of "Precious Lord, Take My Hand." For sound designer Nathan Jones and singer Jamal Sarikoki, the production of the audio dramas felt almost as epic.
Tony opens the show by reading some emails and opening up some mail he got, and he also talks about the Daytona 500 and about John Rahm winning the Genesis Invitational. Michael Wilbon calls in to talk about the NBA All Star Game and about his beloved Northwestern basketball team which is looking like a lock to make the NCAA Tournament, Jason La Canfora calls in to talk about how the O's will be this year and also about the XFL, and how the NFL may lengthen it's season again, and Tony closes out the show by opening up the Mailbag. Songs : The Henry's “Take My Hand” ; Dave Smith and Friends “Old Man Hands” To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices