Bluegrass Musician Earl Scruggs

DATE October 16, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Earl Scruggs talks about his life and bluegrass music
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest, Earl Scruggs, is one of the most important players in the history of
bluegrass. He perfected the three-finger style of banjo picking that became
standard in bluegrass. Scruggs joined Bill Monroe's band in 1945, the band
that virtually invented bluegrass. In 1948, Scruggs and guitar player Lester
Flatt left Monroe to form their own group. Flatt and Scruggs became one of
the most popular acts in country music. Their hit "Foggy Mountain Breakdown"
became even more famous when it was used on the soundtrack of the movie
"Bonnie and Clyde." They also crossed over by playing the theme for the TV
series "The Beverly Hillbillies." In 1969, Earl Scruggs formed his own band,
The Earl Scruggs Revue, with his sons Gary and Randy. Scruggs has been
inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, and this year he got his own
star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Along with Doc Watson and Ricky Skaggs, Earl Scruggs is featured on the new CD
"The Three Pickers." Let's start with a track. This is "Feast Here Tonight."

(Soundbite of "Feast Here Tonight")

Mr. DOC WATSON, Mr. RICKY SKAGGS and Mr. EARL SCRUGGS: (Singing) There's a
rabbit in the log and I ain't got my dog. How will I get him? I know. I'll
get me a briar and I'll it twist in his hair, that way I'll get him, I know.

Unidentified Man #1: (Singing) I know...

Mr. WATSON, Mr. SKAGGS and Mr. SCRUGGS: (Singing) I know...

Unidentified Man #1: (Singing) I know...

Mr. WATSON, Mr. SKAGGS and Mr. SCRUGGS: (Singing) I surely know, that way
I'll get him, I know. I'll get me a briar and I'll twist it in his hair, and
that way I'll get him, I know.

Unidentified Man #2: Come on, Earl!

(Soundbite of banjo and guitar)

Mr. WATSON, Mr. SKAGGS and Mr. SCRUGGS: (Singing) I'll get me a briar and
I'll...

GROSS: Earl Scruggs, welcome to FRESH AIR.

Mr. SCRUGGS: Thank you.

GROSS: Now you grew up during the Depression. Your father died when you were
four. How did your family make a living when he died?

Mr. SCRUGGS: He was a farmer also, so I stayed on the farm until I got old
enough get a job in the factory. And on the farm you worked from daylight
till dark and in the factory you worked eight hours, so I thought that was
great.

GROSS: Right. Who did you hear play banjo before you started playing
yourself? I mean, I've read that there was no radio in your house when you
were growing up.

Mr. SCRUGGS: No.

GROSS: So who did you hear? How did you hear them?

Mr. SCRUGGS: We had a banjo in our home. My father played old-style banjo,
so I had a banjo there, and my brother Horace had a guitar, and so we just
started playing just old tunes that we'd heard before. And then a little
later we'd got a Sears, Roebuck radio and started listening to some--mainly
the "Grand Ole Opry" and some programs like that. But as far as the style of
banjo that I play, nobody had played it before me, and the only thing that is
different from my playing and what I'd heard is that I had a three-finger roll
that has later been called Scruggs style, but it seemed to help me to play
slow tunes as well as up-tempo tunes. Most of the banjo playing in the old
days were hoedown-type tunes, up-tempo tunes.

GROSS: So could you put into words what your style of picking is, the
three-finger style?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Well, it's just what you hear. It involves--it's a little
misleading to say three fingers. It's actually two fingers, middle and index
finger, and your thumb, and it's kind of--some of the rolls will go, if you
number your thumb one, the index two and your middle finger three, it's like a
one-two-three roll, over and over. But to do a tune, it's like trying to say
every word with the exact same amount of syllables in the word. You've got to
alternate the rolls some to make the tune flow.

GROSS: Since you didn't have a radio when you were very young and you didn't
have a record player...

Mr. SCRUGGS: Yeah.

GROSS: ...and so you were just, like, hearing, you know, musicians who may
have been, you know, living where you were, how did you come up with your
style of playing, with your style of picking?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Oh, we--I guess the old days, you have one main room you'd take
company to when they come that you don't use every day, so I was in what we
called the front room with a banjo one day, and I was in the mode where if
somebody had asked me what was I thinking about--I bet you've been in that
mode yourself--you couldn't tell them what you was thinking about. You was
just kind of sitting there, and I was picking the banjo, and I was playing a
tune that I still play today called "Reuben." And when I realized what I was
doing, I was playing the way that I play now. It was like having a dream and
waking up, you was actually playing the tune. So that was the mode I was in
and what I was doing when I learned exactly what I'm doing today.

