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This autumn, fall for Moth Stories as we travel across the globe for our mainstages. We're excited to announce our fall lineup of storytelling shows. From New York City to Iowa City, London, Nairobi, and so many more, The Moth will be performing in a city near you, featuring a curation of true stories. The Moth mainstage shows feature five tellers who share beautiful, unbelievable, hilarious, and often powerful true stories on a common theme. Each one told reveals something new about our shared connection.
To buy your tickets or find out more about our calendar, visit themoth.org slash mainstage. We hope to see you soon. From BRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison. And in this show, meeting our heroes. Stories of the times our lives intersect with the people we most want to intersect with.
Our first story comes from Valerie Walker. She told this at a slam in New York City, where we partner with public radio station WNYC. Here's Valerie. Okay, so sometimes history has a way of speaking directly to you, to your heart. And it can leave a mark, an indelible etch in who you are that can change who you are without it.
It can manifest into a thought, an idea, or a way of being that you wouldn't have been if you hadn't had that moment. And Ruby Bridges made a mark with me. In 1960, at the age of six, Ruby Bridges desegregated a public elementary school in Louisiana all by herself. I first heard about her when my fourth grade teacher read her story out loud in class, and I was fascinated by her.
I was in awe of her bravery and the strength, like in the face of such danger. U.S. Marshals were called in to escort her safely to and from school. Her act was deemed so dangerous. And I also was struck by her determination. The other parents of the students that would have been in her class refused to let their kids come to school and be educated with a Negro. So she spent much of that first year by herself.
And I could relate because almost two decades later, I was the only black kid in my academically accelerated class. And like Ruby learned, I learned and I loved to learn and I thirsted to learn more. So it's no big surprise that I became a teacher. Thank you. Teaching young black and brown minds in Brooklyn. And even then, Ruby was with me.
because every year in my classroom hung a poster of the portrait that was painted of her by Norman Rockwell called "The Problem We All Live With." It depicted Ruby on that fateful first day, so small amongst the long legs of the marshals. I used it to springboard a discussion with my students about the difference between the spirit of the law and the letter of the law. Fast forward to June 2019.
I have moved toward social justice and now work with youth in detention. Think jail for adolescents. The hardest to reach of the hardest to reach. And I get it, because it's hard to have hope behind bars. I had attended a week-long training in a literacy program that was funded, or its foundation was in the freedom school movement.
It was a long week, intense and vibrant. I could see how the training would help my kids, but it was 12-hour days with more homework added in, and I had very little sleep, so I was feeling overwhelmed and hopeless. And it was the last day of the program, and they had a closing ceremony, and I was hangry and tired and just wanted to go home.
I sat slumped in my chair with about 3,000 other people in much the same condition. Suddenly, I thought I heard the moderator say, "Ruby Bridges." And it hit me like a jolt. I sat up in my seat, "Ruby Bridges? Excuse me, did they just say Ruby?" And so I reached down and grabbed a discarded program from the floor and I looked and I found that, oh my God, it was my Ruby Bridges. And immediately my eyes welled up with tears and it began to fall.
She came out onto the stage and she looked so young that my first thought really was, damn, black really don't crack. And then she spoke so eloquently, not of what she had endured, although she added more information. Behind the car that the U.S. Marshals used to drive Ruby to school marched every black member of her town. A beautiful image that was.
But she didn't speak more of that because sadly many of the younger kids in the audience didn't know who she was. But instead she connected to them by exalting the amazing freedoms today that we have to create change. And she challenged them to do just that as a way to pay it forward. When she was done, the moderator said that there would be time for one or two questions and I shot out of my chair like a bullet, hand raised high in the air on my tippy toes.
I was so intent, my focus so single-minded to talk to my hero that I did not even realize that I had begun to chant breathlessly, "Pick me!" until I began to notice that the people sitting around me started pointing to me and saying, "Pick her." And they picked me.
And as I walked to the mic, I was transformed back into my nine-year-old self when I'd first heard about her. And I don't remember what the first person asked or what she answered, but I do remember that when it was my turn, she looked very kindly at me.
And I thanked her for her act of defiance that directly led to my ability to graduate from an Ivy League institution. And I thanked her and told her what an inspiration she had been to my life and what role she had played in my classroom. And then I asked her the questions I had been burning to ask her since forever. Was the white woman that taught you kind to you? And did you love having the teacher all to yourself? Because I was a super nerd, and to me that sounded like Nirvana.
