Fresh Air - Best Of: 50 Years Of SNL Musical Guests / Black History Through Blues

Episode Date: February 1, 2025

Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson is the co-director of a new documentary about the music of Saturday Night Live over the last 50 years. It's called Ladies & Gentlemen and it's streaming on Peacock. We'll also hear from author and scholar Imani Perry. Her new book Black In Blues explores the significance of the color blue in Black life, from the indigo trade to the birth of blues music.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Public media counts on your support to ensure that the reporting and programs you depend on thrive. Make a recurring donation today to get special access to more than 20 NPR podcasts. Perks like sponsor-free listening, bonus episodes, early access, and more. So start supporting what you love today at plus.npr dot org. From W.H.Y.Y. in Philadelphia, this is fresh air weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Today, Amir Questlove Thompson. He's the co-director of a new documentary about the music of Saturday Night Live over the last 50 years.

It's called Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of SNL Music. TV critic David Bianculli also reviews Questlove's film and a four-part documentary series about SNL. We'll also hear from author and scholar Imani Perry. Her new book, Black and Blues, explores the significance of blue in black life, from the indigo trade to the birth of blues music. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This message comes from Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies. Sending or spending money abroad, hidden fees may be taking a cut. With Wyze, you can convert between up to 40 currencies at the mid-market exchange rate. Visit Wyze.com. TNCs apply.

This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. As part of Saturday Night Live's 50th anniversary celebration this year, there's a new documentary highlighting the musical guests and music comedy sketches that the show has featured over the decades. It's called Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of SNL Music. It was co-directed by our guest, Grammy-winning musician and Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker, Amir Questlove Thompson.

He's the co-founder and drummer of the hip-hop band The Roots. It's the house band for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Before we get into Questlove's conversation, our TV critic David Bianculli offers us his review of the film and a four-part documentary series that's also part of the 50th anniversary celebration. Both the film and the series are now streaming on Peacock. The two new Saturday Night Live documentaries come from filmmakers who bring their own interests and perspectives.

NBC's Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of SNL Music comes from Amir Questlove Thompson, who's both a musician and a music historian. And the four-part SNL 50 Beyond Saturday Night, now streaming on Peacock, comes from Morgan Neville, who's as interested in the creative process as he is in letting people tell their own stories. Questlove, in his movie-length study, mines the archive of a half century of musical performances, as well as the emergence of hip-hop and other genres into the show and the culture. Some classic performances are run full length. Others are sampled in cleverly compiled montages and mashups.

It's such a solid, well-selected overview, that I can think of only one SNL music performance I really wish had been included. Paul Simon, backed by Lady Smith Black Mambazo, on their thrilling 1986 rendition of Diamonds on the Souls of Her Shoes. But Questlove covers a lot. Not only infamous appearances by Elvis Costello, Sinead O'Connor, Ashley Simpson, and Kanye, but even comedy sketches and videos built around music.

The infamous D*** in a Box Christmas song with Justin Timberlake and SNL cast member Andy Samberg is deconstructed. So is another classic SNL musical moment featuring guest host Paul Rudd and musical guest Beyonce. Timberlake tells how that got on the air, with Timberlake, Samberg, and cast member Bobby Moynihan as her music video backup dancers. Part way through Timberlake's account, we hear the start of the actual single ladies sketch. Andy texted me and he said, hey, are you in town?

I said, yeah, I'm in the city. He said, Bobby Moynihan has this great idea for a sketch about you, me, and him being Beyoncé's background dancers for single ladies that never made the cut. She's gonna be the musical guest this week. I was like full like leotard and he's like, yeah. And I was like, oh, this is too funny. Like we have to do this.

She was very polite about it, but she was very hesitant. And when I say hesitant, I mean like she was not having it. Beyonce! Oh my gosh, I'm so psyched to do this new video with you. Me too. But you know, there's this one thing. I haven't met the other dancers. Are we gonna have time to rehearse?

Oh, look, don't worry about the other dancers, B-Town. I handpicked them myself. These guys are pros. These guys? I'm like, does she know how funny this is going to be? Like how beloved this whole moment will be? So I said, bring me the leotard. So I put the leotard and the heels and the hose on and everything.

