Fresh Air - Celebrating Country Music's Black Roots

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

Beyoncé's highly anticipated country album, Cowboy Carter, is out today. One of the musicians on it is fiddle and banjo player Rhiannon Giddens. We'll listen to our 2010 in-studio performance with the group she was part of then, the Carolina Chocolate Drops. They played string band and jug band music of the '20s and '30s, music most people associate with a white southern tradition. But the members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops are Black. They saw themselves as part of a little known Black string band tradition— forerunners of modern country music and bluegrass.John Powers reviews A Gentleman in Moscow, starring Ewan McGregor, which begins streaming today on Paramount+. David Bianculli reviews the new Apple TV+ documentary about Steve Martin.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. Beyoncé's new country album, Cowboy Carter, was released today. A single from the album, Texas Hold'em, went straight to number one on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart, making her the first black woman to hold that spot. The excitement over this album is bringing new attention to the under-recognized importance of black performers in the history of country music. One of the performers on Beyoncé's new album is Rhiannon Giddens, a singer, songwriter, violinist, and banjo player.

Giddens has won two Grammys, a Pulitzer Prize, and was a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient. In 2022, she became the artistic director of the Silk Road Ensemble, which was founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Early in her career, she was a member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, which played string band and jug band music of the 1920s and 30s, music most people associate with a white Southern tradition. But the members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops were black. They saw themselves as part of a little-known black string band tradition, forerunners of modern country music and bluegrass.

We're going to listen to Giddens and the Carolina Chocolate Drops in an interview and performance on our show from 2010. First, though, here's Giddens on Beyoncé's Texas Hold'em, playing viola and banjo. Her banjo opens the track. Texas Hold'em Sugar on me, honey, too. It's a real live boogie and a real live hold down. Don't be a, hey, come take it to the floor now. Woo! That's Texas Hold'em from Beyonce's new country album, featuring Rhiannon Giddens on banjo and viola. Now, let's go back to 2010, when Giddens was with the Carolina Chocolate Drops,

playing music inspired by the early black string band tradition of the 1920s and 30s. They had just released their album Genuine Negro Jig, featuring traditional songs, songs by Tom Waits, a cover of an R&B hit, and an original. In the band, Rhiannon Giddens played five-string banjo, fiddle, and kazoo. Dom Flemons played guitar, four-string banjo, harmonica, jug, snare drum, and bones. Justin Robinson played fiddle, auto-harp, and did the vocal beatbox.

At the time, they were all living in North Carolina, as the band's title suggests. They brought some of their instruments to the WUNC studio in Durham for an interview and performance. Rhiannon Giddens, Justin Robinson, Don Flemons, welcome to Fresh Air. Let me start by asking you to perform a song that's also featured on the new CD. Can you do Your Baby and Sweet Like Mine for us? Absolutely. Absolutely. Everybody talking about the sweetie nowadays I got the one with the sweetest waist

Your baby may roll a jelly fine Nobody's baby can't roll it like mine Your baby ain't sweet like mine She bake a jelly roll all the time And when I'm feeling lonesome and blue My baby know just what to do. Yes, she even called me a honey. She even let me spend the money.

Never has a baby put me out of dough. She even buys me all my clothes. I don't want to brag, just want to put you in line. Your baby ain't sweet like mine, no, no. Your baby ain't sweet like mine. No, no. Your baby ain't sweet like mine. Oh, play that horn. Oh, play it like Mr. Tom Larkin. Yeah, mine can play very good.

Blow on that jam. Blowing at you Your baby ain't sweet like mine She bakes a jelly roll all the time And when I'm feeling lonesome and blue, my baby knows just what to do. Yes, sir. She even call me honey. She even let me spend the money. Never had a baby. Put me out, go. She even buys me all my clothes. I don't want to brag, just want to put you in line Your baby ain't sweet like mine, no, no Your baby ain't sweet like mine, yeah, yeah Your baby ain't sweet like mine

Fantastic. That's the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a song that they're performing for us, but that's a song they also do on their new CD, Genuine Negro Jig. And who chose that song and why? Oh, that was a song that I chose. That was a piece that was originally recorded by a fellow named Papa Charlie Jackson, who was a six-string banjo player out of New Orleans. And I just really liked the number, and a lot of his numbers aren't performed anymore, so that was one that I've kept in my repertoire for quite a while. Now, Rhiannon, you're a great fiddler.

