The Kitchen Sisters Present

The Kitchen Sisters & Radiotopia•www.kitchensisters.org

The Kitchen Sisters Present… Stories from the b-side of history. Lost recordings, hidden worlds, people possessed by a sound, a vision, a mission. Deeply layered stories, lush with interviews, field recordings and music. From powerhouse NPR producers The Kitchen Sisters (The Keepers, Hidden Kitchens, The Hidden World of Girls, The Sonic Memorial Project, Lost & Found Sound, and Fugitive Waves). "The Kitchen Sisters have done some of best radio stories ever broadcast" —Ira Glass. The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced in by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) in collaboration with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell and mixed by Jim McKee. A proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX. Learn more at radiotopia.fm.

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Episodes

14 – Taylor Negron: Portrait of an Artist as an Answering Machine

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.

Jan 27, 2015•18 min

13 – Sam Phillips and the Early Years of the Memphis Recording Service: We Record Anything, Anywhere, Anytime

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 1950...

Jan 13, 2015•29 min

The Nights of Edith Piaf

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, Geo...

Dec 16, 2014•29 min•Ep. 12

11 – Cigar Stories: El Lector—He Who Reads

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 labo...

Nov 25, 2014•25 min

10 – Dissident Kitchens

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.

Nov 13, 2014•15 min

9 – Atomic Wine

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.

Oct 30, 2014•17 min

The Pizza Connection + Turnspit Dogs

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.

Oct 14, 2014•19 min

Just Girls: The Hidden World of Patti Smith and Judy Linn

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 photograp...

Sep 03, 2014•12 min

6 – Cry Me A River: A story of three pioneering river activists and the damming of wild rivers in the west

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 lon...

Jul 31, 2014•32 min

5 – The Making of the Homobile: A Story of Transportation, Civil Rights & Glitter (and further stories of making…)

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 Ly...

Jun 24, 2014•20 min

4 – The French Manicure – The Long Shadow of Shirley Temple

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 kno...

May 15, 2014•22 min

3 – Eel Pie Island

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 Kitche...

Apr 12, 2014•18 min

2 – Tennessee Williams: The Pennyland Recordings

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

Feb 27, 2014•20 min

1 – The Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall and Rise of Thomas Alva Edison

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 an...

Feb 04, 2014•20 min

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