Jazz Bassist Charlie Haden Started off in Country Music

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: SEPTEMBER 04, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 090401np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Charlie Louvin Discusses His Country Music Career
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:00

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Today, we conclude our country music week with performers who got their start singing with family. The Louvin Brothers, Charlie and Ira, are considered one of the great vocal harmony duos of country music. Elvis opened for them. The Everly Brothers were inspired by their harmonies. The Byrds and Emmy Lou Harris recorded their songs.

Here's their 1955 recording of a song they wrote, "When I Stop Dreaming."

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- SINGER-SONGWRITERS CHARLIE AND IRA LOUVIN PERFORMING "WHEN I STOP DREAMING")

CHARLIE AND IRA LOUVIN, SINGERS: (SINGING)

When I stop dreaming
That's when I'll stop loving you

The worst that I've ever been hurt in my life
The first time I ever wanted to die
Was the night when you told me
You loved someone else
And asked me if I could forget

When I stop dreaming
That's when I'll stop wanting you

GROSS: The Louvin Brothers were popular at the Grand Ole Opry and well-represented on the country music charts from the late '50s until the mid-60s when the act broke up. Brother Ira was killed in a car accident soon after.

Charlie Louvin has continued to record and to perform at the Opry. I spoke with Charlie Louvin in 1996 after the release of his CD, "The Longest Train," which features songs that he first recorded with his brother.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- THE LOUVIN BROTHERS PERFORMING "WHEN I STOP DREAMING")

CHARLIE AND IRA LOUVIN, SINGERS: (SINGING)

When I stop dreaming
That's when I'll stop loving you

The worst I've ever been hurt in my life
The first time I ever wanted to die
Was the night when you told me you loved someone else
And asked me if I could forget

When I stop dreaming
That's when I'll stop wanting you

GROSS: Charlie Louvin, with harmonies by Barry and Holly Cashion (ph). I asked Louvin if it was difficult to sing without his brother's harmonies after his brother died.

LOUVIN: I'd always believed that any song that's worth singing is worth putting harmony on. And of course, I'd had grown used to that for the 23 years that my brother and I had worked together. And even today, 34 years after he's gone, I -- when it comes time for the harmonies to come in, I will move to my left because my brother and I always used to use one microphone.

And so you had to share the mike, and I -- I -- even today, I will move over to the left to give the harmony room, knowing in my mind that there's no harmony standing on my right. But it's just -- old habits are hard to break.

TERRY GROSS, HOST: The harmonies that you created with your brother, I think, were based on the sacred harp singing that you used to do in church. Would you describe those kinds of harmonies that come out of sacred harp singing, or what's also known as "shaped note" singing?

LOUVIN: I'm not sure, Terry, that I can describe them or explain them where they'd be understood. It's just something -- I don't have any musical learning. What I know and what we did is -- it just came natural for us because we was raised in a family that went to these sacred harp singings with regularity.

There's things that I can't explain to it -- there's actually -- they're doing five-part harmonies. And most people today thinks that four is the limit when a quartet sings -- that they've got all the parts.

But the sacred harp or shaped note singing people used five harmonies, and some of them are extremely high, with the ladies parts. And none of them is low as the -- as the quartets practice today. It would be like a mid-range bass part.

GROSS: How did you take the, like, five-part harmonies that you were familiar with from church and adapt that to a two-voice style? What did you use from that? I guess what I'm really asking is how did you work out your harmonies with your brother?

LOUVIN: My brother adapted a harmony that he thought sounded good. And it was always good enough for me. I remember once our A&R man asked my brother, that's not -- or actually, he told him. He said, "That's not really tenor you're singing there on that song, is it?"

And my brother said: "What? You don't like it?"

And he said: "I didn't say I didn't like it. I just don't think it's, you know, like regular tenor."

And my brother said: "Well, I don't really don't know what it is. I just thought it sounded good so I put it in there."

And that's kind of the way that we -- us being raised together -- if it was obvious that the song was going to get too high for me to sing in a certain place, my brother would just automatically take that high lead and I would do the low harmony. We didn't have to step on each other's foot or wink or bump shoulders to do this. It was just something that you knew was gonna happen in the song and you just -- you'd go ahead and change to a part that you was capable of doing.