GROSS: So did you think, like, `Oh, my God, this is a breakthrough,' or did
you just not make, you know, much of it at the moment?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Well, my brother said I came out of the room, saying, `I got it,
I got it.' So I didn't know what I had, but he said that's what I was saying.
But anyway I played the--to play "Reuben," it's a tune in a different key from
standard tuning, and I played that one tune the rest of the week and my oldest
brother, Junie, came over on Saturday, he came walking up the road and then I
got out on the edge of the porch and started playing "Reuben" and as he
started to go in the house, he said, `Is that all you can play?' And that
shocked the fire out of me. Because I hadn't retuned the banjo to another key
and tried another tune.

GROSS: Now you joined Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys in 1945. This was the
group that basically created the sound that's become known as bluegrass. When
you joined the band, could you hear that something different was happening
there?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Oh, yeah. He had--nobody'd had the style of banjo in the group,
and he just did the top tunes that would make the banjo sound good. So it was
a good shot to start with 'cause he had the Grand Ole Opry exposure and that
gave me a lot of exposure when I went to work with him. And it got immediate
attention because nobody had heard that kind of a banjo picking. So it caught
on real fast with the public.

GROSS: Why don't we hear one of your recordings with Bill Monroe from 1947.
This is one of the famous ones, "Blue Grass Breakdown" with Bill Monroe on
mandolin; Lester Flatt, guitar; my guest, Earl Scruggs, banjo, recorded in
1947.

(Soundbite of "Blue Grass Breakdown")

GROSS: Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys recorded in 1947 with my guest Earl
Scruggs on banjo.

You're considered one of the first banjo players to be a serious musician and
to not be a comic with a banjo. A lot of banjo players before you...

Mr. SCRUGGS: Yeah.

GROSS: ...would tell comic monologues, or sing comic songs with banjo
accompaniment. And in fact, there's...

Mr. SCRUGGS: Yeah.

GROSS: ...a story that may be apocryphal that "Uncle" Dave Macon, the banjo
player, said after hearing you the first time, `He ain't one damn bit funny.'

Mr. SCRUGGS: Yeah.

GROSS: Did you realize that you were a departure from that, a departure from
the kind of comic tradition of banjo playing?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Well, I used to try to study and see if there's some kind of
routine I want to do as being a comedian because everybody--player, and there
were very few, they all were comedians. And kind of used the banjo as a prop
to get into their comedy routine. But all my interest was just in picking.
Not only tunes but songs behind the singers. Not only in the lead part but
doing a backup. You know what I mean by backup? Playing an alto or something
to support the singer. So that's where my interest was was as a lead picker
with the banjo but also a supporter with the banjo.

GROSS: What was life on the road like with Bill Monroe?

Mr. SCRUGGS: It was terrible. If I hadn't have been 21 years old and full of
energy, had just came off of a farm and a thread mill where I could--you know,
I thought to do an hour show on the road was a pushover compared to eight
hours in the mill or from sunup to sundown on the farm. And music was my
love, so to get into a group that had good singing and playing, and Bill had
that, especially good singing, and had a good fiddle player, so I went in, and
it just seemed to make a full band, especially for that style of music. That
was long before anybody had tagged it as bluegrass. It was just country music
but it really made an outstanding group, for that day and time, especially.

GROSS: But why did you hate traveling so much with the band?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Why did I hate it? It was because we did it 24 hours a day
practically. Back then there was only two-lane highways and he traveled in a
'41 Chevrolet car and we'd leave after the Opry on Saturday night and maybe
work down south Georgia was about as far as you could get for a Sunday
afternoon show. And on down to Miami someplace for Monday or Tuesday and
worked till about Thursday and started working back to Nashville. So it was
just--you'd only be in Nashville long enough to do the Grand Ole Opry and to
get a change of clothes and pack your suitcase and head out again. I was
single at the time so I was living in a hotel and had one suitcase and so
it--I had to really work on it to keep clean clothes for every night doing a
show on the road.

GROSS: My guest is Earl Scruggs. He's featured on the new CD "The Three
Pickers," along with Ricky Skaggs and Doc Watson. We'll talk more after a
break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is banjo player Earl Scruggs, one of the pioneers of bluegrass
music. When we left off we were talking about playing with Bill Monroe and
the Bluegrass Boys in the mid-'40s.

