The Wormlips Scrapbook

For years it’s been nagging at me that I need to digitize my old public radio programs, but I’ve never had a free moment even to figure out where to start.

Well, how’s this for fortuitous: the day I found out I have all this unexpected free time, I stumbled upon a box of DAT tapes of my work: Steel Drivin’ Man (about the John Henry legend), Skip Through the Shadows (my childhood series), A Gathering of Days (Adi’s and my holiday series), something I did about financial abuse of the elderly, and the one you’ll read about in just a second. I didn’t even know I had these in demi-digital form.

So my plan is to upload these thangs to this here blog one by one, as I convert them. Someday I hope to try to salvage all the rest of my stuff, which is on decomposing analog tape.

Before we get to this first program, a little background:

I started as an independent producer for National Public Radio in about 1982. Unsolicited and unknown, I mailed them my first radio piece (about involuntary sterilization abuse of Mexican-American women) and they accepted it. I didn’t learn until much later that it was an exceptionally difficult field to break into. I’m glad I didn’t know, or I might never have tried.

For years I probably earned about ten cents an hour, but it was an incredibly fun time to be working in public radio: a climate of experiment and creativity. I did pretty much whatever I wanted. I accepted a number of assignments from them, but mostly I came up with my own strange ideas and executed them in my own style. The West Coast Desk editors rarely tried to change what I did. I don’t know why I was so lucky.

Here’s something I don’t tell people often: I never listened to much public radio myself. I just liked making it. Maybe that was a good thing, because I wasn’t trying to emulate anyone else’s concept of what public radio should sound like.

Okay, so: this first documentary feature is about rockabilly legend Rose Maddox. I produced it with my friend TJ Meekins, who had a world-class weekly American country and rockabilly radio program on KVMR-FM in Nevada City. Immersed as she was in that culture, she knew (and had interviewed) a bunch of its pioneers. It was she who provided all the knowledge, insight and connections that made the program possible.

Rose was her friend, so she arranged that interview for us. We also flew down to Burbank to interview another of her old pals, country musician and songwriter Cliffie Stone.

I also used bits of earlier interviews she’d done with people including Tennessee Ernie Ford, and archival material she’d tracked down.

It was a fun program to produce because the subject is intriguing and because TJ is a blast. It aired on NPR’s All Things Considered or Weekend All Things Considered (can’t remember which) in whatever year that was. 1996 or 1997, I think. Here it is (13:33 minutes long):

Rose Maddox died around a year after this program aired. So did Cliffie Stone. I’m glad we didn’t procrastinate.

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Here’s a 4.5-minute radio piece I did for the BBC in about 1987: a story about a guy named Forbes Kiddoo and his island. It was quite a cool place. I wonder whatever happened to it.

Oh, check it out. It still exists, now as Forbes Island Restaurant in SF.

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One of the most amazing experiences of my life was getting to work for two months in South Africa, where I co-produced two documentaries and did some radio production training. I was incredibly lucky. It happened because a good friend believed in the project so much that he got it funded by two US grants and sponsored by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA).

The radio programs were about specific aspects of life under apartheid, which had ended only the year before. (Nelson Mandela’s presidential palace was across the street from our office.) The work-pace was frantic as we traveled around Cape Town and its townships gathering interviews and weaving the painful recollections into a single audio story—all in about a month. It wasn’t enough time.

I won’t keep rambling on about these amazing weeks, except to say that I never ceased to be amazed by the openness of spirit of the South African people I met and that we interviewed: not only their willingness to talk to us about incomprehensible suffering, but to allow me—an outsider—to listen

This first program is about the forced removals under the Group Areas Act, which resulted in black South Africans, “coloureds,” Indians and others being driven from their homes so that whites could take over the area.

Two of my newly met colleagues, Sue Valentine and Siviwe Minyi, became dear friends, and thirteen years later I miss them as strongly as ever. The three of us co-produced this. It was broadcast by the South African Broadcasting Corporation, and also in the US, as I recall.

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