GROSS: Your early recordings were gospel tunes. Many of them were originals. In fact, why don't we hear one of those originals that you co-wrote with your brother Ira. This was made in 1952, and the song is called "The Family Who Prays."

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- THE LOUVIN BROTHERS PERFORMING "THE FAMILY WHO PRAYS")

THE LOUVIN BROTHERS, SINGERS: (SINGING)

The family who prays
Will never be parted
Their circle in heaven unbroken shall stand
God will say enter
My good faithful servant
The family who prays
Never shall part

Satan has parted
Fathers and mothers
Filling their heart with his envy and hate
Heading their pathway
Down to destruction
Leaving their children like orphans to stray

The family who prays
Will never be parted

GROSS: The Louvin Brothers from 1952 -- Chet Atkins, featured on electric guitar?

LOUVIN: Yes. Chet recorded our first Capitol Record with us, and Chet is a big part of the Louvin Brothers sound, from "The Family Who Prays" right on through to the end of the Louvin Brothers' career.

GROSS: You were singing a lot of gospel songs early in your career, but I know your brother Ira had the reputation of being a heavy drinker and of having quite a temper.

Did you share the same religious convictions? Did you live with the same kind of values? Or was there a big difference there?

LOUVIN: No, when -- you know, a lot of us know better, but we don't do better. He knew better. He was extremely well-versed on the good book, as far as knowing what was right or wrong. He just -- he just wasn't able to conquer the devil, I guess.

But we didn't have any major problems with the drinking until, I'd say, the end of 1958. The Louvin Brother records -- the sales slowed down as all other country artists did in 1958, because the music was changing.

And so our producer told my brother, "I believe that it's the mandolin that's keeping Louvin Brother records from selling" -- which had always been a featured part, and my brother worked hard to become proficient on the mandolin.

And when this producer -- namely, Ken Nelson (ph) -- said this to my brother, and my brother feeling that Mr. Nelson was a close friend and a trusted friend, he believed him. And so he would never play his mandolin again on a recording after that statement.

If it would come up, somebody would say, "I think this would sound good with the mandolin." My brother would say: "Nah, let the piano do it or let the guitar do it. Anybody -- but I'm not doing it."

And it -- it caused him to drink extremely heavy, and he went -- between then and the time he passed away -- went through three wives, and just lots and lots of problems that he never could whip.

GROSS: Did you start losing dates, too? Did -- did he get a reputation for drinking a lot?

LOUVIN: Unfortunately, Terry, if you're half of a duet, one person in that duet don't ever get a bad name. It's just, the Louvin Brothers did this."

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

LOUVIN: The Louvin Brothers did that. Anything he did -- good, bad or indifferent -- I was, in the minds of the promoters and the radio stations and what have you, I was as guilty as he. And no way that I could change that. The only way I could change it was be for us to not to be together.

And that finally happened on August 18th, 1963. I just -- we had gone from a pretty good career in -- well, from early, the '50s. The song "The Family Who Prays" right on up through our recordings, we had done quite well. And we found ourselves in 1963 on the bottom of the totem pole, playing very few dates and -- because promoters, the men who spend the money for the TV ads and the radio ads in the newspaper, rent the building and all this -- they don't buy problems.

With everything running as smooth as possible, they'll still have enough problems to drive them halfway batty. But if they know that any particular group is more apt to cause them problems than they are to be straight that day, then they just won't buy 'em.

And that's what happened to the Louvin Brothers career.

GROSS: My guest is Charlie Louvin. We'll talk more after our break.

This is FRESH AIR.

BREAK

My guest is country singer Charlie Louvin, who first became known as half of the harmony duo The Louvin Brothers.

I want to play another original gospel song that you recorded, called "I Like the Christian Life." This is really a beautiful song. Graham Parson (ph) loved this song and used it on The Byrds album "Sweetheart of the Rodeo." Do you remember writing this?

LOUVIN: No, I don't. Things went -- went and come in the Louvin Brothers career. Sometimes my brother would be a totally good man. He could have been a preacher if he'd wanted to. He was that knowledgeable of the good book and he had the gift.

But my brother was the gifted songwriter. I came up with the ideas. If I could give him a title and a few words of the story, he could write it in five minutes. So this is the way we worked.

I don't specifically remember the day that that song was wrote, but I remember that my brother was attempting, with all of his might, to live a Christian life so -- at that time. When the statement was made -- "I like the Christian life" -- he thought that might make a song.