And I put a robe on and I walked in and I knocked on her door. I walked in and I threw the robe down and I put my hands on my hips and she was like,, you didn't. Morgan Neville's SNL Documentary series is broken into four episodes each one looking at a different aspect of the show and its history The first one looks at the original audition tapes by many of the people who tried out for SNL With those same people watching and reacting to their younger selves. Some scream, some cringe, some cry, some, like Pete Davidson, laugh. I'm not good at sex, you know, because I wasn't raised in a brothel.

I'm 20. Like, I don't, I'm not good at it. I don't understand why my girlfriend gets mad. She's like, that's it? I'm like, yeah, like, what did you expect? Like, you know any good guitar players that have been playing guitar for a year? Ha, ha, ha, ha.

Another episode spends a week observing how an installment of SNL is created by following the process from start to finish, mostly from the point of view of the writers. A third episode gets even more laser focused, spending an hour on a single sketch. And it's a brilliant choice, coming from the midway point of the show's 50-year run. It's the sketch recording session, featuring guest star Christopher Walken and cast members

Will Ferrell, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Parnell, and others. You may know it better by the name most associated with it, Moore Cowbell. It's a sketch Walken and Farrell elevated after the dress rehearsal by going all out in character. The sketch was set during the recording session for Blue Oyster Cult's 1970s hit, Don't Fear the Reaper. Farrell plays a very loud cowbell, and Walken portrays the track's very enthusiastic music producer.

Jimmy Fallon remembers. Christopher Walken for air upped his game. He was almost doing an impersonation of Christopher Walken. He was talking like no other human being would talk ever. All right, here we go. Don't fear the reaper. Take one, roll it. All right.

One, two, three, four. Once the sketch began on the live show, Farrell, who had written it, knew they had connected big time with the studio audience. Are you sure that was sounding okay? I'll be honest, fellas, it was sounding great, but... I could have used a little more cowbell. LAUGHTER As soon as he delivers that first line,

I could use a little more cowbell. And that gets a huge line. I'm like, Oh, they're in. They're in. Oh, goody, there's more coming. In this new recounting, we do not hear from Christopher Walken himself, which Dana Carvey says is right in character for him. Carvey even slips into character as Walken

to make his point. That keeps his cool factor here. Yeah, that he's not gonna, not gonna go down memory lane, let the work speak for itself. The final episode of Neville's documentary series hones in on one seemingly random but ultimately seminal year.

The 1985-86 season when executive producer Lauren Michaels, who had left the show after its first successful five-year cycle with the original cast, was asked back by NBC executive Brandon Tartikoff. SNL was in freefall, and the common wisdom was that Lorne never would return to a sinking ship. But he did. When Brandon was trying to get me to come back in 1985...

Hello, I'm Brandon Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment. APPLAUSE Someone said, you know, you've already done Saturday Night Live. Somebody who wants to be you does Saturday Night Live. And I thought, oh, right, well, I kind of enjoyed being me. It's one of the few times in either documentary we hear from Michaels. Clearly, he prefers to let the cast and crew and the shows speak for themselves. And they do.

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, among others, tell some really great stories. and the shows speak for themselves. And they do. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, among others, tell some really great stories. There may not be enough screen time given to some SNL veterans in their stories, from Bill Murray to Kate McKinnon and Sarah Sherman, but there are an awful lot of laughs and memories and music and insights. And just the right amount of cowbell. David Bianculli is professor of television studies at Rowan University in New Jersey. Both of the SNL specials are now streaming on Peacock.

Ladies and gentlemen, 50 years of SNL music was co-directed by our first guest, Amir Kwezlove Thompson. He's the co-founder of the hip-hop group The Roots, which is the house band for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, who is a former SNL cast member. Kwezlove is a busy guy these days. He's also co-produced a documentary about Sly Stone called Sly Lives, AKA The Burden of Black Genius, which will start streaming on Hulu on February 13th. His 2021 documentary, Summer of Soul, about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival,

won an Oscar for best documentary. Terri interviewed Questlove about the Saturday Night Live documentary last week. Amir, welcome back to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you back on. Thank you for having me. Were there roots ever on SNL? You know, it's weird. I've been on SNL in every configuration except for the one that I want to be on, which is actual music guest. Like I've been a punchline on Weekend Update. I've been part of a Timothée Chalamet sketch. I've been mentioned in monologues.

