Race and the Voting Landscape

DATE November 1, 2006 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Dan Seligson of electionline.org talks about this
year's elections, the changes made since 2004, voting machines,
problem states, and what to do if you're wronged in the process
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

We're six days away from a high-stakes election in which control of the House
and the Senate are at stake. With new voting machines and new procedures in
many places, some people are preparing for a meltdown in the voting process,
while others are predicting only minor problems. My guest, Dan Seligson, is
expecting something in between. Seligson is the editor of electionline.org, a
nonpartisan and non-advocacy organization that tracks and analyzes election
reform issues. They've published an election preview examining potential
Election Day problems. I asked Seligson what problems he's expecting.

Mr. DAN SELIGSON: Well, I think we've got so many people who're going to be
voting on voting machines for the first time that they haven't used before.
We've got poll workers who may have used these machines at an administered
election in the primary with a lot fewer people to deal with. You know, the
stakes are higher, the participation is going to be much greater, and the
possibility of some kind of breakdown somewhere in the system when you have
just this many new machines, this many new rules around the country, I--you
know, the probability is good that we're going to have problems.

GROSS: Things are supposed to be better by now. We've had the experiences of
2000 and 2004, the Help America Vote Act has taken effect. So why are we
having such problems when things are supposed to have improved by now?

Mr. SELIGSON: Well, January 1st, 2006, was a big date in the Help America
Vote Act. That was the date at which each state was supposed to have a
statewide voter registration database completed. And that was a major
endeavor. That took--all of the local lists had to be combined into this
state list that had to be interactive, real time, etc., etc. This is a
complicated undertaking. Then, in time for the first primary this year,
states had to have new voting machines, or some--most states had to have new
voting machines that were accessible to people with disabilities. Most of the
time, that would be a touch screen machine like we see in Maryland. In some
cases, it's called a hybrid machine, where you use sort of a touch screen
interface and it prints out a paper ballot that's then scanned by this optical
scanner.

But each state had to have these things in place in time for this year. So
what we've seen is a tremendous amount of change, a lot of voting machine
purchases, a lot of new database troubles in some places, where they're just
kind of having growing pains and haven't done anything of this scale before in
elections. And then we have some new procedures around the country: voter
ID, provisional voting, that kind of thing. So we have all these things
combined this year in a high-stakes race, things that we really didn't have in
2004. While we had a, you know, a huge election. We had a great turnout. We
had a very high-stakes election. We didn't have the level of change between
2000 and 2004 that we've had, really, between 2004 and this year.

GROSS: One of the issues of electronic voting machines is, is there a way of
accurately doing a recount? And that's why a lot of people insist that there
should be voter-verified paper audit trails. What are those?

Mr. SELIGSON: A voter-verified paper audit trail is, essentially, a slip of
thermal paper that runs either to the right of or on top of a voting machine,
an electronic voting machine. And it essentially shows the voter exactly what
should be in the computer's memory. So once the two match up, when the voters
see that what's on the screen matches what's on the slip of paper, they
finalize the ballot, they hit the cast vote button, and then that slip of
paper is cut off, kept separately, and then the electronic vote is of course
kept in the computer's memory.

Now after the election, in most states that require these paper trails, the
paper is used in the event of a recount. We saw this in Ohio, where they
audited results after the primary.

GROSS: But in one county in Ohio, wasn't it found that 10 percent of these
paper ballots were compromised or damaged or uncountable for some reason or
another?

Mr. SELIGSON: Yeah, see, there's the trouble. What happens is, we had
inexperienced poll workers load thermal paper in the wrong way. Now, if
you've ever used a thermal fax machine, if you load thermal paper in the wrong
way, you don't see anything. Now, we had some that ripped. We had some that
were inexplicably blank. So when they wanted to do an audit of these
voter-verified paper audit trails after the election just to see how accurate
they were and how they matched up with the machine totals, they found that 10
percent were uncounted.

Now, you know, fast forward to this election. Imagine we have a race that's
decided by 100 votes. They need to recount using these voter-verified paper
audit trails, and they lose 25,000 ballots.

GROSS: Let me get to the Diebold voting machines. That's the brand that most
people know, because there's been so much controversy surrounding them,
because the head of Diebold has been a Republican, has supported Republicans,
and there's a lot of, well, why don't you describe what the concerns are
around Diebold machines?