So what you're about to play is what he got just from that title.

GROSS: Well, let's hear it. And this is from Charlie Louvin's new album called "The Longest Train."

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- SINGER CHARLIE LOUVIN PERFORMING "I LIKE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE")

CHARLIE LOUVIN, SINGER: (SINGING)

My buddies tell me that I should have waited
They say I'm missing a whole world of fun
But I am happy and I sing with pride
I like the Christian life

I won't lose a friend
By heeding God's call
What is a friend
Who'd want you to fall?

Others find pleasures
In things I despise
I like the Christian life

GROSS: That's Charlie Louvin from his new album "The Longest Train."

Did friends ever mock you for trying to live the Christian life?

LOUVIN: No, but -- I wouldn't say they mocked. When you're not living a Christian life, you have one set of friends. And if you're gonna profess to live a Christian life, it's obvious that you're gonna have to change friends. You're gonna have to change a lot of habits -- old habits being hard to break. Sometimes it can't be done.

So if you prefer to hang around with your old friends, there's a good chance that you'll drift right back into doing exactly what you were -- are trying to get out of doing.

GROSS: I know exactly what you're saying. Did your brother have two sets of friends?

LOUVIN: Yes, yes, he did. And he had -- he had some friends that any time they seen him, wherever it was at, they would have a bottle with them; always insist, you know, "just one." And even if my brother was good -- doing his best to stay straight, to kick it, those friends would always show up, and there wasn't enough of us to keep those kind of friends run off.

So they would always get to the artist, and there's other artists that are still big in the business today that has the same problem.

You know, one sip will take them right on through two three-fifths and a two-week drunk, you know. So you have to stay away from that first drink.

GROSS: You and your brother broke up the Louvin Brothers and went your separate ways in 1963, and it was, I think, just about a year later that your brother and his wife were killed in a head-on road collision. And I think it was the driver in the other car that was drinking and that was responsible for the crash. Is that right?

LOUVIN: Yes, that's true. It happened in Missouri, halfway mark between Kansas City and St. Louis. My brother was coming home from an engagement that they had been on in Kansas City. And the other two people was going from St. Louis to Kansas City to celebrate Father's Day. They just started celebrating it too early, that's all. They didn't wait 'til they got out of that car.

GROSS: What -- how did it change your life when your brother was killed?

LOUVIN: Well, I'd already become a solo artist, so to speak, Terry, and I had released -- or Capitol Record people had released "I Don't Love You Anymore," which went to the No. 1 spot. And I believe the second song was "Think I'll Go Somewhere, Cry Myself to Sleep." And it was doing good at the time.

And my brother kind of -- kind of felt that somebody'd done him wrong, but I hadn't. I -- that's the only -- music is the only thing I knew, and so naturally I would try to stay in the business, because he had sworn to me that he was getting out of the business.

However, he -- he had -- he was making attempts to get back in the business; had a couple of records released for Capitol Records. Neither one of them had done anything, but I'm sure that if he would have been given time, he'd a figured out what the public wanted and that's what he would've gave them.

GROSS: Are you still performing with the Opry?

LOUVIN: Yes, ma'am.

GROSS: How long has it been?

LOUVIN: I'm -- I'm almost finished with my 42nd year.

GROSS: Wow.

LOUVIN: I'm really hoping that it'll work into something regular here soon.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: Yeah, right.

How has the Opry changed from when you started singing over 40 years ago in the Opry?

GROSS: I don't know. It -- there's a lot of beat in the music, but my music hasn't changed. It's just -- people ask me often, "What do you think of the path that country music has taken in the last few years?" I say: "Well, you know, there's a lot of music out there that's called `country,' but that it's not country."

It's even got the public confused. I had a young man walk up to me three or four months back at a show date I was doing, and wanted me to sing a song that was a truly rock'n'roll song. It was by Lionel Ritchie.

He said, "I want you to do this song."

And I said: "I'm sorry, son, I don't know that song. We're just a country group. We play country music."

He said: "That's country. I just heard (UNINTELLIGIBLE) somebody played that on my way down here, on our local country disc jockey."

So that -- you know, you can't fight with people when they say that, 'cause I guess that kid really believed that this song was a country song. So we'll just have to blame it on the people who promote all kinds of music as country. And it's not the public's fault if they have problems with figuring out what is and what is not country.

