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Former President Carter dies at 100

by | Dec 29, 2024 | News

Former President Carter on Feb. 24, 2013. Photo: Commonwealth Club of California/Flickr

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter died Sunday, Dec. 29, the Associated Press reports. He was 100, making him the longest-living president in history. Carter had entered hospice care a year earlier.

I briefly interviewed Carter 25 years ago at an event in South Florida while working as a reporter for Miami station WIOD, NewsRadio 610. He was appearing at Books and Books in Coral Gables in January 1999. That was at the same time as a U.S. Senate trial of President Bill Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice regarding a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinski. I asked Carter his thoughts on the trial, as well as changes in politics since his time in office.

AUDIO: Interviewing former President Jimmy Carter in January 1999 in Coral Gables, Florida.

Much was been written about Carter since his death. While he only served one term, Carter received high praise for how he lived his life. I was very appreciative that he gave me a few minutes going into the event, providing thoughtful comments to my questions.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:

MICHAEL HIBBLEN: What are your thoughts on modern day presidential politics and the investigations of the president and so forth?

FORMER PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: Well, I don’t think there’s any way to control what the investigations have done. The Congress passed the law, President Clinton signed the law into effect. The Attorney General called for a special prosecutor, a three-judge panel appointed Kenneth Starr when a vacancy occurred, but I think there’s no doubt that the special prosecutor law has been abused by Kenneth Starr. I don’t think that there’s any doubt that after this furor is over, which I hope will be fairly soon, that the law is going to be changed to put some constraints on the time spent and the money spent on investigations.

HIBBLEN: Do you think politics has become more nasty since your days in office?

CARTER: Oh yeah, there’s no doubt about that. It’s become very nasty compared to when I was in office. When I ran against Gerald Ford, who was an incumbent president, and when I ran later against Ronald Regan, he was a governor, former governor, I never referred to them as anything except my distinguished opponent or my worthy opponent. If I had run a negative campaign spot on TV, it would have been suicidal for me. I mean, the people would have condemned me. Nowadays, the common thing is not to win by what you claim that you are going to do if you get in office, but to win by totally destroying the character of your opponent, whether they deserve to be destroyed or not. The problem is the finance laws which permit unlimited use of soft money, as you probably know. The soft money cannot be used by law to promote a candidate. It can be used to tear down an opponent, and that’s one of the root causes of the negative atmosphere that exists not only in Washington but in statehouses like Atlanta and in Tallahassee.

HIBBLEN: So, you feel a lot of changes should come to politics?

CARTER: The change that needs to be done is to change the campaign finance laws. Yeah, because now we have the equivalent of legal bribery. It is legal, but somebody that wants a special favor from the Congress or from the White House, from the governor’s mansion or whatever, gives unlimited amounts of money through various means, and they don’t give it for nothing. They expect some special treatment or they expect their voice to be heard, at least, you know, when the candidate who they have helped finance gets in office. So, that’s what needs to be changed.

Raving about Willie Nelson during Arkansas PBS pledge drive

by | Dec 24, 2024 | Johnny Cash, Music, Willie Nelson

I had the most fun I’ve ever had during a pledge drive on Wednesday, Dec. 11 as Arkansas PBS featured an evening airing Willie Nelson’s 90 Birthday Celebration, followed by a 1990 concert with country supergroup the Highwaymen, which was made up of Nelson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson.  

I’ve long been a huge fan of Willie and have seen him in concert more than any other performer — maybe a dozen times since 1990. I spoke about being introduced to Willie’s music at a young age in the 1970s when my mom would play his 8-tracks Red Headed Stranger and Stardust on practically every family trip to see my grandparents. I didn’t enjoy Willie then, but over the years, watching him perform during the first Farm Aid concert in 1985 and many times on Austin City Limits helped me begin building an appreciation. Eventually seeing him in concert, I realized what an amazing performer he was.

So it was a joy to talk about Willie as we were showing a couple of his concerts. Joining me on the air was singer-songwriter Ryan Harmon, who, despite his young age, has an encyclopedic knowledge of country music. Years earlier he had worked in the marketing department at Arkansas PBS, but after being selected for an audition with ABC’s American Idol, took the encouragement he received from judges and is now focused on building his career as a musician. 

If you watch the video below, you’ll see we had a great time on the air. The video only features highlights from our local breaks with none of the concerts we were showing to avoid copyright infringements by posting this to YouTube. 