You play banjo, but you were featured very prominently on kazoo on that. Was it hard for you at first to take the kazoo seriously as a genuine instrument? Well, I didn't really think of it as a serious instrument until Dom brought it in, and he was playing it on some tunes that he was doing, and then there's a whole tradition of jug band music where people are playing the kazoo as a serious horn. I mean, it's, you know, playing it really, really well. And so he suggested that I start to play it. And I was like, well, let me give it a shot.

And then I realized how, well, not easy, but it's just it's easy in terms of if you have some vocal ideas of what you want to do. It's just like the jug. You have to have in your mind what you're going to do and have to be able to produce that with your voice before you even have the kazoo. String bands are usually considered a white southern tradition. And you're a band of African American musicians. And you've found a black string band tradition

that you feel part of. But did you fall in love with this music before you knew that there was a black string band tradition? Yep. Absolutely. What did you fall in love with about it? Well, I fell in love with the rhythm. I was a contradancer and square dancer,

and I just was seduced by the banjo, the rhythm of the claw hammer banjo that just really pulled me in. And then I found out about the history, and then I went, oh, this is really in. And then, then I found out about the history and then I went, Oh, this is really deep. And then it just kind of,

I was done. I was done for then, you know, it was, that was it. So discovering this music and falling in love with it without knowing there was an African American tradition. Did you,

did you feel like maybe you weren't supposed to like it? You know, maybe you would never fit in with it, maybe there wouldn't be a place for you? Or people would think you were odd to gravitate toward the music? Well, definitely the odd thing, that's a definite, just because any black person who's involved in a folk music scene anywhere knows that it's either they've been just the one of them or maybe someone else. And I think that's how I was in Phoenix.

I was the only black person, but I was also the only person that was under like 40 in the scene in Phoenix that I was in. But I just kind of plowed on myself. And I know Justin had a really similar story. Yeah, I... Oh, Lord, I just forgot the question. Weird, being a weird black person. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's it. Being a weird black person.

We're all really familiar with being a weird black person. Yeah, I mean, I guess for me, it was sort of... I didn't have the same thing with the age thing because there were certainly lots of people when I started playing in Chapel Hill. There were certainly lots of people around my age doing it, but I certainly was the only black person at the time doing it. But that was not going to stop me. I mean, I think it's characteristic of all of us is that we were sort of misfits,

you might say, in our own rights when we grew up. So doing something just because it wasn't cool or because you weren't supposed to, we're certainly not any stranger to that. Yeah, I was sort of used to it because I was, after I graduated from college, I really got into like Scottish music. So I was always getting, you know, so, you know, how come you're playing this kind of music, you know?

And so I was just kind of used to that. So it didn't really, I just kind of just kept on going, just like Justin was saying. How come you were playing that kind of music? Oh, I just liked it. Yeah, I mean, there's really nothing more to it than that. Well, you were already used to not being cool, too, because, I mean, you sang opera before. That's a pretty quick way to not be cool. Yeah, it's true.

So did your parents have associations with this music? Not this kind of, not specifically this music, but see, this music is very closely related to other kind of music that, like, I know Justin and I would have grown up with, which is bluegrass and old country music and even, you know, the other side, which would be the blues and the jazz side. I mean, I heard all of that stuff growing up.