I've been in like a Lonely Island sketch. But I guess one could say that my dream, one of the main reasons why I was excited to be on The Tonight Show like 16 years ago when we first got offered the position, I was like, great, this puts me within one degree of the brass ring, which is doing SNL. So kind of funny how I'm a part of that ecosystem almost in every way, but the one way I want to be,

which is like musical guests one day, but you know, the Roots are working on their 17th album right now. So, you know, I'm still hanging on to my dream. Good. So do you think that the Saturday Night Live band, particularly in the Paul Schaeffer era, though I don't know what era you started watching. I assume it was Paul Schaeffer.

The very beginning. So my Saturday night live obsession really starts with, you know, the epicenter of my entire music world is Soul Train. And it just so happens that, you know, for most of America, especially with Soul Train in its prime, you know, everyone has a Saturday afternoon, 12 p.m., cleaning the house, watching Soul Train experience. But in Philadelphia, kind of weird, my Soul Train experience was always at one in the morning. And so, I had parents that were very forward-thinking, very cool. And of course, I'd have to be in bed like 8.30 p.m. So, whenever like the love boat theme starts, it's like, gotta go to bed. Not with that deep voice, but yeah, basically,

gotta go to bed. And the agreement was that be in bed at 8.30, and then at 12.30, midnight, we will wake you up. And by 12.30, Weekend Update is over for SNL. And then their music guest does two songs. And so I would go downstairs, turn on the TV, watch the two songs from SNL, whoever the music guest was, and then Soul Train comes on at one in the morning. And then I'm in bed at two a.m. and up for church at 730 in the morning. That's pretty much like my life from like five until maybe 11.

Then Soul Train started coming on like in the afternoon. But I never stopped watching SNL. So I was there from the very, very beginning. It was nothing like it. I know that's the cliche that you're gonna hear a lot about this 50th anniversary, but there was truly nothing like it on television. Amir Questlove Thompson speaking with Terry Gross.

His new documentary, Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of SNL Music is now streaming on Peacock. We'll hear more of their conversation after a short break. I'm Tonya Mosley and this is Fresh Air Weekend. One of the questions that you ask both cast members and people behind the scenes at SNL is can you hum the SNL theme? So I want to play the attempts to hum the theme and then talk about it. I can't hum the theme either. Hey, no one can. I immediately went to the actual theme. And I want to, before we hear it, I want to challenge our listeners to just pause and

think for a second if they can hum the theme. Now let's play the theme. You know what I realized listening back, which I hadn't ever really thought of before? What? There isn't a melody. I mean, it's like you're coming in in the middle of an improvisation. It's the most iconic nondescript theme song. And kind of in my, that was my first realization back when I would, pretty much any Saturday that the Roots aren't touring and they're taping, I'm in the audience watching.

And that to me is one of the most humorous things ever. Like, wow, like you know it when you hear it. You know that's SNL, but it's a feeling. It's almost like it's the last theme that offers a feeling, but not any evidence of it. I don't know, it's like trying to put water in your pocket or something like that. It's abundant, but it's whatever you want it to be.

Having gone through 50 years of musical guests, what's one of the performances that had a big impact on you when you were a kid and had to be embedded at 830 but you managed to watch Saturday Night Live? I will say that you know the first five years was pretty much you know SNL, the role of SNL was that was our YouTube, that was our viral video. For me, that was the one place where I could watch. At the time, I think my all-time favorite artist was Bill Withers.

You know, there really just wasn't a show in which you can see actual musicians playing. I mean, you could watch American Bandstand or Soul Train where they might be lip syncing. Occasionally on Soul Train, they play live. But, um, you know, back then, it was slim pickings. Either Friday night you watched a midnight special, um, sometimes a rock concert would come on,

like, Sunday nights. Um, but basically, uh, SNL was just a... It was a rare moment in which you got to catch a really cool band. So even like Devo coming on, like I was eight years old when they did the Jocko Homo song are we not men, we are Devo and like me and my cousins minds were blown, you know. So practically any group that came on in the first five to six years I was an instant fan of.