And she answered in the affirmative to both. But then she went on to thank me and tell me that I was an inspiration to her. Now, you know I don't remember what else happened because I passed out on the spot. However, I do remember the feeling of
I remember thinking of the kids that I work with back in Brooklyn and wanting to know how I could convey this feeling to them, this joy, this energy, this ability to speak to history and make another mark. I just knew that I was energized in that moment, no longer tired, and I was ready. Thank you.
That was Valerie Walker. Valerie says she's new to storytelling and likes learning the craft. She blames her mother, Rosemary, for sparking her imagination.
Ruby Bridges was the only student in first grade teacher Barbara Henry's class for over a year because of the intimidation of protesters. They made other black students fearful to enroll and also kept white students from attending. Barbara Henry, the only teacher to accept a black student into her class, was ostracized by the community, but along with Ruby Bridges, left her mark on history.
A postscript to this story: After the conference, Valerie told us she made it to her airport gate only to find Ruby Bridges there. She was surrounded by adults, with younger people sitting on the floor at her feet. Valerie says you could feel the admiration radiating from everyone around her. And Ruby was just talking, asking as many questions as she answered. Valerie says it was a beautiful and fitting sight.
To see a photo of Valerie with her hero, Ruby Bridges, you can visit themoth.org. Our next storyteller is singer-songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman. Beth told this story in Austin, Texas, where we were presented by the Paramount Theater. Here's Beth live at The Moth. So in 1985, my husband and my son and I picked up and moved to Nashville, Tennessee, so I could pursue my career as a songwriter.
And the first couple of years were pretty frustrating and intense and exciting. I was just running around trying to meet producers and get my songs heard and getting a lot of rejection letters and things like that. I remember talking to some of the writers and they were basically telling me that, "Don't worry, as soon as you get a song on the chart, going up the chart, they'll call you." And I thought, "Wow, that would be a lovely thing if that would happen."
And five years after moving to Nashville, I wrote a song with Don Schlitz and it got recorded by Tanya Tucker and a song called Strong Enough to Bend. It went all the way to number one and it was nominated for Song of the Year. And I was like, thank God. And I remember, you know, being really excited about that. But it's true. Then my phone rang and I got this call.
And it was one of the legends that I'd ever been exposed to, a man named Fred Foster. Fred Foster had signed Dolly Parton and Kris Kristofferson and he produced Pretty Woman and he was just a legend and an icon. And he calls me up and he goes, "Hey, this is Fred and I'm making an album with Willie Nelson."
Now, Willie has been going through some stuff in his life, and he's got a deadline, but he hadn't been writing a lot of songs. He's got a new wife and a new baby and a lot of things going on, and he just said to me the other day, find out who wrote that Strong Enough to Bend song, get them to write me one. And I'm just listening to this on the phone going, this is not happening.
Because I knew every Willie Nelson song. We had all his records. I mean, you could hold them up to the light and see through them. That's how much I knew all of his songs. And I was absolutely thrilled. And I said, when do you need it by? He said, three months. And I went, consider it done. Hang up the phone. And I immediately go into supersonic songwriter mode. I was completely focused and just freaking out.
And I remember my husband was so great during this time. He would pick up our son from school and they'd come home and I could hear him in there and then they'd kind of slide over, you know, open the door and kind of peek in right around dinner time and say, "How's it going?" And their mom, and I just, you know, I'd look at them like, "Oh, what?" And he'd go, "See that face? That's your mom's songwriter face, bud. Let's go get us another pizza."
Somehow, I don't know, I finally had to get out of the house, so I went to the Y, and I jogged around the indoor track. At the Y, because I was jogging around, I got this idea. I was like, okay, Willie Nelson, come on, what do you do? You go...