We watched Hee Haw every Saturday night. You don't change the channel, grandma would be very upset with you. And so, I mean, that's just those musics are like one step away from this kind of string band music. So it wasn't too much of a leap. It's not like we grew up in, you know, Russia or something. I mean, it was really fairly close to what we were already used to. So it was just kind of like that extra step, you know, back to this kind of music for us. And even me, I didn't really get into the black string band music until I went to the

Black Banjo Gathering, which we all went to and kind of had just a life-changing experience. But I knew about blues and jazz and jug band music, but I didn't associate any of that with the white fiddle tunes per se, even though I could guess that they may be related. Yeah, so you all met at this Black Banjo Gather gathering, a gathering of black banjo players. And so was that a revelation to you that there was this big community spread out maybe? Well, first to correct. Yeah, we'll have to fix that because it wasn't necessarily a gathering solely of black banjo players. It was a gathering of everybody who was interested in either the African roots of the banjo or even just string band music, or who was, you know, an African

American player of the music, or even an African player of, you know, ancestors of the music. There were scholars, musicians, just people who were just there just to learn um and and you know the black population of the gathering was still small but you know there was enough to you know we all met there and we're all like i'm not the only one oh my god you know so it was for us it was fantastic and for everybody else it was it was great just you know because a lot of a lot of the scholars had been sort of laboring all you know by themselves or had just been talking to other people, and they got to all meet up and sort of have this momentous occasion. I'd like to ask you to perform another song that's also featured on the new CD,

and the song is Trouble in Your Mind. So before you play it for us, tell us why you chose it and what you love about the song. This is one that Justin was playing that I reminded him one day at a jam that he played it. And it's a piece from an album called Music from the Lost Provinces, put out by Old Hat Records. And it's just a nice breakdown, and we just started doing it. Okay, let's hear it. I wish I had a nickel I wish I had a dime I wish I had me a pretty girl, you'd not call her mine

Don't get trouble in your mind, don't get trouble in your mind Don't get trouble in your mind, don't get trouble in your mind If you see that gal of mine, you tell her if you can Tell her when for she goes to make my bread to wash in the magic hand Don't get trouble in your mind, don't get trouble in your mind Don't get trouble in your mind, don't get trouble in your mind That's great. That's the Carolina Chocolate Drops performing a song that's also featured on their new CD, and the new CD is called Genuine Negro Jig. So when we left off, we were talking about how you discovered like the African-American tradition in string bands and you met

an African-American fiddler who's in his 90s now named Joe Thompson. And did he teach you certain things on fiddle that you didn't know or hadn't heard before? Oh, Lord, yeah. Joe Thompson is the guy that you were mentioning. He's 91. He's been playing since he was six or seven years old. And he learned from his father when his father learned from his father. So it's a long tradition among his family. But Joe's fiddle style is really particular, not only to him, but to the region.

I've had the opportunity to listen to other fiddlers who would have been a little bit older than Joe through field recordings and stuff. And they all sound pretty similar. What has happened is that, and they are white and black, but what has happened is most of this particular region's fiddle styles of music has not been well documented, so it sounded really different to listening to, for folk enthusiasts at large, to hear somebody like Joe playing, it would sound really foreign and really different. And it does, And it's, you know, it's beautiful. Rhiannon, would you give us an example of what was really different from what he taught,

about what he taught you compared to what you had known before? Well, the kind of amazing thing is that one of the reasons why I think our sound is the way it is, is that we were all sort of learning when we started going down to play with Joe so we didn't get much chance to play other sort of more I don't know square I don't know so different ways but what the one of the things that I think I've taken away a lot um as a banjo player um is I'll get I'll get the banjo here. Is that... Is that real heavy down, the downstroke, you know? And it's almost an anticipatory kind of down, you know? If that makes sense. I don't know. It's kind of hard, you know, if that makes sense. I don't know.

It's kind of hard to talk about music, but... Well, a lot of times you tend to hear that with hillbilly performers more in the style of Grandpa Jones or Uncle Dave Macon generally, but even that Tennessee style, that's taken to an extreme, while North Carolina, it's a little bit more compact within it, but the downbeat is still there. Justin, is there anything you could talk about that you learned from Joe Thompson on fiddle?