Now it was in the Bill Monroe band that you met guitarist Lester Flatt, who
became your long...

Mr. SCRUGGS: Yeah.

GROSS: ...musical partner. What did--what were your first impressions of
him, when you first heard him play and sing?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Well, I liked his singing and his playing fit in good with that
style of music, and we palled around together. You know, in a group, you kind
of find one or two guys that you like better than the other part of the group
or the other may be interested in things that you don't care for, so anyway
Lester and I got along with each other and roomed together and so we did that
for two and a half, three years, and that's when really we never had talked
about starting a show ourselves, but I had made up my mind that I was going to
just get off the road. So I worked two weeks' notice and when I started to
leave that night Lester turned in his notice. And while he was working his
notice, he gave me a call over in North Carolina and said, `Why don't we get
on the radio station over close to your home and try it as a group ourselves.'
So that's how we got started with the Foggy Mountain Boys.

GROSS: Now you started recording, you and Lester Flatt started recording in I
think it was 1948 and for the first couple of years you recorded for Mercury
Records.

Mr. SCRUGGS: Yeah.

GROSS: During that period, you recorded what became one of your best-known
songs, "Foggy Mountain Breakdown."

Mr. SCRUGGS: Yeah.

GROSS: Is there a story behind the song?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Well, that's just a simple song that I probably wrote in 10 or
15 minutes and it--and I've written several other tunes and had some pretty
big hits, but nothing like "Foggy Mountain Breakdown." You'll have a ringer,
as I call it, one that might make a hit with just about everybody, and so
"Foggy Mountain Breakdown" was one of them and it got a lot of support like in
the film "Bonnie and Clyde," the movie. They used it as a chase song. And
that supported that tune a lot. So the tune did a lot for not only me, but it
did a lot for a situation like that in a movie like "Bonnie and Clyde."

GROSS: How did "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" end up being used in the movie
"Bonnie and Clyde"?

Mr. SCRUGGS: He called and wanted me to write a tune for...

GROSS: Who called?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Warren Beatty, who wrote and starred in the show. And so he
called back, I think I'm quoting this exactly the way it was, in a few days,
and he said he didn't want me to write anything because he'd found a tune that
he thought fit what he wanted. See, we recorded that tune before they got
what I say good equipment. I mean, just plain everyday microphones in a radio
station and no to start making tunes sound fuller or something. It was just
raw material. By that I mean it didn't have no echo chamber or anything on
it. So that's what Warren Beatty heard in that tune, so he didn't want to try
to record another tune because he thought that the equipment that they had
then was probably--would give it a more modern tune than what we had recorded,
which turned out to be "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," and the sound that we got
then.

GROSS: So you're saying that he used the original recording and he didn't
want you to re-record it?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Yeah. He took the Mercury recording and that was it.

GROSS: Why don't we hear that original recording of "Foggy Mountain
Breakdown," and this is Lester Flatt and my guest Earl Scruggs.

(Soundbite of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown")

GROSS: The original recording of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," which was later
used in "Bonnie and Clyde," featuring Lester Flatt on guitar, Earl Scruggs on
banjo. My guest is Earl Scruggs. And his latest CD is called "Three Pickers"
and it features him, Doc Watson and Ricky Skaggs performing together.

Now you mentioned what--when you got off the road with Bill Monroe what you
wanted to do was a radio show and first you did one in Bristol. Then in 1953
you ended up doing a radio show in Nashville at a station there. And...

Mr. SCRUGGS: WSM, yeah.

GROSS: Yeah, and it was, I think, a 15-minute program every morning at 5:45,
which is pretty darn early to have to perform.

Mr. SCRUGGS: Yeah, that--we'd come in 2:00 and go to bed and get up at 4 to
try to get awake enough to do a live radio program. But that was your bread
and butter in those days. By that, I mean, we made really our living by the
road work that we did. We'd go out and do shows and charge admission and get
a percentage of that and also some flat rate, too, but that just put us to
working in bigger auditoriums and bigger crowds.

GROSS: The show was sponsored by Martha White Flour.

Mr. SCRUGGS: Yeah.

GROSS: And I understand the jingle for that became pretty well-known and you
were even requested to play it at some of your concerts. I've never heard it.
How did it go?

Mr. SCRUGGS: (Singing) Now you bake right with Martha White, goodness
gracious, good and light, Martha White. For the finest biscuits, cakes and
pies, get Martha White self-rising flour--(speaking) then the group
says--(singing) the one all-purpose flour--get Martha White self-rising flour.
It's got Hot Rise.

