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[0:01] Jerrell L. Henderson: The beauty of the musical, Raisin, is that the people who created it, the folks who created it, were really interested in not just maintaining the integrity of the original story and the characters, but expanding it. So that that integrity can be shared with the entire African American community of the Southside of Chicago. You know, while focusing on this one family, but still seeing all these other personalities and how they react and interrelate. I mean, it's a slice of America. And in a similar way that a company is a slice of America. In a similar way that hair is a slice of America. You know what I mean? These are the stories that we tell about ourselves and it's how we know who we are.

[0:42] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Welcome everybody to A Musical Theatre Podcast where we discuss the cultural and emotional impact of some of our favorite musicals in theater history. My name is Jeffrey Scott Parsons. You can call me Jeff. Today we are discussing the best musical Tony winner from 1974, Raisin, which is of course a musical version of the famous play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. You may remember me mentioning the show briefly during our episode on The Wiz earlier this year. I'm really grateful to be covering it because quite frankly, it gave me the chance to get to know it better. It's a show that doesn't get produced very often. And what makes me even more grateful is who's here to chat about it with me. He is a theater director, puppeteer, African-American theater historian and archivist. Everybody, please welcome Jerrell L. Henderson.

[1:46] Jerrell L. Henderson: Jarrell, thank you so much.

[1:50] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I usually have to do my own applause. So I really appreciate the fact that you applauded for me.

[1:57] Jerrell L. Henderson: If I can do anything. Just also know that everyone applauds with me. Right, guys?

[2:03] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Now, I say all the time on the show that as a young boy, musical theater became like the art form or the filter through which I began to understand and relate to the world. And I know I don't know you that well. So correct me if I'm totally off here. But it seems to me like maybe we have that in common. More specifically, it seems musical theater has become one of the ways for you to relate to and understand your African-American heritage. Is that kind of fair?

[2:32] Jerrell L. Henderson: Without question. I just didn't know it was happening until it had happened. And that's what our 30s are for.

[2:39] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Amen to that.

[2:42] Jerrell L. Henderson: No, no one told me. And my family, I grew up in South Philadelphia before it was gentrified. And it's still pretty segregated. But when I grew up in the late 80s, early 90s, it was 99.9% African-American and like 1% Southeast Asian. So we were all people of color. We were all so-called BIPOC folk then. But, yeah, no. But my family didn't go to theater. We went to church and to the movies. And so The Wizard of Oz led to The Wiz. My mom, my mom's favorite musical is Grease. Grease is not my favorite musical. Grease is the worst. So I know Grease by heart. Or we play film. But it was just a part of our lives that was accepted, if that makes sense. Because we didn't go to see theater, I knew I liked theater, but I didn't see myself as part of the actual community. Because no one told me that all you needed to do was listen to watch musicals and listen to show tunes in order to be a theater person.

[3:53] Jerrell L. Henderson: And you're part of the tribe.

[3:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Exactly. Yeah.

[3:56] Jerrell L. Henderson: Like it wasn't until much later. So, yeah, but no, it absolutely has become a way for me to kind of walk more clearly inside of who I am and to become the best adult that I can be in the context of what it means to be an African-American.

[4:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Wow. So talk to me about when all those pieces started coming together. Was it in your education? Was it college?

[4:16] Jerrell L. Henderson: It was undergrad. And I don't talk about my undergrad experience a lot because it really was not terribly enjoyable. I learned a lot, but they were all really hard lessons. And the school that I went to was incredibly racist.

[4:34] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, gosh, Dan, I'm sorry.

[4:36] Jerrell L. Henderson: Well, I mean, it's just kind of the way of the world. And it was a ginormous culture shock. However, in the questions in terms of, like, which students are valued, which students are not valued, I was left alone. Because many of the professors who were in that training program just didn't see much value in me. But because they left me alone and I was hungry to know more, I began to research on my own. And, you know, I went to a number one state university, which had a really great library. And I thought to myself, you like musical theater. You say you want to be a musical theater performer. But there are a lot of musicals that I knew of. I just had never heard. You know, you're kind of you know, when you're growing up, you're exposed to what you're exposed to.

You do the best you can. And so I went to the library and I tried to listen to as many albums that I had, musical theater cast albums that I had heard of but had just never listened to before. So we're talking Cabaret. We're talking Sophisticated Ladies. We're talking Ain't Misbehavin'. We're talking the original Broadway cast of Jesus Christ Superstar with Ben Vereen. And that album blew my mind.

[5:50] Jerrell L. Henderson: I had never heard. I still remember listening to, you know, there's the Overture. And the Overture leads into Heaven on Their Minds. And I remember sitting in the library listening to Ben Vereen perform Heaven on Their Minds. And I had never heard anything like that. And I was raised in a church. And he was saying things that you did not say about Jesus. Fair enough. I was like, whoa. And it was rock music, and he's hitting these high notes. Jesus! These crazy high notes. And this is 100% true. I ripped, after the song was over, I ripped the headphones off of my head and threw them across the room like they were on fire. And I just kind of sat there trying to make sense of what I had just heard.

[6:39] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's amazing.

[6:40] Jerrell L. Henderson: And then I went across the room, picked up the headphones, plugged them back in to the vinyl, because this was on vinyl at the time. Oh, wow. And listened to it again. Let's try this again. And have been hooked ever since. Like, that was my first intro. And then speaking of vinyl, you have this incredible collection. First of all, tell us about your collection, because I'm just so kind of enamored by it.

[7:04] Jerrell L. Henderson: Sure. Around the pandemic, I started collecting musical theater albums from the African diaspora. So the first album that I bought in that genre, because at first I had gotten this record player as a gift from my husband. It was the first birthday present he ever bought me when we were dating. And he bought me this record player, and we never spoke about it. He just sensed it, and it changed my life, clearly. I mean, it got me here with you. And the first album he bought me was Ella in Berlin. And I was like, this guy's a keeper. And so that afternoon, I ordered Lena Horne's The Lady and Her Music, because that's one of my favorite albums of all time. And I listen to it more than anyone born, you know, towards the end of the 20th century probably should.

But I really like it, and it speaks to me directly. Around the pandemic, when theater shut down, and I was beginning to search for community, you know, I had a few run-ins with some other theatrical personalities at that time online. And I was just kind of searching for community. And, you know, my husband, Ricky Jinchao, my husband, he recommended that I find, you know, if you don't see the community that you like, maybe you should create your own. And I went, well, that's not a bad idea. And so I started intentionally collecting. I said, oh, you know what I'm going to do? I want to think about creating an Instagram page that just revolves around Black musical theater. You know, and of course, I was thinking, you know, Raisin, The Wiz, Yubi.

But it occurred to me that Black theater goes beyond African-American in relation to, like, North America. You know what I mean? When you think of what it means to be Black, is it just, you know, those of us who were born in Philadelphia or Milwaukee or Chicago, but, you know, that's work that's being done in Brazil. That's work that's being done in, you know, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica and Ghana and Nigeria. And so it really put me on this path of, like, okay, so you want to investigate theater and musical theater in the African diaspora based on the vinyl albums that have been left behind. And so I began to intentionally collect vinyls from all over the world. And the more I did it and created the page and people began to respond to it in really cool ways, meaning, like, people began to follow and comment and, you know, and comment on how it was giving them a sense of history.

