>> announcer: artworks is made possible in part by the mpt new initiatives fund founded by irene and edward h. kaplan. >> hello, i'm rhea feikin and this is artworks mpt's new weekly series that introduces you to groundbreaking artists both famous and emerging. these stories are shared by a special consortium of pbs stations across the country. an exciting new experiment in programming. my co-host is kwame kwei-armah artistic director of centerstage, maryland's state theatre. >> kwame: hello and welcome to artworks . we're all so excited about this new series. today, we celebrate rock and roll hall of famer bobby vee. one of the 10 highest chart-makers ever, and...he's still rocking. >> my name's bobby vee. i'm an 18-year-old singer from fargo, north dakota. it all started about three years ago back in fargo, my hometown when i got together with my brother and two other kids and formed a small rock and roll band called the shadows. ♪ suzie baby, where are you? ♪ ♪ have you left me for someone new? ♪ ♪ suzie baby, where are you? ♪ ♪ have you left me for someone new? ♪ this song is a little thing i made up when i was bored in high school. it was born out of teenage lust or something, i don't know. i was, i was, you know 15-years-old, 16-years-old when i recorded the song. ♪ is your love life shining bright? ♪ it came out in the summer of 1959 and got all kinds of airplay in the upper midwest. ♪ suzie baby, don't you know... ♪ that was the springboard of my whole record career. we were launched on our career by a tragedy. it was february 2, 1959. >> a plane carrying three rock and rollers, heading for the moorhead armory, where they were scheduled to appear that night crashed over iowa. three victims of the crash were buddy holly, ritchie valens and the big bopper. >> bobby vee: and i came home in the afternoon and my brother told me that the three artists who were scheduled to be on the show that night were killed. i was so stunned by this whole event because holly was my, he was my hero, and i had a ticket for the show. >> i mentioned to him that a local disc jockey had put out a plea for talent for the show that night. >> bobby vee: charlie boone, that was the guy. he was in fargo at that time as a disc jockey. >> bill velline, brother: the whole group got together and we started discussing whether we should or shouldn't go on with the show. and i guess i was the only one that was actually against it mainly because i was scared. we'd never played before a live audience. >> bobby vee: we weren't even a band. we didn't have a name. >> bill: in the end, we decided to go on with the show. >> bobby vee: and then i got to thinking, well, we've kind of never played before, and i don't really know what to do or anything. it got to us and charlie boone said, "ok, you guys are on. what's the name of the band?" and everybody stared at the floor, we didn't have a name. and i finally said, the shadows. and it was this fast. he said, "ok. ladies and gentleman, the shadows." i was almost in a coma by the time the curtains opened up. [cheers & applause] ♪ you keep a-knockin' but you can't come in ♪ ♪ keep a-knockin' but you can't come in ♪ ♪ keep a-knockin' but you can't come in ♪ ♪ come back tomorrow night and try it again ♪ it changed my life. really. i mean, the thing changed my life. i wouldn't be here if it hadn't been for that show. ♪ come back tomorrow night and try it again ♪ this is the original band, 1959, bobby vee and the shadows. there's my brother, myself stillman - jim stillman, and bob coram. and the gold records there's some of them. this is "take good care of my baby." ♪ take good care of my baby ♪ this is a hit, a gold record from london from rubber ball. ♪ rubber ball i come bouncing back to you ♪ ♪ rubber ball i come bouncing back to you ♪ this is what we did for marketing in 1959. the guy that was managing us bing bingston, he said we're going to have a little contest to find the real suzie baby. they chose the young lady that won - i guess, if you call that winning. i picked her up in my '53 oldsmobile, and we went out for dinner, and i dropped her off at home. and that was it. but isn't that something survived all these years. >> don't forget to sing right in the mic for me, bobby. >> ♪ hmm, he's your new flame, but when you hear my name you won't forget me ♪ i loved being in the studio. i loved it. i loved it even more than being on stage to be in a studio. you can really paint your pictures. there were a lot of songs that were left in the dust in the whole process of making records. and i got to thinking about those songs. ♪ you won't forget the love ♪ ♪ you won't forget the love ♪ ♪ the love i gave you ♪ >> jeff velline, son: they went and found boxes of tapes like these, and acetates. these are the... >> bobby vee: yeah, this is ferguson road. it's a carole king song. and it says on here, "sorry, bad mixes" -- that was the engineer, the guy that was producing it at that time. but it might be a bad mix, but it's not a bad song, and it can be properly mixed. and that's what we're here for. ♪ my ba-ay-ay-ay [record skipping] ♪ ♪ just one more time ♪ you don't hear hiccups very much anymore. >> jeff: 130 some-odd tracks. everybody seems to be blown away that there could be this much material that was never released. it made sense to us to tell the rest of the story. >> tommy velline, son: we have talked about him being lumped into that early '60s pop genre of teen idol - the bobby rydell the fabian, the frankie avalon. most people that are music historians and follow that time period know that he was way more of the singer than most of those people were. and this back catalog of music shows that. the fact that he's got six albums worth of material laying around that nobody's ever heard shows that they were really trying to get his voice on as many things as they could. >> ♪ we all have our angels, and