Among the things I spoke about during the pledge drive was my one experience interviewing Willie for a half-hour in South Florida in 2005. I was working for the Miami Herald, which had a partnership providing local news to PBS/NPR station WLRN. You can hear the interview and read a transcript here.

During breaks in the Highwaymen show at Nassau Coliseum, we also talked about the unveiling of the Johnny Cash statue earlier that year in the U.S. Capitol, which I was excited to attend. His statue and one of civil rights pioneer Daisy Bates, unveiled earlier in the year, now represent Arkansas. Each state is allowed two statues, and Bates and Cash were selected by the Arkansas General Assembly in 2019.

Interviewing Willie Nelson in Plantation, Florida on May 26, 2005. Photo: Candace West/Miami Herald

I also discussed covering the restoration years earlier of Cash’s boyhood home in Dyess, which began when Arkansas State University bought the dilapidated farmhouse as part of its Arkansas Heritage Sites program. Fundraising for the project began with a 2011 with a concert in Jonesboro, which included Kris Kristofferson. Willie would perform the second year, with a dedication ceremony of the home eventually held in 2014.

The preservation of the Cash home and placing a statue of he and Bates in Washington are, by far, my favorite stories to have covered during my long career.

Veteran broadcaster, high school teacher Bob Gay dies at 87

by | Dec 9, 2024 | Radio

Bob Gay after we met for lunch on July 14, 2004. Photo: Michael Hibblen

I’m sad to learn my high school radio broadcasting instructor Bob Gay died Friday, Dec. 6. He was 87. Bob had a lengthy career working at radio stations and later shared his wealth of knowledge with students. While I later learned more nuanced information in college, especially about journalism, I always felt I got more real world information about this challenging industry from Bob.

In his class at Little Rock’s Metropolitan Vocational Education Center, which I took from 1988-89, he even taught us things like how to cold call program directors to express interest in working for a station. He didn’t sugarcoat the profession, and for those interested in pursuing a career, offered advice on how to build professional relationships and what not to do.

For much of the class we operated as a radio station, with students rotating through different positions each week: being a DJ following a strict format clock, writing and producing commercials, writing and delivering newscasts, and preparing commercial logs. It enabled us to have an understanding of how all broadcast-related positions worked together to make a station function. We operated out of facilities that up until a year earlier had housed a real radio station, KLRE-FM 90.5, which was central Arkansas’s first NPR station and had initially been licensed to the Little Rock School District.

I wish I remembered details of the stations and places where Bob worked. One time in class he put a tape on the reel-to-reel machine and played an aircheck he was clearly proud of him with him being a DJ for a top 40 station, circa 1974. I’m making that assumption on the time period because he played Gordon Lightfoot’s “Sundown,” which was released that year, several times during his shift. I’m confident that station wasn’t in Arkansas.

Bob eventually helped put KSSN-FM 95.7 in Little Rock on the air as program director around 1980, which grew to become the top-rated station. Longtime morning man Bob Robbins mentioned Bob Gay while telling a story at a 2015 reunion of radio people. The newscasts at KSSN were recorded, and Bob Robbins said he stumbled midway through a newscast and proceeded to yell a string of expletives. He rerecorded the newscast, but ended up putting the wrong tape into the automation system and those profanities were played on the air. Bob Gay didn’t hear the broadcast, but came out of his office asking, “What did you say? What did you say?” One of the many things Bob Gay taught us was never say anything in a radio studio you wouldn’t want to be broadcast, and perhaps this incident was why.

Bob helped me get my first paying radio job — a small, financially struggling AM station in Benton where most of my paychecks bounced. But it gave me a chance to get some experience, get better on the air, and I got hired at a better, more financially stable radio station six months later. My career progression was exactly what Bob encouraged his students to do. Keep improving our skills, then look for better stations or bigger markets. I ended up working in radio for 34 years and don’t think it ever would have started without Bob. I’m still in broadcasting, but today in television at Arkansas PBS.

I met up with Bob a few times over the years. The last time I saw him was in 2004 during a visit home to Arkansas. He was thrilled that at the time I was working as a news anchor and reporter for a major station in Miami, and he seemed to enjoy hearing my adventures. I wish I’d reached out to him in recent years.

