Before The Cheering Started with Budd Mishkin

Send us Fan Mail If you're writing about American icons like Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali, you better bring your A game.  And Jonathan Eig has.  His latest book is "King: A Life," the first biography of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in more than 30 years.  It's beautifully written, a must read.  Jonathan Eig fell in love with the written word and the feel of the newsroom while...

Send us Fan Mail It's refreshing to interview a rising star during the first chapters of the story.  And Zora Howard is a rising star, in theater, film and the spoken word.  Her love of the arts started young, very young, and the stories of her youth in Harlem play a tangible role in the art she is creating today.  The "Before The Cheering Started" years were not that long ago for Z...

Send us Fan Mail The word unique is vastly overused.  But Kelefa Sanneh has a style of writing and speaking about music that is most definitely his own.  It’s on the pages of his articles in The New Yorker and in his critically acclaimed 2021 book “Major Labels: A History Of Popular Music In Seven Genres.”  He heard a lot of music growing up, especially the African music of his parents.  But it wa...

Send us Fan Mail Gabrielle Hamilton isn’t a musician.  But she makes sweet music on the page and in the pantry, hitting all of the right notes.  Her admirers have an emotional attachment to her New York restaurant Prune.  How good is her memoir “Blood Bones and Butter?”  Anthony Bourdain called it “the best memoir by a chef ever.  Ever. “  And her 2020 New York Times article about the closing of P...

Send us Fan Mail The journey for any actor can be long and winding. For Jordan Donica, it started as it did for many actors, going to shows as a kid and then hitting the stage in high school. But once he got to New York at the end of college, his ascent in the theater world was rapid. Quite rapid. The talent was always there. Same for the love of performing. And athletics.  Many of us had a tough...

Send us Fan Mail Listening to Russ Titelman talk about music is a blessing. His passion for music has never waned. He grew up with it in his home in Los Angeles. It soared while listening to the LA radio of his youth, especially his beloved doo-wop. And it culminated in him producing a wide variety of our greatest musicians, from James Taylor and Paul Simon to John Pizzarelli and Rufus andChaka Kh...

Send us Fan Mail Bobby Sanabria lives and breathes music.  It's not just what he does.  It's who he is.  His vast musical knowledge is built on a bedrock of experiences growing up in the Bronx, surrounded by all types of music in his home, on the block and in his city.  Then there are the lessons he learned from teachers and students at the iconic Berklee College of Music in Boston (and...

Send us Fan Mail We are taking a week off from the interviews this week on "Before The Cheering Started with Budd Mishkin" as we prepare new conversations with comedian Chris Gethard, Grammy Award winning record producer Russ Titelman, Grammy Award winning musician Bobby Sanabria, chef and writer extraordinaire Gabrielle Hamilton and more. So this week, another of my own "Before The...

Send us Fan Mail We all have musicians who really speak to us, whose music thrills us in good times and sustains us in hard times.  Marshall Crenshaw is one such musician for me.  From the first notes of the first album in 1982, I was in.  And I've never left.  He grew up near one of the great American music cities, Detroit.  His music reflects that influence, the early experiences on the roa...

Send us Fan Mail It didn't take long for Fareed Zakaria to impress friends, colleagues and policy makers.  As a graduate student, he was invited to the White House to offer his thoughts on foreign policy issues.  His path led from writing op eds for The New York Times to editing magazines, writing books and finally broadcast news.  He brings to his work a rich lifetime of experiences, includi...

Send us Fan Mail To excel in any field, there must be passion.  And preparation.  Millions of basketball fans have seen these qualities in Mike Breen's work for some 30 years, broadcasting New York Knicks and NBA games.  He honed his skills at an iconic New York radio station that has produced scores of sportscasters and sports reporters, WFUV of Fordham University.  There were some early yea...

Send us Fan Mail It's actually a gift to interview Baratunde Thurston.  He is so thoughtful and perceptive that the conversation introduces me to issues I never considered and concepts I think I understand but was never able to put into words.  And that is a gift.  His insight is on display in his writing for Puck News, his 2012 book "How To Be Black," his podcast "How To Citiz...

