A Prairie Home Companion from American Public Media

Special Guests
Saturday, August 23, 2008

Suzy Bogguss

Growing up in Aledo, Illinois, Suzy Bogguss loved music. She joined the church choir, played the piano and drums, and bought her first 12-string with the money she earned from babysitting. Now, more than a dozen albums later, and awards ranging from the Academy of Country Music's Top New Female Vocalist of 1989 to a Horizon Award given by the Country Music Association, Suzy has won acclaim in both country and contemporary music circles. Her new CD is Sweet Danger (Loyal Dutchess Records).

Sam Bush

Sam Bush was just 11 when he got his first mandolin. By the time he was 17, he had won the title of National Junior Fiddle Champion for three years in a row and had made his recording debut, Poor Richard's Almanac. Two years later, in 1971, he founded New Grass Revival, a band that pushed bluegrass into new territory by incorporating styles like rock, pop, reggae and jazz. His latest solo recording is Laps In Seven (Sugar Hill Records).

Ramblin' Jack Elliott

At 9, Ramblin' Jack Elliott took in a Madison Square Garden rodeo. At 15, he ran away from home and got a $2-a-day job with Colonel Jim Eskew's Rodeo. A cowboy taught him a few guitar chords, and a rodeo clown showed him how to play the banjo. By the time the kid returned home, the die was cast. Now, some six decades later, Jack Elliott has rambled to every corner of the United States and most of Europe. In the 1950s, Woody Guthrie took Jack under his wing. The two traversed the country, and after Woody's death, Jack continued his wandering ways. He hung out with Jack Kerouac, played for England's Princess Margaret, performed in Greenwich Village clubs, and toured with Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review. He has inspired musicians from Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney to Lou Reed and Bruce Springsteen. In 1998, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. His latest CD is I Stand Alone (Anti- Records).

The Hopeful Gospel Quartet

As the Hopeful Gospel Quartet (Garrison Keillor, Robin and Linda Williams, and Carol Elizabeth Jones) explains it, the group "began its career backstage at Prairie Home shows, when we stood waiting for the balloon to go up and sang to pass the time and found out that we all like gospel songs and that they sound wonderful in a stairwell." Now, countless gigs (and a couple of personnel changes) later, they are still finding great four-part harmonies in stairwells and on stages across the country.

Singing the music they love—be it bluegrass, folk, old—time, or acoustic country—Robin and Linda Williams have carved out a three—decade career that has taken them from Carnegie Hall to the Hollywood Bowl. They've have written dozens of terrific songs, ones that have been covered by the likes of Emmylou Harris, Tom T. Hall, Tim & Mollie O'Brien, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Kathy Mattea, and The Seldom Scene. Robin and Linda's latest CDs are Deeper Waters and The First Christmas Gift, both on Red House Records.

Carol Elizabeth Jones hails from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She has made her mark as a singer of traditional mountain music and as a writer of new songs in the old tradition. She has recorded several acclaimed albums of original material. Ridin' Along (Yodel-Ay-Hee Records), released in 2005, is a collection of classic country and bluegrass duets with Laurel Bliss.

Howard Levy

Howard Levy is perhaps best known for developing a fully chromatic harmonica style on a standard 10-hole diatonic instrument. Anyone who has ever picked up a little Hohner Marine Band can appreciate the feat. He was a founding member of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, and he has performed with musicians from Dolly Parton to Styx. His recent recordings include Cappuccino, with violinist Fox Fehling (Balkan Samba Records).

The Milwaukee Mandolin Orchestra

The Milwaukee Mandolin Orchestra was formed in 1900 as the Bonne Amie Musical Circle (BAMC). At the turn of the 20th century, the mandolin—which made its way to America with immigrants from Italy—had won the hearts of music lovers throughout the United States. The BAMC—the oldest organization of its kind in the U.S. and one of the oldest in the world—was the first of many mandolin orchestras to spring up around the country. These days, the Milwaukee Mandolin Orchestra plays popular music from the period between 1895 and 1920. They use arrangements published in those early decades specifically for mandolin orchestra. A few years ago, the group recorded a CD titled Mandolins in the Moonlight. A new album is in the works and scheduled for release in November. Members of the Milwaukee Mandolin Orchestra: (first mandolin) Paul Ruppa, Linda Binder, Mikhail Litvin; (second mandolin) Dave Moynihan, Frank Ullenberg, Shirlee Henningsen, Lisa Lyons, Helene Parker, Bill Murphy; (tenor mandola) Tom Schwark, Tom Gaudynski; (mando—cello) Bill Foley; (guitar) Bill Rickards, Tim Detzer, Jeff Binder; (mando—bass) Bruce O'Neill; (flute) Maribeth Sacho.

Peter Ostroushko

Peter Ostroushko's first recording session was an uncredited mandolin set on Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks. He toured on a regular basis with Robin and Linda Williams, Norman Blake and the Rising Fawn Ensemble, and Chet Atkins. He also performed Jethro Burns, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Johnny Gimble, Greg Brown, John Hartford, Taj Mahal and others. His compositions have been performed by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Minnesota Sinfonia, the Rochester (Minnesota) Symphony Orchestra, the Des Moines Symphony and the Kremlin Chamber Orchestra. Ken Burns used music from Peter's recording Heart of the Heartland for his PBS documentary Lewis & Clark, and Twin Cities Public Television commissioned Peter to provide music for their nationally distributed programs The Dakota Conflict and Grant Wood's America. Peter's latest CD is Postcards: Travels with a Great American Radio Show (Red House Records), songs he composed while traveling with A Prairie Home Companion.

Alice Peacock

Singer/songwriter Alice Peacock, who grew up in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, comes from a long line of performers: Her parents were both actors, her grandmother, Grita Albrecht Gnass, was a cabaret composer, and her grandfather, Fritz Gnass, was an actor who worked with Bertolt Brecht and appeared in Fritz Lang's M. Young Alice made up songs on the family's piano—a sign of things to come. While a theater major at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, Alice took an interest in jazz, blues, folk and bluegrass. After college, she sang backup with a San Francisco R&B band, before moving to Chicago to pursue a solo career. She has recorded three albums—Real Day, Alice Peacock and her brand-new CD, Who I Am (Universal). Reading has always been one of Alice's passions. There was no television in the house when she was a kid ("My mother was convinced it would turn our brains to JELL-O"), so Alice devoured books and practically lived at the library. She says it's why she became a writer, and why she and her husband and a friend founded the not-for-profit organization Rock for Reading, which raises money for literacy and reading programs in Chicago.

Jearlyn Steele

Jearlyn Steele grew up in Indiana and first sang with her siblings (as The Steele Children) in churches, concert halls and on radio and TV. After she left home and moved to Minnesota, one by one the rest of the Steele kids followed. They started singing together again as The Steeles. Now music is the family business. Jearlyn 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. Steele Praising Hymn is her most recent CD.