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.
UGLY PEOPLE GOT NO REASON TO LIVE As a new, 22-year-old writer for The SoHo News in 1978, I was sent out to interview Lou Reed. He gave the nastiest interview of his life. Then demanded it be printed verbatim. Episode Playlist Lou Reed: Growing Up in Public Transformer Little Richard Lanham: On Your Radio…
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A HUSTLER WITH EXQUISITE TASTE Joel Dorn was one of the last record producers standing from the old music biz. When the new industry pushed him out in the 1980s, he bounced back with the creation of CD box sets. “Don’t give me that ‘Hey, baby’ shit,” he said. “I invented it.” Episode Playlist Joel…
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WHEN ADVENTURE MAGAZINES BEGAT MOVIES My father hired Mario Puzo as associate editor at Magazine Management at 655 Madison Avenue in 1960. While working there, Puzo would write his great novel about Hell’s Kitchen, The Fortunate Pilgrim. And then at age 49, break out with the most successful novel in history—The Godfather. Episode Links The…
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A COMPOSER PREPARES Cy Coleman wrote the scores to a dozen legendary Broadway musicals. But he was a jazz pianist first, and virtually invented the sophisticated culture of New York cocktail jazz in the 1950s. Episode Links The Best Is Yet To Come Witchcraft and Lenny You Fascinate Me So
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A BASS PLAYER PREPARES Jack Bruce reinvented the bass guitar and wrote spectacular songs. Cream lasted a mere three years. But he remained a working musician first and disregarded the pretense of rock stardom. Episode Links Cream Box set Harmony Row Songs For A Tailor Jack Bruce in mid-career Classically trained in cello
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