Mr. SELIGSON: Well, the concern started really before 2004, when computer
scientists in California started to become concerned about how machines are
certified, who's making them, whether the code that runs these machines has
some kind of independent verification by computer scientists, whether the
machines are hack-able, that kind of thing. Diebold was steadfast in its
defense of its machines, despite the criticism that was coming in from
computer scientists, and very reputable computer scientists.

Then we had this incident in 2004, where Walden O'Dell, the former CEO of the
company, wrote a letter to--a fundraising letter, where he said he was going
to, quote, "help deliver Ohio's electoral votes to President Bush." That's not
a good idea for the head of a large company, a voting machine company, to make
a statement like that just before an election. And that--while he's gone, and
the company has since enacted a policy that limits any political activity by
people who work in its election division, that statement--and people remember
what Walden O'Dell said. They remember that every time they think of Diebold.
And, you know, I think that the company continues to be the focus when people
say there's something wrong with electronic voting machines, that electronic
voting machines are corrupt, that, you know, these companies are run by
Republicans, this is because of what Walden O'Dell did in that later.

GROSS: Is there any evidence that the Diebold machines are any more or less
prone to tampering, to hacking, than other brands?

Mr. SELIGSON: I don't know if Diebold is more or less hack-able than other
brands. I do know that when experts in the field get ahold of a voting
machine to see whether it's hack-able, they seem to get Diebold machines more
often than not. So we had this Princeton professor who came up to Capitol
Hill, I think it was some time in early October, and he essentially hacked
into a voting machine at this hearing in about a minute. So it was a dramatic
display of something that, you know, that could happen on Election Day.

Now, Diebold officials would say no one would have enough access to this
voting machine. No one would have, you know, the necessary time and the
ability to do this, plus they use old software. It's an old machine. It
can't happen in the real world. Well, I don't think that Diebol's defense has
really moved many people at this point.

GROSS: So you painted a a picture in which there are a lot of genuine
concerns about how electronic voting machines are going to function, and
whether the final counts will be contested or not. Is there any system in
place in any part of the country to really deal with the potential problems
that may occur on Election Day this year?

Mr. SELIGSON: Well, I think optical scan systems, which are going to be used
in a lot of the country, really, I think that is the most prevalent form of
voting. What it is is, it's a piece of paper where a voter either completes a
line or circles a circle next to a candidate's name. These machines are
paper, essentially. They're fed into these feeders at a polling place. If
there's a stray mark or some other ballot-spoiling error on the ballot, it
gets spit back out. The voter can get a new ballot and vote it correctly.
After the election, you've got your electronic total that came from the
machine, and then if there's any dispute, you can hand count ballots. If a
voter made some weird mark and it was rendered uncountable by the machine, if
I put a big heart next to Kerry and a big X and sad face next to Bush, an
election official could look at that and determine voter intent. Obviously I
meant to vote for Kerry.

So these machines, I think, address a lot of the concerns. They're paper.
You can do an independent count. But what they don't do is allow people with
disabilities the possibility of voting independently and secretly.

GROSS: My guest is Dan Seligson, editor of electionline.org. We'll talk more
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Dan Seligson. He's the editor
of electionline.org, and this is a nonpartisan, nonadvocacy organization that
tracks and analyzes election reform issues. And we're talking about potential
trouble spots for this coming election.

Now there have been disputes over the registration process and, you know,
who's eligible to vote. Have there been a lot of states that have been
changing the process in the past couple of years?

Mr. SELIGSON: Well, there have been some new requirements with registration,
as far as providing the last four digits of a Social Security number or a
driver's license, but there have been also, in Arizona, for example, the
Proposition 200 was approved by voters two years ago, and what it requires is
that voters show proof of citizenship when they register. Now, this is
something that no other state in the country requires. You check off a box
and it's essentially it's a legal document, so you're liable, you know, if you
lie about your citizenship status. But Arizona takes that extra step to make
people show something when they register.

In other states, there have been issues with matching. The way that these new
registration databases work is that you have information about a voter that
can then be compared to health records, to corrections records, that kind of
thing, and driver's records. So there has been an issue about whether a
perfect match needs to happen. In California, for example, they said that
thousands of voters weren't achieving this perfect match and that people were
being knocked off the registration rolls unnecessarily or essentially
disenfranchised because the information didn't match up like it was supposed
to.