GROSS: Charlie Louvin, recorded in 1996.

Let's hear another recording by the Louvin Brothers. This song, which they wrote, was later recorded by Emmy Lou Harris.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- THE LOUVIN BROTHERS PERFORMING "IF I COULD ONLY WIN YOUR LOVE")

THE LOUVIN BROTHERS, SINGERS: (SINGING)

If I could only win your love
I'd make the most of everything
I'd proudly wear your wedding ring
My heart would never stray one dream away

If I could only win your love
I'd give my all to make it live
You'll never know how much I'd give
If I could only win your love

Oh how can I ever say
How I crave your love
When you're gone away

Oh how can I ever show
How I burn inside
When you hold me tight

If I could only win your love
I'd give my all to make it live
You'll never know how much I'd give
If I could only win your love

Oh, how can I ever say
How I crave your love...

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Terry Gross
Guest: Charlie Louvin
High: Country music performer CHARLIE LOUVIN. In the 1950s, he and his brother Ira Louvin were regulars at the Grand Ole Opry. Ira was later killed in a car accident.
Spec: Entertainment; Music Industry; Art; Religion
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Charlie Louvin Discusses His Country Music Career

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: SEPTEMBER 04, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 090402NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: BETTY JOHNSON
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:20

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

We're concluding our country music week with performers who got their start on stage singing with members of their families. Betty Johnson sang gospel music with her parents and three brothers in a group called "The Johnson Family Singers."

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- "THE JOHNSON FAMILY" PERFORMING)

BETTY JOHNSON: Hey, (unintelligible), let me help you boys sing this next song.

BROTHER OF BETTY JOHNSON: Ah, sis, what do you know about boots and saddles anyway?

FATHER OF BETTY JOHNSON: Well, wait a minute there, Red. Betty may not know as much as you fellows about the west and cowboy life, but when it comes to singing, she knows as well as anyone how to make that song pleasing to listen to. So no more quibbling. Let's hear all four of you youngsters on this one.

(SINGING)

Take me back to my boots and saddles
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
Let me see that gentle ...

GROSS: The Johnson Family Singers of North Carolina sang their way out of poverty, eventually touring the South with stars of the Grand Ole Opry, and singing on network radio.

When Betty Johnson was old enough to go her own way, she sang jazz and pop songs. She was a regular on the Jack Parr show and a headliner at such nightclubs as the Copacabana, the Persian Room, and the Sands. She retired from singing to raise her family.

A few years ago, Betty Johnson returned to the New York cabaret scene and to recording. I spoke to Johnson in 1995 and asked how her parents decided to form The Johnson Family Singers in the late 1930s.

BETTY JOHNSON, SINGER; FORMER MEMBER, "THE JOHNSON FAMILY SINGERS": It's amazing what an empty stomach will do. We were very, very poor people. We lived on a farm. We lived on anybody's farm who would hire six hands. And we were -- as little as we were -- we were all workers. And my dad would come home and we'd sit around on a little braid of rug -- I remember -- in front of the fireplace and we'd start singing.

And we just all had a wonderful talent for singing. So daddy said: you know, I'm going to go to a school. I'm going to go and learn music and I'm going to teach music. And you're all going to sing. And one day, we're going to be a real famous singing family. And we all thought: oh, daddy it's wonderful, but how is this going to happen?

Well, on Sunday afternoon, we would all sit on our porch, which was a log cabin, and we announced to different people and the word got around communities that we were going to sing. And people would come and actually sit on blankets and listen to us sing. And I -- dad just said said we're gonna do it. And he had tremendous vision.

GROSS: So did he go to music school?

JOHNSON: He went to the Stans-Baxter School of Music in Dallas, Texas. We -- it took a whole year's of earnings of our family to do that. And he was only gone for four weeks. And he came back and he had a chart, a music chart. I shall never forget it. And he taught us to read that. And we just -- we just had that talent.

