Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson is the co-director of a new documentary about the music of Saturday Night Live over the last 50 years. It's called Ladies & Gentlemen and it's streaming on Peacock. We'll also hear from author and scholar Imani Perry. Her new book Black In Blues explores the significance of the color blue in Black life, from the indigo trade to the birth of blues music.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the focus of Questlove's documentary on SNL?
We'll also hear from author and scholar Imani Perry. Her new book, Black and Blues, explores the significance of blue and black life, from the indigo trade to the birth of blues music. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.
Chapter 2: How did Imani Perry connect Black history to blues music?
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This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. As part of Saturday Night Live's 50th anniversary celebration this year, there's a new documentary highlighting the musical guests and music comedy sketches that the show has featured over the decades. It's called Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of SNL Music. It was co-directed by our guest, Grammy-winning musician and Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker,
Amir Questlove Thompson. He's the co-founder and drummer of the hip-hop band The Roots. It's the house band for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Before we get into Questlove's conversation, our TV critic David Bianculli offers us his review of the film and a four-part documentary series that's also part of the 50th anniversary celebration.
Both the film and the series are now streaming on Peacock.
The two new Saturday Night Live documentaries come from filmmakers who bring their own interests and perspectives. NBC's Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of SNL Music comes from Amir Questlove-Thompson, who's both a musician and a music historian.
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Chapter 3: What unique insights does Questlove offer about SNL's music guests?
Beyonce! Oh my gosh, I'm so psyched to do this new video with you.
Me too. But you know, there's this one thing. I haven't met the other dancers. Are we going to have time to rehearse?
Oh, look, don't worry about the other dancers, B-Town. I handpicked them myself. These guys are pros.
I'm like, does she know how funny this is going to be? Like how beloved this whole moment will be? So I said, bring me the leotard. So I put the leotard and the heels and the hose on and everything. And I put a robe on. And I walked in and I knocked on her door. I walked in and I threw the robe down and I put my hands on my hips and she was like, no, you didn't.
Morgan Neville's SNL documentary series is broken into four episodes, each one looking at a different aspect of the show and its history. The first one looks at the original audition tapes by many of the people who tried out for SNL, with those same people watching and reacting to their younger selves. Some scream, some cringe, some cry, some, like Pete Davidson, laugh.
I'm not good at sex, you know, because I wasn't raised in a brothel. I'm 20. Like, I don't... I'm not good at it. I don't understand why my girlfriend gets mad. She's like, that's it? I'm like, yeah, like... What did you expect? Like, you know any good guitar players that have been playing guitar for a year?
Another episode spends a week observing how an installment of SNL is created by following the process from start to finish, mostly from the point of view of the writers. A third episode gets even more laser-focused, spending an hour on a single sketch. And it's a brilliant choice, coming from the midway point of the show's 50-year run.
It's the sketch Recording Session, featuring guest star Christopher Walken and cast members Will Ferrell, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Parnell, and others. You may know it better by the name most associated with it, More Cowbell. It's a sketch Walken and Farrell elevated after the dress rehearsal by going all out in character.
The sketch was set during the recording session for Blue Oyster Cult's 1970s hit Don't Fear the Reaper. Farrell plays a very loud cowbell, and Walken portrays the track's very enthusiastic music producer. Jimmy Fallon remembers.
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Chapter 4: What impact did Deborah Harry have on hip-hop's presence on SNL?
Chapter 5: What were some memorable performances from SNL's 50-year history?
So I assume that what they're lip syncing to is a live performance. That's not the record.
There's some people, you know what, there's a few artists that are smart enough that will maybe do eight specific takes of a particular performance so that you're under the impression that they are, you know, what's up Detroit?
How y'all doing?
You know, like they'll go that far. Like I know artists that will do like 10 or 20 versions of a song to sort of customize or not get caught out there. But I think just in the name of presenting a perfect package, that's what people go through.
You're talking about in concert right now, right?
Yeah, in concert or most, you know, I'm on television. I'll say that 90% of... You know, it's very rare for a person to just go 100% live. Like, I'll say that on The Tonight Show, 85% to 90% of what you see is a perfected delivery. Like, in their minds, it's like, I must sell this song to sell my album.
And so they don't want to leave risk or to chance any, you know, any flub that would make you say, nope, that note was flat, so I'm not supporting that group. So... Yeah, that's kind of where we are now in entertainment.