One of the things that you highlight in the SNL documentary is the role of SNL in the world of hip hop. And tell the story of how Debra Harry basically broke hip hop on SNL. Okay, so Saturday Night Live is the first time that America and the world will get to see what hip-hop culture is. The very first rap performance on TV is when Debra Harry hosts the show in 1981 and brings on a Sugarhill act called The Funky Four plus One More. And she took a liking to this group, even though there were other popular groups at

the time, like there was Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and the Sugarhill Gang, both like platinum hits and really music and culture changing songs at the time. But she took a liking to this group because it was similar to Blondie, a band that had a woman in the lead of it. And so she took a liking to them. And for me, that's such an SNL move where, you know, those first 10 years, um... they weren't about, well, who's the most popular person to bring ratings in? It was always like the cool factor,

like, okay, who's the most popular person now? Who's the person under that person that we could give a boost to? And that's like a prime example of how cool, how the, how SNL always had their finger in the pulse of, you know, who's next. And, you know, as a result, come 20 years later, a lot of those first time acts, you know, your, your, your early hip hop groups, like, you know, them getting Run DMC before Run DMC was Run DMC or them getting Prince before

Prince was Prince, or the Talking Heads or D.V.O., whoever, like, a lot of those risks that they took in the first 10 to 15 years, those guys will wind up being like the household names and the fiber of the mainstream once SNL becomes the mainstream instead of the underground. But yeah, with Deborah Harry using her power to bring attention to a culture that no one knew about, that is a prime moment of the SNL effect and how it builds American entertainment culture. Some of my favorite parts of the movie are the stories about things that have gone wrong,

followed by clips of showing what went wrong and how it really shocked everybody behind the scenes. And one of those stories is Elvis Costello. So you know he does one song during dress rehearsal that I guess he and Lorne Michaels had agreed on. And then he stops it after a few bars. Let's hear what happens. Here's Elvis Costello. In the dress rehearsal we did a song that was on my first album but I thought it sounded a little too slow. It was a medium tempo song and I didn't think it was exciting enough.

And I realized the show is live. We can do anything we want. I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, there's no reason to do this song here. When he stopped, the hubbub in the studio was like, oh, my God, what's going to happen? You couldn't hear it. Radio, radio. One, two, three, man. With the Elvis thing, I was sitting with Dan Aykroyd on a home base, we were just watching him.

I go, oh, I think we were being hijacked. All of this stuff, it builds up in legend in the retelling. But I didn't come out there to give a political lecture, you know, I came out to kind of shake it up. As we finished the song, the initial reaction in the moment was, I think we better get out of here. Somewhere in it, somebody said in anger, you'll never work on American television again. But the idea I was banned from television is nonsense. That's such a great story. I love it. And I think you made a good choice. I love both songs,

but I think you made the right choice. He made the absolute right choice. And that's the thing about SNL, is there's a risk factor involved. And usually it starts with no. Like Eddie Murphy talks about, I did not want to do Hot Tub with James Brown. Justin Timberlake goes on and on about trying to

convince Beyonce to do the single lady sketch. Like everything starts at no. And it's like, wow, like you almost talked yourself out of history. And I'm trying to get people in the mind state that, you know, oftentimes we, we get in our own heads about why something won't work. And sometimes you just got to take a risk.

And you never know, this might be part of the American fiber, the history of it. But also, I know people have so many questions about what happens on a live show if something goes wrong. Like for me, one of my favorite clips is the Ashley Simpson moment where you hear the directors freaking out because they don't know what to do.

Said I go to commercial, what do I do? Describe what happened. Well, you know, Ashley Simpson had a sore throat and was a little iffy about her singing, so she opted to lip-sync instead and her drummer who's controlling all the music accidentally plays the wrong song for the second song. He in fact plays the song that we already heard as the first song. Right, exactly.

Everyone in the audience knows this is wrong and there's no way of covering that up. Well, yeah, I mean, they could have just patiently just stopped the song and started all over again as if nothing happened, but, you know, she infamously does a weird dance and runs off stage, kind of humiliated, and they go to commercial. It just so happens that Az Rodriguez, my co-director of this documentary, said that, you know,

they also have the audio recording of the production room, like what was happening at the time. And for me, it was so hilarious to hear the producers and the directors inside of the control room. To me, it sounds like a bunch of teenagers that stole their parents' car in San Francisco, and then the cars, like, the brakes just give out in a San Francisco hill going down 100 miles per hour, like, what do we do? Oh no, oh no! You know, so I love showing, like, not how the sausage is made, but you know, you get to see what's under the trunk.

And that to me is the most fascinating part of SNL, like how it's able to happen every week without fail. Let's hear some of what happened behind the scenes. Uh-oh. On a Monday. Oh, shit. Spy, wrong song, wrong song. Oh, this is bad.