Hot Rise was actually a baking soda that went into the bread. It would--it
makes bread rise; you know that yourself being a lady.

GROSS: (Laughs)

Mr. SCRUGGS: So--but I thought it was pretty cleverly written.

GROSS: So did you get, like, a lifetime supply of free Martha White flour?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Oh, no. Oh, no. They would have probably have done that, but I
got a lifetime of work with Martha White. It was a great company. And they
helped us just more than I could total up, I guess.

GROSS: How long did that show last?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Oh, I wish my wife was in here; she could tell you better than
me. But it lasted for a lot of years and then we went into television.
Television came in in about 1955, so they put us--we started transcribing the
morning show, radio show, and we'd sleep late but we'd have to do a live
television show at a different city each night. And the reason I say a live
radio--television, that was before they had cameras to film you with. So we'd
have to--we'd leave 4:00 Monday morning to go to down in Georgia. Had two
cities in Georgia, Atlanta being one, and, let's see, Wednesday was Florence,
South Carolina, and Thursday was Huntington, West Virginia; and Friday was
Jackson, Tennessee, down in west Tennessee. And Saturday back at
WSM-Television and do the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday night. And if we weren't
working on Sunday, we were free until 4:00 Monday morning, and we started that
2,500-mile tour again.

GROSS: Earl Scruggs plays with Doc Watson and Ricky Skaggs on the new CD "The
Three Pickers." We'll talk more in the second half of the show. I'm Terry
Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Announcements)

GROSS: Coming up, a poet becomes a substitute English teacher and learns
she's not one of those cool teachers you see in movies and TV who get through
to the kids no one has gotten through to before. Elizabeth Gold has written a
memoir about teaching called "Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity." And we
continue our conversation with Earl Scruggs.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with bluegrass pioneer Earl
Scruggs. He plays with Doc Watson and Ricky Skaggs on the new CD "The Three
Pickers." Scruggs created the three-finger style of picking that became
standard in bluegrass. In 1948 he and guitarist Lester Flatt left Bill
Monroe's band to form their own group, Flatt & Scruggs, which became one of
the most popular acts in country music and had the crossover hit "Foggy
Mountain Breakdown."

Well, I want to ask you about another crossover hit that you had, and this of
course was the theme for "The Beverly Hillbillies," "The Ballad of Jed
Clampett"...

Mr. SCRUGGS: Yeah.

GROSS: ...which got you like the number-one record on the country music
charts, a crossover to the pop charts. And, of course, it was on TV every
week for years. And it's still on a lot in reruns. How were you asked to
write the theme for "The Beverly Hillbillies"?

Mr. SCRUGGS: I didn't write the theme.

GROSS: I mean, to record the theme, yeah.

Mr. SCRUGGS: Yeah. Well, I wish my wife was in here because she does all my
business things and she could tell you exactly how it came about. But we had
done a show...

GROSS: Wait, let me stop you. She's in the control room listening to the
interview, right?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Yeah.

GROSS: Why don't we invite her in and she can tell us the story about the
phone call. How's that?

Mr. SCRUGGS: She's on her way in.

GROSS: OK, great.

Mr. SCRUGGS: So just hold that question. She'll be in, in a little bit.
Now, Louise, say something, see if she...

Mrs. LOUISE SCRUGGS: Hello?

GROSS: Ah, that's much better.

Mrs. SCRUGGS: One, two, three.

GROSS: Great.

Mr. SCRUGGS: Now I hear you in my headphones, too.

Mrs. SCRUGGS: OK.

GROSS: OK. OK. Is this Louise Scruggs?

Mrs. SCRUGGS: Yes, it is.

GROSS: OK. Well, can you tell us the story about the phone call inviting
your husband to record the theme for "The Beverly Hillbillies"?

Mrs. SCRUGGS: Well, Mr. Paul Henning, who wrote and directed "The Beverly
Hillbillies" show, called of course before it went on the air. He had written
a show and he called and wanted Earl and Lester to do the theme music. And I
turned it down at first because of the word "Beverly Hillbillies." I didn't
know what connotation that was going to take with country people and didn't
want to offend them. So he said, `Well, the premise of this show is that the
Beverly Hillbillies are going to always be outsmarting the city slickers.'