And I love seeing this and being surrounded by people who are just interested in the subject matter. If you like history, if you like music history, if you like musical theater history, if you like African American history. And for me, the sweet spot is, like, African American musical history. So it plays to folks who have that drive. And it's really changed my life in a lot of positive ways. And as an artist, as a human being, as someone who's always felt a little bit out of place, you know, there weren't a lot of kids like me growing up. I'm terrible at basketball. And while that can be a really nasty stereotype, in the case of my childhood, you know, that was what you did. You played basketball or football.

Maybe you ran track. So there weren't a whole lot of people excited to talk about, you know, the revival of Chicago that came out of, like, 96, 97 with B.B. I ran out and got the CD. It was, like, everything. I was trying to play the cell block tango for my friend who's like, I like you, Jarell. I don't know if this music is for me. You know what I mean? Like, no, you don't understand. It's satire. It's really good. It's so cool. But now that I'm a little bit older and I've created this community, there are folks who totally buy into that. And so you feel less alone.

[11:20] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's really what it's about. That's fantastic. And so for those of us who everyone, everyone who loves musical theater can appreciate it. But those of us who are African-American searching for the elements of what we've contributed to society, because society is always finding ways to remind us that we haven't contributed. And at least, you know, you can't be all things to all people. But in the realm of musical theater, oh, I'm not asking for anything. Because look what we've contributed to this. Look at what, you know, it's not that I'm looking for a seat at the table. I helped build this table. This table is part mine. So I will not be asking for a seat to the table. I will be sitting down. Because it's partly my table, yeah. Because I helped build this damn table.

[12:06] Jerrell L. Henderson: And so it's also empowering in that way.

[12:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's, my brain is going like so many directions. I'm like focus, Jeff, focus. But the last episode we had was on the Pirates of Penzance and we looked at kind of the world of operetta and how that influenced the musical theater art form. The same should absolutely be said for another part of the family tree, which is jazz and African-American artists in general. And then which goes on to inspire, among others, Gershwin. You know what I mean?

[12:44] Jerrell L. Henderson: Yeah, exactly.

[12:45] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. Now we're going to spend a lot of time talking about amazing artists today. One of the ones that we absolutely have to talk off the bat is Lorraine Hansberry, who wrote, like we said, Raisin in the Sun, the play originally in, what was it? 1958?

[13:01] Jerrell L. Henderson: Well, 58 is when they were working on it, but 59 is when it was based on Broadway.

[13:08] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. She's the first female African-American playwright to have a play on Broadway. The idea for this play was inspired in part by the difficulties her family faced in housing and securing a home in a historically white neighborhood. Her father, Carl, was the Hansberry in a Supreme Court case named Hansberry v. Lee. So it is a huge part of her identity and her growing up. And I think what's so interesting is that this play, I mean, changed theater. Right? I mean, it's widely considered one of the best plays of all time. It was a big hit. It didn't win Best Play of the Tonys. It didn't win the Pulitzer Prize, which we can talk about. But it won Drama Critics.

[13:56] Jerrell L. Henderson: It did win the Drama Critics.

[13:57] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You're right.

[13:58] Jerrell L. Henderson: Yeah, for Best Play. When did you know this play?

[14:01] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: This, for me, especially in my, I think, high school education, and I would probably risk to say for many white people, it was the first window for me to see the black experience. For me to see the black experience of pre-civil rights era in America.

[14:16] Jerrell L. Henderson: Yeah, or at least the more authentic one. Because the African American experience is constantly being shown in film and television, and on the news, but it's always really skewed and perverted. Whereas Raisin is kind of like, in many ways, a breath of fresh air, because the characters are allowed to be fully formed human beings.

[14:55] Jerrell L Henderson: And so I remember listening to that in English.

[15:01] Upkama Goosey: Yeah. And of course, because of how popular it is in the American theatre canon, and how often it is produced, once I was familiar with it, it's kind of like when you first learn of an actor, and then you start seeing them everywhere. Yeah. It's like, no, they've always been there. But now you're just seeing it catches your eye a little bit more. So that's kind of how it was with A Raisin in the Sun. A Raisin in the Sun and All My Sons by Arthur Miller, in my opinion, right now, it might change. It's like the closest America has ever gotten to a truly realistic play, because most of the plays that are considered American realism have really heightened moments. You know what I mean? You think about Death of a Salesman and the brother Ben who walks through a wall.

That's not real. Interesting. But in A Raisin in the Sun, like the time is chronological. It takes place like one location. And it's about people like moving through their lives. It's so special. It's so special. The title of the play comes from a line from a poem by the legendary poet Langston Hughes. And I was wondering if you wouldn't mind reading that section? Would you mind?

[16:15] Upkama Goosey: I would not mind at all. The poem is called Harlem. And it's at least in the collection of poems that I have, it's Harlem number two. There are two Langston Hughes poems named Harlem. It says, What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore and then run? Does it stink like rotten meat or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it sags like a heavy load? Or does it explode? And Langston Hughes, who, I mean, we can have a whole podcast episode about his relationship to American theater. He was also a playwright. But one of the issues that he wrestled with, you know, 20 to 30 years before Dr. King's famous speech was the idea of the American dream.

And what that dream meant to African Americans or people of African descent, BIPOC, what would you want to call? And when you read the lines of that poem, next to Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, you can see elements of all of the poem is exploring what do African Americans do with the fact that they are so that we are so limited, often limited in our choices. We are Americans by definition. And yet we do not have access to the full potential of what it means to be an American. And that reality manifests itself in a lot of different ways. Some of us become overachievers. Some of us go in the other direction. And so when you read A Raisin in the Sun, in the context of that poem, you can see the characters just trying to figure out like, what do you do, particularly Walter Lee and Lena Mama?

What and Benita? Benita, for sure. What do you do with all of this hope with all of these dreams that society is being told you're allowed to have, but when you're African American, you're not you're able to have them, but you're not able to fulfill them. But you have to stand by and watch other people fulfill them. And what that must do to you. There's so much of American theater in general, but especially African American theater that we would not have had or at least wouldn't have had the same way if it wasn't for Langston Hughes coming along.

[18:41] Upkama Goosey: Oh, that's beautiful.

[18:42] Jerrell L Henderson: Yeah, man. Really, really dynamic, cool cat, Langston Hughes.

[18:49] Jerrell L Henderson: Now, tragically, we didn't get a whole lot more theater from Miss Hansberry because she passed away from pancreatic cancer at the age of 34. She had a fascinating life, though. I didn't realize she was a closeted lesbian and divorced her husband, Robert Nemiroff, before she died. But even after their divorce, they remained super close and particularly with professional matters. And that's really important to the musical Raisin because when you see it, or read it, you'll notice that the book is co-authored by none other than ex-hubby himself.

[19:20] Upkama Goosey: That's right. Yeah, he also updated A Raisin in the Sun, which I have conflicting feelings about. He re-added, you know, a scene that had been cut his argument, she didn't want to cut. And nobody would know that except me because I was married to her. Hey, listen, you can't argue with that.