And there's no, yeah, on the road again. It's the train beat. So I thought, okay, I got it. The train beat. That's it. That's got the, I got the music part. And then I'm driving. I'm just, okay, I'm going. And I'm thinking, it's got to have a great title. It's got to be, what would Willie say right now? And then this phrase popped into my head. There's nothing I can do about it now. Perfect. And then I got really paranoid because I thought, gosh, that's such a good title. Surely somebody's going to write it out from under me before I get it done. And
Anyway, I worked and worked, and the other problem with this title was that I had to rhyme it at the end of every verse. And, you know, like hardly anything rhymes with now. I mean, I used them all up in no time. I had allow, and I had brow, and I had, I don't know, another somehow. And I was just sitting there going, God, there's got to be another ow rhyme that's not bow wow. And all of a sudden I started thinking about that lullaby that said, Bawk-a-bye.
on the treetop when the bough b-o-u-g-h and I'm thinking okay okay don't don't panic there's a way to get that at the end of this line so I can rhyme it at the with took two more hours and I mean this is one of those things where you know like I'll never forget how hard I worked to get this one little bit you know it was just like
excruciating and I finally got it and I said and I've been dreaming like a child since the cradle broke the bow and there's nothing I can do about it now and I went oh my god yeah husband comes in there and he goes he goes are you okay and I'm like yes this is going to be so good
And I just felt like I'd crossed over the mountain of songwriting. You know, I'd gotten to the top, and I knew that I had that song. And I finished the rest of it in 20 minutes. And then I went about, okay, now it has to be a demo. And I got my little four-track cassette machine out, and I played all the parts, even though I don't really play bass. I did keyboard bass, and I played guitar, and I did a little...
kind of piano thing and I even had to really work hard to get a good snare drum sound because I don't really have drums so I had like my dulcimer turned around and I was hitting the back of it with my bedroom slipper which had a really cool sound and I literally finished it
with just enough time to crawl out of my cocoon of songwriting madness and go in my slippers and my dirty hair to the airport and hand Fred this cassette. And I just remember just going, "Here!"
And I knew that I'd written a great song. I'd written the best song I'd ever written. I had absolutely no expectation that Willie was going to cut it. Because in the interim, every songwriter in Nashville had started writing songs for Willie. The word got out, you know, and I knew there was a huge amount of competition. But I just went, I just driving home from the airport. I'm like, I'm going to stop at the store. I'm going to get some chickens and a nice bottle of wine. I'm going to wash my hair, take a bath.
I made this beautiful dinner for my family. I said, "Hello, it's me. Remember me? I'm back in the world." And the phone rings. Now, I'd had a couple of glasses of wine because I was kind of celebrating, so I was a little tipsy, you know. And I said, "Oh, I'm sure that's Willie Nelson calling me to tell me they're cutting my song. So I'll be right back." And I went and picked up the phone and I went, "Hello, and it was Willie Nelson calling me to tell me they were going to cut my song."
I couldn't believe it. I was like, "Okay." I don't even know what I said to him. It was really very poor. And I just... And he goes, "Well, let me put Fred on to go over the details with you." And in eight hours, I was on an airplane and I was flying to Austin and I was driven out to the Cut and Putt Studio. Some of y'all around here know what that is. This was totally the greatest moment of my life. And, you know, Willie himself opened the door.
And I stood up and I was like five inches from Willie Nelson's face. And he goes, hey. And I was like, hi. And he goes, do you want to play some golf? And I'm like, sure. Yeah. I've never played golf. So I'm standing there and I'm swinging that club. And the ball is just staying there the whole time. And he was so kind. He came over to me and he said something that I consider to be deeply philosophical. He came over to me and he said, you know what, Beth? You don't actually want to hit the ball.
you want to kind of throw the ball with the end of the club. And I have applied that to many things in my life. Anyway, he said, "Come on, let's go in the studio and make a record." So we walk in there and there is just the band, you know?
Bobby, Willie's sister on piano, and we're talking about legends here, Paul English on drums, and I'm sitting there four feet from Willie Nelson's guitar trigger. I can touch his guitar. I'm like, oh my God, it's really happening. They play my demo, which sounded like a hit. I'm sorry, it just did. And they were like, this is a great song, and I'm going, I know! I know!
I must have been such a doofus, but I was so excited, you know. And I had that train be, there's nothing I can do about it now. I'm like, okay, wait until this band gets a hold of this song. So Willie goes, count it off, Paul. Paul counts it off. One, two, three, four. And he plays it really differently.
It wasn't bad, it was just completely different. It was like, instead of... It was like... Which is a shuffle in my world. And I thought, whoa, that can't be right. Nope, doesn't go with my strum at all. And I'm thinking, well, any minute Willie's going to stop and they're going to start over because it's raw. And they didn't stop. And he kept singing and the band was playing their hearts out. And they got to the end of it and Willie said, that was fantastic. Let's go to lunch.