GROSS: Well, let's get a sense of what The Johnson Family Singers sounded like. This is one of their recordings.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- THE JOHNSON FAMILY SINGERS PERFORMING)

He put the sunshine in my soul
Alleluia
When I gave him full control
I'm so happy every day
Alleluia
I can say he puts the sunshine in my soul

In my heart there is a soul
That I'm (unintelligible) all day long
He puts the sunshine in my soul

All the darkness now is gone
For with him I'm passing on
He puts the sunshine in my soul

He puts the sunshine in my soul
Alleluia
When I gave him full control

GROSS: Now, I know when you first went on the road, I think it was during the Depression, and your father made a trailer that you could travel in.

JOHNSON: Yes.

GROSS: And I haven't seen any descriptions of that trailer, but I just find it hard to fathom that your father would actually make a trailer.

JOHNSON: It was -- it was a -- it was like a house trailer. And we bought lumber. We built a chassis and we left our home in this trailer, with a car pulling it, of course, with one envelope that had been given to us by our minister, saying: if you ever need money, there is money in this envelope. And my dad said: no, faith is going to get us there and faith will bring us home.

And we would stop. We'd run out of gas -- get low on gas. We'd stop at a service station and my dad would say: now, we're a family. We're going to a music school in Cookville, Tennessee. And we haven't any money, but we have a talent. We will sing for you. You can take up money. You can -- whatever you want to do. And everybody would say "yes."

GROSS: What would you sing?

JOHNSON: Oh, we would sing hymns mostly. And people were just -- they loved us. And they saw to it that we got -- and by the way, we didn't just sing to exclusive white audiences either. We sang in many, many, many black churches.

GROSS: How would your father get you into black churches? How did he get the people in the black churches interested in your music?

JOHNSON: Well...

GROSS: I should imagine that the times were very segregated, obviously, too.

JOHNSON: ... well, it was very segregated then, of course. It was -- I can't tell you how terrible it was. But my dad -- my dad as a young man had sung, would you believe, in a black -- all black quartet. I -- my dad was a pretty -- he -- well -- I can't understand. I know he worked in a mill and he met some people -- some men in the mill -- that he liked and they sang. They did barbershop quartet. And they did spirituals. And actually, that's when my dad met my mother. But dad was singing in a black quartet.

Now, you couldn't go in a white church with three black men and one white man. But the black people took daddy into church.

GROSS: Well, how did you family end up singing on the radio? I know -- I think you sang on radio stations throughout the south.

JOHNSON: No, we sang on a 50,000 watt CBS outlet.

GROSS: Oh.

JOHNSON: And the -- that was...

GROSS: That'll get you around.

JOHNSON: That got us around. But the -- how that happened, we -- there was a big convention in Charlotte, North Carolina and there was a contest. And whoever won this contest was to have a shot at a radio program -- one guest appearance.

My family sang at this -- this contest, and we won. And instead of having just one guest appearance, we were signed for -- forever contract. And we started singing a 6:15 a.m. show called -- it was a hymn-time show every morning. And we drove in from the farm -- that was a 45-minute drive.

Then we got an afternoon program sponsored by the same sponsor for 16 years, at 5:35. Now, that was a new experience because we had always sung hymns and spirituals and gospel songs. But on that program we learned to sing popular songs, American songs, Western songs. So we just worked all the time and went to school and worked the farm still.

But by that time, we bought our own little place, and that was pretty special.

GROSS: Betty Johnson, recorded in 1995. She now records jazz and pop songs on her own record label "Johnson-Gray."

Coming up, Charlie Haden remembers his family's country music act.

This is FRESH AIR.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Terry Gross, Washington DC
Guest: Betty Johnson
High: Singer Betty Johnson. She was a member of "The Johnson Family," which sang gospel and country music for two decades. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was a fan, and the group was invited to sing at his memorial service. Johnson went solo in the late 1950s and was a regular on Don McNeil's "Breakfast Club" and Jack Parr's TV show.
Spec: Entertainment; Music Industry; Betty Johnson
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: BETTY JOHNSON

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: SEPTEMBER 04, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 090403NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: CHARLIE HADEN
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:40

TERRY GROSS, HOST: Charlie Haden is one of the greatest living jazz bass players, so he might seem like an unusual choice to conclude our country music week. But he started off in country music, as a child, singing with his family on their country radio show.

His story is just one example of the way in which country music has influenced music outside of the genre.

I really think that you're the most melodic bass player that I can think of.

CHARLIE HADEN, BASS PLAYER: Well, thanks.

