The Kitchen Sisters Present

Eddie McCoy owned a janitorial service in Oxford, North Carolina, a tobacco town of some 10,000 people. When he was badly injured in a car wreck, frustrated and unable to work, a doctor told him, “Try using your head instead of your hands.” Eddie took his passion for local history and a scavenged cassette recorder from a trash can and began taping his town. Eddie records the who, what, when, where and why of slavery times, sharecropping, the civil rights era, and of who poured the first concrete in Oxford. Produced by The Kitchen Sisters and Leda Hartman  

In 2001, a quarter-century after boxing’s celebrated “Thrilla in Manila,” Ali and Frazier were once again poised to enter the ring. But this time it was the daughters of the legendary combatants scheduled to battle at the Turning Stone Casino on the Oneida Indian Nation in upstate New York. Laila Ali, 22-year-old daughter of Muhammad Ali; and Jacquelyn Frazier-Lyde, 39-year-old daughter of Joe Frazier. The 2001 bout, broadcast on pay-per-view TV, was billed as “Ali vs. Frazier IV” —a continuation of the blood feud that fueled their fathers’ three title fights in the 1970s. A behind the scenes glimpse of the “Daughters of Destiny,” from the trash-talk of the press conferences to the sweat of the training camps.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote a poem about them. Amy Tan’s mother was serenaded by them as she lay in state. Jessica Mitford’s memorial procession was led by them. And more than 300 Chinese families a year hire the Green Street Mortuary Band to give their loved ones a proper and musical send-off through the streets of Chinatown.The band traces its roots back to 1911 and the Cathay Chinese Boys Band, the first marching group in Chinatown.

In the early 1950s, at the same time legendary record producer Sam Phillips was making recordings of the pageants and events happening in Memphis’ white community—across town, R.A. Coleman, an African American photographer, was making recordings of the black community—weddings, church choirs, nightclubs and dance halls.

A look into the life of Taylor Negron—actor, comedian, and telephone message hoarder—told through the voicemails on his machine. We produced this piece with with Taylor’s dear friend producer Valerie Velardi in 1999 as part of the Lost & Found Sound series on NPR. Taylor died on January 10, 2015. We present this story in his honor.

Before Elvis walked through the door, before Sun Studios put Memphis on the map—Sam Phillips, a young man with a tape recorder, lived by the motto, “We Record Anything, Anywhere, Anytime.” Weddings, funerals, marching bands, the Miss Memphis Pageant—Sam recorded them all—anything to keep his fledgling Memphis Recording Service open to record Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King, Little Junior, Ike Turner, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley. The raw and rocking, unrecorded music of the 1950s South.

She rose every day at dusk and rehearsed, performed, ate and drank until dawn. Then slept all day, woke up and began to create and unravel again as the sun went down. Nearly every song Edith Piaf sang came from a moment of her life on the streets of Paris. She would tell her composer and musician lovers a story, or describe a feeling or show them a gesture and they would put music and words to her pain and passion, giving her back her own musical autobiography. Charles Aznavour, Francis Lai, Georges Moustaki, Henri Contet, some of France’s great musicians and writers recall their nights with Edith Piaf. The Nights of Edith Piaf was Produced by The Kitchen Sisters in collaboration with Raquel Bitton, who hosts and translates the program.

Narrated by Andy Garcia. At the turn of the century until the 1930s in the cigar factories of Tampa and Ybor City, a well dressed man in a panama hat with a loud and beautiful voice sat atop a platform and read to the cigar workers as they rolled. These readers, known as Lectores de Tabaqueres, read Cervantes, Zola, Victor Hugo, Karl Marx, Jules Verne…. It was the voices and words of these lectores – before radio and mechanization, who informed, organized, and incited the cigar workers, who labored by hand until the 1930s, when both the rollers and readers were replaced by mechanization. A lost tradition of story and smoke.

Part 3 of the Hidden Kitchens World Trifecta with host Frances McDormand: Hidden Kitchens Russia, stories of the role of the kitchen in the downfall of the Soviet Union. 

Part 2 of the Hidden Kitchens World Trifecta with host Frances McDormand and special guests Werner Herzog, Gael Garcia Bernal and Stories of Atomic Wine and The Romance and Sex Life of the Date.

A Hidden Kitchens World Podcast Trifecta with Frances McDormand and The Kitchen Sisters. In this episode Salman Rushdie talks about his Hidden Kitchen. We travel to Sicily for The Pizza Connection—a story of fighting the mafia through food. And on to England for the seldom heard saga of a small dog bred to run in a wheel that turned a roasting spit in medieval kitchens—The Turnspit Dog: The Rise and Fall of the Vernepator Cur.