[19:38] Jerrell L Henderson: Yeah, fair enough. At the same time, it wasn't what was originally in there. He changed it after she died. But that was listen, he had the power to do that. Yeah. Um, when you get to Raisin, he finished Les Blancs, which was the last play that she like wrote proper, but died before it was completed. Right. You know what I mean? And also, he worked on the book, which would eventually become the off-Broadway play to be young gifted in black, which it's the Nina Simone song, man, which was about her life, not just about A Raisin in the Sun but really like who was this woman because when you read, at least in the Philip Rose book, you know, I'm reading Amani Perry's looking for Lorraine. I've read all three Sidney Poitier biographies, including this life, which is the his first Oh, my God, you know, Lorraine Hansberry, he was an impressive human being.

She was smart. Yeah. And she knew how to use language in order to make a point that moved beyond a lot of the arguments because I mean, Lorraine Hansberry comes into prominence with when America, American theater and film is in the era of the race play, right. And this is also the era of Sidney Poitier is how Sidney Poitier is able to be launched into the stratosphere because America is finally ready to deal with the issues of race. What it means. Yeah.

[21:13] Upkama Goosey: When was that time? Like when did that hit?

[21:16] Jerrell L Henderson: We're talking 40s going into the 50s. Right. So you start to see plays like Home of the Brave. You start to see films like Blackboard Jungle and the Defiant Ones. But a lot of the stories that you hear or see are written or have been watered down by white producers and directors. And so the arguments that are made while there is an accuracy to them are often really shallow. This is something that's touched on in Alex Chodros' Trouble in Mind, which was almost the first play on Broadway, 1955. You know, the play that was just done on Broadway with the great LaChanze. Yes. Where it's a play within the play. And you see, the play is about a play that's going to Broadway that's in rehearsal and it's going to Broadway and it's about the Negro problem.

This is the era that we're living in. And so by the time Lorraine Hansberry and A Raisin in the Sun come along, America is more ready. America thought it was ready with Trouble in Mind and then it backed off from that, you know. And this is also the era of Death of a Salesman. This is the era of, not Streetcar, The Miracle Worker. That's the play that won the Tony Award that year. That's right. That's the one that won Best Play. So this is also the era of like the great American play, I think Sleepworter Youth by Tennessee Williams had opened that season. Can you imagine that season?

[22:47] Upkama Goosey: Yes, I can imagine it, which is why I'm upset with the universe that I wasn't there to see it.

[22:55] Jerrell L Henderson: It also it takes me back to what you were saying earlier about your vinyl collection, which is sometimes when we go back in history and look at these pieces of art, we see the time in which it was produced and also feel a connection to what we are going through today. And in going through Raisin, and thinking back on the many conversations that we've had over the past few years, it brings out a couple of feelings in my heart. Number one, oh my gosh, we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. And also, it makes me feel not so alone because you can almost hear the similar conversations being had 40 years ago when they're creating Raisin. It's this dual thing of like, oh my gosh, we still haven't got it figured out. And also, oh, thank goodness, we're not the only ones to screw this up.

[23:47] Upkama Goosey: Yeah. And also, every once in a while, a play like Raisin in the Sun, a musical like Raisin, does get produced and does become a hit. That's something incredible that we do as Americans. We really should do that more.

[23:59] Jerrell L Henderson: Well said. So, Robert Nemiroff, ex-hubby, he gets approached by Charlotte Salzberg to turn Raisin in the Sun into a musical. And they start looking at different scores. From what I understand, they received a couple of different submissions. One submission by Judd Wolden and Robert Britton, who were a composing team who had met doing what? People who have listened to the podcast, the BMI Lehman Engel Workshop, the workshop where all of these composers have met together and start composing. They start turning A Raisin in the Sun into Raisin. It opens out of town, it gets pretty positive reviews. It seems like at some point it goes from being the star vehicle for the man who's playing Walter Lee to kind of more of an ensemble feel, which is what the original play is.

Of course, Walter is like the star of the show. But it does have, because I think of what you're saying in terms of realism, it has more of an ensemble feel. And I would say the same goes for the musical. It has this very ensemble nature to it, which is unusual in 1973 musical theater.

[25:11] Upkama Goosey: Absolutely. And it takes the idea of what Miss Hansberry started with Raisin in the Sun and expands it. Because in Raisin in the Sun, we stay within the home of the Youngers on the south side of Chicago. But in Raisin, we go outside. They go outside in the film, but not in the play. Yeah, we start outside. You know what I mean? With that amazing overture. Oh my goodness. That is one of my favorite overtures of all time. Judd Wolden, the composer, studied jazz pretty seriously in his youth. And boy, oh boy, can you hear it in the score? It's really respectful of the jazz tradition.

[25:54] Jerrell L Henderson: It's so haunting. It's just like, okay, you've got my attention. I sense a lot of integrity in the show, because never once does it fall into some sort of musical theater trope where it goes to a fantasy sequence. And now that's how we're justifying the music. It really does stay grounded in what the play was striving to do. And that doesn't mean it's devoid of theatricality. That is not the case. In fact, the original production was staged pretty skeletally. Is that a word? And there was a lot of pantomime, that sort of thing. So it was very theatrical, but it was always about people. It was always about people.

[26:36] Upkama Goosey: So it's a hit. It's a hit. I love how she wins Best Musical, like I said, at the 1974 Tony Awards, as does Virginia Capers. She wins Best Featured Actress for Lady Younger. My gosh, just, you listen to this album and her performance. And there's just so much wisdom and soul coming out of every cell of her body. It's fantastic. Now, it doesn't win Best Score or Book, which is not totally unusual, right? The examples that come to mind, won Best Musical while losing the other awards to, well, Lion King to Ragtime and Millie to Urinetown. The weird thing here that I don't think has happened before or since, and I just wanted to plop this in here, is that the winners of Best Book and Best Score that year weren't nominated for Best Musical.

So Best Book went to Candide, that amazing show by Leonard Bernstein. I mean, that score is incredible. But not only was it not nominated for Best Musical, it wasn't nominated for Best Score. Can you imagine that Glitter and Be Gay and Make Our Garden Grow weren't even nominated for a Tony Award? And then the winner for Best Score was Lerner and Lowe's Gigi. It wasn't nominated for Best Musical either. And it wasn't nominated for Best Book. So like what was happening in 1974, Jarell? I don't understand.

[28:03] Jerrell L Henderson: That's why I love the 70s. It's probably my favorite decade in American musical theater. I was just talking to a playwright a few weeks ago. And we were talking about, you know, what era of time we would go back to if we could. And I would love to go back to the 1970s, just throughout that decade of all these plays running around. Because you also have like Company coming out around this time. You also have Mac and Mabel. You also have Pippin. You got all of the Fosse stuff coming out. I mean, Godspell. I mean, it's just there were so many stories happening. But that's what makes it exciting. That's what makes it an exciting era. Because it was a period where anyone could be, where any artist had the potential to be rewarded.

Nine times out of 10, it was probably going to go to a white artist, because that's the way that America generally worked. But the 70s was a period in which that began to break down, you begin to see that a little bit. Now, again, the 80s would come and it would kind of go back to business as usual. Yeah, you know, that wouldn't really be broken again, until I would argue the early 90s, when you begin to see, you know, Luther Henderson being nominated, George Lewis being nominated, Tanya Pinkins and Audra McDonald for a while, just ruling that feature, like go back and forth between the two of them. So that's when you begin to see that again, you know what I mean? Brian Stokesman, Norm Lewis, and so on.