Oh, yeah. Well, first of all, Joe's bowing is really, really interesting. He has a, which is something that's common among fiddle players, at least around here, something they call the double shuffle, or some people call it hen's egg. I've heard fiddlers call it sewing cloth. It's all this sort of forward and back motion that is going forward all at the same time

and making these really great rhythmic kind of things that you have to really work very hard to get. And also, Joe plays notes that are not in the Western scale, which is actually kind of great. Can you play us an example of what you're talking about? Oh, I'll play you the double shuffle? Is it the speed or the harmony? Play it without the double shuffle and then she'll hear it. So this is without it.

So it's a little of both. Because of the way that the fiddle is tuned, when you're playing the double shuffle, you get to get these really either sympathetic ringing strings or, depending on where your fingers are, not sympathetic rings. So you get some really interesting harmonies that I've never really heard anywhere else in any other kind of music. The Carolina Chocolate Drops, recorded in 2010. We'll hear more after a short break.

Also, we'll have two TV reviews. Critic-at-Large John Powers reviews the new Paramount Plus drama series A Gentleman in Moscow, and I'll review the new Apple TV Plus documentary about Steve Martin. I'm David Bianculli, and this is Fresh Air. Thank you. and butter beans and you across the table eating them beans and making love as long as i am able pulling corn and cotton too and when the day is over ride the mule and cut the fool and look again all over goodbye don't you cry i'm going to louisiana to buy a coon dog and a big fat hog and marry Susanna Sing song, ding dong, I'll take a trip to China Cornbread and butter beans, then back to North Carolina Cornbread and butter beans, then you cross the table

Eating beans and making love as long as I'm able Plowing corn and cotton too. And when the day is over. Ride the mule and cut the fool. And love begin all over. Wearing shoes and drinking booze, it goes against the Bible. A necktie will make you die and cause you lots of trouble. Street cars and whiskey bars and kissing pretty women. Women, yeah, that's the end of a terrible beginning. And cornbread and butter beans and you across the table.

Eating beans and making love as long as I am able. Poe and corny cotton to a... Part of the tricky aspect of string band music is that part of its roots are in minstrel shows, part of its roots are in blackface. And so it gets really kind of complicated when you go back to the early history of that music. So I wonder what it's been like for you to negotiate that aspect of the music and to deal with separating the music itself from some of the stereotypes that were foisted on the musicians who played it.

I think something that we have as a new generation of player in the old-time music is that we are educated and we're approaching the music at an emotional distance that just has not been there in earlier generations. Before, you'd look back at those aspects of history and people just would say, don't touch that. And now in this generation, we're able to see what actually happened or what was misappropriate or what was good. Because the thing about a lot of the black string band music is not much of the music was put down on recording. And that's a very essential part of understanding black music is hearing it. And, you know, delving into it, you find some things that are off-putting, but at the same time, you've got to think in the context of the past

instead of thinking in the context of the present. And I think that's been something in the African-American community that's been, it's not something that we've done very much of, is looking back. It's really been a forward push for lots of different reasons. And as Don was saying, I think we are one of the first generations who, I mean, there's still a lot of stuff that's, you know, needs to be fixed. And there's a lot of people that are still, you know, in bad situations. But I think as a whole, we're one of the first generations in the African American community that has been able to look back

without personally being as touched by it. You know, like our parents, they went through the civil rights movement. They, you know, they went through all of these things and they're really personally wrapped up into a lot of this stuff. Whereas we're of a generation where we can step back and go, okay, so what can we, what can we take from it that it's the good stuff? I mean, the minstrel shows and the stereotyping, and that's all clearly very bad, but there's a lot of great music and dance, and there's a lot of black musicians and dancers

who persevered through the stereotype and who were able to show their skill and their entertaining, and they were able to do that. And so we can take the good stuff from that now, I think, along with knowing that there was bad stuff. Well, you know, we're talking about rescuing music from the past, but you're also playing music from the present as well as original songs. And I think we should get to that a little bit. Although you're doing this contemporary music in the spirit of the string band style.

