Behind the Scenes Minis: H.L. Hunley and Gospel Blues

Tracy and Holly talk about Tracy's chat with Dr. Rachel Lance, and the legacy of Thomas Dorsey.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. Happy Friday,
Happy Friday, Welcome to casual Fridays. What Stuff you missed
in History Class. One of the things we talked about

(00:23):
this week was Thomas Dorsey. Um, just as you had
been talking about the obvious nous for you of of
doing an episode on James Baldwin recently, Thomas Dorsey kind
of fit the same bill for me because, um, he
touched so many pieces of black history that we have

(00:44):
talked about on the show, and also ultimately his story
and his legacy is very uplifting. UM. I mentioned on
in the episode that I had heard a band play
It's Tight like that in New Orleans. I don't know
if I said that was the song it it was, uh,
and that I had asked the bandleader about it afterwards,
and that's how I started, uh, you know, thinking about him.

(01:06):
I don't think you did say the song, But as
you were telling that story, I was kind of like,
I wonder if this happened in New Orleans, just because
I remember I don't know if this was on the
same trip when you and I were both in New
Orleans together, but there was just a lot of music
happening while we were there. There always is, that's New Orleans.
It wasn't. It was on a subsequent trip that I
went on with a bunch of friends of mine from childhood,

(01:28):
So it was about a year ago, a little over
a year ago. And it's funny because that song to
a modern ear, the lyrics do not sound all that saucy.
But at the time, and with the knowledge of the
double ententgres in play, I mean, there were people that
were like, this is raunchy. How can you claim that

(01:52):
you are a man of God and dedicated to sacred
music and also making money off of this? That song
sold more than seven million copies. Goodness, And there's a
reason it's very catchy, uh, And there's a reason that
musicians even love to play it today because it is really,

(02:12):
um it's a great song. The other thing that I
have been thinking about a lot as we do this,
and I kind of mentioned it at the top of
the episode, is that even people that are not especially
religious are often very very moved by this genre of music. Um,
and I wanted to talk about a particular thing that

(02:33):
happens that if I hope it's still happening, but it
was one of my favorite, favorite favorite things in the world,
which is that when I used to run a lot
of half marathons, at the end of Disney's Princess Half Marathon,
when you are about probably two tenths of a mile
from the finish line and you are completely exhausted and

(02:55):
probably feel like garbage, you turn a corner and there
is a huge gospel acquire and if that doesn't like
power you through to the end, I don't know what's
going on with you, because it is amazing. It's so good,
and it's one of my favorite favorite experiences I have
ever had in my life, not just in running, not
just a Disney It's beautiful and I don't think I'm

(03:18):
particularly religious, but it is moving as all get out,
So I hope they're still doing it. I haven't run
that race in the last several years, but every year
I did it up to that point where I stopped,
they did it every time. And that choir also is
amazing because they're out there often in the heat in
Florida in full robes, singing their hearts out, or sometimes
on a rare year in the cold and singing their

(03:40):
hearts out. So it's really amazing. And if you are
a runner and you haven't experienced that, I hope you
get to because it is like it's a moment. It's
just an amazing moment. One of our episodes this week
was the interview with Dr Rachel Lance about her new book,
it's just a couple of months old as of when
this episode is coming out, called In the Waves, My

(04:02):
Quest to Solve the Mystery of a Civil War Submarine.
We talk about the books some in that interview, and
I mentioned that I really enjoyed reading it because it's
this fusion of the historical story and her research into
solving this mystery, UM, and also just the experience of

(04:23):
doing the research which UM. At this point, we have
solicited questions for a Q and a episode of the
show that we are going to do. That episode has
not come out yet, but one of the things that
people ask us about a lot that will probably be
talking about in that episode is like our own process, UM.
And so it was really interesting to me that she

(04:46):
really just documented what the experience of doing all this
work was like because that's clearly a thing that people
are curious about when it comes to any kind of
research and project like this. Yeah, yeah, it always cracks. Yeah,
it's a question we feeld a lot during live shows,
and I think in some ways it surprises people that

(05:07):
we handle it very differently as do most people. Right,
Like I I think there might be a supposition on
the part of some folks that like, there is a
way to research certain things, and really everybody can kind
of figure out the technique and approach that works best
for them. Yeah. One of the things that I also

(05:28):
really liked about this whole thing, um was the part
about how people who aren't, you know, folks that have
advanced degrees in history, can still do meaningful work that
is contributing to the field of history even though they
might be outsiders to that field in some ways. It's
been a while since this has happened, but I know that, uh, you,

(05:48):
you and I have occasionally been kind of tagged into
conversations on Twitter, um at academic conferences where people are
kind of bemoaning non history ends in quotation marks doing
history podcasts, when like, really, there's a whole broad field
of the things that people can contribute to history and
can contribute to talk about history and to understanding our

(06:11):
past a little better. Yeah, for what it's worth, that's
not um a scenario specific to history. Sure, sure there
are there are lots of debates like uh in film. Uh,
there are some people that think that like people that
don't make films shouldn't have podcasts that discuss film from

(06:35):
like a media analysis perspective. Yeah, you know, name any
any area of expertise or study that a person could have,
and there are always people that are like, only degreed
experts should talk about this. Yeah. I UM, when when
the pandemic was really starting to cause shutdowns all over

(07:00):
the country, I remember seeing m a Twitter thread where
somebody in the medical field, clearly frustrated by the pushback
that was happening from people like did not have medical
experience or medical degrees, said something like, name a field
besides medicine where people who have zero experience in zero
training think they know more than the doctors, And the

(07:24):
replies were just like everyone naming their own fields. Anyway,
I'm super appreciative that, uh that Dr Lance took time
to sit down with us and just one more time
in case folks have been meaning to get a pen
and write it down. That book is called In the Waves,
by quest to solve the mystery of a Civil War submarine.

(07:51):
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