But that's kind of what makes it so cool. And that whole idea of the ensemble, which is how we begin speaking. It's a special show, you also have the appearance of performers who are going to become leaders, or known entities in predominantly television. You have Joe Morton, as Walter Lee Younger, Joe Morton, who I knew from a different world. Joe Morton is the actor that, you know, Whitley leaves up the altar for Dwayne.

[29:50] Jerrell L Henderson: All of those are extra bonus points that bring you to Best Musical.

[31:19] Jerrell L Henderson: But when you look at the totality of what it means, the totality of the story being told, and what it means to the larger American culture, this has a bigger impact.

[32:02] Jerrell L Henderson: Yeah, the only thing that I take issue with is Clive Barnes, who made the argument that the book, you know, well, you can say the book is even better than what Lorraine Hansberry wrote. And it's just like, why don't we just not compare what an African American woman who lived that life and that experience did to, you know, albeit really righteous white folk, Jewish folk who cared, who believed in the work and wanted to expand it? Why don't we just not play that game?

[32:34] Jerrell L Henderson: It's not necessary in the slightest. And it is a good book. It's a good book. And it moves. It's strong. There's nobody arguing that it's not strong. But we don't need to make that comparison because it just falls in line with too many ways that African American culture has been kind of smoothed over.

[32:57] Jerrell L Henderson: Absolutely. Yeah. All right. Well, I'm excited to go through this real fast with you because I read the play. I hadn't ever read it before. I've never seen Raisin. It doesn't get produced very often, but I bought it, read the, you know, the script of the musical, followed along with the cast albums, and really, really enjoyed it. So I'm excited to share that with our listeners, because I guarantee there's probably a majority who haven't seen this musical either. It begins with like we talked about this prologue. It's called the prologue, but it is essentially a staged overture. And in the script, what I would have preferred, I guess, if I had Muddruthers, is that I would have liked to have seen the younger family.

Since that's who it's about. In the original Broadway production, the prologue was used as an opportunity to introduce us to South Side Chicago. And it's in the middle of the night, early, early hours of the morning, you're starting to see the working class get up to do their jobs. You're seeing a lot of people leaving bars inebriated. You're seeing some people doing drugs. A woman gets pulled in kind of by this evil drug dealer, and she passes out from snorting too much heroin. It's actually pretty dark. And then somebody comes and rescues her. And that's the prologue. So it's just about establishing this area.

[34:30] Jerrell L Henderson: Now, I get why they did it is because this whole story is about this family leaving this area.

[34:38] Jerrell L Henderson: Yeah. And that music, again, that music, at least for me, plays into that. This is the world that you're entering into. These are the things that you're doing. And it's just the context. It's what makes those folks those folks. So it's less about showing the audience the neighborhood that the family wants to get out, as it is showing the audience, like, this is the world that these folks come from. This is the world that they call home. Because it's home to them. Those are the same streets that Ruth sends Travis out to play on. You can't understand the younger's experience to some extent, if you don't have some understanding of that larger world outside. Because it's a culmination of the good and the bad and the other. That's what makes it up. You know what I mean?

[35:28] Jerrell L Henderson: You're absolutely right. That's so cool. I also love how it reiterates how everybody's kind of on top of everybody.

[35:35] Jerrell L Henderson: Yeah. Nobody has this. It's not this suburban. There's no space. So while you also have these awful things happening, you also have people running to go to work. You also have people opening up businesses that are going about their life and trying to do the best that they can. And it's the culmination of all of that energy. I love that. That the younger's then become a microcosm of that world. The musical shows a more expanded story. You know what I mean? And for those of us who have lived in large cities in America, I mean, come on. You're walking through traffic.

[36:16] Jerrell L Henderson: No, that's so true. Trying not to bump into people. You know, because you're right. There are people everywhere.

[36:22] Jerrell L Henderson: Well, let's talk about this family who's living here. So like we said, the younger family, we got Walter Lee, who is the oldest son of the family. He's also married. He's a father. He's married to Ruth. They have a son named Travis. His mom, the grandma, is generally referred to as Mama, but her name is Lena. Then Walter's little sister, so also a child of Lena, is Benita. And each of these characters showing a different POV of getting the American dream within the black experience.

[37:04] Jerrell L Henderson: Walter is 100% the dreamer. It sounds like his recently departed father, Walter Sr., was similar, but had—correct me if you think I'm wrong—grown very weary in realizing that maybe his dream would never come to pass. There's this one line that I love so much that he always said, which is, I mean, just such a beautiful line. And I got to say, this is a great book because it retains all of the gorgeous stuff of Ms. Hansberry. But in any case, so Walter Sr., he has passed, and his life insurance money is about to come to the family, which is a huge amount of money, $10,000, life-changing for a family like this. And when we meet them, we see Walter, his dream is to start a liquor store with two other people. Now, Mama does not like that idea because she is a very conservative, religious woman, and the idea that you're going to start a business to fuel people's addictions to liquor is more than she can handle.

[38:25] Jerrell L Henderson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the basic premise of the story. There's one thing that I want to go back to, which is Walter Sr. and the whole idea of his dream. I don't think that Walter Lee Sr. ever gave up on his dream. I just think he renegotiated them. Okay, because it's similar to the ending of Carolina ReChange, right?

[38:43] Jerrell L Henderson: Absolutely. Yeah. All right, I'm not going to get where I want to get to, but my kids are. And that then becomes the dream, if that makes sense.

[38:51] Jerrell L Henderson: Yeah, yeah, completely. And I think that there, for better or worse, there's something incredibly American and universal about that.

[38:58] Jerrell L Henderson: That's what I was going to say. Because it is this audacity of hope, to borrow a phrase from President Obama, that we preach the ideal and live in the reality.

[39:07] Jerrell L Henderson: Yes, yes!

[39:11] Jerrell L Henderson: And when we live in the reality, then what we can pass on to the next generation is that next sense of hope, because then maybe they might get even a little bit closer, because we know we'll fail. We know we're going to fail to reach this perfection. It's just, it's not going to happen. But that's what kind of makes us crazy and beautiful at the same time. My father and both of my grandfathers were laborers. This is me telling you my life history. They worked with their bodies. That's how they made their money. I'm an artist. I work with my mind, for the most part. You know what I mean? My energy, my ideas, my creativity. That is a version of the American dream. And that's what they're pushing for.

[39:54] Jerrell L Henderson: No, I really, I dig what you just said. I really like the way you just put that.

[40:01] Jerrell L Henderson: Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate that. Well, you inspired it.

[40:04] Jerrell L Henderson: I'll take that.

[40:07] Jerrell L Henderson: Now, in terms of what you were saying about not necessarily giving up on your dreams, but growing up or I don't know, whatever.

[40:15] Jerrell L Henderson: Renegotiating.

[40:16] Jerrell L Henderson: Renegotiating. Thank you. Renegotiating your dreams. Yeah. Ruth, who's Walter's wife.

[40:22] Jerrell L Henderson: Mm hmm.

[40:23] Jerrell L Henderson: She is the one who I maybe is always encouraging some renegotiation because Walter has this dream. This is going to be a liquor store, liquor store, liquor store. And Ruth is eat your eggs, eat your eggs, eat your eggs. Right.

[40:38] Jerrell L Henderson: Eat my eggs.