GROSS: And especially when you're improvising. There's a sense of melodic sweep to the lines that you play. I think a lot of bass players just think more harmonically and they think about rhythm, but not so much about melody.

HADEN: Well I was brought up with melodies all my life, from the time I was -- well, even before I was two, when I started singing on my parents' show -- radio show every day. My mom told me once, she said: you know, when I used to rock you to sleep, I used to hum all these songs -- she knew all these great folks songs like "Barbara Allen" and "Mansion on the Hill" and "Silver Threads Among the Gold."

And you know, one of my brothers and sisters would be walking through the living room, and she would -- while she would be humming in the rocking chair, and they would start humming the harmony with her. 'Cause everybody sang all the harmony parts on our show -- they all knew how to do that by ear.

And then my mom would sometimes switch to the harmony, and they would switch to the melody. And I was hearing all this stuff. And she said one day she was humming to me, and I started humming the harmony with her. You know, and -- before -- she said: well, I guess that's a signal for you to go on the show. You know, so I started on the radio show when I was 22-months old. I was really lucky to be growing up around melodies of the Carter Family and the Delmore Brothers and Hank Williams and all those people that my parents knew.

And I guess that was my -- it was a very strong musical training in my young life. I acquired a melodic sense very early on. I'm very, very fortunate that I was raised around that great music.

GROSS: What part did you sing with your family when you were a boy, and your family had a country music radio show, and...

HADEN: Yeah.

GROSS: ... performed country music all around.

HADEN: I sang all the harmony parts. You know, I couldn't wait to get to the studio every day. I loved it. Every day, my parents would choose the songs that we were going to play out of their vast library of songs from the Carter Family and the Delmore Brothers and all the hymns that we had. And we would go over them and then we would go on the air.

Sometimes, we had -- we had radio studios in our home, wherever we were living. We moved around a lot. And -- but mostly we would go to the studio at the radio station and do our show ever day. I loved going to the studio and I liked the air conditioning and the acoustical tile...

LAUGHTER

... you know, the acoustical tile and the big windows, you know, that had triple, quadruple glass. And this was back in 1944, '46, '47, '48, '49. It was -- it was a great experience.

GROSS: I can't believe you had radio studios in your home. Would you do remotes from your own home?

HADEN: Yeah. You know, where I was born in Shenandoah, Iowa, we were on a radio station there called KMA. It's still there. And my dad moved our family to Springfield, Missouri in the Ozark Mountains. And my grandparents -- my father's mother and father -- had a farm outside Springfield. And my dad always wanted to do farming.

So he got this farm down the road, you know, a gravel road. I went to a one-room schoolhouse there, Belle View School. And our farmhouse -- my dad had the radio station come out and hook up a remote thing where, you know, the things that your ring where you'd turn the crank?

GROSS: Mmm-hm.

HADEN: You know, well he used to turn this crank, and when the -- and the ring would go into the studio in Springfield, and that was the signal for us to go on the air. And we'd start the theme song. And we did it from our -- we did our show from the our farmhouse for several years before we moved into the city and went over to the station every day.

GROSS: So did you play in churches and at revival meetings and stuff in addition to singing on the radio?

HADEN: We played in churches. We played personal appearances all over. My parents were on the Grand Ole Opera quite a few times.

GROSS: You know what I'm wondering, if singing at churches and other, you know, other like religious events, revivals -- whatever -- did that give you a sense that music had this spiritual potential in it?

HADEN: Well, the hymns especially that we sang, you know. And then my mom used to take me, when I -- I don't know why she chose me to take -- but I was one of the -- I was the one child -- she had six kids -- you know, I had three brothers and two sisters -- and several Sunday mornings, quite a few Sunday mornings actually, when I was around nine years old, she would take me to the African-American Church in Springfield. There was just one of them. And we would just listen to the choir. It was like one of the most beautiful things that I've ever experienced in my life, to hear that music, the spirituals and the gospel music. And I'll never forget that.

Yes, I had a really early contact with spirituals and hymns. And I had a feeling right away that there was a spirituality in music. I mean, you know, when you talk about jazz, I believe 85, 90 percent of improvisation in jazz is spiritual. When you start to play and you tell a story to people, and you take people on a journey that you want to take them on, it's all about spirituality.

GROSS: Charlie, a recent album of yours is an album of spirituals, hymns and folk songs, and it features you with the pianist Hank Jones. It's an album of duets. Are any of these songs songs that you used to do as a child?