I know there are many other students who learned a great base of knowledge from Bob and went into radio. I hope to see some at his service, scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 12. According to his obituary, it will be at Smith North Little Rock Funeral Home with visitation to begin at 10:30 a.m., followed by the funeral at 11:30.

UPDATE:

I learned a lot more about Bob during his service, and it was wonderful visiting with his wife and childern. A few of Bob’s former students were also there, including Doug Virdin, who was in my class, and Todd Stuart, who had gone through the radio program a few years before me, but who I would eventually work with at KJBR, Power 102 in Jonesboro.

The man who led the funeral spoke about how Bob had grown up in Newport, Arkansas and experienced a few tragedies in his life. During a July 4th celebration, he witnessed the drowning of his 18-year-old brother. He also developed polio in 12th grade and lost all muscle in his legs. Bob ended up having to walk a mile to school each day using crutches while relearning how to walk. 

A man who worked at a local radio station saw Bob and started giving him rides. Eventually he brought Bob to the station where he worked, which was the beginning of Bob’s radio career. Eager for more opportunities, he would take jobs at radio and TV stations around the country in markets of all sizes. 

Bob met the woman he would later marry on the first day he arrived for a job in Marion, Alabama. He also worked for stations in Burlington, North Carolina, Memphis, Tennessee, and at WBCM in Baltimore, Maryland. I might be missing others.

He eventually returned home to Arkansas, working in Little Rock as program and music director at KARN, television station KTHV, and as I mentioned earlier, KSSN, which would dominate Little Rock radio for decades. He also did some on-camera work in TV as a weatherman, though I’m not sure if that was at KTHV. Among photos rotating on screens as the visitation was underway was one showing Bob at a weather map in the pre-radar days, with hand-drawn weather patterns on a board. Another photo showed Bob in front of a large television camera with KTHV on the side. 

It was a nice service and I’m glad I learned more about Bob’s life and career. Somehow these details never came out when I was his student or in later years while visiting over lunch.

Hosting ‘Not Necessarily Nashville’ on Little Rock Public Radio

by | Nov 17, 2024 | Music, Not Necessarily Nashville

A few times a year I’ll fill in for Flap Jones hosting her long-running country music program Not Necessarily Nashville, as I did last night on Little Rock Public Radio’s KUAR-FM 89.1. Flap has been a friend for 35 years since the first time she asked me to sit in hosting the show in 1989. 

Not Necessarily Nashville, Nov. 16, 2024, 7 p.m. on Little Rock Public Radio’s KUAR-FM 89.1.

It’s always a joy because playing music was what inspired me to get into broadcasting. Then I learned how little freedom commercial radio DJs have in selecting their music, so in 1993 I made the transition to news, which was a wise choice for me. I was always interested in reporting and anchoring, and that led to a more solid career path. There are a tiny fraction of jobs for DJs now compared to when I got into radio due to the corporatization of the industry and the rise of computer automation.

On this weekend’s program, I played several songs from a new David Olney tribute album that was released last month. I was a big fan of Olney’s since the first time I saw him play live about a decade ago at Little Rock’s White Water Tavern. I wasn’t familiar with him that night, but the songs and his voice were amazing. I never missed another show when he would come through town. Below is a video I recorded of him playing “Dillinger,” “Always a Stronger” and “Vincent” at the White Water on Nov. 13, 2019.

Olney died about two months later of an apparent heart attack during a performance at a music festival in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida on Jan. 18, 2020. He was 71. In the middle of Olney’s third song, he abruptly stopped, said “I’m sorry” to the audience and put his chin to his chest, according to musician Scott Miller who was performing with Olney. “He never dropped his guitar or fell off his stool. It was as easy and gentle as he was. We got him down and tried our best to revive him until the EMT’s arrived,” Miller wrote on Facebook.

The tribute album Can’t Steal My Fire: The Songs of David Olney was released on Oct. 18 and the range of performers covering his shows just how much respect he had from his peers. They include Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Buddy Miller, Jim Lauderdale and Willis Alan Ramsey.  

I played four songs from the new album, as well as a live version of Olney performing “Vincent” during a performance that was eventually released as the Live in Holland album in 1994. You can find the full playlist of songs from this weekend’s program below.