So, Rhiannon, on to a song that you do on the new CD. And this is a song that I want you to talk about. I want you to talk about the original version and how you heard it and why you do it. And it's Hit Em Up Style. Yeah, Hit Em Up Style is, well, it was just all over the radio. And every time it came on, would just like jam in my car to it it just was very catchy and had a great chorus and the you know beats and all that stuff

and it's just one of those songs that kind of never went away in my brain and then I heard it again on the radio like years later and just something kind of occurred to me I was like why don't we I wonder if we could try to play that and so I tried to play it on the fiddle and actually worked really well on the fiddle. And then the three of us sort of came together and said, okay, like, how could we do this? And then, you know, Dom came up with a great rhythm on the banjo that worked really well.

And then we found out that Justin beatboxed, and we're like, you know, and it just clicked. And we kind of messed around with the original version of the song. We just tossed out what didn't work and just kind of went with what did. And who did the original? Blue Cantrell was the original singer. Yeah. Okay. So let's hear this from the CD. This is from the Carolina Chocolate Drops new CD, Genuine Negro Jig. And this is Rhiannon Giddens singingly. While he was scheming, I was beaming And his beamer just beaming

Can't believe that I caught my man cheating So I found another way to make him pay for it all So I went to Neiman Marcus on a shopping spree And on the way I grabbed Soleil and Mia And as the cash box rang, I threw everything away. Hey ladies, when your man wanna get buck wild Just go back and hit him up style Get your hands on his cash and spend it to the last time For all the hard times

When you go, then everything goes From the crib to the ride in the close So you better let him know that if he mess up You gotta hit him up So that's Rhiannon Giddens singing from the new Carolina Chocolate Drops CD, Genuine Negro Jig. Nicely done. I really like that a lot. And Rhiannon, what you're playing on fiddle, it's this like drone style that I think is really interesting. Yeah, it's just kind of old timey. Old timey put to hip hop, I suppose.

Is that drone really old timey or is that a more contemporary kind of thing? Oh, no, that's very old timey. The double stopping, you know, that kind of rhythmic bowing it's all it's all old-timey what makes it contemporary is the minor key you know because there's not a lot of minor stuff and and in those tunes and well i mean there there are some but the ones that we think of as old you know like that are in the public sort of ear are not in minor key and I think that's one of the main things that makes it sound so contemporary. And so kind of, you know, people say it's Middle Eastern-y. It's just, you know, it's in the minor key. So how did you learn that drone style? Maybe you could just play a little

bit of that drone and talk about it a little bit. Oh, gosh. I mean, just from playing. um and that's just that's just like one of the first old-time tunes I knew. And so it wasn't much of a leap to take that to that tune, to the Hit Em Up style tune. It just fit really well. Yeah, compare that to what you did on Hit Em Up style. Do a little bit of that. Nice. Now, were you classically trained on fiddle? On violin? Oh, good Lord, no. No, no, no. Just voice. Just voice. Just voice.

Yeah. So we heard you sing on hit-em-up style. Now, you started out singing opera. Yeah. So can we hear a little bit of your opera voice? Yeah. I had a warm double fight. I know you're my asses, but let me see what I can... The trees on the mountains are cold and bare.

The summer just vanished and left them there. there like a false-hearted lover just like my own who made me love him then left me alone Very nice. What was that? That's in honor of the music that we play. That's from an opera called Susanna, which is set in Tennessee. And that was the composer's sort of mountain ballad, but, you know, classically. Of course. Right. So did you have to find a different voice after leaving opera for folk music? I did. I mean, I was lucky in that I didn't start off when I was a kid singing opera. I sang contemporary folk music with my dad and my sister and my mom.

