May 28, 2015

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame oral history project

Roling Stone- Four years ago, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame brought together Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis for a historic group interview. It wasn't easy to get the rock pioneers in the same room. "Fats doesn't travel well, so we took the others to his hometown of New Orleans," says Hall of Fame president Joel Peresman. "The group interview was great, even if Richard hijacked things a little bit. The next day we separated them and conducted really deep interviews on their whole lives."

It was the beginning of the Hall of Fame's oral-history project, an unprecedented collection of videotaped conversations with key figures in rock history. So far, the Hall of Fame has interviewed everyone from Grace Slick, Art Garfunkel and Dion DiMucci to Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry, Chuck D and Darryl "DMC" McDaniels...

In the coming months, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Library and Archives — a Cleveland building separate from the Hall of Fame — will make the oral histories available to visitors

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