I also played a couple of Willie Nelson songs. From several decades ago, I pulled “To Make a Long Story Short, She’s Gone” from one of Willie’s albums, which was a duet with Kris Kristofferson. I’m still mourning Kristofferson’s death on Sept. 28 at the age of 88. The only time I got to see him play live was at the first Johnny Cash Heritage Festival in 2011, which was a fundraiser to support the restoration of Cash’s boyhood home in Dyess, Ark. I covered the event for a news story, which included Kristofferson speaking at a press conference before the show about his friendship with Cash.

“I’ve never met another human being who had the power just in the presence that John had. And to be working on a tribute for him and for his home is a real honor for me,” Kristofferson said.

I also aired a song off Willie Nelson’s new album Last Leaf on the Tree, which was released on Nov. 1. Many songs on his albums in recent years seem almost like he’s preparing fans for his eventual death. I played “Keep Me In Your Heart,” which includes the lyrics: “Shadows are fallin’ and I’m runnin’ out of breath, Keep me in your heart for a while. If I leave you, it doesn’t mean I love you any less. Keep me in your heart for a while.”

I’m looking forward to being able to talk about him next month on Arkansas PBS when we air Willie Nelson’s 90th Birthday Celebration on Wednesday, Dec. 11 at 7 p.m. I’m scheduled to be speaking during breaks in the program as part of our pledge drive. I saw the concert film in a theater in Little Rock when it had a one-day screening nationwide. During our broadcast, I hope to share details of my one experience with Willie, interviewing him in 2005, as well as what makes me such a fan of his work. 

My first exposure was as a kid when during any long drive, my mom would play the 8-tracks of Red Headed Stranger and Stardust, laying the foundation for an appreciation of his work. I’ve probably seen him play live about a dozen times over the decades, most recently on May 31, 2022 at Little Rock’s First Security Amphitheater along the Arkansas River. At 91, he has definitely slowed down, is not playing the guitar quite as heavily, sits on a stool for much of the show, and at times his voice is little more than a raspy whisper. But it’s amazing he’s still performing and maintaining a busy schedule.

Not Necessarily Nashville playlist, Nov. 16, 2024, Little Rock Public Radio

Flaco Jimenez (with Stephen Stills) — “Change Partners” (from Flaco’s album Partners)
Graham Wilkinson — “Lucky” (Cuts so Deep)
Rosanne Cash — “Money Road” (The River and the Thread)
Jimmy Dale Gilmore — “If it Wasn’t for the Wind” (Can’t Steal My Fire: The Songs of David Olney)
David Olney — “Vincent” (Live in Holland)
Steve Earle — “Sister Angelina” (Can’t Steal My Fire: The Songs of David Olney)
Willis Alan Ramsey — “Women Across the River” (Can’t Steal My Fire: The Songs of David Olney)
The SteelDrivers — “If My Eyes Were Blind” (Can’t Steal My Fire: The Songs of David Olney)
Willie Nelson & Kris Kristofferson — “To Make a Long Story Short, She’s Gone” (Extras)
Willie Nelson — “Keep Me in Your Heart” (Last Leaf on the Tree)
Townes Van Zandt — “I’ll Be Here in the Morning” (For the Sake of the Song)
James McMurtrey — “Vague Directions” (Candyland)
Joe Ely — “She Never Spoke Spanish to Me” (Joe Ely)
The Flying Burrito Brothers — Wheels (The Gilded Palace of Sin)

This Month at Arkansas PBS

by | Nov 1, 2024 | Arkansas PBS, Arkansas Week

We’ve got a lot happening on the air and being streamed on Arkansas PBS during the month of November. Prentice Dupins and I detail some of the highlights and events that are planned.

  • An Arkansan and a Canadian attempt a 2,200-mile trip through the Northwest Passage in homemade rowboats as captured in the new film “Passage,” premiering Nov. 7 at 7 p.m.
  • Ken Burns’ new two-part documentary on the life, genius and enduring impact of Leonardo da Vinci premieres on Nov. 18 and 19. In advance of that, we’re hosting an event on Saturday, Nov. 9 at 4 p.m. to screen highlights, followed by a panel discussion at CALS Ron Robinson Theater,
  • And of course, we’ll preview the Nov. 5 election on the Nov. 1 episode of “Arkansas Week,” then have analysis on the following week’s program.

Throughout the month, Arkansas PBS is also collecting gently used winter clothing, which can be dropped off at libraries across the state during the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood Sweater Drive.