But I had to find my classical voice. And so when I left school and I needed to find first a Celtic voice and then this old time voice, it was a little easier because I already had sort of thought about it before, you know, it wasn't just I was singing classical for like 25 years and then had to had to make a switch. That would have been hard. But yeah, it's just like I switched into a different brain. Is it easier to sing in a folk style than an opera style? Does it just take less effort? I'd say it takes a different effort. And actually, when I'm tired, it's easier to sing classical because it's classical is really it's like for the most you get the most voice for the least amount of effort. That's what you really learn. And you're learning how to sing without a microphone.

Whereas I actually have a hard time sometimes when I'm tired singing sort of straight tones and like soft, high, sort of folky type things. So it's really kind of, it evens out, in a lot of ways. I mean, I don't have to warm up for an hour to do a Taco Drop show, which I appreciate. I probably should. And I seriously hope my voice teacher didn't hear that little excerpt that I sang because I'm a little out of practice. But, you know, you got to give up something. So I want to thank you all for talking with us. It's really been great. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. This has been an absolute pleasure. The Carolina Chocolate Drops, Rhiannon Giddens, Justin Robinson, and Dom Flemons,

recorded in 2010. The group is disbanded, but each member has gone on to other projects. Rhiannon Giddens can be heard on Beyonce's new country album, Cowboy Carter, which was released today. After a break, John Powers reviews A Gentleman in Moscow, a new Paramount Plus drama starring Ewan McGregor. This is Fresh Air. In the new TV series A Gentleman in Moscow, Ewan McGregor plays a Russian count who's put under house arrest after the Russian Revolution.

Based on the 2016 novel by Amor Tolles, the show begins streaming on Paramount Plus today and then is televised Sundays on Showtime. Our critic at large, John Powers, says that it's a light series about dark things. Nearly 250 years after we kicked out the British monarchy, Americans can't get enough of the aristocracy. We devour the crown in Downton Abbey, obsess over Kate Middleton's health and Prince Harry's marriage, and find vampires extra sexy because they're nobly born. This fascination helped make a bestseller of A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Tolles' sleekly tooled novel about an exceedingly appealing Russian aristocrat after the 1917 Russian Revolution. A romanticized fable about a grimly realistic era, it's been adapted into a TV series starring the exceedingly appealing Scottish actor Ewan McGregor.

The show was created by Ben Vanstone, who was behind the reboot of All Creatures Great and Small. He uses this brutal period as a backdrop for an easy-to-swallow tale about a decent but frivolous man who's deepened by being cut off from his life of privilege. McGregor plays Count Alexander Rostov, a literate, beautifully-mannered bachelor with a connoisseur's knowledge of wine, a dandy's immaculately cut suits,

and a mustache about which he's quite vain. His story begins in 1922, when the Bolsheviks sentence him, implausibly it must be said, to lifelong house arrest in Moscow's luxurious Hotel Metropole. Although he lives under the baleful gaze of a secret policeman named Osip, played by Johnny Harris, this isn't exactly the gulag. Despite his small quarters, he eats nightly in the hotel's elegant restaurant, whose cellar stocks his adored Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Over the next three decades, the count befriends a young girl, Nina, who grows into an avid communist, and reunites with his radical college friend, Mishka, played with Dostoevsky in fervor by Fahinty Belogun. He also gets involved with a wise-up actress, Anna Urbanova,

that's a nifty Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who boots him out of her bed with the same imperious haste with which she invited him in. As the passing years unleash famine, propagandistic lies, and Stalinist terror, most of it invisible inside the hotel, he finds himself doing things he could never have imagined. He becomes a waiter in the hotel restaurant and starts looking after a little girl, Sophia, whose parents have been shipped off to a camp.

Here, talking to the Stalin-admiring Nina, he offers a parable about the moths in Manchester, England. For thousands of years, the peppered moth had white wings with black speckles. It was perfectly camouflaged against the bark of the silver birch trees. Naturally, there were aberrations. Moths with pitch-black wings. They were quickly snapped off the trees by birds before they had a chance to mate. In the late 19th century, when Manchester

became crowded with factories, soot covered all the buildings and trees. And the white-winged moth found itself exposed and picked off, while the black-winged moths thrived. In less than a century, the black-winged moth, which had made up 10% of the moth population, now made up over 90%.