GROSS: Now, in 2004, Ohio was very controversial. And it remains
controversial in some circles. Congressman John Conyers had issued a report,
what went wrong in Ohio, examining problems with long lines, cutting back on
the right to provisional ballots, cutting back on the right of citizens to
register to vote, targeting minority and urban voters for illegal challenges,
as well as other problems and irregularities. And the secretary of state who
oversees and certifies the election, Kenneth Blackwell, was in 2004 co-chair
of the Bush-Cheney campaign, and this year he remains secretary of state but
is also running for governor.

So given the controversy surrounding what happened in 2004, what are we
looking at now in Ohio this year?

GROSS: Well, I think if Florida was the poster child for election dysfunction
in 2000, I think Ohio has taken the tiara. Ohio is really the new ground zero
for potential election problems, and I think the media will descend on that
state. Poll watchers, organizations like Election Protection, will be
watching very closely. We'll be there as well to take a look at what's
happening.

There's a lot of things going on in Ohio. First of all, most of the state is
using Diebold, I believe TSX voting machines, which is the newer version of
their touch screen machine that's in Maryland. These machines have the paper
trail. Again, we had problems with the recounting of paper trails in Cuyahoga
County.

We have the state's top election official, who is the arbiter of elections in
the state is now also a candidate, so he's sort of, I guess he would be
considered then the man on trial as well as the judge. But that's not rare.
That happens in a number of states.

And then we have a lot of questions arising about what went wrong in 2004 and
what's been done to fix it. Well, I think there has been some effort to deal
with this issue of machine allocation. There's been new formulas about how
many voters are expected voters, and how many machines you have to have per
voter. One of the biggest problems in Ohio was that machines were allocated
incorrectly, so there were huge lines, particularly in inner city precincts.
And a number of voters just didn't have the time to stand there for two or
three hours in the rain, I think it was a miserable day, to stand there and
wait to vote.

GROSS: In the 2004 election, Ohio became known as the new Florida. Do you
think in 2006 that another state will become known as the new Ohio? Are you
expecting particular trouble in one state this time around?

Mr. SELIGSON: Well, we selected 10 states to watch, the criteria being there
is either something going on in election administration or the potential for
difficulty. One of the states that I think is maybe being overlooked is
Connecticut. Connecticut has three House races that are very competitive. I
think the Senate race between Ned Lamont and Joe Lieberman has become a lot
less competitive in recent days, but the House races are very competitive, and
potentially, if you've got three Republican incumbents who lose or get close
to losing their seats, this could have a major impact on this election.

The state is using lever machines. Lever machines are these old, clunky metal
unit that have been in place in a number of states for 60, 70, I don't know
how many years, but a long time. There's 25 jurisdictions--and this is
cities, small towns--who are going to be using optical scan machines. But for
the most part, most Connecticut voters will cast ballots on these lever
machines which, in 2005, we had a federal agency the election assistants
commission, write a memo saying were essentially not compliant with federal
law any more. So we've got vast numbers of people voting on these machines
that a federal agency have said essentially they're not compliant. That don't
have a paper record.

GROSS: You're also monitoring Florida. You've talked a little bit about
potential problems in Florida this time around. Are there other things that
you're looking for in Florida?

Mr. SELIGSON: Well, Florida made a change to its voter ID law that, while it
seems subtle, could have an impact on some voters. What they did was
they--previously, in 2004, a voter needed to present a photo ID in order to
cast a ballot. If they didn't have a photo ID, they would sign an affidavit
and then they would go vote a regular ballot. Now the slight shift has been,
if a voter is now lacking a photo ID, they cast a provisional ballot, which is
different. That is then set aside and their eligibility is determined later.
The question is, with greater scrutiny on each of these ballots, is there a
greater opportunity to cancel ballots, to challenge someone's identity, to
essentially discard a ballot that should've been counted.

The other issue in Florida were some very strict rules they passed on
third-party organization, be it labor unions, a group called Acorn, other
organizations that run registration drives. And what Florida's law does is it
imposes some pretty severe fines on these third-party organizations if they
fail to return registration forms within 10 days. Now, the fines could get as
high as $5,000 per form, and what happened was, a judge said, `Well, that's
pretty steep and that's going to stop a number of these organizations from
registering people, and therefore stop some people from registering to vote.'
So there was an injunction against the law in August, but this could
definitely come back. Yeah, I think it'll come back to the legislature and
could be revisited next year.

