Wide Open Air Exchange

Tim Sampson is communications director for the Soulsville Foundation which runs the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, the Stax Music Academy, and the Soulsville Charter School in Memphis. We discuss the history of Stax Records including artists Booker T. Jones, Otis Redding, Jean Knight, the Staple Singers, and Isaac Hayes as well as the establishment and operation of Soulsville which Tim has been involved with since day one.

Miss Joyce is a Memphis soul/R&B singer with an inspirational story. Joyce Howard-Hemans was a preacher’s kid who found a secular spirituality and left home at fourteen to carve out her own place in the world. She’s faced hardships including a period of homelessness and losing multiple friends to gang violence and she’s channelled her experiences into her music and songwriting.

Don Cusic is Curb Professor of Music Industry History at Belmont University in Nashville. He's been in the music business for 45 years as a journalist, record producer, artist manager and songwriter. Don explains the development of the Nashville Sound and discusses country stars Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Roger Miller, Dolly Parton, Keith Urban and others and what it was like working with Roy Orbison at Monument Records.

Lotta Haegg is a talk-radio producer living in London. We discuss what it’s like being a radio producer and Lotta tells of her first radio shifts during major news events. Lotta also shares stories from her years growing up in regional Australia and Sweden and speaks of her experience as a step mum to teenagers.

Davis Rivera is an Oxford scholar specialising in Film Aesthetics. He wrote his dissertation about the Hungarian director Béla Tarr. Davis is originally from Port Arthur, Texas. He fields my questions about film makers and actors, the state of Texas and Southern rap. Among it we discuss two of Davis' favourite artists Warren Beatty and Kanye West.

Mike King is founder of Smile Kids Japan, a non-profit organisation which connects volunteers with child welfare institutions. He's also in the final stages of a DPhil in Social Policy at Oxford University.