And the white-winged moth, well, found itself in the minority. So? We used to take generations for a way of life to fade. Under current circumstances, we must acknowledge that the process can occur in the blink of an eye. Like Darwin says, adapt or die. Over the course of the show's eight episodes, in truth six would have been tighter and stronger, the Count does adapt. He becomes fast friends with the hotel's caretaker, bartender, and kitchen staff,

people he would once have treated politely as lessers. And he learns what it means to be responsible for a child. Even as he opens himself up to new things, he also tries to civilize his overseer, Ossip, by giving him Les Miserables and showing him Hollywood movies. While anyone who believes in the revolution is shown to be fatally wrong, the Count remains aristocratic in the finest sense of the term. The show doesn't really get into the ways that the Count's genial urbanity was made possible because men of his class lived off the labor of impoverished serfs. Such protective fondness for the count might register as obtuse, were it not for MacGregor's charming performance. He imbues this entitled man with wit, warmth, and joie de vivre, qualities

that drive the Bolsheviks crazy, but make us like him. To my surprise as one who grew up in a small Midwestern town, I wound up identifying with a Russian aristocrat who discovers how to live more fully by watching his comfortable world get blown apart. John Powers reviewed the new TV series, A Gentleman in Moscow. It begins streaming today on Paramount Plus and premieres on Showtime this Sunday. Coming up, another of today's TV streaming premieres. I review the new two-part Apple TV Plus documentary about Steve Martin. This is Fresh Air.

Steve Martin has avoided the biographical documentary treatment his entire showbiz career, a career that spans more than half a century. Until now. Starting today, Apple TV Plus presents a new biography, two actually, directed by Morgan Neville, with home movies, private materials, and intimate access provided by Martin himself. A comedian who thinks he's funny and isn't. I thought, I don't know, there's something there. This new two-part biography from Apple TV Plus has such an unwieldy title.

Steve! in capital letters, Martin! in parentheses and in lowercase, and the closing phrase, a documentary in two pieces. But it sort of makes sense after you watch it all, because the two pieces, the two 90-minute films, are fairly distinct entities. The first part documents the comedian's long-determined road to stardom, a 15-year trek that finally led to him being the biggest thing in stand-up, selling millions of copies of his comedy albums, and filling large arenas with adoring fans. So that's the Steve part in loud capital letters. But the second piece is much more intimate and shows him as he lives and works today,

looking back on his drive to stop stand-up entirely and branch out into movies and writing plays and books. It's the quieter, more contemplative movie of the two. So it's more the Martin, small case, in parentheses portion. And even though many memorable bits from Steve Martin's career are barely hinted at, his Saturday Night Live performance of King Tut, for example, both parts of this documentary contain treasures and, yes, insights. Steve Martin is such a relatively private celebrity that there are bound to be some of those.

But it's what director Morgan Neville does with them that makes this such a delightful career study. Neville's directing credits include 20 Feet from Stardom, his Oscar-winning documentary film about backup singers, and Won't You Be My Neighbor, a hugely popular biography of children's TV host Fred Rogers. I was interviewed briefly in that film, but it was wonderful anyway. In the first part of

his Steve Martin study, Neville reveals the hard work that went into the development of Martin's onstage persona as a goofy, self-obsessed, childlike entertainer. Surprisingly, it was born out of his college studies in advanced logic and philosophy and his love of such artists as Picasso. And he toiled at his act for years, often getting few laughs and even less money, until SNL came along in the mid-'70s. Suddenly, Steve Martin was a superstar,

a reversal of fortune he notes in his private journal with one single, all-caps word. Finally. Banjo's such a happy instrument. It really is. It's a good thing for a comedian like me. And just a happy thing. You can't go, oh, murder and death and grief and sorrow. Okay, I want to do this last banjo tune and we'll move on with the show.