GROSS: I'm going to ask you a question that I can't imagine you can really
answer, but that's not going to stop me.

Mr. SELIGSON: Go for it.

GROSS: Yeah, well the question is, why is this happening? Why in the United
States of America are we so worried about the election being accurate? I
mean, I just don't remember, in my lifetime--I know there's been corruption
and I know there's been, you know, contested elections in various places, but
there's never been anything quite like this for several elections in a row.
What is going on?

Mr. SELIGSON: It's a great question, and I think what's going on is there's
a much greater emphasis on the administration of elections than there ever has
been before. My organization, for example, we didn't exist in 1999. We
started up after the 2000 election because of the number of problems that were
found around the country. I think both political parties have learned that
they need to pay attention to the process or they're going to lose. They're
going to lose an election because they didn't know what the recount procedures
are. They didn't know, you know, how to challenge voters effectively.
They've both been studying this issue. And as the electorate has become more
divided and now we're really a 50-50 country, every race is high stakes and,
you know, there's always the possibility of using the courts to your advantage
in an election. Both sides seek advantage both before, during, and after an
election.

And voter ID is one of those issues where, you know, we've got Republicans
saying `There's something wrong with fraud in our election system.' And we've
got Democrats saying, `There's something wrong with lack of access in our
election system.' They collide right at voter ID. You know, this is the issue
that both parties have consistently disagreed on, because it really cuts to
that integrity vs. access to the system.

GROSS: Do you have any advice to voters this year, who feel that either
they're being denied access to the voting polls or they suspect that their
vote won't be accurately counted, or they've noticed some other irregularity
that makes them suspicious. What should they do?

Mr. SELIGSON: Well, I think the first thing a voter should do, and they
should start soon, is to verify their registration before the election. Just
call up, or if the state or locality offers it, go check on the Web site
whether they are, in fact, properly registered. If there's a problem with
registration, there's not a lot of time to fix it, but it is worth checking
right now. There's a Web site called canivote.org that offers a one-stop
service where voters can link to each state or locality and find out their
registration status and other information like polling place information.
That's sort of the first step.

At the polling station, if a voter makes a mistake, they need to tell a
pollworker. They need to get a new ballot. They don't need to be
embarrassed. Machines are new and the processes are new, so if you make a
mistake, don't be too proud. Get a new ballot. If you have a voter-verified
paper audit trail, look at it. They did a study in Nevada in 2004, and only
about 30 percent of voters, you know, the ones that they measured, bothered to
ever look at this piece of paper that's running next to the voting machine. I
mean, this is an important piece of the process is that you need to make sure
that the piece of paper matches up with the electronic total, because there's
a chance, if there's a recount, the piece of paper's the only vote that
matters. So make sure that it worked correctly. And I think if Cuyahoga
County voters paid closer attention, they probably would've noticed these
blank spots or other problems with their voter-verified paper audit trails.

The next step in the process: on the wall of every polling place in the
country is a voter grievance procedure phone number and other information,
where if someone has a problem, if they feel that they were wrongly denied the
right to vote, that a machine didn't work or some other problem, every state
has had to establish a formal grievance procedure as part of the Help America
Vote Act that was passed in 2002. So that's sort of the last step.

And then usually, in these high-stakes states and high-stakes races, if you
walk outside you'll see someone wearing a t-shirt that says Election
Protection, you have a problem call this number. So there are organizations
out there, nonpartisan organizations, that will help voters if they need it.

GROSS: Well Dan Seligson, thanks so much for talking with us.

Mr. SELIGSON: Absolutely. Pleasure.

GROSS: Dan Seligson is the editor of electionline.org. They've published a
2006 election preview. I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Reverend Nelson B. Rivers III, the COO of the NAACP;
and Marvin "Doc Cheatham," president of the Baltimore NAACP, talk
about the challenges facing African-American voters in 2006
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Voting experts say that problems at the polls in 2000 and 2004 have led to
increasing disillusionment among African-Americans. The NAACP is encouraging
African-Americans to vote, and the group is preparing to monitor
irregularities and intimidation at the polls. They'll pay special attention
to 10 states the group considers likely to have problems.

My guests are Reverend Nelson B. Rivers III, the COO of the NAACP, and Marvin
"Doc" Cheatham, president of the NAACP's Baltimore branch. He's overseeing
the effort to monitor polls in Baltimore. Maryland is one of the 10 states
the NAACP is focusing on. The others are Alabama, Florida, Georgia,
Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.