Well, you still have one mystery for me, which is how do singers manage to sing when they're doing this elaborate workout with their choreography when you're going to be out of breath?
Exactly. So pretty much it's just part of the course. It's always been that way. But when I go to SNL... Yeah, I'm entertained by what I see, but I'm not sitting in the audience just to watch Saturday Night Live. Like, for me, the best part of the show is what happens in the commercials.
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Chapter 6: How has SNL influenced American entertainment culture?
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You know, sometimes there are ideas that make you reconsider the way you look at the world around you. My guest today, scholar Imani Perry, does that with her new book, Black and Blues, How a Color Tells the Story of My People. Perry weaves the gravitational pull of blue in black life, both literally and metaphorically, in sound and in color.
From the creation of dyed indigo cloths in West Africa that were traded for human life in the 16th century to the American art form of blues music and sartorial choices. Coretta Scott King wore blue on her wedding day. Fannie Lou Hamer wore a blue dress to testify before Congress.
These examples could be seen as mere coincidences, but in this book, Perry weaves a compelling argument for why they are not. Imani Perry is the Henry A. Morris Jr. and Elizabeth W. Morris Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.
She's also the author of several books and has published numerous articles on law, cultural studies, and African American studies, including Looking for Lorraine, which is a biography of of the playwright Lorraine Hansberry, and Breathe, A Letter to My Sons. Imani Perry, welcome back to Fresh Air, and thank you so much for this fascinating book. Oh, thank you for having me.
Can I have you read a passage, page 21, last paragraph? The truth is this.
Black as such began in nobly. through conquering eyes. Writing that makes me wince because I hold my black tightly, proudly even. Honesty requires a great deal of discomfort. But here's the truth. We didn't start out black, nor did we choose it first.
black was a hard-earned love but through it all the blue blues the certainty of the brilliant sky deep water and melancholy have never left us i can attest you might be thinking by now that this blue thing i'm talking about is mere device a literary trick to move through historic events. And if blue weren't a conjure color, that might have been true.
But for real, the blue in black is nothing less than truth before trope. Everybody loves blue. It is human as can be. But everybody doesn't love black. Many have hated it, and that is inhumane. If you don't already, I will make you love it with my blues song.
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Chapter 7: What risks have artists taken during their performances on SNL?
It's a beautiful example for me of actually the combination of African Americans being American, becoming a people in the context of the United States, and also having these connections that are like arteries to the rest of the black world. And so, you know, there are references in the book to that. And so the blue note really is like that. And it is something that...
you are attuned to, you can hear. It operates intuitively, I think, for listeners of American music. And in some ways, that is the whole globe because American music has journeyed everywhere, right? Even if you don't have its formal definition or even if you can't describe it. And there's something to that as well in this story, right?
There is a presence and a power that isn't necessarily fully articulated that comes through this particular history. So, you know, the music...
really does it's not even just it's not just metaphorical it functions as a kind of representation or an example of the fact of of being black and particularly being black American I want to play an early reference that you write about it's Louis Armstrong's 1951 recording of what did I do to be so black and blue let's listen to a little
Cold empty bed Spring's hard as lead Feel like old Ned Wished I was dead What did I do To be so black and blue Even the mouse Ran from my house They laugh at you And scorn you too What did I do To be so black and blue I'm white inside But that don't help my case. Cause I can't hide what is in my face. How would it end? That was Louis Armstrong's 1951
What did I do to be so black and blue? It was really fun to go down memory lane and listen to these old pieces, I'll say. But what did you learn about how Armstrong really turned this song, which was several decades old by the time he sang it, into really a direct commentary for the time?
Yeah, so the original version of the song actually took place in a black musical, and it was sung by a dark-skinned black woman who was actually talking about colorism in the black community and the kind of preference for lighter-skinned women. And the transition is beautiful, but what Armstrong does is it's this example of the sort of multi-layered references that exist in both black and blue.
And it's a song that bridges blues and jazz as well, so it has this blues phrasing and sensibility, but then with the horns and the scatting, you hear the kind of growing complexity of jazz. And we have black and blue in the sense of being bruised. And you have blues in the sense of melancholy. And of course, the general sense of sort of the blues that exist along with blackness.
And in Armstrong's personal life. You have this struggle around being a person who is actually sent into the world as an advocate of the United States in the context of the burgeoning Cold War and as a kind of figure that is supposed to be an example of the glory of the United States.
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