Can I get like a tight shot maybe on the fingers on this, okay? Dave, we'll send the draft. I'd like to start off with the tight shot, okay? I did this thing in dress. I thought we had it worked out. I'm sorry. Okay, I'll do something else then.

I can go with it. All right, you know what I'm saying? It's just, you know, you ask for something, you think you're going to get it, it throws you off when you're a performer professional, like I am. And I'm sorry if I look a little angry, but I guess I am, because, you know, it hurts you.

You know what I'm saying? It hurts the people who are watching the show when me, the artist, comes out here and I can't get one little cooperation. You know what it hurts you, you know what I'm saying? It hurts the people who are watching the show when me, the artist, comes out here and I can't get what a little cooperation, you know what I mean? I mean, I can't get a little help from the backstage crew. Excuse me. But in 1980, after just a few years of sold-out tours, Steve Martin pulled the plug, walked away from solo stand-up comedy, and never went back. Instead, he pivoted to movies, a decision that concludes the first part of Neville's study and paves the way for part two. The act essentially was conceptual,

and once the concept was understood, there was nothing more to develop. I sort of created my own dead end. Part two is my favorite. It's the one where Neville makes some extraordinary connections, like noting that Steve's father's reaction after seeing his son star in his first movie, The Jerk, was the dismissive, he's no Charlie Chaplin. And how that painful remark surfaces decades later in one of Martin's plays, when an aspiring young architect breaks ground on his first building, only to have his father remark, he's no Frank Lloyd Wright. And part two is the one where Neville makes the most room for comments and appearances from Martin's wife and friends, friends like Lauren Michaels and Tina Fey. And Jerry Seinfeld, who listens to Martin's incredulity

at having a late-career success with his streaming Hulu series, only murders in the building. It's almost impossible. I'm 76. Yeah. And you've got a hit television show. Yeah. That doesn't happen.

No, it does. Yeah. It does. It does happen? Sure. Who's 76 and has a television show? Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin? Now that's true. Absolutely. I think I made that point. Most of all, there's Martin Short, one of Steve Martin's longest and dearest friends, who not only co-stars with him in Only Murders, but also in a series of comedy tours, in which the two of them share the stage

and pleasantly mock one another. Just like they do in real life, when Neville captures them, reading aloud from laptops, privately trying out possible new jokes for their act. I love a comedian's opening line because it sets the tone for the entire stupid show. I think that's funny. You know, we haven't performed in a year and a half, which will become obvious as the show goes on. I like I'm not nervous, I'm just unprepared.

It's the same idea. How many of you applauded because you thought I was dead? Hmm. Ever have one of those moments when you walk into a room and forget why you're there?

Well, it's funny. Okay. I know what you're thinking. These hearing aids make my ass look amazing. Right away, it's a premise of you're thinking. These hearing aids make my ass look amazing. Right away, it's a premise of you're old. Maybe you can follow it up with a line about your prostate. Every night, I make sure I give a goodnight kiss

to the three little ones that mean more to me than life itself. My two Emmys and my Tony. I could hear that coming out of you. Because it's not very good. This new Apple TV Plus documentary about Steve Martin is very good. It's the study of a man who appears to have found more joy as he's gotten older. And the more you watch this profile, the more joy you'll find as well. On Monday's show, Sue Bird, the best point guard in the history of women's basketball. She won NCAA and WNBA championships and five Olympic gold medals. We'll talk about her career, playing in Russia during the offseason, her coach was murdered, deciding to retire, and being engaged to retired soccer star Megan Rapinoe.

I hope you can join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our senior producer today is Roberta Scharrock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Diana Martinez. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Sallet, Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Teresa Madden, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavey-Nesper. For Terry Gross and Tanya

Mosley, I'm David B. Inclou. This message comes from Grammarly. Back and forth communication at work is costly. That's why over 70,000 teams and 30 million people use Grammarly's AI to make their points clear the first time. Better writing, better results. Learn more at grammarly.com slash enterprise.