Send us Fan Mail A generation of young New York Yankee fans have grown up listening to Suzyn Waldman as the color commentator on the Yankee radio broadcasts.  To the young women listeners, she is nothing less than a pioneer, a powerful symbol that anything is possible, including calling baseball games on the radio.  She's been a fixture on the New York baseball scene since the mid 1980's...

Send us Fan Mail I've had the pleasure of interviewing a lot of wonderful storytellers.  Richard Kind is second to none.  His stories are humorous and poignant, with lessons learned along the way.  He works constantly, but there were years of struggle and sacrifice that are part of almost every actor's resume.  And there were the seminal years that opened the window to the rest of his ca...

Send us Fan Mail We journalists like to say that we are not the story.  We tell the story.  But the story of some journalists is just as compelling as any they will tell.   And the story of Michelle Miller of CBS News is absolutely compelling.  Her new memoir is called “Belonging: A Daughter’s Search for Identity Through Loss and Love.  It is the story of Michelle’s search for a connection to her...

Send us Fan Mail Jean Chatzky is a business journalist and personal finance advocate.  What is not written on her resume is that for much of her career she has served as a translator.  She's taken the intricacies of the world of finance and made them approachable for millions, primarily but not exclusively, for women.  She did this via magazine articles and 25 years of appearances on The Toda...

Send us Fan Mail When Michael Dorf was growing up in suburban Milwaukee, he liked to build.  Friends and neighbors actually let him build not only their treehouses but their rec rooms.  The love of building has never stopped.  That sense of what could be has led him to create two of New York's most iconic concert venues and an annual series of concerts at Carnegie Hall that give underserved k...

Send us Fan Mail In her 20's, Jane Green took a leap.  She was already an established newspaper and magazine writer in London.  Jane quit her job and gave herself three months to write her first novel and get a book deal.  It worked out pretty well, with millions of books sold and several ending up on The New York Times Bestseller List.  Now she has created Emerald Audacy, a podcast network w...

Send us Fan Mail Go be unique in New York.  You say you have a background that is out of the norm? Who doesn't?  In New York, out of the norm  IS THE NORM.   And yet, a special place is reserved for the story of Marcus Samuelsson, one of the city's and the country's best known chefs and restaurateurs by way of his native Ethiopia and the country where he was raised, Sweden.  It&apos...

Send us Fan Mail If we are fortunate, we meet a teacher and mentor when we're young who opens the door to possibilities, a window to the rest of your life.  Joshua Henry had that experience in high school.  He then surrounded himself with music and shows and performing at the University of Miami.  From there it was on to New York, soon getting hired as part of the original cast of Lin-Manuel...

Send us Fan Mail John Linnell is one half of the beloved musical duo They Might Be Giants.  For 40 plus years, John Linnell and John Flansburgh have been making fun, quirky, memorable music.  Really good music.  For adults.  For kids.  For everyone.  Their friendship dates back even longer to growing up just outside of Boston.  My conversation with John Linnell is about that friendship and the ear...

Send us Fan Mail Sports fans around the country know Jeremy Schaap for his decades long award winning work on ESPN.  I was fortunate to get to know him just as his career was just starting before he was a network anchor and correspondent.  He was really smart with a great work ethic and you knew that big things lay ahead.  He also was properly respectful of the work and legacy of his father Dick S...

Send us Fan Mail I've interviewed hundreds of prominent people through the years.  Occasionally I am asked, "who is the most interesting, thoughtful person you ever interviewed?" It is an unanswerable question.  But suffice it to say that Majora Carter is part of that conversation.  I've interviewed her twice .  Each time I have come away from the interview a smarter person tha...

Send us Fan Mail You don't have to be a standup comedian to love Robert Klein.  My friends and I listened to his comedy albums religiously and knew the routines cold.  During one interview with Robert years later, I recalled an old, great bit of his that he had actually forgotten, not uncommon in the admirer/artist relationship.  But the fact of the matter is that the generation of top stand-...

Send us Fan Mail Paul Reiser always loved comedians.  He and a friend created a club in high school for comedy fans and actually called New York comedy clubs to ask if any comedians were available to come and speak to them.   But be a comedian?  Not surprisingly, like so many who chose an unorthodox, non 9-5 path, his parents had to be convinced.  Early on, Paul even suggested getting a letter fro...