And I just went, no, oh no. And he looked at me and said, is everything okay? And I went...
Yeah, yeah, that was great. That was fantastic. That was great. But, you know, there's this one little thing. You might want to just listen to that demo one more time because I wrote it all around, you know, on the road again, that whole train thing that's your signature. And I'm realizing you are in the studio telling Willie Nelson how to make a record. This can't end well. And he was looking at me with these deep,
You know, he's got really amazing eyes. He's looking sort of right through me, bemused. And he goes, "Let's ask Paul. Hey, Paul, did you hear that last one as a shuffle?" Paul's putting his coat on. He's going, "Yep, I think I did." Willie said, "That's what I thought. Let's go to lunch." So I just had to smile and be professional. And I was just sure that was not going to be a hit. I said, "I should just be grateful I've made it this far. I got to meet Willie Nelson."
And for the next couple of months, you know, we worked on the track, I played the guitar, I tried to make my guitar playing work with the shuffle. I was just like, you know, okay. And then it came out on the album and I thought, oh boy, you know. I didn't even tell anybody that I wrote this song because I knew it was, you know, not going to... And then they put it out as the next, the first single. And I, oh, this is going to be so terrible. It's going to be a flop and it's going to reflect on me.
Anyway, I, you know, couldn't believe it. It came out as a single and the interesting thing that happened is that the higher it went up on the chart, the better it sounded. Like when it got in the top 10, it was an amazing record. And I was like, yeah, I wrote that. That's right. I did. And when it went to number one, I was going around saying, yeah, I wrote that just like that. Oh, yeah. And you know,
But I was fascinated by how so many things within me changed and adapted around that and how my perception changed and how I was so sure that wasn't a hit. And then it was, and I was like, wow, what's with me? So I've learned a lesson from that, which is that going forward in my life, you know, anytime I felt 100% positive that I was absolutely sure that I knew something or
I always just reserve a little wiggle room just on the periphery, a little space for the part that I might not know, you know, that part. And that's made my life a lot better, so I have Willie to thank for that. And I'll never ever forget my favorite memory of this song was the first time I heard it on the radio. And I was driving my car and of course I reached over and cranked the volume all the way up, which is why I didn't see the stop sign.
And I got pulled over, of course, and the cop was very insistent that I turn the radio down and I kept telling him, "There's no way, I've got like one more song, one more, like two minutes on this song." He's like, "That's my song and that's me singing with Willie and I'll sing it with you and I'll show you that's me and that's my guitar playing." And he's just going, "Mm-hmm, uh-huh." You know what? I've heard a lot of them and that's the best one I ever heard. And he wrote me a ticket anyway.
For $80.46. And I thought, fine, fine. And it turned out fine because I got to pay for it with my royalties. Thank you. Beth Nielsen Chapman is a Grammy-nominated member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame. She's released 14 albums and written seven number one hits. You can find out more about Beth and her new Song School podcast at themoth.org.
We'll have more stories of meeting our heroes in just a moment when the Moth Radio Hour continues. Turn her heart of gold to steel
I've got the song of the voice inside me set to the rhythm of the week. And I've been dreaming like a child. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by PRX.
This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison. Our next story in this hour about meeting our idols comes from Danny Ortiz, who told this at our New York City Grand Slam, where we're supported by WNYC. Here's Danny, live at the Moth.
I had already scandalized my entire class the year before on our eighth grade trip to Washington, D.C., when I used my spending money not to buy a souvenir at the Smithsonian, but to buy a Mac eyeshadow. By the time that I discovered the most magical book I had ever seen, which was full of illusion and transformation and perfectly sculpted cheekbones. It was called Making Faces by a makeup artist named Kevin O'Kwan. And...
Inside were pictures of makeup he had done on every 90s famous woman from Gwyneth Paltrow to Janet Jackson to Martha Stewart as Veronica Lake. And I think that because I wasn't trying to rush my mom out of her favorite store Nordstrom where I had spotted the book, she bought it for me.
And inside, Kevin Aucoin not only gave makeup tips and techniques to create the looks, but also shared personal details about growing up gay in a town that just wasn't quite sure what to do with him, and eventually moving to New York City to pursue his dreams, just like I was going to do. And so I started experimenting on everybody, from my best friend to my grandma, even doing my dates' makeups for school dances. And I got to know...