HADEN: Yeah, we used to do "Abide With Me" and some of the other hymns that we'd do -- "Amazing Grace" -- on the album.

GROSS: Mmm-hm.

HADEN: And actually, every hymn that's on the -- on "Steal Away" we used to sing. And Hank and I chose which hymns and which spirituals -- he had a lot of spirituals. You know, my favorite one that he -- that I've ever heard him play was "It's Me, Oh Lord, Standing In The Need Of Prayer." And that's the one that I heard on the Smithsonian collection of jazz piano, that inspired me to do the record with him.

And I called him as soon as I heard it, and I said: man, that's one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. Could we play spirituals together sometime? And he said: Charlie, I would really love to do it. Let's do it -- so we did it.

GROSS: Why don't we hear that spiritual that you just mentioned, "It's Me, Oh Lord." And this is from an album of duets with my guest Charlie Haden and pianist Hank Jones. The CD is called "Steal Away."

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- CHARLIE HADEN, BASSIST, AND HANK JONES, PIANIST, PERFORMING "IT'S ME, OH LORD" FROM CD "STEAL AWAY")

GROSS: Our interview with Charlie Haden was recorded in 1996. We hope you enjoyed FRESH AIR's country music week.

Coming up, we remember Dr. Jonathan Mann, one of the organizers of the international fight against AIDS. He died in the Swissair crash.

This is FRESH AIR.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Terry Gross, Washington DC
Guest: Charlie Haden
High: Bass player Charlie Haden. He formed his quartet to play the music of the 1940s and early '50s. He's worked with such well-known musicians as Art Pepper, Paul Bley, and Ornette Coleman.
Spec: Charlie Haden; Music Industry; Entertainment
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: CHARLIE HADEN

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: SEPTEMBER 04, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 090404NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: JONATHAN MANN OBITUARY
Sect: News; International
Time: 12:50

TERRY GROSS, HOST: When the Swissair Flight 111 went down Wednesday night, we lost many people who had dedicated their lives to helping others through medical research and humanitarian efforts.

One of those people was Dr. Jonathan Mann, who was described by a colleague as the architect of the global mobilization against AIDS. He was the founding director of the World Health Organization's global program on AIDS, and was a pioneer in linking world health with human rights.

He founded the Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard. He left Harvard last year to become the dean of the Allegheny School of Public Health in Philadelphia. That move made it easier to be with his wife, Mary Lou Clements-Mann, who taught at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where she was conducting research into an AIDS vaccine. She also died in the crash.

The Mann's were on their way to Geneva for a UN conference on AIDS vaccines.

Dr. Jonathan Mann was very generous to FRESH AIR in giving his time to discuss AIDS. When we spoke on World AIDS Day in 1997, he had just returned from an AIDS conference in Geneva. He was focused on how to fight AIDS in poor developing countries, which don't have the funding for the latest medical advances that are cause for optimism in the U.S.

DR. JONATHAN MANN, EPIDEMIOLOGIST; DEAN, ALLEGHENY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH; ORGANIZER OF WORLD AIDS DAY, FOUNDING DIRECTOR, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION'S GLOBAL AIDS PROGRAM: I think this is a terribly difficult problem for us all because when the -- when we first confronted AIDS in the early and mid-1980s, we really were all in this same boat together. North, South, East and West, we didn't have any drugs. We didn't have any treatment. We didn't have a vaccine, obviously. What we had was common sense. What we had was good public health. What we had was exchange of information of ideas about how to prevent infection.

And then in the midst of this equality, this solidarity in front of the disease, drugs became available, but become available only to the rich. And then the poor see the rich getting the drugs and living, while they who are infected do not get the drugs and die. It is literally as stark as that.

Now, what this does is bring forward once again the fundamental inequity that has existed always and continues to exist in many other areas. It exists in areas where preventable and treatable diseases go unprevented and untreated in the developing world, simply for that fact of not having the money to buy the drug or pay for the drug.

The fact, however, that in AIDS this has emerged in front of our very eyes -- that it isn't an inherited inequity -- it's an inequity that we've actually seen develop right in front of us -- it's so difficult to be -- for developing -- for industrialized country people to be excited as they deserve to be about the new drugs, and then to see the faces of those who will never get those drugs, who will not have those drugs, and who will die as a result.