According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, almost one third of
African-Americans today have little or no confidence in the voting system, and
more than three times as many African-Americans than whites don't think their
vote would be accurately counted. Do you sense the distrust that that Pew
Research Center poll measured?

Reverend NELSON B. RIVERS III: Oh, absolutely. It's palpable. We can feel
it, we hear it. As we move around the country, I do a lot of speaking to
NAACP branches and youth units all across America. Just came back from
Topeka, Kansas, a few days ago, as well as Oakland, California. And
everywhere I go, there's this combination of commitment to turn out to vote
and to have folk participate in the process, but also acknowledging, even
within our own ranks, so much pessimism and suspicion about the process.

The Diebold machines generate a lot of suspicion because of the statements of
the owner of the company and what happened in Ohio. So there is great
suspicion across our community, but I think this year it's balanced with a lot
of angst about public policy, and a lot of distrust of folk in government,
especially the members of Congress now. I think people are going to be
motivated to participate slightly higher rates than in the last midterm
election, but there is a lot of pessimism, distrust, and antagonism toward the
election process.

GROSS: Doc Cheatham, what are you hearing?

Mr. MARVIN "DOC" CHEATHAM: Well, in the state of Maryland, not only hearing,
but we've already experienced double requests for absentee ballots as opposed
to people physically going to the polls, so it has already shown itself in the
fact that all the voters who normally would have voted for the going into the
voting machines, significant numbers, double have actually this year requested
the paper ballot.

GROSS: Because they don't trust the machines?

Mr. CHEATHAM: They don't trust the machines, unfortunately.

GROSS: And why don't they trust the machines? What's going on in Maryland
this year that makes the machines particularly controversial?

Mr. CHEATHAM: Our primary election back in September, we had not a good
state election. We had polling places in one county that were not delivered,
the total part of the apparatus needed to deal with the check-in system. We
had a significant number of judges that either had problems with the machine
or, in fact, physically were not there. So we have a combination of
challenges with the two electronic apparatuses we have in Maryland coupled
with the fact that a significant number of judges did not appear.

GROSS: Because of questions surrounding the voting machines in Maryland, the
governor, who's Republican, is recommending the people vote with absentee
ballots. What impact do you think that's having on voters? Can you tell?

Mr. CHEATHAM: The impact is that many people will be voting via absentee
ballot when in fact they've not done it before. We strongly suggest that they
be very careful, that they make certain they vote in every category that they
deem appropriate. But we don't totally support that whole concept of absentee
ballots. The reason for that is, a significant number of voters that vote
absentee ballot, believe it or not--I won't say a "significant," but at least
a number of those--will not have their ballots counted because they did not
follow the process correctly. It's the same situation with provisional
ballots. A number of people vote provisional ballots, but the overwhelming
majority of the provisional ballots are never counted.

GROSS: So you're not recommending the absentee ballots?

Mr. CHEATHAM: We're recommending folks, at least in the city of Baltimore,
and I would say possibly the state of Maryland, if you physically have the
ability to get to the polls, go to the polling place where you've been
registered.

GROSS: Have you found that there have been rumors, or really conspiracy
theories, about what to expect this election? Are there rumors and conspiracy
theories that are circulating?

Rev. RIVERS: Some of this is not theory, some of it is fact. Some of it is
voter suppression tactics that've been used across the years, going back as
far as, in Arizona, when over 30 years ago, they used to threaten Hispanic
voters with deportation if they showed up. Right now, in many states, we've
heard reports in Texas and many places that folk have been threatened that if
they show up and are not documented, or they'll be checked and sent back. We
also have, in Georgia, rumors are out that they're going to, if you come and
you have a parking ticket, you'll be arrested, that your records will be
checked.

All of this is false, but this is really a tactic that's been going on,
tactics that've been used over the years. I've encountered them in almost
every election in my adult experience. I've been working with elections now
going back almost 30 years, and I've never been through one that didn't have
some kind of trickery, someone trying to manipulate folk, trying to intimidate
folk, harass people. Almost always they target people of target, the poor.
And so these are not just rumors, this is a fact. We have received samples in
the past of postcards that were sent to black voters telling them if you did
not child support, you can't vote; telling them that if you did not--if you
have a court date outstanding, you'll be arrested on the spot. And we've seen
these things and we know that they exist. And they will exist this time.