They should play it. And it was just like, you know, those old movies of two locomotives hitting each other, full bore. What are we doing? I don't know, she should sing. People were running in and out of the studio and it just seemed like the show came to a screeching halt. And the rumors were after that, I think there were two rumors after that if I remember correctly. One was that, oh she really can't sing, so, not because of a sore throat, but because she's not capable of singing live.

And therefore, they had to have her lip sync. And the other rumor was, oh, there's probably lots of acts that are really lip syncing. Well, you know, the thing is, you know, we went through this like 10 years before with Millie Vanilli. Um, you know, the kind of, this is what I call, this is what I call the post-thriller

effect of 1982, where suddenly your music video became the most important way to sell the song. And, you know, it came to the point where if you're in concert, fans expect whatever you did on your video, you would have to surpass it. And, you know, because Michael Jackson's introducing this whole idea of, like, not only do you have to sing the song, but you have to sell the song, dance the song, act the song. Um, for most people, it's hard to...

It's hard enough just to sing it, but also to sing and perform or dance or whatever you have to do. Since the 80s, there have been options on how to sell the song without you giving up your voice or whatever. So I mean, kind of the lip singing aspect has been a thing since the early 80s, but for me as a musician, that's just a fact of life. But for a lot of people, there's a smoke and mirror aspect to it.

And I guess with that Ashley Simpson performance, you know, most of America found out that half their favorites kind of do that. Like it's just the standard. Really? I don't want to pop any more balloons than I have to. But it's just again, like from the artists that I have to, but it's just, again, like, from the artists that I talk to, it's like they might get in their heads that, you know, if I move too much and I'm out of breath, then I won't be able to hit the notes like I normally do.

And, you know, I think people, again, the thriller effect is it must be perfect. And I'm kind of from the school of warts and all. Like, I love seeing the warts. I love seeing the pimples, the mistakes. Like, to me, that's the human touch. And I think people need to trust that more. Like, you know, things don't have to be Instagram filter perfect 24-7.

So I assume that what they're lip syncing to is a live performance that's not the record. There's some people you know what there's a few artists that are smart enough that will maybe do eight specific takes of a particular performance so that you're under the impression that they are you know what's up Detroit how that they are, you know, what's up Detroit? How y'all doing?

You know, like they'll go that far. Like I know artists that will do like 10 or 20 versions of a song to sort of customize or not get caught out there. But I think just in the name of presenting a perfect package, that's what people go through. You're talking about in concert right now, right? Yeah, in concert or most, you know, I'm on television. I'll say that 90% of, of, uh, you know, it's very rare for a person to just go 100% live. Like, I'll say that on The Tonight Show, 85 to 90% of what you see is, is a perfected delivery.

Like, in their minds, it's like, I must sell this song to sell my album. And so they don't want to leave risk or to chance any flub that would make you say, no, that note was flat, so I'm not supporting that group. So yeah, that's where we are now in entertainment. Well, you still have one mystery for me, which is how do singers manage to sing when they're

doing this elaborate workout with their choreography when you're going to be out of breath? Exactly. So, pretty much it's just parthochorus. It's always been that way. But when I go to SNL, yeah, I'm entertained by what I see, but I'm not sitting in the audience just to watch Saturday Night Live. Like for me, the best part of the show

is what happens in the commercials, like watching the Teamster guys and the crew guys like at furious pace in two minutes, like build an entire set while, you know, they're quick, the artists are quick changing in the back and, well, they make it in two minutes flat. And to me, that's the best part of the show, like, watching the choreography of a well-oiled machine. AMT – Amir, it's been so great to talk with you. Thank you for being such a regular

guest on our show. It's really it's a joy. Thank you Amir Questlove Thompson's new film ladies and gentlemen 50 years of SNL music is part of SNL's 50th anniversary Celebration it's streaming on peacock. He spoke with Terry gross Coming up Harvard professor Imani Perry talks about her latest book, Black in Blues, How a Color Tells the Story of My People. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. You know, sometimes there are ideas that make you reconsider the way you look at the world around you.

My guest today, scholar Imani Perry, does that with her new book, Black and Blues, How a Color Tells the Story of My People. Perry weaves the gravitational pull of blue and black life both literally and metaphorically in sound and in color. From the creation of dyed indigo cloths in West Africa that were traded for human life in the 16th century, to the American art form of blues music and sartorial choices. Coretta Scott King wore blue on her wedding day.