They look good. And I got to know the woman at the prescriptives counter at that Nordstrom who would help me recreate the looks from the book if the store wasn't too busy. And on one such visit, there were signs all over the cosmetics department announcing that the following Friday, none other than Kevin O'Kwan was going to be in the store for a book signing.
I was already planning my outfit. And so, the problem was that I didn't drive, so I had to beg one of my parents to leave work early so that they would take me. And the following Friday, with my dad in his pickup truck in the parking lot, I strode into Nordstrom carrying not only Kevin O'Kwan's book, but also a letter that I had written to him explaining how inspirational I found him, in case the line was so long that we wouldn't have time to talk, or I was just too nervous to do so.
Turns out I didn't really need to worry because the line was short, which I found surprising. Because in my world, he was bigger than Madonna, and bigger than Cher, and bigger than Liza, who coincidentally are all women whose makeup he had done.
And it turns out that when I'm really nervous, I don't clam up. In fact, I don't shut up. And so when I was trying to assure him that I was in fact of sound mind and I blurted, "I know what year it is. I know who the president is."
He cracked up and he could not have been more gracious. He posed for pictures and he didn't just sign his name in my book, he actually wrote a message that I wouldn't have time to read until I was back in my dad's truck on the way to our school's football game that night. And what he wrote was, I will remember you. You are so fucking cute. Call me heartbreaker. And then it's going on. I decided that I wasn't going to hold it against him that he had used...
the F word, because he had used it to say something nice about me. And I didn't take it as flirting because he called me heartbreaker, which is the specific term you use to someone you are acknowledging is cute, but you have zero attraction to. Like mostly babies in checkout lines are heartbreakers. So to me, it was just a lovely gesture to an admittedly adorable kid who had shown up at one of his book signings. And
Kevin Aucoin was a very busy man in addition to his day job doing makeup for everybody. He also wrote a column for Allure and he was appearing on TV shows like Sex and the City, the Fashion Roadkill episode. And I didn't want to bother him by actually calling the number that he had given me. And I didn't know if he was offering some sort of mentorship or friendship or what. But I did know that I would call him when I moved to New York where I wasn't going to know anybody.
On May 7th of my senior year of high school, as I was in the midst of hearing back from all of the schools that I had applied to, my good friend Jillian approached me one day in theater arts class. It wasn't drama class. It was theater arts class. With a very concerned look on her face, and she wanted to see if I was okay. And when I didn't know why she was asking, she expressed her condolences for Kevin Okwon.
I didn't understand the joke. I just knew that it wasn't funny and I didn't know why she was telling it to me. And so in looking at her trying to figure it out, I saw that she was horrified to realize that she had just broken the news to me. He was 40 years old. And when I finally did move to New York, I did not bring Making Faces with me, not with the phone number that I couldn't dial.
I wrapped it up in paper and I placed it on the top shelf of my childhood closet. And I've been home often over the past 10 years and I've glanced up at it, but never looked at it, never taken it down. But on my most recent trip home, my dad asked me to go through all of the things in my closet because he was going to sell the house.
So I threw away years worth of greeting cards and school projects and photographs because I had to look at them not for the possibility that they had once represented but for what they actually meant to me now. And when I got to that top shelf, I knew that I needed to do the same. So I pulled the book down and I left it in its paper and I placed it in my suitcase and I brought a little bit of Kevin O'Kwan back with me.
Danny Ortiz grew up in Southern California, near where he imagines Sweet Valley High would be, but has lived in New York City long enough to always stay to the right on escalators. You can share any of these stories or others from the Moth Archive and buy tickets to Moth storytelling events through our website. You can find us on social media too. We're on Facebook and Twitter, at The Moth. ♪
Our idols are not necessarily famous. Our next story is about a hero closer to home. Elise McInerney told this story at an open mic story slam competition in Melbourne, Australia, where we partner with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ABCRN. Here's Elise. I was seven when I created my masterpiece.