So anyway, we talked about that two or three times, and he ended up sending
the pilot to Nashville for us to see. And after we looked at it, we thought,
`OK, that looks all right.' So they went ahead and recorded it, and while
they were doing the theme music, I said to Perry Botkin, who was the music
director at the time, `I think that would make a great single.' And so I
called Mr. Henning and I said, `What do you think about them recording that
for a single for Columbia Records?' and he said, `I think it's a great idea.'
So I spoke to their A&R director, Mr. Don Law, who was doing their records at
the time, and so they recorded it three weeks later. And then on--it was
released in October, and December 8th, 1962, it hit number one in Billboard.

GROSS: On the country chart?

Mrs. SCRUGGS: Yeah, right. And then it was up in the pop chart, too.

GROSS: Louise Scruggs, you handled the business end of Flatt & Scruggs. How
did the theme song from "The Beverly Hillbillies" affect business for the
band?

Mrs. SCRUGGS: Well, I started getting--after the show started airing, I
started getting calls for them for dates and concerts. And within about a
month I had them booked up for a year in advance.

GROSS: OK.

Mrs. SCRUGGS: So it was tremendous.

GROSS: Well, Louise--yeah.

Mrs. SCRUGGS: And it eventually ended up being shown in 76 countries around
the world. So what it did actually insofar as spreading country music, it
helped country music and it helped, well, the banjo in particular because Earl
gets mail from people all over the world.

Mr. SCRUGGS: What will happen, too, I might interject here, that if you do
something that makes a big hit, it's going to help all country music in
general. So I think it really helped everybody that was on the road because
it made more people aware of country music. And you're not going to get it
all yourself. So it put a lot of people on the road to making--playing bigger
dates.

GROSS: Well, Louise Scruggs, thank you for stopping in for part of the
interview. We really appreciate it.

Earl Scruggs, you're still there?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Yes.

GROSS: Great. So you and Lester Flatt do not sing on the theme at all,
right?

Mr. SCRUGGS: No, we just did the music part.

GROSS: Right. Good. OK.

Mr. SCRUGGS: Jerry Scroggins, a West Coast person, did the vocal on the theme
that you hear on "The Beverly Hillbillies." We did record it for Columbia
Records, but that was later.

GROSS: And when you recorded it, you sang it?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Lester did, mm-hmm.

GROSS: And why don't we hear the theme from "The Beverly Hillbillies" with
Lester Flatt and my guest, Earl Scruggs.

(Soundbite of theme from "The Beverly Hillbillies")

Mr. LESTER FLATT: (Singing) Come and listen to my story about a man named
Jed, poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed. And then one day he was
shootin' at some food and up through the ground come a-bubblin' crude. Oil,
that is. Black gold. Texas tea. Well, the first thing you know...

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is banjo player Earl Scruggs.

Now why did you and Lester Flatt split up?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Well, the biggest thing for me--see, I had three boys coming
along, Gary, Randy, and Steve was my youngest boy. And they were good
musicians. And as a matter of fact, Randy had been recording with Lester and
me as far as the guitar work ever since he was seven or eight years old. So I
just had a band in my home, and one of the biggest thrills a person will ever
get is to go on stage with his children, especially if they're good musicians.
And I'll have to brag on them even though they are my boys. I thought some of
the best musicians I'd ever played with because they had grown up listening to
me. They knew everything that I did and could play it, plus they knew younger
people's material, new material. And still they kind of made it sound like
they was a Scruggs boy when they played it. So it was a great outlet for me
to start working with my boys.

GROSS: Did you stay close with Lester Flatt? And what kind of terms were you
on when he died in 1979?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Oh, we were friends, I just didn't see him that much because I
was on the road so much in the direction we were going. And, of course, he
kept a show himself and he worked as long as he was able to work, really.
Yeah. So I always--and still today, though he's been dead for several years,
I still have a warm spot in my heart and cherish the days that we worked and
traveled together.

GROSS: There is a Gibson banjo that is named for you. It's called the Earl.

Mr. SCRUGGS: Yeah.

GROSS: It has a portrait of you...

Mr. SCRUGGS: Yeah.

GROSS: ...on it, and your signature. Is it a lot of fun to have, you know, a
banjo that's dedicated to you, that bears your name and likeness?

Mr. SCRUGGS: It is. As a matter of fact, they're making five different
models with my name on it, from the plain banjo, which they're all basically
the same banjo. What runs up the cost is like gold plating and engraving and
things of that nature.

GROSS: Do you play one of those Gibsons or do you play something else?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Well, yeah, I play a Gibson banjo.

GROSS: Is it an Earl?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Well, basically it is. I'm playing a banjo that I've been
playing since back in the late '40s, I guess, early '50s. But it's still
basically--they're still making basically the same banjo they were making way
back there.