[40:41] Jerrell L Henderson: Which I love, once again, a perfect place for a song because that that eat your eggs, Walter, is such an iconic line in the straight play. So then the fact that it then gives way to this I want song for Walter. Anyway, my my question within all of this is to say, I don't think Ruth is trying to be a wet blanket on this situation.

[41:05] Jerrell L Henderson: No, not at all.

[41:08] Jerrell L Henderson: She's not the nagging wife that Walter sometimes mistakes her to be. Ruth needs to be practical because Ruth lives in a reality that doesn't afford her. Walter Lee drives around the city all day.

[41:19] Jerrell L Henderson: So Walter Lee gets to see a lot of life.

[41:25] Jerrell L Henderson: He's a chauffeur, by the way.

[41:26] Jerrell L Henderson: Yeah.

[41:28] Jerrell L Henderson: Ruth spends time working in kitchens. I'm going to go out on a limb. Walter Lee has a car or he takes a cab to work where he drives a car for someone else. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say Ruth is on a bus or a train going to someone else's house. And then she spends all day in someone else's house and then she comes back to her house. So the idea. So there is there. There's a possibility that you could fall into the trap of the so-called nagging wife, which is like old school misogyny, American misogynistic anyway. But there's this great line. I don't know. I don't remember if it's in the musical. There's a great line where she offers him milk. She's like, do you want some milk or something to eat? And he's like, no, I don't want no milk. Why are you always trying to feed me?

[42:13] Jerrell L Henderson: And her response is, I just want to give you something.

[42:19] Jerrell L Henderson: Yeah. No, it's in the musical. I don't know what else to give you. And that's before they get all sexy, actually. Yeah. And there's a line in earlier in the play where she's talking to Lena at the table and they have that conversation about the money. And Lena looks at her because she starts to sell. She starts to do what Walter Lee asked her to do. Walter Lee is like, you talk to Mama and she's like, I don't want to deal with that. But she does it because she wants to support her husband and she knows how frustrated he is. And she starts to work Mama and Mama looks at her like that. Walter Lee, you want this store? And her response is no, but he needs it. He needs it. He needs something that I can't give him.

[42:59] Jerrell L Henderson: In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and say, I think Ruth is the better business person. And if it were more, if it were more acceptable, I mean, she's better with money. She's more level headed. But at the same time, she listens because she understands that through all of this, like energy and maybe even misplaced aggression that sometimes comes out of Walter. She still hears what he needs, which is something to make him feel valued and seen. She sees him go out every day just like his dad did because she knew Big Walter. She saw him do that. They all lived in that apartment together. And then Big Walter died. Ruth is the hardest. I think she's the hardest character to play in that play because she is the most level headed. Walter Lee is always yelling. Benita is always yelling. And Mama doesn't yell a lot, but Mama knows how the world should be.

[44:04] Jerrell L Henderson: Let's actually talk about Benita because she has all of the benefits of being the youngest in that she's probably been a little bit more spoiled than Walter. Oh, my goodness. And because of that, she also has all of the possibilities. She wants to be a doctor, but she also wants to play the conga drums. Every day she has some new interest. I love it. And so the world is totally her oyster. Yes! It drives everybody crazy, but it's also what makes Benita so lovable, right? Yes! And Walter is being very competitive with Benita right here at the top.

[44:44] Jerrell L Henderson: Because she wants some of this money, this insurance money, to put her through college so that she can become a doctor. And Walter doesn't see why she should be able to get her education and he not receive, you know, his money to start this liquor store.

[45:00] Yeah, one of the challenges of scarcity is that it begins to pit people against each other. We see that and we see that in the American theatre community all the time. There's scarcity. And so it's like, well, can this opportunity be mine? Can this opportunity be mine? And we don't know how to share because there's not a lot to share. And we can talk to the larger, you know, again, capitalism, the larger reasons and how people use, you know, race, culture, age, gender, sexual orientation to divide people. But now that's basically it. Now, Benita is the character that Lorraine Hansberry wrote about herself.

[45:37] Oh, I'm sure.

[45:38] So Benita is. No, she said it. She admitted to it.

[45:43] Oh, really?

[45:44] She's so outspoken. And so, yeah.

[45:46] She's so outspoken. And it's and it often pits her against her family, including her mom, when all of a sudden she'll just start, you know, philosophizing and decide that there's no God, which is just not OK in Lena's household. Right.

[46:04] But she's also the one who's most connected to her history as an African-American. And she's also the only character in this play who is connected directly with her history as an African-American, with her relationship with Asagai, because Asagai connects us to the motherland that we were taken away from.

[46:27] So Asagai is somebody who she's met at college, in college.

[46:30] That's right. Oh, yes. Thank you.

[46:31] And he he's from Nigeria.

[46:34] Nigeria. Yes, Nigeria.

[46:37] And he is inspiring within her this connection to who she is and kind of shedding also the skin of all what has been placed upon them.

[46:50] Once again, just so beautiful to see these different people all related, all living in the same cramped quarters and all having such different experiences and perspectives on the same life. Imagine what it means to an African-American going to see this musical in the early 1970s, who the only representation of a human being from any country in Africa is in a Tarzan movie.

[47:15] You know what I mean? But Beneath is the only character that has that hat that's able to make that connection.

[47:23] So while we may agree with what she says, while we totally disagree with how she expresses herself, sometimes she does have a connection to her past in a way that the rest of her family doesn't.

[47:35] And she is the closest one to really getting a sense of identity.

[47:39] And she's able to teach Mama.

[47:42] It's just really like the collision of those personalities.

[47:46] Seeing how Mama reacts with Beneath and specifically Asagai and also reacts to Ruth and Walter Lee brings to my awareness once again how living on top of each other they all are. And nobody has any privacy.

[48:04] No. And I'm sure everybody knows when Ruth and Walter are having sex, because you know what I mean? There are just things that everybody understands, but nobody really has to talk about. But that is how close this family is in terms of living quarters.

[48:22] And so when Ruth and Lena sit down to really discuss what is she going to do with the money, the mom is very, Mama Lena is very adamant that, yes, some of the money is going to be going to Beneath for her education, because that's what Walter Sr. would have wanted. And then she's going to use some of the money to make a down payment on a house because she wants them to get out of this place.

[48:48] In the musical, Walter is shown to have a pretty big drinking problem.

[48:52] Yeah. Is that the case in the play as well?

[48:56] We don't see it, but yeah, because we see it and the first time we see it is in the film because the play doesn't leave the house.

[49:03] But in the film, we see him go to the bar after Mama doesn't give him the money immediately. And she's going to buy the house.

[49:12] We see him sinking into alcoholism again because he's just numbing himself at this point.

[49:17] Absolutely. And unfortunately, I think it also doesn't help his case at all, because here you have you're wanting your mom to invest in a business where you actually might have a problem being around that substance too much.

[49:32] You know what I mean? And they don't ever talk about that, they don't ever talk about it, but it's there.

[49:38] It feels very clearly present.

[49:40] I never thought of that.

[49:41] And that's really, yeah, wow, that's really clear.

[49:46] It's arguable that part of one of the reasons why she's against that, because all she says is that I don't want to sell people liquor.

[49:53] Yeah. But Walter Lee also has a drinking problem.

[49:56] Yeah. So you don't want to name that.