What started out as the polystyrene packaging to a dinner set became the wildest imaginings of a fairy palace. I spent hours crafting tiny pieces of furniture, tiny fairy beds, tiny fairy tables, even tiny pieces of fairy cutlery. I went to bed that night with the tired satisfaction of an artist who knew they'd created something very special. The next morning, I ran in to bask in the glory of my creation, and in front of it was a sprinkling of fairy dust.
and a tiny piece of floral letter-writing paper on which, in tiny, curly, elaborate handwriting, were the words, Dear Princess, is this for us? Oh, wow, said my mum, who'd come in behind me. It looks like the fairies were really, really impressed with what you made for them. And she pulled out my pencils and we wrote a response welcoming them to their new home. And so began a wonderful friendship. I found out the fairy I was corresponding with was called Candy Tuft
And she and her best friend Rose had the very important job of flying around to all the gardens in my neighbourhood, taking care of the fairy babies that lived there. She told me all about her adventures in Fairyland, and I told her all about my adventures in Grade 2. I told her who my best friend was that week, which boy I decided could be my boyfriend that week, about the fights I was having with some of the girls in my class, and she always was there with some words of support and advice.
I'd tell her about times when my dad wouldn't come home, and my mum would cry, and she'd tell me that she knew with her fairy magic that both of my parents loved me very much and that everything was going to be okay. And having a fairy pen pal gave me massive street cred in the playground. As the chosen one, I would perch myself upon a bench and share all the latest updates from Fairyland, and I would come home with stacks of drawings and letters from all of my classmates who'd ask me to pass them on to see if they could get a fairy pen pal too.
And some kids did, and some kids didn't. And as questions started to circulate and tensions rose, Mr. Shorthouse, our grade two teacher, announced that fairies were now officially banned in grade two S. LAUGHTER
And so the fairy craze of St Mary's Primary School died as quickly as it had started, but the craze continued at home. I had pictures of the Candy Tuff Fairy all over my walls, and on my eighth birthday, I woke up to find that my polystyrene creation had been replaced with a beautiful fairy lamp that played music when you wound it up.
And so I continued correspondence with Candy Taft for quite a while, with differing levels of regularity depending on the important things that were going on in my life at that time. And during one of those lulls, my mum and her best friend planned a two-week trip away. And whether it was missing her or some kind of seed of doubt, I thought that would be a really good time to write a letter. And so I wrote my letter and I waited. And a night passed and another night.
And so I just casually mentioned to my dad that Candy Tuff was taking a little longer than usual to reply. And then the next morning, next to my fairy lamp was a piece of A4 printer paper and in blue highlighter in something that very much resembled my dad's handwriting.
was a letter from the fairy king who was just letting me know that Candy Tuft had gotten caught up in a spider web recently but like it was all going to be fine she was just going to be out of action until Saturday which coincidentally was when my mum would be back and my heart crumbled and I sobbed and I sobbed and my panic stricken father tried to comfort me but I just couldn't stop grieving for the magic and the excitement that I'd lost now that I knew that Candy Tuft was just my mum.
And so my mum came home and we didn't talk about candy tufts, but as the months passed, things got a little more stressful. My parents were fighting a lot more and my dad moved into the spare room and I didn't know how to talk to anyone about it, so I was fighting with all of my friends. And so one night I was sitting on my bed and I looked at my fairy lamp and I thought of something that I could do to make myself feel better. So I wrote a letter and the next morning there was a sprinkling of fairy dust and
a piece of floral writing paper, and in painstakingly curly handwriting, a letter addressed, Dear Princess. And I knew then that I didn't need fairy magic to know everything was going to be okay when I had a mum who loved me that much. Thank you. APPLAUSE
Elise McInerney lives in Melbourne, Australia, and has spent the last few years traveling and working with women's rights organizations in the Pacific and Asia. She attended the local mall Story Slam in Melbourne for a year before working up the courage to tell this as her first story.
Elise says, And just like Candy Tuff said, everything was okay. My mom and I are still very close and now no longer need to communicate via an imaginary fairy.
A note to all of you listening, if any of these slam stories have inspired you to want to tell your own, go to themoth.org. Find a slam near you and go put your name in the hat. More stories about encountering our idols in just a minute when the Moth Radio Hour continues. ♪♪♪
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
You're listening to the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison. Our final story in this show about encountering our heroes comes from jazz bassist Christian McBride. He first told this story for us at a special event we did in an apartment on the 57th floor of a skyscraper. He was standing in front of a baby grand piano that was made of clear plastic so as not to spoil the view. He was standing in front of a baby grand piano that was made of clear plastic so as not to spoil the view.