GROSS: When you say you're still playing the same banjo, do you mean it's
literally the same instrument or that it's the same model?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Yeah. Same banjo.

GROSS: Same banjo.

Mr. SCRUGGS: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: So do you have to get it like redone occasionally?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Well, the only thing you're going to wear out on the banjo is
the head. The head used to be skin but now it's plastic. They wear out on
you, and the strings; outside of that, you could play one for a thousand years
unless you got it broke in some way.

GROSS: Now what do you love so much about this banjo? Is it just a
sentimental attachment or is there something special about the sound?

Mr. SCRUGGS: Well, it produces the sound that my ear's looking for. Maybe
I've just gotten used to it, but I like the sound that I get out of that
particular banjo. I feel at home with it when I take it out of the case and
start--you know, when you start with another instrument, they all have their
feel and playing the same instrument, you know what it's going to feel like
when you take it out of the case and start to perform.

GROSS: Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. SCRUGGS: Been my pleasure.

GROSS: Earl Scruggs plays with Doc Watson and Ricky Skaggs on the new CD "The
Three Pickers." Here's a track from the CD "Earl Scruggs and Friends"
produced in 2001 by his son Randy Scruggs. This is a duet with John Fogerty,
who used to be the leader of Credence Clearwater Revival.

(Soundbite of song)

Mr. JOHN FOGERTY: (Singing) When I was young and in my prime I left my home
in Caroline. Now all I do is sit and pine for all those folks I left behind.
I got the Blue Ridge Mountain blues and I stand right here to say, my grip is
packed to travel and I'm back to ramble through my Blue Ridge far away.

GROSS: Coming up, the misadventures of a writer who tried teaching high
school English.

This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Elizabeth Gold discusses her book "Brief Intervals of
Horrible Sanity"
TERRY GROSS, host:

It's not easy teaching high school. If you want to know just how difficult it
can be, consider Elizabeth Gold's experience. She was a poet who had taught
writing to college students and young children when she accepted a position at
a New York City public high school, taking over for a ninth-grade English
teacher who had left in the winter. It was in an immigrant middle-class and
working-class neighborhood. Gold didn't get a chance to teach much
literature; she was too busy trying to create order in her chaotic classroom.

After hanging on for the remainder of the school year, Gold left high school
teaching. She's written a new memoir about her experience called "Brief
Intervals of Horrible Sanity." That's a play on Edgar Allan Poe's line, `I
became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.'

Here's a brief reading from Gold's book.

Ms. ELIZABETH GOLD (Author, "Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity"): `Be a
general,' the principal has told me. And so in the spirit of Lee or
Washington or maybe Douglas MacArthur, I very kindly yet firmly asked Ricardo
to stop drinking that soda. He takes a nice refreshing gulp. And this is
boring, I think to myself. Here he is being a teen-ager, challenging me.
Couldn't he be less predictable and quote Latin instead? And now Ricardo
Silva and I are having the last discussion in the world I want to be having,
about why he won't put away that soda. And both of us are getting more
heated, and everyone in the class is taking bets. Will he or won't he stop
drinking that soda? And the sound is bubbling up. It is time for me to take
control. I grab the can out of his hand.

`Give me my soda.' `No. At the end of class.' `Give me my soda.' `No. At
the end of class.' `Give me my soda.' `No.' `Give me my soda.' `No.'
`Soda. Soda. Soda. Give me my soda.' `No.' `Give this man his soda.'
`No.' `You owe me money. You took my soda. Give me my soda.' `Give this
man his soda.' `No.' `Give this man his soda.' `No.' `Give this man his
soda.' `I will give this boy his soda at the end of class.' `Ooh,' says the
class. And now, of course, this boy has transformed me into the kind of adult
I can't stand, the kind of adult who cares about soda. Not that there isn't
this little voice inside me whispering, `Oh, come on. Let him have his soda.
Drink up, Ricardo. Drink up. Work on those cavities. Flaunt that manhood.'
But give into that voice and I'm lost. Our struggle is not about soda anyway;
it's about the semiotics of soda. That's what it is, and I know that's what
it is. It's not the soda but what the soda means.

GROSS: That's Elizabeth Gold reading from her new book, "Brief Intervals of
Horrible Sanity," and it's about her short teaching experience.

So you have just read us one scene about what your typical day was like, the
fight about the soda...

Ms. GOLD: Yes.

GROSS: ...which is really a fight about who's in control here. Is it the
student or the teacher? What were some of the other typical things that you
had to demonstrate your authority with? Or try anyway?

