VOICES OF OUR TIME

In Chicago during the McCarthy era a lawyer by training, an actor by vocation, Studs Terkel, was hosting a local TV show, "Studs' Place," when he was kicked off the air for refusing to sign a loyalty oath. No one would touch him except small, momandpop WFMT, an FM classical station. He remained there for fifty years, as the station grew into an important cultural force, and he raked in a couple of Pulitzers for oralhistory books, such as WORKING and DIVISION STREET, USA. For most of that time, he had--and, now almost completely deaf, still has--an uncanny way of getting people to talk candidly and interestingly. Producer Tom Voegli has here collected excerpts from Terkel's daily interview show, featuring such cultural icons as Leonard Bernstein, Dorothy Parker, Bertrand Russell, R. Buckminster Fuller, Mahalia Jackson--48 luminaries in all. Each is far too short but, nonetheless, gives a revealing aural snapshot of its subject. Jackson, for instance, the singer and activist, struggles to keep magnanimity in her heart in the face of racial violence. This is a must have artifact of America in the last half of this waning century. Y.R. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award © AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/SEP 99]