My hope here is that that tension -- that ethical dilemma -- will push people not to deny it or look away from the problem, but to say to themselves: what can we do for the developing world? And I sincerely believe and feel that the answer to that lies in vaccine; lies in the need to emphasize, to put the energy and the resources not into basic research on vaccine, but now into moving vaccines into the development phase so that they can become a reality.

This, I think, is the -- will be the expression of global solidarity from an industrialized world that has drugs that treat, to a world which needs desperately to prevent the over-95 percent of infections that are
occurring in the developing world.

GROSS: There was an interesting article in November in "The New York Times," basically asking the question: is it time to challenge the idea that AIDS is a special illness? That people with AIDS are entitled to kind of special benefits, whether it's free hot lunches, free haircuts, art classes, legal advice, dinners delivered -- and these are all those special services that arose through a kind of informal AIDS network of people who were concerned about friends and loved ones and neighbors.

So have you been following this debate?

MANN: Yeah, I have, and actually I think many of us for quite a long time have felt that AIDS is not special, but that we shouldn't respond to that idea by lowering standards of AIDS care back to the way it is for others; but rather, use AIDS as an example of how -- how what people need can actually be provided and how important that can be.

I remember back in the late 1980s visiting San Francisco General Hospital, visiting the AIDS ward there, and being very impressed by all the amenities: the comfortable chairs, the plants, the VCR, the television and so forth. And then going to the cancer ward, fairly nearby, and the cancer ward was sort of a regular cancer ward, like you'd imagine.

I think the response to that, again, is not to make the AIDS ward like the cancer ward, but make the cancer ward like the AIDS ward. And so I think that we really have learned a lot about the importance, for example, of dignity in the context of this epidemic.

We've learned how critical it is that people who have a disease, no matter what disease or condition, be accorded dignity. And people with AIDS have fought for and demanded that dignity. Well, that same issue of dignity applies as much to people with cancer or heart disease or other conditions.

So I think that it's a very healthy debate, and I think that the period of time when we saw AIDS as a completely unique phenomenon really ended some time ago. We now recognize that in this country, for example, if we really want to deal seriously with AIDS, we're not only going to have to deal seriously with issues of health care for all Americans, but we're going to have to deal with the factors in our society that make people vulnerable to HIV in the first place, and that includes racism, as just one piece of that picture.

Similarly, around the world, we're seeing that the underlying root causes of vulnerability to AIDS are the same conditions which create vulnerability to the other major causes of premature disability, illness and death in the world.

So I think we're at the verge of a reintegration, in a sense, of work against AIDS with broader work to improve health in this country and abroad.

GROSS: What else are you thinking about on this World AIDS Day?

MANN: Well, I am first of all thinking of the first World AIDS Day in 1988, and how on that day, how exciting it was that in every single country in the world, there was activity among non-governmental organizations, among private people, around the issue of AIDS.

The slogan for the first World AIDS Day was "Tell The World What You're Doing About AIDS."

And I'll always remember the feeling in WHO headquarters as, in a sense, the countries around the world lit up one after another, as we received reports of activities; that people were using that day -- that World AIDS Day -- to really say something about the importance of AIDS and what they were doing and what needed to be done.

Since then, World AIDS Day has remained a day that belongs to people, not to governments. It's not an official day that vanishes, you know, in the long list of official days. And even though there are official declarations and proclamations, the real heart of World AIDS Day has always been what people do on that day to think about AIDS, to remember those who have died, to think about how important it is to protect the living.

GROSS: Dr. Jonathan Mann died with his wife Mary Lou Clements-Mann in the Swissair crash. They were both 51.

Our interview was recorded last year on World AIDS Day.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Terry Gross, Washington DC
Guest:
High: Dr. Jonathan Mann, the founding director of the World Health Organization's Global Program on AIDS, died this week in the Swissair plane crash. Last year, Terry Gross interviewed Mann about the state of AIDS across the globe, as well as the speculations at that time about a possible AIDS vaccine. He was the Dean of the School of Public Health at Allegheny University of Health Sciences in Philadelphia.
Spec: Jonathan Mann; AIDS; Death; Swissair; Nova Scotia; Disasters
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: JONATHAN MANN OBITUARY
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.