Black Cracker Presents: Tales of...Season 1
Tales of Times Square: The Tapes
This podcast presents voices of strippers, old fighters, burly-q men, peep show girls, hustlers, cops and the priest who tried to save them.
By Josh Alan Friedman
Season 1: Tales of…Times Square: The Tapes
An audio record of Times Square in the 1970s and '80s, drawn from Josh Alan Friedman's original cassette interviews.
Between 1977 and 1986, Friedman reported from 42nd Street for Screw, The Soho Weekly News, High Times and New York magazine, and the tapes he made became the book Tales of Times Square (Delacorte Press, 1986), still considered the definitive account of the strip before Disney and the Times Square redevelopment cleared it. Nothing in this season is reenacted or narrated from memory. These are the voices themselves, restored from deteriorating cassettes.
Episodes include Pee Wee Marquette, the caustic emcee of the jazz club Birdland through the '40s and '50s; Izzy Grove, one of the last surviving Guys and Dolls characters; and Bob Anthony, Frank Sinatra's boyhood friend and first bodyguard, who ended up running the back office of the Melody Burlesk.
Start anywhere. Each episode stands alone.
FROM SELTZER BOTTLES TO IRRITABLE BOWEL SYNDROME. Irv Charnoff and Jess Mack were the last remaining vaudeville/burlesque booking agents in 1984. They mourned the decline of wholesome American show-biz, as it devolved into pornography.
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So long, Sucker. Old Times Square was at the brink of extinction and my job was done. The finale of this podcast series.
View Episode DetailsJosh’s dead heroes. Interviews, memories and short stories. First up, A 20-year-old Josh auditions for Beatlemania in 1977. Coming September 20.
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But almost doesn’t count. When Josh auditioned for Beatlemania in 1977, he was just one hopeful in the callbacks for George. Thousands of Beatle manqués descended from the hinterlands to audition for the Broadway show. There were only four parts, but no shortage of broken dreams.
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THE IRVING BERLIN OF ROCK ‘N’ ROLL. We worked on a book in which he would tell off the world, to be called Kiss My Big Black Ass. It remained unfinished. But Jerry Leiber blew my mind. And he was one bitch of a chef.
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