Christian is a cigar lover and he told this story with an unlit cigar in his hand. For courage, he said. Here's Christian McBride still clutching a cigar, but this time at Cooper Union in New York City. Thank you very much. I'm here to share a story with you about a man who was a jazz legend, someone I had the great honor and privilege to work with very early in my career. That's the late, great trumpet player Freddie Hubbard. Freddie. Freddie.
I was born and raised in Philadelphia and growing up at, thank you again, jazz musicians of my generation, our number one hero, the person who we all wanted to play with more than anyone else was Art Blakey. We wanted to be a member of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. Every great jazz musician since the 50s played with Art Blakey from Freddie Hubbard,
Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan, Wynton Marsalis, Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Wayne Shorter, they all played with Art Blakey. So as a teenager, I had my wish list of people I wanted to play with. Art Blakey was unquestionably number one. Number two was up for grabs.
But that was answered the first time I saw Freddie Hubbard perform live. It was in the summer of 1987 in Philly. And I had grown up going to a lot of rhythm and blues shows, a lot of gospel shows, so I knew what that intensity, that fervor, that drama was in the music and the stage art of these great soul and gospel performers.
I never quite got that with a jazz performance. Too many times with jazz concerts you leave going, "I think I liked it." Because it got you here, but not here all the time. First time I saw Freddie Hubbard it was the jazz equivalent of James Brown. He might as well have gotten on his knees with his trumpet and had a guy come and put a cape on his back.
But that excitement, every time he would take a trumpet solo, the whole audience would just start screaming like anything you could ever imagine. Freddie Hubbard quickly became number two on my list. I moved here to New York in 1989, and as fate would have it,
Some of my closest friends, my quickest friends that I made, were a beautiful drummer named Carl Allen, pianist named Benny Green, and a saxophonist named Don Braden. Just by chance, they were all in Freddie Hubbard's band at that time. Art Blakey had just changed to what was to become his final band. So I missed the opportunity to play with Art Blakey. I got to see him, but I never got to play with him. So at that point, I started looking at number two.
And I would always very, at least I thought I was being sly and subtle. I would ask Carl, I said, Carl, who plays bass with Freddie when his regular bass player can't make it? Carl started looking at me like, I got you. I said, yeah, well, who does the gig? He said, well, whoever's available. Huh, great. A few months later would go by, hey, Benny,
Freddie doesn't need a sub yet, does he? Don't worry, we got you covered. Every time I would mention Freddie Hubbard, Don, Benny, Carl, they wouldn't give up anything. Finally, Carl calls me. I'm a student at Juilliard at this point. And Carl calls me up and he says, "Listen, McBride, I have a very bizarre gig for you. It's in Columbia, South Carolina, and we're going to be the house rhythm section for the Budweiser Jazz Explosion."
And if you ever saw that in the late 80s and early 90s, it was rarely jazz. He says, "We're going to play behind Noel Poynter, Gene Karn, Lonnie Liston Smith, and Freddie." That's all I heard. Freddie.
This was probably my intro, you know, to see if Freddie would like me well enough to maybe call me to sub for his regular bass player. So we go down to Columbia, South Carolina. The gig was at a place, I kid you not, called The Plantation. They built a stage in front of a big white house. I'm not lying to you. And we played this gig.
Freddie Hubbard was very much an alpha male. He was a man with a huge spirit, a very macho kind of guy, almost had like a mob boss mentality. Just to be a good musician wasn't enough. You also had to be a man. And so Freddie was very dramatic. He didn't make the rehearsal, didn't make the sound check, just showed up for the gig.
So I'm in the dressing room, I'm in the trailer actually, and I'm just shaking in my shoes and Carl says, "Hey Freddie, this is Christian McBride." I was 17 at the time and Freddie just kind of looks at me and says, "Yeah, nice to meet you." We go on stage and we play and to hear his horn up close like that, I almost had a heart attack. I thought, "Oh my God, I'm playing with Freddie Hubbard. I can't believe this." Gig is over.
I'm thinking to myself, "God, I hope I made some sort of impression on Freddie. Something." Freddie turns around after the gig and says, "Nice meeting you." Gets in his limo, goes back to the hotel. I went, "Guess he didn't dig it." But I know I'll see him again. I know I'll see him again. I knew all of Freddie's music, got together with Carl and Benny, and would always try to ask what songs they were playing so if I ever got the call, I'd be ready. Three months later, I get the call.