Fannie Lou Hamer wore a blue dress to testify before Congress. These examples could be seen as mere coincidences, but in this book, Perry weaves a compelling argument for why they are not. Imani Perry is the Henry A. Morris Jr. and Elizabeth W. Morris Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, and of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University. She's also the author of several books

and has published numerous articles on law, cultural studies, and African-American studies, including Looking for Lorraine, which is a biography of the playwright Lorraine Hansberry, and Breathe, a Letter to My Sons. Amani Perry, welcome back to Fresh Air, and thank you so much for this fascinating book. Oh, thank you for having me. Can I have you read a passage, page 21, last paragraph. The truth is this, black as such began in nobly

through conquering eyes. Writing that makes me wince because I hold my black tightly, proudly even. Honesty requires a great deal of discomfort. But here's the truth, we didn't start out black, nor did we choose it first. Black was a hard-earned love. But through it all, the blue blues, the certainty of the brilliant sky, deep water, and melancholy have never left us. I can attest, you might be thinking by now that this blue thing I'm talking about is mere device,

a literary trick to move through historic events. And if blue weren't a conjure color, that might have been true. But for real, the blue in black is nothing less than truth before trope. Everybody loves blue. It is human as can be. But everybody doesn't love black. Many have hated it, and that is inhumane. If you don't already, I will make you love it with my blues song." Thank you so much for that, Imani. I also want to say that this book is, I know you don't think of yourself as a poet, but it's very lyrical.

It's really poetry. Thank you. How did meditating on the color blue help you come to a deeper understanding about the use of the word black to articulate what we are? So I mean, I have sort of a roundabout answer to that question. It's a beautiful question. And it may have more than anything to do with the blues. So it's the genre of music that is sort of the foundation

of African-American music, certainly, and the foundation of American music generally. And it is, as I say, sort of a sound of the world's favorite color, meaning that it captures both the joy and the melancholy. Having the blues, when you have the blues, rather, playing the blues can act as a means of kind of curing the blues.

It has this movement through the spectrum of emotions, this deeply human sensibility to it. And so there was something about the universality of the color blue and the power of the sound of the blues, the way the sound of my people coming out of the Deep South, coming out of a history of enslavement, coming out of being, having this identity cast upon them and making something beautiful, creating beauty at the very site of wound. There was something about the way in which those two senses of blue coincided so profoundly that actually for me became a pathway to thinking about blackness and in some ways the absolute tragedy of the failure to recognize its beauty.

And so, you know, the book is a journey through that, a journey through both the anguish, but of course, which you have to acknowledge, but of course this remarkable beauty that actually has a resonance with everyone even when they deny it. So, you know, I guess that's the simplest way I can think about saying how, yeah, how that connection emerged for me. I want to talk a little bit about music. It's kind of the easiest way to get even deeper

into this book and this thought. You know, I think the term blue note is so embedded in our understanding as something that relates to jazz music. If you're not a musician, maybe you just know of it, but not really, at least I didn't know what it meant really until I was reading your book and I understood it to mean the in-between. I was just really curious how this definition of the in-between also allows you to deepen

your understanding of how black people's creation of the art form of jazz itself came to be. It's the in-between. It's the slurred notice, it's that which isn't recognized on the Western scale. And of course it is recognized, you know, there increasingly musicians have been talking about a blues scale and there are other scales in which what we refer to as blue notes in this context are, you know, are understood just as notes. And that's actually just a wonderful example because the addition of the blue note to the sound of American music transforms it much in the way

that there's something indispensable about the presence of black people in the United States and what it becomes. And at the same time, it is its own thing, and also it has connections to these other genres of music. And it's a beautiful example for me of actually the combination of African Americans being American, becoming a people in the context of the United States

and also having these connections that are like arteries to the rest of the black world. And so, you know, there are references in the book to Haitian history and Brazilian history and history of the Congo and all of these very deep connections that are present. So the blue note really is like that. And it is something that you are attuned to, you can hear. It operates intuitively, I think, for listeners of American music. And in some ways, that is the whole globe because American music is journey in some ways that is the whole globe because American music has

journeyed everywhere, right? Even if you don't have its formal definition or even if you can't describe it, and there's something to that as well in this story, right? There is a presence and a power that isn't necessarily fully articulated that comes through this particular history. So, you know, the music really does, it's not even just, it's not just metaphorical, it functions as a kind of representation or an example of the fact of being black and particularly being black American. I want to play an early reference that you write about.