[49:58] That's not a great idea. And she's just so she's so clever in those ways.

[50:02] And once again, everybody knows everything about everybody that I can't help but see that connection.

[50:07] Well, it does give us it gives us a good song, though.

[50:11] We have the song Booze.

[50:12] Yeah. You know what I mean?

[50:13] Which is where we talk about it.

[50:15] Well, there are so many great songs.

[50:16] I really recommend that everybody listen to this score.

[50:20] Runnin' to Meet the Man is this great song where Walter is trying to keep up with the rat race. Booze, which you mentioned, which is when Walter is meeting with his business partners to get the store.

[50:33] Sweet Time, which is this beautiful song that Ernestine Jackson sings on the original cast album. Ruth is she's she starts it by singing to Walter about like, remember when we used to be sweet?

[50:45] And then it becomes this duet and ultimately pretty sexy and romantic.

[50:51] Can I can I tell you that that, hey, that is my favorite scene in A Raisin in the Sun.

[50:57] Because it's it's how you know that Lorraine Hansberry, even though she was a beginning playwright, understands dramatic action.

[51:06] Because Walter Lee and Ruth just beef.

[51:09] The first time you see them together, it's beefing.

[51:11] They're tired. They're cranky. They're hungry. There's beef.

[51:14] Once they realize that Ruth is pregnant and everything kind of starts falling apart and he comes back, no one else is in the house.

[51:23] No one else is there.

[51:24] And they start talking to each other and they start asking each other questions.

[51:28] And you can see the spark of the flame that used to live there used to be a big flame.

[51:32] And now it's just a spark.

[51:34] You know, how did we get to this place where we don't where we're afraid to talk softness to each other?

[51:39] We yell at each other now.

[51:41] How do we get which is a great couple question, right?

[51:43] It's a great question. How did we get here?

[51:46] And just as they're beginning to come together, mama enters and she's bought the house.

[51:53] Yep. And she tells everybody that she's used the money to make the down payment on the house.

[51:56] And it's not just any house.

[51:58] It's a house.

[51:59] It's a it's a house in Clyburn Park, in Clyburn Park neighborhood where black people and it shatters all of that.

[52:07] Sweet Time is also my favorite song in the musical reason.

[52:10] Hmm. It's I mean, it's just it's really I love it.

[52:15] And then I'm sorry.

[52:16] No, you were you were going through them.

[52:17] No, no. So once that news comes to comes to pass, then we're right here at the end of Act One. And Walter Lee sings You Done Right, which is just a powerhouse of a song talking about.

[52:29] Yes, that's the yes or no.

[52:34] So like, I mean, it is powerful.

[52:39] And that what's his name again?

[52:41] I forget who played Walter Lee.

[52:43] Oh, Joe Morton.

[52:45] Joe Morton. That's right. Thank you.

[52:46] Joe Morton just has this golden throat.

[52:50] I mean, and and he's pushed to his limits.

[52:54] I mean, the score is really, really challenging.

[52:56] And in particular, this first act closer is just filled with rage and frustration.

[53:02] And you say, yeah, you come right.

[53:06] Oh, right.

[53:09] I love it.

[53:11] We can't pay for the copyright.

[53:13] Don't sing anymore.

[53:14] No, I'm just saying that was 30 seconds.

[53:17] That exactly.

[53:23] So Act Two begins with they're at church.

[53:27] Yeah. And the song.

[53:28] Yeah. Yeah. Yep. He come down this morning, which when I first OK, once again, didn't know Raisin super well.

[53:33] And I heard the song. I was like, of course, we have to do a number in a black musical at church.

[53:39] But it's actually really fantastic and comes back in a beautiful way.

[53:43] It's like a three act play.

[53:45] It is. That song has like three different movements to it.

[53:50] Like, again, the score is such a good score.

[53:54] And part of me wants to be a hater because it was written by white folks.

[53:58] Yeah, because I'm like, well, I wish it could have been written by African-Americans.

[54:02] But I mean, it's it's really well done.

[54:05] The folks who wrote this really respected the play.

[54:09] They really respected the characters and they really went out of their way to make sure that the characters were full human beings.

[54:15] And it didn't just play around with the themes of it, but it tried to go to the heart of who these people are and how they live their life.

[54:21] And so when you get to he come down this morning, which could be a throwaway Broadway church song with black folks.

[54:27] Lord knows there are plenty.

[54:29] When you get to that and you get to the the moment where it switches off to Travis, the young son, and you begin to see how gospel and church is beginning to manifest itself in him.

[54:43] I like it because you can really see Lena's influence on Travis.

[54:48] And then we have, again, that community.

[54:51] It's not just the youngers.

[54:53] It's the youngers in relation to this community of African-Americans.

[54:56] And they're all on different versions of the same journey.

[55:00] Some of them find their way through alcohol.

[55:02] Some of them find their way through work.

[55:03] Some of them find their way through church and religion.

[55:07] It is a recurring theme in the life of African-Americans who live in inner cities.

[55:12] And in this case, I'm speaking to myself.

[55:15] You know what I mean?

[55:15] My dad spent a lot of time in bars and my mom spent a lot of time in churches.

[55:19] Wow. That was my childhood.

[55:21] You know what I mean?

[55:23] Because everybody was looking for a way to deal with the fact that you were working at these really menial jobs.

[55:31] You weren't sure what your future was going to be.

[55:32] You're living paycheck to paycheck.

[55:35] You know, there needs to be some kind of release or something to build on.

[55:38] And with my dad, it was the camaraderie of other folks, other working class folks who understood him and a good drink.

[55:44] And with my mom, it was believing that there's something there's something better.

[55:49] The end of Act one of Raisin ends with this like really dark, emotional moment of like, I don't know where we're going, but wherever we're going, it's not where I'm trying to go.

[55:57] But the beginning of that, too, is like, no, there's still joy here.

[56:00] There's something here.

[56:01] There's still hope there.

[56:02] There's still faith there.

[56:04] And I can't help but feel like Lena going to church brings her to this place where she gives Walter the rest of the money that she hasn't used on the down payment.

[56:15] And she says, I want you to take three thousand of it to put in an account for Benita's education and then do what you will with the rest of it.

[56:25] And he's ecstatic.

[56:29] Here's the thing.

[56:29] And this breaks my heart to say Walter uses all of the money.

[56:33] Yeah, he's a really bad.

[56:35] It's a terrible decision.

[56:37] He puts all of the money.

[56:39] He doesn't take out any of the stuff for Benita and puts it into this this deal with these two guys, Bobo and Willie.

[56:46] Yep. Cut to the chase.

[56:49] Willie skips town and takes all the money.

[56:54] And I still have such an emotional reaction to that.

[56:57] She's she's so intelligent, Larry and Hansberry, because the prime event that alters the trajectory of the family for the negative doesn't immediately come from white society.

[57:11] It comes from African-American society, which is which is a society that is predicated on predatory behavior to each other because it is a microcosm of the larger society.

[57:23] Like that's what white America does to black America.

[57:25] And so you see that happening in a version of it.

[57:29] So, you know, someone from outside the community might look at that and go, well, that's black people treating black people poorly.

[57:34] But it's like, no, what Willie did is a reflection of what America does to black people all the time.

[57:40] And Willie has made up his mind that he's going to be the taker as opposed to the one that's already getting taken.

