[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Listeners, you're all familiar with our listening party segments when we interview a musician about a new album and then play some clips from it. Today we have a very special edition of a listening party because it's an album we made. You heard about The Public Song Project, where we invite anyone to record and send in songs based on work in the public domain.

For this year's project, we had some help from friends of WNYC, professional musicians and names you've heard of on our airwaves before. As you've been hearing during our pledge spots today, we put together some of our favorite tracks on a cool, clear, red vinyl album, which is available as part of our pledge drive. Here for an All of It listening party, here to talk about the album and share some clips by with producer Simon Close. Hi, Simon.

Simon Close: Hey, Alison.

Alison Stewart: And Zach Gottehrer-Cohen. Hi, Zach.

Zach Gottehrer-Cohen: Hey, Alison.

Alison Stewart: Before we dive into the album, would you please describe The Public Song Project for us?

Simon Close: Sure. For the first time. [laughter] This is our project that we started last year. We're inviting anybody to submit songs based on work in the public domain. We broadened it out this year to coincide with WNYC's centennial, and invited professional musicians, as you said, names that you hear on the radio station to join in and submit some songs. That's where the songs on this album came from.

Alison Stewart: Who are we talking about in terms of musicians, Zach?

Zach Gottehrer-Cohen: We have the Lemon Twigs and Lightning Bug with this very reverby take. It's like a pop-type synth take on some old music. Rosanne Cash with some Nashville Honky-Tonk. The lemon Twigs. Did I say lemon twigs?

Alison Stewart: Yes, the Lemon Twigs.

Zach Gottehrer-Cohen: Lightning Bug. Two Ls. That's got me mixed up. Rhiannon Giddens, who we'll talk about in a little bit of. We also have Jake Blunt, Odyssey, who didn't do a cover. He did a--

Simon Close: Sample.

Zach Gottehrer-Cohen: He used samples instead of most of the artists, which we got adaptations in full.

Alison Stewart: Simon, there are 14 songs on the album. You had to narrow it down from about 35 songs from your full roster of musicians. How'd you pick?

Simon Close: It was tough to pick because they're all great songs. I think what we wanted to do on this album was take a highlight reel of the different kinds of songs that we got from different artists. As Zach was saying, there's some hip hop and DJ-style music represented. There's indie rock, there's country. There are also different kinds of submissions. A lot of them are cover songs, but then there are samples of songs. There are a couple songs that adapted poetry to turn them into basically original pieces of music. A lot of different angles on this prompt.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear a couple things. First up, we have Rosanne Cash and John Leventhal. Tell us a little bit about this.

Simon Close: Sure, I'll take it. This is a song originally from the 1920s, and the early versions of it sound very 1920s. You hear versions on piano and ukulele. It's called Any Time by Herbert Happy Lawson. Happy was the name that he went by as a composer. In the late 1940s, this morphed into a country standard because of Eddy Arnold, I think is his name, who was a pioneer of the Nashville sound in the 1950s. It became an even bigger deal and it became a very early country billboard charting hit at that time.

Rosanne and John took that song, and their version of it sounds very similar to that country feel that Eddy Arnold started and many others have covered since then, but uses modern technology to make it feel both from that time and from earlier, but also timeless and now. This is Any Time from Rosanne Cash and John Leventhal.

[MUSIC - Rosanne Cash and John Leventhal: Any Time]

Anytime you're feelin' lonely

Anytime you're feelin' blue

Anytime you feel downhearted

That will prove your love for me is true

Anytime you're thinkin' 'bout me

That's the time I'll be thinkin' of you

And anytime you say you want me back again

That's the time I'll come back home to you

Alison Stewart: Let's hear another track. We're going to hear from Rhiannon Giddens, Zach. What did you get Rhiannon to sing?

Zach Gottehrer-Cohen: She chose to perform a song called I'm a Little Blackbird Looking for a Bluebird, which actually celebrates its hundredth anniversary next week on October 29th, along with WNYC's hundredth anniversary. This is a song that was made popular by Florence Mills, who Rhiannon-- It's a little bit of a backwards story. Rhiannon first got really interested in Florence Mills's life when she was preparing to act in the same role that Florence was acting in Shuffle Along, which is a really--

It's a show that was performed on Broadway, I think one of the first written by an all-Black writer team.

Simon Close: And starring an all-Black cast.