And so every time in an election, we have to have a way to turn the vote out
to compensate for the vote that's intimidated or harassed.

GROSS: How did the elections in 2000 and 2004 affect the way that the NAACP
is monitoring elections now in 2006 and affect what it is that you're looking
for?

Rev. RIVERS: Well, if you recall, in 2000, NAACP was the first organization
to hold hearings and respond with a fact-based respond. The hearings revealed
widespread and amazing problems, intimidation, harassment, and classic failure
on the part of the election machinery and election officials in Florida and
then across the country, which led to the implementation of or the passage of
the HAVA, the Help America Vote Act. In fact, a lot of the data that helped
the act become law came out of those hearings.

And what we learned across the country is that, one, we were effective in
turnout. It was the largest turnout in a number of years, and in many places,
historic voter turnout, especially among black voters. But historic turnout
also produced historic discrimination, historic harassment, and breakdown in
the system. And so we came back in '02 and found that many of the problems
still existed. '04, another high turnout.

We also found, like in Ohio where they tried to manipulate the process right
before the election about who could actually vote, how you registered, even
down to the size of the paper that you used to register with by mail, a lot of
problems with mail-in registration. And so because of that, we developed like
a protocol, a criteria that we used to train our folk to have them prepared.

We also realized that at the polling place, the long lines, the waits
discourage folk. And some of that turned out, in our investigation, to be
intentional. We think that that was designed to frustrate folk and to have
them turn away before they could vote. So a big part of it was to encourage
folk to stay in line. No matter how long it takes, you must vote, because
only when you vote do you get a chance for your vote to count.

Then there's the issue of, `Even after I vote, will my vote be counted?' And
so we expect that '06 is a dry run for us for '08. In addition to how
important these elections are, we're also going to find out which systems
still do not work. So we'll have two more years to try to get it right.

GROSS: Doc Cheatham, what do you think?

Mr. CHEATHAM: One of the things I would like to point out, I spent almost
all of my life in the field of elections. From the 2000 election, we did not
learn and did not listen to those of us that are considered to be election
experts. And I'm still crying out today. What we need is a computerized
voting system that is transparent, that enables you to have a paper trail and
a paper receipt. And you can't tell me that with all of the technological
institutions we have across the country, including Morgan State University
here in the great state of Maryland, that we cannot in fact build the type of
apparatus that we've been crying out for since the year 2000. We can go to
the moon, you can't tell me we can't build a machine. It has to be a
transparent computerized machine, paper trail, paper receipt.

GROSS: Doc Cheatham, you have been focusing on elections for many years. Do
you feel like progress has been made in fairness in getting African-Americans
access to polls in your lifetime? Do you feel like we're heading back in the
wrong direction?

Mr. CHEATHAM: Sadly enough, I think we're heading in the wrong direction. I
think, sadly enough, a number of people have found more ways to disenfranchise
both poor and people of color. And I think it just makes our resolve with the
NAACP that much stronger, that we must fight even harder because the
discriminations and the racism that took place years ago may not be the same
that we're experiencing today, it's more sophisticated. Which means we must
become more talented in fighting those that have ill will with the election
process. And I'm discouraged, but not to the point that I will give up. We
will continue fighting to make certain that every vote counts, no matter where
we are in the country.

GROSS: Well, thank you both very much for talking with us.

Rev. RIVERS: Thank you.

Mr. CHEATHAM: Thank you and God bless you.

Rev. RIVERS: It's been a pleasure.

GROSS: Nelson B. Rivers III is the COO of the NAACP. Marvin Doc Cheatham is
the president of the NAACP's Baltimore branch. If you're wondering if he's
related to the late trumpeter Doc Cheatham, yes, he's a great-nephew.

Coming up, we talk with Don Byron. His new CD pays tribute to Junior Walker.
This is FRESH AIR.

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Interview: Don Byron talks about his new Junior Walker tribute CD,
"Do the Boomerang," and how Walker and the entire gospel tradition
heavily influenced his personal and professional life
TERRY GROSS, host:

When clarinetist and saxophonist Don Byron puts together a new concert or CD,
I'm always curious to see what he's up to. He's a terrific composer, but he
often performs music of composers he loves, and his choices represent a
wonderful mix of styles. Klezmer, Earth Wind & Fire, The Sugar Hill Gang,
Henry Mancini, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Sly Stone, Lester Young, and
Duke Ellington are just some examples. His new CD, "Do the Boomerang,"
features tunes written or recorded by the saxophonist Junior Walker, including
Walker's 1969 hit "What Does It Take?" and his first hit, "Shotgun," from
1965. Here's Don Byron's band with Dean Bowman doing the vocal.