[57:45] So you can imagine that something like that happened to Willie probably more than once.

[57:51] And he was just like, well, effort.

[57:52] There's there's no use in trying to live a decent life.

[57:54] Just looking out for myself.

[57:55] Because you have to look out for yourself.

[57:57] And you end up preying on the same people who are around you.

[58:02] And for that reality to be reflected on stage, on the Broadway stage at that level, that's complexity.

[58:13] That is character and situational and neighborhood complexity.

[58:20] And the interesting thing about the musical theater art form is that then when you have a story like this, the moments that you decide to musicalize gain greater importance.

[58:30] Simply because now you're spending more time on them.

[58:34] And the moment of this kind of robbery of Willie taking the money and running doesn't have a song.

[58:42] You know, what does have a song, however, is the situation that happens with the people from Clybourne Park.

[58:53] There's this dude by the name of wasn't Lindler, Lindner, Mr. Lindner, Carl Lindner.

[59:00] Yep. And he has come to the Youngers, you know, as they're getting ready to move into this house.

[59:06] And we don't see the scene in Raisin.

[59:10] We don't see what he tells them.

[59:12] But after he leaves, we kind of skip to this moment where Mama comes home and Ruth and Walter Lee and Benita perform a song commenting on the experience they just had.

[59:28] It's an incredible piece of musical theater in my eyes, because now all of a sudden this is the moment that we have decided to focus on.

[59:38] Jerrell L. Henderson: Lindenur comes to offer the family money to not move in. The members of that area, which are predominantly white, do not want African Americans moving to their neighborhood. The reason that is not because they're racist, by the way, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, I'm getting there. The reason that's generally given is, well, property values, and there's a whole history to that. And it's, I mean, it goes to the heart of Chicago social politics, because that's still being dealt with today. I live in Chicago now. So, but he comes to offer them money. And the idea is that, again, traditionally, when these stories are told, the white Americans who are doing kind of the society's dirty work, racist dirty work, are thugs.

Or, you know, you think, think, um, Chief Fire, Chief Conklin and Ragtime. You know, I mean, it's very brazen. It's very, it's obviously ignorant. And it's really easy for, in my opinion, it's very easy for white members of the audience to distance themselves from those characters, because you look at that character, go, well, I don't behave that way. I don't behave that way. I don't use those words. Carl Lindner is a sweet man, quiet, polite man, who frames the process of paying them to not move into the neighborhood as an extension of brotherhood. And that is something that was the deception that was new for Broadway. Once they realize what he's actually saying, we don't want you to move in, because we don't want to live around Black people.

But we're actually doing it for everybody's own good. It's actually better if we just live around them. Yeah, people get along better when they live around people who would not have a government background. We don't want you to move in here and get bombed. Yeah, like horrible things happen when Black people move into white neighborhoods. Let's just squash the whole thing. And we're willing to pay you more than what the house is worth to stay out or to stay away. So we can do each other a favor. You'll get paid a little more money. We'll get to keep our neighborhood the way that we want to make it. Everybody wins. Right. And so when Mama comes back, and it's really great. I love the construction of that moment.

Mama comes in, and they're like, wow. You don't realize what we just went through. You had a caller. I think it's beneath the vine. And Mama understands what they're talking about. And her response is, heaven give us strength or lord give us strength, something like that. Did they threaten us? And that's where the song comes. Oh, they don't do it that way anymore. No. They talk brotherhood and togetherness. And they sing this song. Let's talk about brotherhood.

[1:02:50] Jerrell L. Henderson: So the song is called Not Anymore. And it's saying racism looks different now. It looks different now. It's evolved. It's evolved. It's even sneakier. It's those shadow beliefs.

[1:03:07] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: We applaud the NAACP.

[1:03:08] Jerrell L. Henderson: Absolutely. I love it. In many ways, it's like the more successful Officer Krupke. Because in West Side Story, Officer Krupke in the second act always feels a little like, why would these characters be behaving this way?

[1:03:22] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I couldn't agree more.

[1:03:25] Jerrell L. Henderson: And here, it actually makes perfect sense. And it's in the exact same spot in terms of musical construction. It's so great. It's very insightful. And it's a way through fun play to let mom know, yeah, we're dealing with the same thing, but not the same way. Because mama, Lena, came from an environment where they would just come to your house with a gun and drag you out and hang you from a tree. And it was just that. It was like, that was it. That's how things were dealt with. But now we're in a different era. It's funny to them, and not in a ha-ha way, but like, it's absurd. The situation that they're being placed in is absurd, and they understand the absurdity of it. It's a smart song. I enjoy listening to that song.

[1:04:13] Jerrell L. Henderson: So after this song, that's when all of the revelation comes to light about how—

[1:04:21] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, they lost the money.

[1:04:23] Jerrell L. Henderson: How they lost the money. Benita is, of course, beside herself because she can't go to college now. I mean, everybody's just really upset. What Walter Lee decides to do is to contact Mr. Lindner and accept the offer.

[1:04:39] Jerrell L. Henderson: Not just accept the offer, but to put on a show. A minstrel show, coon song, whatever it takes. And it's similar to where Willie is and why Willie behaved the way that he behaved. At this point, the only thing that matters is money. And I'm sick of doing the right thing. I'm sick of caring. I'm sick of working my ass off just to end up in the same apartment. And I can't get like, I'm 30 years old and I have a son that sleeps on the living room couch. I think of that line so much. Because I'm like, wow. I don't know what that really feels like, but I can imagine what that must feel like. That must be, you must feel like the biggest loser in the world. Every time you wake up in the morning and you go into that living room, you know that you can't provide the way that society says you should be providing for your family.

So we're not just going to accept the money. I'm going to cry if I need to get down on my knees and say, oh, great white father, just give us the money and you won't have to live next to this bunch of stinking n-word. Like it's a dark, that song, you know, that's a dark song, but it's, it's.

[1:06:03] Jerrell L. Henderson: And it's a reprise of It's a Deal.

[1:06:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's right. That's absolutely right. Yeah. And it goes to the heart of where he is emotionally at that moment because he's in a dark place. But the good news is, again, it's structured really well. The good news is from that song, we get to the Hills and Valleys. Is that the name of the song?

[1:06:21] Jerrell L. Henderson: Measure the Valley.

[1:06:23] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Which is because, I mean, everyone's so upset, right? And Walter leaves and wise mama, what she tells everybody is, and here I'm going to pull this, this line up.

[1:06:37] Jerrell L. Henderson: Yeah. But Neitha says that he wasn't a man. He's a rat.

[1:06:41] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah.

[1:06:41] Jerrell L. Henderson: And that triggers, that triggers mama. Mama says, honey, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy for everybody. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in himself.

[1:06:57] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yep.

[1:06:57] Jerrell L. Henderson: And, and she sings this song called Measure the Valleys, which is basically saying, if you're upset that the wind isn't blowing very strong, maybe you need to look at the path that it had to take to get to where you are. And not only is it an 11 o'clock number, but it is an 11 o'clock number. That's actually very bluesy. Like it isn't.

[1:07:15] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It isn't, it isn't super loud.

[1:07:19] Jerrell L. Henderson: Yeah, you're right. It's actually very quiet and wise and, and, and singular. I can't really think of another, another 11 o'clock number quite like it.

