Studs Terkel (Louis) has died - Remembrances

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Studs Terkel (Louis) has died - Remembrances

Remembrances on NPR
Studs Terkel, Oral Historian and Radio Legend, 96Born in 1912, Pulitzer Prize-winning oral historian Studs Terkel helped thousands of everyday Americans tell their own stories. Terkel hosted a Chicago radio program for 45 years and authored 12 oral histories about 20th century America. Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94573985
+ Bob Dylan 1963 with Studs Terkel (58,05)

Biography
Studs Terkel, prize-winning author and radio broadcast personality was born Louis Terkel in New York on May 16, 1912. His father, Samuel, was a tailor and his mother, Anna (Finkel) was a seamstress. He had three brothers. The family moved to Chicago in 1922 and opened a rooming house at Ashland and Flournoy on the near West side {LISTEN}. From 1926 to 1936 they ran another rooming house, the Wells-Grand Hotel at Wells Street and Grand Avenue {LISTEN}.

Terkel credits his knowledge of the world to the tenants who gathered in the lobby of the hotel and the people who congregated in nearby Bughouse Square {LISTEN}, a meeting place for workers, labor organizers, dissidents, the unemployed, and religious fanatics of many persuasions. In 1939 he married Ida Goldberg and had one son.
Terkel attended University of Chicago and received a law degree in 1934. He chose not to pursue a career in law. After a brief stint with the civil service in Washington D.C., he returned to Chicago and worked with the WPA Writers Project in the radio division. One day he was asked to read a script and soon found himself in radio soap operas, in other stage performances, and on a WAIT news show. After a year in the Air Force, he returned to writing radio shows and ads. He was on a sports show on WBBM and then, in 1944, he landed his own show on WENR. This was called the Wax Museum show that allowed him to express his own personality and play recordings he liked from folk music, opera, jazz, or blues. A year later he had his own television show called Stud's Place and started asking people the kind of questions that marked his later work as an interviewer {LISTEN}.
In 1952 Terkel began working for WFMT, first with the "Studs Terkel Almanac" and the "Studs Terkel Show," primarily to play music. The interviewing came along by accident {LISTEN}. This later became the award-winning, "The Studs Terkel Program." His first book, Giants of Jazz, was published in 1956. Ten years later his first book of oral history interviews, Division Street : America, came out. It was followed by a succession of oral history books on the 1930s Depression, World War Two, race relations, working, the American dream, and aging. His latest book, Will the Circle Be Unbroken : Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith, was published in 2001. Terkel continues to interview people, work on his books, and make public appearances. He is Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Chicago Historical Society.

http://www.studsterkel.org/bio.php

Interviews on Folk Music
Studs Terkel's interest in music has been evident since his earliest radio programs. WFMT allowed him the freedom to choose his own material, and significant portions of his programs were devoted to exploring various types of music through interviews with musicians, singers, songwriters, and musicologists. Folk music was one of his favorite topics. The Old Town School of Folk Music was founded in Chicago in 1957, a few years after Terkel began his radio program. Terkel's involvement with this popular Chicago institution brought him in contact with many local folk musicians who he later interviewed on his program. He was able to interview several other prominent guests, such as Joan Baez, while they were in Chicago for a performance.
This selection of folk music programs includes American folk musicians from around the country. The interviews below include early proponents of folk music: John Jacob Niles, who began performing in the early decades of the 20th century; popular 1940s concert performer Richard Dyer-Bennett; original Grand Ole Opry member Jimmy Driftwood; and Win Stracke, founder of the Old Town School of Folk Music. Notable among the selections offered is a two-hour interview with folklorist Alan Lomax who scoured Europe for samples of original folk music for the Library of Congress. The selection also includes performers who popularized folk music in the 1960s, such as Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Pete Seeger. The recorded conversations range from discussing the relationship of folk music to antecedent songs in Europe and elsewhere to the meanings of folk songs and their relevance to the current social and political environment. A major theme throughout these interviews is the strong calling that this type of music had for the guests and their undeniable passion for the preservation and performance of traditional music.
To listen to a sound, click on the file name of that selection. Real Audio is required for these recordings. If your system does not have Real Audio, it can be downloaded for free at http://www.real.com.