(Soundbite of "Shotgun")

Mr. DEAN BOWMAN: (Singing)
I said shotgun!
Shoot 'em 'fore he runs, now,
Do the jerk, baby!
Do the jerk now!
Ho!

Put on your red dress
And then you go downtown now.
I said buy yourself a shotgun now
We're going to break it down baby now.
We gonna load it up, baby, now
And then you shoot 'im 'fore he runs now.

I said, shotgun!
Shoot 'im 'fore he runs now.
Do the jerk, baby,
Do the jerk now!

(End soundbite)

GROSS: Don Byron, welcome back to FRESH AIR. So why'd you want to do an
album of Junior Walker tunes?

Mr. DON BYRON: I had always been a fan of Junior Walker's music and I had
never really had any way of really understanding it other than I liked it.
And quite a few years ago, as I was moving through various spaces, I
discovered black gospel, religion, and culture, and found that a lot of the
music that had happened in the 20th century was pretty much coming out of
that. And in my exploration, I kind of figured out where he was coming from,
that a lot of the mannerisms that he was using, if you want to call them
"mannerisms," were really gospel-isms, and they came out of the singing and
preaching of the black church.

GROSS: What else do you hear when he's playing or in his tunes that you
didn't hear when you were younger?

Mr. BYRON: Well, I think that's mostly it. It's kind of a vocal quality,
instead of doing what horn players are taught, which is studying other horn
players. And I think as an American horn player, you're either in school a
classical musician or a jazz musician. And when we're talking about jazz,
we're talking about melodic material where the chords and the scales are kind
of matched up and the melodies come out of the scales that are associated with
the chords.

What I could hear was another way of relaying that was much more the way an
R&B vocalist tends to relate to singing a song and improvising on and around
the melody of it.

GROSS: It's interesting, like Junior Walker had like several dance hits, like
"Do the Boomerang," and of course "Shotgun."

Mr. BYRON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And you, not too long ago, were doing a show of early, like Sugar Hill
hip-hop and rap records, which are also kind of like party music.

Mr. BYRON: Yeah.

GROSS: But it's completely like different. It's like two different
generations. Do you think a lot about how, for a lot of people, music is
purely generational, it's about what they grew up with as opposed to kind of
listening to the music of many generations?

Mr. BYRON: Well, I think as a musician, you don't think as much about, you
know, generational difference as much as you think about stylistic difference.
And I think the whole aspect of Junior Walker's music coming from gospel was
something that was really new for me. About, I don't know how long ago it
was, maybe 10 years ago, I started really paying attention to gospel music.
First through checking out gospel preachers. And there was a group of them,
Jasper Williams from Atlanta, William Ellis from Chicago, Paul Morton from New
Orleans, that I checked out that I thought, even just speaking, I could hear
the beginnings of gospel singing coming directly from these preachers.
There's just a real connection within gospel culture, and even more now,
current gospel culture, you see the preaching alongside with the singing,
alongside with the instrumental playing, like it's all kind of one piece.

And I was checking this stuff out and, really, you know, believe it or not,
discovering Jesus for myself, I started to see these connections. And as it
was working its way through me, all of a sudden, `Man, you know, I understand
what this music is coming from.' It really got into me.

GROSS: Did I hear you correctly? Are you saying that through investigating
gospel music, preachers, that you ended up becoming Christian?

Mr. BYRON: Yeah. I mean, I was Christian all along in the kind of way that,
you know, somebody that's Catholic and doesn't go to church is Catholic and
doesn't go to church. I was a Lutheran and didn't go to church. And the kind
of church that I went to was, well, we had a British minister at my church in
the South Bronx. In fact, I'm completely convinced that the guy was convinced
that he was doing missionary work by ministering to us in the South Bronx.
But, you know, the music wasn't really funky. It wasn't really coming out of
this. In fact, you know, this kind of church culture was not what I was
exposed to.