It's Louis Armstrong's 1951 recording of, What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue? Let's listen to a little. Spring's hard as lead, feel like old meadow, wished I was dead. What did I do to be so black and blue? Even the mouse ran from my house They laugh at you and scorn you too To be so black and blue I'm white inside But that don't help my case That was Louis Armstrong's 1951, What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue? It was really fun to go down memory lane and listen to these old pieces, I'll say.

But what did you learn about how Armstrong really turned this song, which was several decades old by the time he sang it, into really a direct commentary for the time. Yeah. So the original version of the song actually took place in a black musical, and it was sung by a dark-skinned black woman who was actually talking about colorism in the black community and the kind of preference for lighter skinned women. And the transition is beautiful,

but what Armstrong does is it's this example of the sort of multi-layered references that exist in both black and blue. So there's, and it's a song that bridges blues and jazz as well. So it has this blues phrasing and sensibility, but then with the horns and the scatting, you hear the kind of growing complexity of jazz. And we have black and blue in the sense of being bruised, and you have blues in the sense of melancholy, and of course the general sense of sort of the blues that exist along with blackness. And in Armstrong's personal life, you have this struggle around being a person who is actually sent into the world

as an advocate of the United States in the context of the burgeoning Cold War and as a kind of figure that is supposed to be an example of the glory of the United States. And yet, as was often the case, and we saw this in the context of World War I and World War II, even as black people served the nation valiantly, they were subject to deep inequality at home. And so the song actually is able to encapsulate all of those dimensions with these rather simple sentences, lyrics that are not directly about all of that, but absolutely are about all of that. So you get the sense of innuendo, of multi-layered discourses.

It's just so elegant and beautiful and profound. You also reference Nina Simone. You talk about her first album, which was in 1957. There is this song called Little Girl Blue. I also want to play that. Let's hear a little bit. I'm sorry. Sit there and count your fingers What can you do? Oh girl, you threw, sit there Count your little fingers, unhappy little girl blue.

Sit there. That was Nina Simone singing Little Girl Blue. And Imani, as you write about, there was just a lot going on with this album. There's a lot of delays with the recording label. It kind of set her on the path, really her career path decisions from that point on. What did you learn about Simone and the recording of

this song that made you want to explore it for the book? I'll just say, you know, I grew up on Nina Simone. My mother loved Nina Simone, and so I've been listening to her literally for my entire 52 years of life. And, you know, we talk a great deal in some ways about the late Nina Simone in the world of sort of popular culture. Nina Simone is a woman who was both a musical genius and also a person who put politics in their music and also a person who struggled with her mental and emotional health after so many tragedies.

And so I wanted to look at the beginning. I wanted to attend to early Nina Simone, a person who had already experienced extraordinary disappointment. She was a trained classical pianist. She'd been denied admission to the Curtis Institute. She was certain that that denial was because of her race. And so she became this musician who was blending, you know, torch songs, show tunes, jazz as a performer, and then elements of the classical music. But she also was really struggling with, emotionally, with the desire to have been a classical musician

and the ways in which she was excluded from that. And so there's something about in thinking and talking about this first album, I wanted to gesture to the complex emotions associated with her putting this work together and also its incredible beauty. It's yet again one of these sites where you see, you know, the process of creating beauty at the site of wound. It happens over and over and over again in black culture and life. And I was able to do it through the story of a really cherished musician, for me personally,

but I think for the world. I'd like to end our conversation on a passage of your book that I feel is so rooted in the present moment. It's page 228, the last paragraph. It starts with an admission. An admission. An admission. I am very much an American, and that is an uneasy title for me. I have a culture and an identity tied to this land.

I am without apology who and what I am. The unease is about the relationship between my citizenship and the rest of the world. My blackness is a conduit, but my Americanness is so often a betrayal of that connection with others. I know the classic responses coming from some. People want to come here from all over the world, the American dream is universal. I think that dream is of a castle of security that exists inside the palace gates. I come from inside the territory, but outside the gates, so I know better.

But I have one take. There are many others. We are no monolith. This is my blues. Imani Perry, as always, thank you so much for this thought provoking conversation. Thank you. Imani Perry's new book is Black and Blues, How a Color Tells the Story of My People. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Brigger is our managing producer. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. A special thank you to Jose Yannis and Connor Anderson from WDET for additional engineering

help. With Terry Gross, I'm Tonya Mosley.