[1:07:32] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You're right. And it's not, it's not Rosa's turn.

[1:07:35] Jerrell L. Henderson: No.

[1:07:36] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You know what I mean? It's, it's, it's not loud and big and bombastic. I mean, there is a moment where, you know, she increases the volume of her vocals, but it's always issue with love. The world is constantly forgetting that African-Americans are human beings. You can't ever forget that. And you gotta know he screwed up majorly. No one is arguing that and we're all upset, but you can't allow your disappointment and the choice that he made to make your life better, to write him off as a human being.

[1:08:14] Jerrell L. Henderson: And that's the story. It's not that you have to, it's not that you have to forgive him. It's not that you have to accept it. It's not that he's just a good...

[1:08:22] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You have to be happy about it.

[1:08:24] Jerrell L. Henderson: You have to be happy. You don't have to be happy about it. You get to be pissed off. He messed up, but you don't get to deny him his humanity because that's actually why he started all this in the first place. And what you're forgetting is that he did it for you. He thought he was doing something good for you. He doesn't have training. He didn't understand what he was doing. He made a bad business deal. And again, I don't think that it's an apology for Walter Lee's behavior. It's not.

[1:08:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No, no, it's not.

[1:08:55] Jerrell L. Henderson: But you can't forget that. If you are going to love somebody, it's more important to love them in the hard times than the easy ones.

[1:09:02] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's right. That's absolutely right.

[1:09:05] Jerrell L. Henderson: When Walter comes back where he has Mr. Lindner and the white guy is very happy that it seems like he's ready to take his offer, and mom is sitting there in her rocking chair listening to what's about to go down, even in the script it says she specifically looks the other way as though to tell Walter, this is your decision. You got to decide. But speaking to her wisdom, she also kind of sets him up because she pushes Travis forward and goes, teach him. You teach him the way that Willie Harris taught you. You teach your son what you're going to do. And so it creates another level of awareness on Walter Lee.

[1:09:47] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah.

[1:09:47] Jerrell L. Henderson: You know what I mean? And so in that moment, it's like, oh, damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it. All right, you know what we're going to do? The money is what it is, and it's going to be what it's going to be. We're moving forward with this. Boom.

[1:10:01] Jerrell L. Henderson: You're moving into the house like we had planned to and get ready to have us as neighbors.

[1:10:06] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's right, because we don't want to fight no causes or make no noise, and we will try to be good neighbors, but we are going to move into that house because my father earned it brick by brick.

[1:10:21] Jerrell L. Henderson: And my favorite moment of the scene is that while he says all of this, Mama starts humming.

[1:10:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Come on, come on, come on.

[1:10:32] Jerrell L. Henderson: Her church song. She starts humming, He Came Down This Morning, right from the top of Act 2. It's so upbeat. And she's not upstaging, but she's just very simply telling everybody, we're at church right now, and this is God. She's underscoring the moment, and it's the amen corner, which is what I've been doing this whole conversation or what you do. When one of us says something that the other agrees with, but we don't want to cut the other person off, so mm-hmm, that's right, that's right.

[1:11:03] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's how it is, man.

[1:11:05] Jerrell L. Henderson: Yeah, those characters have mad integrity. Ah, love that.

[1:11:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yay. Jerrell, thank you so much for doing this with me. What an absolute joy and honor. I'm so grateful you came on.

[1:11:16] Jerrell L. Henderson: Thank you.

[1:11:16] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, man.

[1:11:17] Jerrell L. Henderson: Oh my goodness.

[1:11:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Any time.

[1:11:20] Jerrell L. Henderson: You know?

[1:11:20] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Any time.

[1:11:21] Jerrell L. Henderson: I don't know if you invite people back, but any time.

[1:11:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It's, again, one of my favorite things to do. I know that we could find more to talk about.

[1:11:28] Jerrell L. Henderson: Not a problem. Many more black musicals.

[1:11:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: As always, if you have recommendations for shows you'd like us to cover on a musical theater podcast, you can always email me at amusicalpodcast at gmail.com. Don't forget to follow us on social media, Instagram, Twitter, at Amusical Podcast. We're also on TikTok. We have our TeePublic store, where any profits we receive will be donated to Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS. We have Patreon, exclamation point, where for only $1 a month, you can receive bonus content, special episodes.

[1:11:59] Jerrell L. Henderson: I'd love to have you back, actually, for something on Patreon.

[1:12:02] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That would be really cool. All in all, you've got to know that I am so grateful for this beautiful podcasting community. So please stay connected, yeah?

[1:12:11] Jerrell L. Henderson: Hey, how do we follow you and everything you're up to?

[1:12:15] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I'm on Instagram.

[1:12:18] Jerrell L. Henderson: Two accounts on Instagram. The first is my professional account, Jerrell L. Henderson, J-E-R-R-E-L-L, H-E-N-D-E-R-S-O-N. And that's like, you know, my theater, my puppetry. Occasionally, I'll post something from my life. But like, honestly, my life isn't that interesting. So I tend to keep it mostly work.

[1:12:39] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I'll work on that, because that's actually interesting.

[1:12:41] Jerrell L. Henderson: And then the other page we spoke about before, it's Black Theater Vinyl Archive. They'll also be linked in our show notes.

[1:12:49] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, wonderful!

[1:12:50] Jerrell L. Henderson: Yay, yay, yay! Yeah, and that's my page where all of the albums that I've posted so far, a couple hundred, are on there. And I always do like a 30-second... I've started doing 30-second samples of each piece, because, you know, copyrights are real. I'm not trying to get sued.

[1:13:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, that's amazing.

[1:13:06] Jerrell L. Henderson: But, you know, if you want to hear a clip of, you know, the European tour of Raisin...

[1:13:11] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, because on that one...

[1:13:13] Jerrell L. Henderson: Sorry, really, really quick. On that one, they actually go into the Akamagosie moment, right? Because on the original Broadway soundtrack, they just do Alaio, which is a beautiful song. That used to be one of my audition songs. I love it.

[1:13:26] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And I can hit all the notes.

[1:13:28] Jerrell L. Henderson: Alaio?

[1:13:28] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Really?

[1:13:29] Jerrell L. Henderson: Oh, that's so cool. You know, I said I can hit all the notes. The song that Asagai sings. That's why I couldn't do It's a Deal. I tried to do It's a Deal. It was like, I can't. I won't have a voice.

[1:13:40] Jerrell L. Henderson: But anyway, but on the European one, in the clip that I played, it's when Walter leads on the table, reading the poem, Can't You Hear, Can't You See? And that's not on the original Broadway soundtrack. So that's one of the reasons I love that. So you can go check that out.

[1:13:53] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Thank you.

[1:13:53] Jerrell L. Henderson: That's amazing. And also, I really can't thank you enough for inviting me into the space.

[1:13:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I would blast.

[1:13:59] Jerrell L. Henderson: Pleasure.

[1:14:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: My pleasure.

[1:14:00] Jerrell L. Henderson: Thank you.

[1:14:01] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Thank you.

[1:14:02] Jerrell L. Henderson: Thank you to everybody who listened and listens. I appreciate you all. Thank you again, Jarrell and everybody out there.

[1:14:12] Jerrell L. Henderson: Measure the Valleys.

[1:14:32] Jerrell L. Henderson: Measure the Valleys.