But I will correct you that I think it was the preaching that I was checking
out first. I was just in a period where some things that I was working on
business-wise didn't work out and I was a little down about it, and then I
started checking these guys out and what they were saying. It was like, they
were like this black rooting section for me. I felt like they were talking to
me. They seemed to understand my situation in a certain kind of way that I
had never really experienced in my churchgoing experience. I was like, `Wow,
this is--where was this?' You know? I could've--if I'd known some of this
stuff, I could've gotten through a lot more of the things that I went through
with a lot more confidence.

And then I discovered the music; it was kind of the other way around. So it
was really, you know, when I say these guys kind of transformed my life, it
wasn't so much that I checked out some music on an intellectual vibe and then
I got a little Jesus. It was like the Jesus kind of came first.

GROSS: So do you think of yourself as born again now?

Mr. BYRON: I think of myself as kind of gussied up. Not necessarily born
again, just a little gussied up. I'm just a little gussied up, I think, is
the right word. I'm just, I'm gussied up for Jesus, you know?

GROSS: My guest is Don Bryon. His new CD is called "Do the Boomerang: the
Music of Junior Walker." We're talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: My guest is saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer Don Byron. His new
CD, "Do the Boomerang" features the music of Junior Walker. This is the track
"Mark Antony Speaks." George Colligan is featured on the Hammond B3 organ.

(Soundbite of "Mark Antony Speaks")

GROSS: I read a really interesting quote by you. You said that you think of
yourself as having been influenced by Lee Strasberg, the great actor, who was
also famous for teaching the method.

Mr. BYRON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And you said that it gave you the idea that you could change yourself
musically the way an actor changes for different roles. And I was wondering
how deep that change goes. I mean, when you change yourself musically, is it
just the music that's changing or are you changing other things? Like in a
performance, do you behave differently onstage? Do you dress differently?
And when you're home working through different periods or different styles of
music, do you find your own personality changing during that period?

Mr. BYRON: Wow. That's yet another super-provocative question of yours. I
would say, for the most part, no, but in this particular case, you know,
getting to a place where I could play Junior Walker's music meant really
dealing with gospel blues in a way that was very personal. I don't think I
could've gotten to this music without embracing some of the boundless hope of
gospel music, and I think to do this project I had to have some kind of
epiphany about the structure of my religious beliefs. And in that way, it's a
much bigger change than playing, say, klezmer music, where you, know, there
was never any kind of feeling when I was playing klezmer music that I wasn't,
like, the same person, like a Christian person from the Bronx.

But then, as I said, the whole mentality around embracing this culture is a
big change for me. It's also a big change for me trying to be more positive.
You know, trying to be more positive is a big change from a person like me,
you know, like, my thing is you know, dark to very dark.

GROSS: But you know, there's a real darkness to Junior Walker's music, which
I don't think I noticed...

Mr. BYRON: Yeah!

GROSS: ...until I was listening to you and then going back and listening to
him again. I didn't notice that in the '60s when I was listening.

Mr. BYRON: Yeah, I think it's--I think the best word I would say is smoky.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. BYRON: It's a little smoky tinge to everything, you know, and a lot of
it is associations we have with the kind of sounds on those records, the
instruments like he often has organ on his records, which, a lot of Motown
records don't have organ. They have piano. The organ is much more of an
atmospheric kind of thing, but there's a kind of sadness, kind of bluesy
sadness and a kind of smoky laidback-ness to some of the music. Certainly a
piece like "Cleo's Mood" really has that very heavily.

GROSS: Anything else you want to tell us about Junior Walker and why you like
his music so much?

Mr. BYRON: Well, I think when we're talking about horn players who have this
kind of gospel blues heavy influence, the ones that people remember are a lot
of the ones that are attached to the big vocalists of the period, so with Ray
Charles we've got Hank Crawford and Fathead Newman. With James Brown, there's
Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley. With Aretha, there's King Curtis. And, you
know, that kind of interplay that I was talking about before became a soloist
and a singer. You really feel that. When Maceo's in there, you know, James
Brown is alive; he's like happy to hear how Maceo's taking what he's sung and
converted it into his own version of that language.

And I think what's amazing about Junior Walker is he is actually his own
singer inspiration.

GROSS: Well, Don Byron, great to talk with you again. Thanks a lot for
talking with us.

Mr. BYRON: Well, thank you. Well, thank you, Terry.

GROSS: Don Byron's new CD is "Do the Boomerang: the Music of Junior Walker."
Some of Byron's own compositions are featured on the latest Bang on a Can CD,
"A Ballad for Many." I'm Terry Gross.
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