Zach Gottehrer-Cohen: And starring an all-Black cast. It spurned on the Harlem Renaissance. She chose to pick this song, I'm a Little Blackbird Looking for a Bluebird, which was popularized by Florence Mills, but never recorded. This is correcting the record. We now have a foremost performer of our time channeling this old performer. Now we get to hear a little bit of it on vinyl and here on the radio.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to Rhiannon Giddens playing I'm A little Blackbird.

[MUSIC - Rhiannon Giddens: I'm a Little Blackbird Looking for a Bluebird]

Never had no happiness

Never had no fun caress

I'm just a little o' beat up humanity, born on a Friday I guess

Blue as anyone can be

Clouds all I ever see

And if the sun forgets no one, why don't it shine for me

I'm a little blackbird looking for a bluebird too

You know little blackbirds, get a little lonesome too and blue

Alison Stewart: Rhiannon Giddens with I'm a Little Blackbird. We're talking about The Public Song Project on Vinyl with producer Simon Close and Zach Gottehrer-Cohen. Let's talk about Will Butler. He's had a big year. The composer behind the Tony winning play Stereophonic, formerly of Arcade Fire. What did he want to record?

Simon Close: He did a song called The Man I Love by George and Ira Gershwin. What I like about his song and Rhiannon's song is that both had a personal connection to these songs for why they chose them. In Rhiannon's case, as Zach said, it was that Rhiannon was going to be in Shuffle Along, and then ended up not being in Shuffle Along, but was interested in Florence Mills, and so got to do this song instead. In Will's case, Will's grandparents were both professional musicians in the early 20th century, living in New York. His grandfather was Alvino Rey, who was a big time bandleader and steel guitar player. His grandmother was in a group called The King Sisters who were a vocal ensemble. They actually performed this Gershwin song when they were together.

Alison Stewart: Oh, nice.

Simon Close: Will, when he sent me this song, he told me that that was part of why he picked it, because his grandmother sang it, and also the suggestion was an ode to his grandparents who lived in New York together. It's a love song. This is Will Butler plus his group Sister Squares. It's a very funky-- Not funky. I don't know, haunting. It's a really cool, contemporary take on this Gershwin song.

[MUSIC - Will Butler: The Man I love]

He'll look at me and smile

I'll understand

And in a little while

He'll take my hand

And though it seems absurd

I know we both won't say a word

Maybe I shall meet him Sunday

Maybe Monday, maybe not

Still I'm sure to meet him one day

Alison Stewart: Spooky. [laughs]

Zach Gottehrer-Cohen: Happy Halloween, everybody.

Alison Stewart: You are great radio producers. You're great live event producers. What'd you learn about making an album?

Zach Gottehrer-Cohen: One of the interesting things is how many back and forths between we send the music and then they have to create a positive of the record that's eventually going to be that then gets stamped onto negatives, and then the negatives get checked. It's just a process of transferring this music one by one until, bam, you've got a record. That's one thing. Then the other thing is just how different it sounds on vinyl. We've listened to these songs in every single form-

Alison Stewart: So many times

Zach Gottehrer-Cohen: -and there's just a character that comes out when you listen to it on vinyl that really adds to the historical way that we're listening to these tracks.

Alison Stewart: We probably have time for one more song. What do you think?

Simon Close: What do you think, Zach?

Zach Gottehrer-Cohen: How about Recca?

Simon Close: Yes, let's go with DJ Recca.

Alison Stewart: Okay. Set this up.

Simon Close: Sure. DJ Recca, who was also one of the judges on the song project last year and this year, teamed up with another producer called offering rain, and they did a really cool-- As I said, there are different kinds of songs on this album. Many of them are covers. Some of them are poetry adaptations. In this case, Recca and offering rain took samples from some old pieces of sound. One of them is a Mexican poet. The audio recording is from 1915. The poet's name is Juan de Dios Peza, and it's him reciting his poem. The other one is from 1907, I think. It's one of India's first recording artists. I'll just read a little bit of what Recca said when they sent this in.

"The original music was created for the track to invoke the origins of both recordings. Offering rain is of Ecuadorian and Indian descent." Recca said, "I live in a Latinx and South Asian neighborhood. We wanted to find content to reflect that and veer outside the contemporary music of the early 20th century America. As DJ's and producers, we could not resist giving it a groove." Here's some very early 20th century sound with a groove.

[MUSIC - DJ Recca and offering rain]

Alison Stewart: You can learn more about The Public Song Project on Vinyl. Big thanks to Simon Close and Zach Gottehrer-Cohen. Thanks, guys.

Simon Close: Thank you, Alison.