yet i suppose ♪ ♪ we all have our devils, that's just how it goes ♪ ♪ and i wouldn't change a thing ♪ i'm so blessed to be doing what i'm doing, and to be in this business over 50 years, and to have my family in the music business. ♪ some distant promise ♪ ♪ no, i wouldn't change a thing ♪ what else do you want? what do you need? this is what we do, you know. i can still do it. ♪ ♪ >> rhea: to find out more about the music of bobby vee and his family, visit the rockhouse productions website at rockhousepro.com. >> kwame: next we meet amy sackett, a hip-hop dancer and choreographer who uses music and dance to bridge cultural divides. sackett marries her love of hip-hop with her experience as a muslim woman to express a haunting message. >> amy sackett: the way that i would describe hip-hop dance to someone who has never seen hip-hop is - i probably wouldn't use words, i'd probably give them a little physical description like, there's some of this that happens... ♪ boom, boom, bah boom-boom-bah ♪ there's a little bit of this... ♪ boom, bah, ooh, gah, mmh ♪ with some of this... ♪ ooh, ooh, ching, cha ♪ you know, i mean, that would be like a rundown of all the range of movements. ♪ ♪ being a muslim woman and being in the twin cities where there's a large muslim community, those two worlds of hip-hop and islam were like separated for me and i really wanted to bring them together. i was making these really fun dances and i was playing with, you know, different styles within hip-hop and creating work, but a lot of it didn't say anything. making this piece for the joint project, "we're muslim, don't panic," brought together my two worlds. ♪ [ rap music playing ] ♪ visually, i knew that this image of us in the full abayas with niqab, which, you know, covers our face, was going to be very powerful for people to see. and from an artistic standpoint, very cool for popping, it looks really awesome when you pop in this outfit. and a lot of people said after they watched it, "man, it looks like that movement belongs in this outfit, you know." i've been dancing my whole life, since i was a little girl. i loved hip-hop from the beginning. and then i decided to pursue dance as a career. i went to the u of m and got my bachelors of fine arts in dance. i went from just participating in hip-hop to really realizing the history behind it and the importance of me as a dancer involved in this culture to really pass that on. so anyone who's taken my class in the twin cities knows i always talk about history. the start of hip-hop was in the bronx, new york, during the late '70s and early '80s. and it was really from the streets, it was from the people living in the bronx, which -- it was a melting pot there. so you have a lot of different cultures influencing this dance. ♪ ♪ hip-hop's not just a dance or just rap, or just graffiti, it's the whole culture. so with each step that you do in hip-hop, you kind of carry on that spirit. during my time at the u of m i learned these different concepts from these great teachers, and just like how to take a movement phrase - you know, a string of movements and build upon them and turn them around for the audience and change the viewpoint of it. all of that helped me with hip-hop, then, because i knew how to take hip-hop and put it on a stage. because that's always the hard part with hip-hop; it lives in the cipher, it lives in the club, it lives in that moment. so to take it onto a stage is very difficult because you take a little bit of its soul away. this is the most difficult thing in choreographing hip-hop is that, you don't want to, you know, rob it of its, like, vitality, and yet in a way putting it on a stage like that does that. being an educator i've always been very, very focused on girls, you know, on giving them self-esteem and helping them be positive. how do we take these little girls that are in fifth grade, and they think being a hip-hop dancer is shaking their booty and -- you know what i mean? and like wearing little booty shorts and whatever. how do we show them how to breakdance, you know? how do we put them on to something else that's positive get them excited about that? and how do we build their self-esteem and take it away from just being pretty, but take it to being intelligent and being able to say something, what's your viewpoint? i still want to create more work that's personal, that has a message, that can communicate something powerful that influences people while being true to the roots of hip-hop dance. i always want to be true to that. >> rhea: sackett has worked with international stars including bow-wow, mario and ashanti. but her passion is mentoring young "b-girls," or breakdancing girls who are in her own community. >> kwame: and now a man who makes a living from turning the ordinary into the extraordinary. david knopp takes basic sheets of plywood and shapes them into flowing organic works of art that actually double as furniture. take a look. david knopp: when people first see my work i'm not sure if they look at it and go, "oh, that's a piece of furniture." i do pause at times when people ask me "what exactly do you do?" i don't know why but i got into shooting photographs of trees in the wintertime. bare of leaves, you can actually see the contours in the surfaces, and i'll interpret them into drawings. there's movement in my drawings, and i take that a step farther and try to keep the movement going on in my sculpture. i use no 3d software to design these, it's usually an intuitive process. i'll take a piece of 4x8 sheet of plywood and cut a template for a starting point maybe a nice curve and i'll just build off of that, one piece at a time, and come up with a rough basic shape of the piece itself. plywood in itself is not a very exciting material. you know, it's basically a construction product. it works well for me 'cuz i'm interested in the end