Just about anytime we walk out of The Kitchen Sisters office in San Francisco we stop and stare in the windows of City Lights bookstore, soaking in the covers of the new arrivals. A while back, we were stopped in our tracks by a book of photographs of Patti Smith – Patti staring down the camera, holding a movie camera herself. It turns out Patti wasn’t just the muse of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the Sixties, she was also muse and model for Judy Linn, an art student and budding photographer in New York. Paging through Patti Smith 1969-1976, we discovered Judy had that no only photographed Patti, she had made a little super-8 movies too, as the two young women created a world together. The movies were missing, but the soundtracks remained. Lost and found sound, we thought. Got to hear those recordings, got to meet that photographer. And we did. Fugitive Waves, Episode Number 7: Just Girls: The Hidden World of Patti Smith and Judy Linn.

The story of three pioneering river activists and the damming of wild rivers in the west. Ken Sleight, now in his late 80s, is a long time river and pack guide in southern Utah who fought the damming of Glen Canyon and filling of Lake Powell. The inspiration for Ed Abbey’s character Seldom Seen Smith in his book The Monkey Wrench Gang, Sleight is currently working on the campaign to remove Glen Canyon dam. Katie Lee, born 1919, a former Hollywood starlet, ran the Colorado through Glen Canyon long before it was dammed and in 1955 was the 175th person to run the Grand Canyon. An outspoken conservationist, singer and writer, she has spent her life fighting for rivers. Mark Dubois, co-founder of Friends of the River, Earth Day and International Rivers Network, began as a river guide who opened up rafting trips to disabled people in the 1970s. Dubois protested the damming and flooding of the Stanislaus River by chaining himself to a rock in the river as the water rose.

The Kitchen Sisters ride the nightshift with The Homobile. Homobiles is a non-commercial, volunteer, 24/7 ride service created by Lynne Breedlove for the LGBTQ+ community and others around San Francisco who feel the need for safe, dependable rides, outside traditional services. “Moes getting hoes where they needs to goes,” is their motto. Homobiles is for people who feel at risk because they don’t conform to sexual or gender norms and have been targets of rudeness or shame or violence, says Lynne. Homobiles is a network of independent drivers who pilot their own cars, a non-profit organization that caters to this underserved, and sometimes harassed community in the Bay Area. This community car service operates on donations. No one is turned away for lack of funds. Homobiles has been called “Uber for Drag Queens,” but with a mission that is social, not financial.

Shirley Temple died on February 10. 2014. Watching the parade of clips from her 1930s movies on TV that night brought back the magic she had as a child to delight and entertain. How many hours did we spend watching her tap her way through hard times and good? It was actually Shirley Temple who triggered the story you’re about to hear. The year was 1999. I had been getting manicures for awhile at a Vietnamese nail shop in San Francisco from a woman named Shirley. Over the months I had come to know her a bit, she would ask about our radio shows, I would ask about her daughter Crystal. One day as we talked it occurred to me, why is this woman named Shirley? She is from Vietnam. There are no Shirley’s there. When I asked how she came to be Shirley she told the most harrowing story of her passage to America as a young girl, her separation from her brother and mother as they escaped Vietnam by boat, how she washed ashore in America alone, sick and scared out of her mind, speaking no English. She said in Vietnam

The Kitchen Sisters  take us to a little-known, hidden corner of London — to Eel Pie Island, a tiny slice of land in the middle of the Thames. Now a small bohemian community of artists, inventors, river gypsies and boat builders, on the edge of Twickenham, Eel Pie Island has a flamboyant history that stretches from Henry VIII to The Rolling Stones. Eel Pie Island is produced by The Kitchen Sisters with Nathan Dalton, mixed by Jim McKee / The Hidden World of Kate McGarrigle, produced by the Kitchen Sisters Fugitive Waves is produced by The Kitchen Sisters in collaboration with Tom Corwin

In 1947 Tennessee Williams and his lover Pancho stepped into a recording booth at a penny arcade in New Orleans and recorded 8 cardboard discs. Lost in a trunk under a friends bed for some 50 years, The Kitchen Sisters unearth these forgotten Pennyland Recordings and tell the story of Tennessee’s fugitive waves. Fugitive Waves is produced by The Kitchen Sisters in collaboration with Tom Corwin and mixed by Jim McKee

Look around your daily life. There’s a little piece of Thomas Edison almost everywhere.  Your desk lamp. That x-ray you got when you broke your arm. The battery in your car. The movie you saw last night. The recording of this story that you’re about to hear…  Welcome to Fugitive Waves. Today, a story from our Lost & Found Sound series on NPR, The Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall and Rise of Thomas Alva Edison.   Fugitive Waves is produced by The Kitchen Sisters in collaboration with Tom Corwin and mixed by Jim McKee