Ms. GOLD: Well, let me see. I mean, first of all, simply getting people to
be quiet in the classroom, getting people to follow tasks, getting people to
take tests, getting people to turn to the right page, getting people to write
assignments. Basically anything. I mean, basically there would be a small
group of students who wanted to follow me, and it soon became a political
issue about whether you were going to listen to me or not. So basically I
couldn't get students to do almost anything.

GROSS: When a more experienced teacher would walk in and take control of your
class, what could they do that you either didn't know how or didn't want to
do?

Ms. GOLD: Well, there were times when teachers would come in and they would
replace me. First of all, I think they were more known by the students. I
was a sub. And these students knew these teachers. Frankly they were men;
they were big men; they had low voices. Probably they were less emotional
than I was. I think that's a big part of it also. And also I just think
there is something about somebody walking into a room that creates a primal,
`Oh, my God, there's Dad. There's the disciplinarian. There's the power
giver.' There's something about that act of somebody walking into the room
and interrupting that creates this kind of instinctual terror in students and
in people, I guess. And I just didn't have whatever it was. I just didn't
have that, and I was a sub.

GROSS: Since it was so hard to create enough order in the classroom to
actually teach a class, when on some occasions you were able to have order in
the classroom, did you have a lesson ready to teach?

Ms. GOLD: Well, not always. I mean, this is--sometimes what happened is that
you get so used to things not working out that the moments when things would
become silent, I was often really surprised because also in order to think
realistically you need quiet. So if the noise is bubbling up and then it
becomes quiet for a minute, you kind of need about five minutes just to kind
of collect your thoughts. And sometimes things would quiet down and sometimes
I did have a lesson that for some reason just kind of clicked. And I would
almost have this feeling that I was racing against the clock, that if I didn't
say incredibly interesting or challenging or just the right thing in just the
right number of seconds, things would explode again. So every once in a while
things clicked but I never really knew why.

GROSS: What's an example of something that clicked?

Ms. GOLD: Well, here's an example of something where things were getting
incredibly out of hand and I began shrieking, `Heard melodies are sweet but
those unheard are sweeter.' And for some weird reason, just hearing a line of
John Keats just silenced the class. They've never heard anything so
wonderful. Someone said, `This is cool.' And I had five minutes to talk abut
the concept of romantic poetry. And for about five minutes, I was able to do
it. And then it just began roaring again. So we had a very, very small
lesson in romantic poetry. So that's one.

GROSS: Now the high school that you were teaching in, in New York, was a
progressive school.

Ms. GOLD: Yes.

GROSS: It was part of the public school system, but it was part of an
experiment within the public school system. What were the more experimental
parts of the program?

Ms. GOLD: Well, I mean, this was a school that was based on the idea--it was
like a lot of these schools. There was a lot of parent input. It was
considered a very democratic school. Everybody was called by their first
names. You know, principals, teachers, students. There was a big stress put
on actually by the principal. The principal had this big belief in this idea
that if you cared about the students enough, if you loved them enough, if you
built up their self-esteem enough, that they would learn. There was also this
idea of team teaching, that we were supposed to be team teaching. But to be
quite frank with you I didn't see any team teaching. There were also a lot of
kind of peace counseling classes. And there was also a component where they
went out into the community, which basically I think a lot of them did things
like clerical work. But there was this component. So that was some of the
components that I guess were considered more progressive, more experimental.

GROSS: How did you like being called by your first name?

Ms. GOLD: Actually I hated it. I think that first of all the weird thing is
when I talked to the children's parents, we called each other by our last
names. So it would be Mr., Mrs., Miss, and I think that's because the truth
is that sometimes what you really need is a little bit of distance, a little
bit of formality. And just--you know, somebody does have to be boss, quite
frankly. Somebody does. And frankly I think a lot of the kids actually
wanted to call me by my last name because despite everything, they really
didn't feel--they didn't need me to be their friend. So for me it doesn't
create warmth and closeness. That's not what does it. And a little formality
is not a bad thing.

GROSS: My guest is Elizabeth Gold. Her new memoir is called "Brief Intervals
of Horrible Sanity." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest Elizabeth Gold has written a memoir about being a midyear
replacement teacher at a public high school in Queens, New York. The book is
called "Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity."

Did you feel like this was the first time where people were going to decide
whether to respect you or not based on a really different standard than you'd
ever faced before? Because I think when you're a teacher in front of, like, a
junior high or a high school class where it just goes with the territory that
they're going to be challenging you verbally, physically, and if you're not
used to that kind of physical challenge or that kind of like verbal challenge,
and if you're a kind of introspective person...