grains of the plywood, because as i carve it, the strata, which act as lines you can express all kind of movement. it actually becomes the lines that your eyes follow. the process, to me is my way of kind of escaping. when i'm out in my studio working it's some of the best time i have. i try to let the work flow and i just kind of follow along with it. in my work i'm always trying to find my own voice, and the work itself has its own voice. you can control that more and more with your tool itself. it's like a pencil when you're drawing, you know? or a piece of charcoal. well, there was an old statement at one time, "in order to create you must destroy." unfortunately, to create plywood you are destroying trees. it's nice to be able to reverse that and take this man-made product which is nothing but a bunch of veneers glued together, and turn that into something that's worthwhile looking at. >> rhea: to see more of knopp's work, visit his website: davidknoppart.blogspot.com. finally, we meet richard sherman, who along with his brother, robert, wrote the songs to some of america's most beloved films, including "the parent trap," "chitty chitty bang bang," and, of course, "mary poppins." in this segment, maria hall-brown sits down with sherman and discovers that every note he writes is deeply personal. ♪ step in time ♪ ♪ link your elbows, step in time ♪ ♪ never need a reason never need a rhyme ♪ ♪ link you elbows step in time ♪ >> maria hall-brown: a little stepping in time with the musical stage version of mary poppins, and a little personal time with the incomparable richard sherman serenading me with one of the classic whimsies he composed with his brother robert for the original 1964 film "mary poppins." ♪ when the day is gray and ordinary ♪ ♪ mary makes the sun shine bright ♪ >> maria: the film that brought us the biggest and perhaps most memorable word ever... >> richard: bob and i made the word up. but it's longer than the real longest word in the dictionary which is antidisestablishmentarianism. that's a real word. i said, we gotta get a longer word than that. and so we made up this word supercalifragilistic- expialidocious. >> maria: how did you do that by the way. was it you, was it bob, was it starting with the word super? >> richard: it was a combination of bob and myself, and i think a lot of crazy thoughts we had. when we were kids we used to make up double talk words. all kinds of words, just to say flablecobbilation and things like that. meant nothing. and people would say, "what does that mean?" and we'd say, "that's a secret nobody knows that." and we didn't know what it meant either. but we decided we wanted to have a colossal word, a super colossal word. and we said super colossal. anybody would say super colossal. super something, but not colossal. and then we said it's got to be real obnoxious. i said, no, it shouldn't be obnoxious, that's a dirty word kind of ugly. why don't we say atrocious that sounds very british. atrocious, super atrocious. good. and then we'd be smart and then we'd be precocious. aha, that's it! so we had part of the song already...super precocious atrocious. and what does that rhyme with? docious. why not? and so we started at the top super karableflobbleflabble cooperkalafragalis... i'm boiling down two weeks of arguments into a couple of seconds. but all of a sudden we came out with califragilistic, and we put it together with expialidocious even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious. and i'll sing it for you. ♪ supercalifragilistic- expialidocious ♪ ♪ even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious ♪ ♪ if you say it loud enough you'll always sound precocious ♪ ♪ supercalifragilistic- expialidocious! ♪ ♪ supercalifragilistic...♪ ♪ supercalifragilistic... ♪ ♪ supercalifragilistic- expialidocious! ♪ ♪ supercalifragilistic- expialidocious! ♪ >> maria: there you have it. but the sherman brothers songbook brought us more than funny words. for disney himself, a song could bear a precious message. i know that disney had a favorite song. >> richard: oh yes. well, that was very, you know, key. when we first started talking we played some songs for walt, we told a story line and we played one particular song, and he heard that song and he said, "that's the key to the whole show isn't it? " and we said, "that's right walt." of course the song was "feed the birds, tuppance a bag." and he knew we were not talking about the price of bird crumbs. we were talking about -- it doesn't take much to give love. all you have to do is pay attention to your children. take them out and show them a good time. love them, care for them, more than providing food, clothing, and shelter. you gotta give them love. so that's a little tuppance a bag that we were talking about. and he heard this song and he just loved it. ♪ feed the birds, that's what she cries ♪ ♪ while overhead her birds fill the skies ♪ ♪ all around the cathedral the saints and apostles ♪ ♪ look down as she sells her wares ♪ ♪ although you can't see it you know they are smiling ♪ ♪ each time someone shows that he cares ♪ ♪ though her words are simple and few ♪ ♪ listen, listen she's calling to you ♪ ♪ feed the birds, tuppance a bag ♪ ♪ tuppance ♪ ♪ tuppance ♪ ♪ tuppance a bag ♪ >> rhea: the mary poppins stage musical is now in its sixth year on broadway. but are you wondering what's happening closer to home? well, here's a look at some of the arts events in our town. and that wraps it up for this edition of artworks . i'm rhea feikin. for more arts and culture, visit mpt.org/artworks, where you'll find feature videos, blogs and information on upcoming arts events. until next week, i'm kwame kwei-armah. thank you for watching. announcer: artworks is made possible in part by the mpt new initiatives fund founded by irene and edward h. kaplan.

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