Carl says, "McBride, we need a bass player for Freddie's gig in Chicago. You ready?" I went, "You have no idea how ready I am." We fly to Chicago. The gig was at the South Shore Jazz Festival. And there's Don and Benny and Carl there to support me. And I don't expect Freddie to remember me from South Carolina, because obviously that, I made no impression. Freddie comes in the dressing room with about
Five people, big entourage, coat draped over his back, sunglasses, guy carrying his trumpet. He comes in and greet the band members loudly. "Hey, what's up?" Gives everybody a hug. He gets to me. I don't have sunglasses, I just have these. He looks at me and he goes, "This must be the bass player." So I'm sitting there like, "Yes?"
Benny Green bless his heart, he comes over and says, "Freddy, this is Christian McBride, man, you're gonna love him, man. I swear, he knows every song you've ever written. He is so ready, he's gonna knock you out. You just wait." Freddy pulls his glasses halfway down and looks at me and says, "You know my shit, huh?" "Yes, sir, Mr. Hubbard. I know every song you've ever written. I'm ready." He pushes his glasses back up and says, "We'll see." We go out, play the gig.
I am not lying to you. Freddie did not acknowledge me one bit on this concert. Freddie would go, during the saxophone solo, Freddie would stand there and he'd kind of watch Don and go, "Yeah, yeah, you sound good, baby." Piano solo, he'd turn and look at Benny. Go and pat him on the back after the solo's over. Bass solo, he leaves the stage. Now, I'm trying to follow him to see where he's going.
Maybe he doesn't want to give me too much dap. He's just going to go behind the stage and watch me. He doesn't want to make me nervous. I follow him. He lights up a cigarette, starts talking to the sound guy, paying no attention to me at all. I thought, oh, wow, this is bad. He comes back. We play about three more songs. No acknowledgement. Doesn't even look at me. Doesn't introduce me. No nothing. I said, okay, this is...
In this case, I'm guessing it's probably "Strike 2" in the end. I'm not going to get a third opportunity. Last song of the night comes, I take another big long bass solo. Freddie, he's out in the audience doing something. My heart is down here. I'm thinking, well, at least I can tell my friends I made one gig with Freddie Hubbard.
You know, whatever. So he comes back, we're vamping out, and Freddie now is introducing the band. Said, "Ladies and gentlemen, let's hear it for our saxophone player, Mr. Don Braden." "Mr. Benny Green, our pianist. Our drummer and straw boss, Mr. Carl Allen." Looks and goes. "This bass player here, he just turned 18 years old a couple months ago. He don't think I remember, but we played together in South Carolina a few months ago."
And he's playing his ass off tonight. How about it for my new bass player, Mr. Christian McBride? And I could have won $10 million. I'm on stage just like, and it was so sweet because Benny and Don and Carl, they also kind of openly went, yes. After the gig was over, I was like, thanks, Mr. Hubbard. I appreciate it. He gives me a big hug. And our next gig was in Detroit. He was like, I'll see you in Detroit.
And for the next three years, I had the most amazing time being in this band. And Freddie passed away three years ago, so God bless Freddie Hubbard. And thank you for listening. That was Christian McBride. He has played with James Brown, Sting, Herbie Hancock, Laurie Anderson, to name a few.
His most recent CD is The Movement Revisited, a musical portrait of four icons. Remember, if you have a story to tell us, you can pitch us right on our site, themoth.org, or by calling 877-799-MOTH. Just tell us your story in about two minutes. We get a lot of our moth stories from the pitch line.
You can share any of these stories or others from the Moth Archive and buy tickets to Moth storytelling events through our website. There are Moth events year-round. You can find a show near you and come out and tell a story. You can find us on social media, too. We're on Facebook and Twitter, at The Moth. That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you get to meet your heroes and that you end up with a good story about it.
The stories in this hour were directed by Catherine Burns, Jennifer Hickson, and Meg Bowles. The rest of the Moss directorial staff includes Sarah Haberman and Sarah Austin-Ginness. Production support from Emily Couch. Moss stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Percussion, Willie Nelson, Derek Fechter, Medesky, Martin, and Wood, and Christian McBride.
You can find links to all the music we use at our website. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.