Ms. GOLD: Yeah.

GROSS: ...and not a kind of physical person, you can feel really lost.

Ms. GOLD: Yeah, I did. And I think one is that when you become a teacher,
especially in a situation like this, you suddenly are--you're like a stand-in
for the adult world. You are an emblem, and a lot of things which you are
supposed to represent, you can't even recognize. I mean, part of my problem
is I was supposed to lead these students to this magical future, and, you
know, I was a sub, I was broke, I was, as I describe myself, a semi-published
poet, and I didn't really know what my own future was going to be. And that's
a very strange position to be this kind of role model who had no inner life at
all, no desires, nothing, just kind of a model of good behavior. That felt
extremely alien to me.

GROSS: Now you taught high school, hated it.

Ms. GOLD: Right, yes.

GROSS: You taught college before teaching high school as an adjunct.

Ms. GOLD: Yeah. Yeah.

GROSS: You're continuing to do that. You like that a lot. You've also
taught like eight-year-olds in elementary school.

Ms. GOLD: Yeah.

GROSS: Taught them poetry. How'd you like that? And...

Ms. GOLD: Oh, that's great.

GROSS: Uh-huh. What's great about it?

Ms. GOLD: Well, one thing about teaching poetry to eight-year-olds is--you
know, every eight-year-old is a genius. It kind of goes downhill from there.
And you come in, you're not doing the disciplining, you are a treat.

GROSS: You're the special poetry teacher.

Ms. GOLD: You're the special poet. Yeah, you're sent in. You come in once a
week. And kids, they love writing poetry. They love poetry. I mean, this is
one of the awful things about sort of going through the system, is you see
kind of--you don't know where a lot of that natural imagination and
creativity--where they go. And it was--I mean, it's not--you know, you don't
make a huge living at it, but it's really inspiring because you learn a lot
about human creativity and they write poems and we enjoy it and it's fun. And
I would always try to read--we'd always do like just a little piece of, like,
an adult poem so they wouldn't be--you know, it would be a little bit of
Wallace Stevens or a little bit of Lorca. And so I think that was part of the
reason I thought I could teach high school, foolishly enough.

GROSS: You know, a lot of teachers, I think, go through a very similar hazing
as the one that you did. And it almost is a hazing. It's a long testing
period to see can this teacher take it, are they worthy of my respect, can
they gain control of this class. And, you know, a lot of teachers go through
this hellish experience and they stick it through and then things quiet down,
at least a bit...

Ms. GOLD: Yeah.

GROSS: ...or things quiet down and things go well after that, depending.
But, you know, after your substitute months were over, you left, and so you
never kind of got to the point where you could have confidence that you could
overcome these kinds of obstacles. So when you see high school-age students
now, do you automatically think to yourself, `Oh, they'd hate me. Oh, if we
were in a room together, they would just insult me, they'd throw something at
me and they would threaten me, they'd be obnoxious to me'? In other words,
has it left you with this fear that, well, this is the way young people are,
and young people don't get along with you?

Ms. GOLD: No, not at all. Actually I have a lot of empathy. And one of the
weird things about being the teacher, some of my favorite students were
students I couldn't control. Sometimes people act up because they're bored,
sometimes because they're doing the wrong thing, sometimes they need a year or
two. And one of the strange things--sometimes I would have a student in class
who would be really wild but you could see by the look in his or her eyes that
the student was not mean, didn't really have anything against me. And then
I'd run into the student kind of on the street and the student would be really
nice to me.

So it was almost like there was something about being in that room that
brought out the worst in a lot of people. There were actually a number of
people in that room who I think if--maybe if I had been there from the
beginning, maybe if I were a different kind of person, maybe if certain people
weren't in the room--you know, some students were bullies--who I think would
quite--they would have liked to have learned something. They would have liked
to have done something. And I felt a lot of empathy for these students
because I felt like we were asking them to do a lot and to kind of ignore that
bully in the corner. That's kind of a hard thing for an adult to do, and it's
kind of a lot to ask a 14- or a 15-year-old to do it. So as a matter of fact
I walked out with more empathy. But don't ask me to teach high school again.

GROSS: Elizabeth Gold, thank you very much for talking with us.

Ms. GOLD: Thank you.

GROSS: Elizabeth Gold's new memoir is called "Brief Intervals of Horrible
Sanity."

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
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