A Prairie Home Companion from American Public Media

Special Guests
Saturday, September 16, 2006

Jearlyn Steele

A native of Indiana, Jearlyn Steele first sang with her siblings (as The Steele Children) in churches, concert halls and on radio and television. After Jearlyn left home and moved to Minnesota, one by one the rest of the Steele kids followed, and they started singing together again as The Steeles. Now music is the family business. Fans still remember their participation in The Gospel at Colonus at the Guthrie Theater and on Broadway. Jearlyn has voiced many local and national commercials, and she has recorded with top acts including George Clinton and Prince. Her most recent CD is titled Steele Praising Him. She is the entertainment reporter for Twin Cities Public Television's public-affairs program, Almanac, and she hosts Steele Talkin', a Sunday-night radio show that originates on WCCO in Minneapolis and is heard in some 30 states nationwide.

Radio Maqam

Radio Maqam is a Chicago-based group of musicians who focus on studying and performing maqam music. Maqam is a musical system of modes, and players in regions ranging from the Atlas Mountains and the Sahara to the Arabian Gulf and the banks of the Euphrates to Greece and parts of Eastern Europe have adapted the maqam system to fit their regional tastes. Radio Maqam tracks these musical traditions and performs maqam music in all its wonderful variations. The name Radio Maqam is, in fact, an umbrella under which the musicians play in various ensembles. They like to think of themselves as "broadcasting" the music to people both familiar and unfamiliar with the tradition. Members of the group performing this evening are: Issa Boulos ('ud), Jim Stoynoff (clarinet), Wanees Zarour (violin, buzuq), Naeif Rafeh (nay), Özgür Sümer (ba&guml;lama), Masoud Kamgarpour (santour) and Martin Stokes (qanun).

Reginald Robinson

Chicago born and raised, Reginald Robinson is a pianist and composer whose music ranges from of semi-classical to ragtime, Latin American to early jazz and blues. Reginald has been consumed with music since early childhood. At home, his parents played records of classical music and R&B and everything in between, and Reginald and his brothers started making music together. But it was a junior-high assembly about ragtime that cinched it. A guest musician played the melody Reginald had heard coming from the ice cream truck every summer, but to hear "The Entertainer" played as a serious piano piece was utterly captivating. He read everything he could about ragtime and its most famous composer, Scott Joplin. That Christmas, Reginald was given a small electronic keyboard, and he started teaching himself to play. By studying school music books, he learned to read and write music. He pored over ragtime transcriptions, comparing them note for note with old piano roll recordings. The hard work of his youth paid off. He now has recorded three CDs, The Strongman, Songs in Silhouette and Euphonic Sounds, all on the Delmark label, and he has performed across the U.S. and in Europe at venues such as the Chicago Jazz Festival, Ravinia and the Gilmore Keyboard Festival. In 2004, Reginald Robinson was honored as a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellow, the so-called "genius grant."

South Shore Drill Team

The South Shore Drill Team & Performing Arts Ensemble was founded in 1980 to help keep kids off the street. The group offers young men and women an opportunity to develop self-esteem, self-discipline and goals for the future. The team was organized by Arthur Robertson, a former Chicago Public School teacher, who continues to direct the group today. The approximately 300 members, ranging in age from 7 to 21, are required to be students in good academic standing in order to stay on the team. In addition to its unique marching style, the South Shore Drill Team's repertoire includes contemporary music, jazz and modern dance numbers. They have performed at the Illinois Governor's inauguration, receptions for the mayor of Chicago, halftime shows of sporting events (including the Fiesta Bowl and Chicago Bulls games), and the Indy 500 parade. They even appeared in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off and in a McDonald's TV ad. In 2005, through a program called Sister Cities, some 50 members of the team traveled to Morocco to perform for appreciative crowds in that country.

Gary Comer Youth Center's Center Voices

Center Voices is the choral program at the Gary Comer Youth Center. It was established in the summer of 2006, when the youth center opened. This after-school project is in partnership with Paul Revere School and was inspired by the school's Soulful Sounds Choir. The talented singers in Center Voices are fourth- to seventh-grade kids, and the group is under the direction of Dr. Christopher Johnson. Dr. Johnson, the music teacher for a number of Chicago-area schools, is the recipient of numerous honors, most notably the National School Choral Award. The six young singers performing on A Prairie Home Companion are: Temprance Bonner, Elijah Stanley, Quintessa Hobson, Briana Jamison, Joseph Pearson and Paige Starks.

Studs Terkel

Studs started in business a long time ago doing a record show "The Wax Museum" on WENR, playing records by his friends Big Bill Broonzy, Woody Guthrie, and Mahalia Jackson, and he chugged along at WBEZ until 1997. Studs is the soul of the city. He describes himself as looking like "a minor mob figure the day after he died" but he's a scrapper, a union guy, a White Sox fan, an old progressive, an admirer of Fighting Bob LaFollette and Clarence Darrow because they were their own men and didn't take orders from anybody.

Franz Jackson

Born in Rock Island, Illinois in 1912, FRANZ JACKSON has been playing professionally for over 70 years. He learned the Chicago Jazz style from its originators and has become one of the greatest tenor sax players of all time. At the age of 17, he played in a band led by Albert Ammons. This was followed by stints with Carroll Dickerson and Jimmy Noone. He later had the distinction of replacing Ben Webster in the bands of both Roy Eldridge and Fletcher Henderson. His musical career then led him to work with Earl Hines and Fats Waller. After spending time in Europe after World War II, Jackson returned to Chicago where he formed his band Original Jazz Stars. He can be heard on the 2001 release Yellow Fire (Delmark).

Howard Levy

Howard Levy is universally acknowledged as the world's most advanced diatonic harmonica player. He has developed a fully chromatic style on the standard 10-hole diatonic harmonica and has revolutionized the way the instrument is viewed and played. Levy is also a talented piano, flute, ocarina, mandolin, saxophone and percussion player and songwriter. He has played a wide variety of music including anything from jazz and pop to folk and classical styles. Levy has appeared on hundreds of albums and has performed with artists like Dolly Parton, Styx, Bobby McFerrin and Astral Project, John Prine, Paquito D'Rivera and many others. Levy has toured all over the world as a solo and supporting artist and he has also taught music workshops, as well as given private lessons. In 1997, he won a Grammy for playing "The Sinister Minister" with the Flecktones, a group he founded with Bela Fleck. Levy also won a Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Original Music for a Play. Tonight he will be playing with Guy's All-Star Shoe Band.