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Episode 161: Mark Kram Jr.—Letting the Dust Clear, Being a Late Bloomer, and Smokin’ Joe
142 Plays6 years ago
"This is not something that comes over night. It's a long, arduous road," says Mark Kram Jr.
Mark Kram Jr. is on the show to talk about his incredible career and his latest book Smokin' Joe.
We talk about how he was a late bloomer and through hard work, long work, he grew into his own skin as a writer.
This show is brought to you by Goucher College's MFA in Nonfiction and Bay Path University's MFA in Creative Nonfiction.
Keep the CNFin' conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
CNF, the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, is sponsored by Goucher College's Master of Fine Arts in Nonfiction. The Goucher MFA is a two-year low residency program. Online classes let you learn from anywhere, while on-campus residencies allow you to hone your craft with accomplishmenters who have Pulitzer Prizes and best-selling books to their names.
00:00:22
Speaker
The program boasts a nationwide network of students, faculty, and alumni, which has published 140 books and counting. You'll get opportunities to meet literary agents and learn the ins and outs of the publishing journey. Visit Goucher.edu slash nonfiction to start your journey now. Take your writing to the next level and go from Hopeful to Published and Goucher's MFA for Creative Nonfiction.
00:00:47
Speaker
Next one, hey, hey, discover your story. Bay Path University is the first and only university to offer a no residency, fully accredited MFA focusing exclusively.
00:01:04
Speaker
on creative nonfiction, attend full or part time from anywhere in the world. In the Bay Path MFA, you'll find small online classes and a dynamic and supportive community. You'll master techniques of good writing from acclaimed authors and editors. Learn about publishing and teaching through professional internships and complete a master's thesis that will form the foundation for your memoir, Memoir.
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Speaker
or collection of personal essays. Special elective courses include contemporary women's stories, travel and food writing, family histories, spiritual writing, and an optional week-long summer residency in Ireland. Not island to Ireland. With guest writers including Andre DeBise III, Ann Hood, Mia Gallagher, and others. Start dates in late August and January. Find out more at baitpat.edu slash MFA.
00:01:59
Speaker
Are you ready? Are you ready to tie one on? Me too. Let's hit it.
Welcome Back and Podcast Focus
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Speaker
Welcome back CNFers.
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Speaker
This is CNF, the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, where I talk to badass writers and more about the art and craft of telling true stories. It's good to be back. Hello. Hello, friends.
Interview with Mark Crambe Jr.
00:02:32
Speaker
Today's guest is Mark Crambe Jr., author of Smoke and Joe, a biography of the legendary Joe Frazier.
00:02:40
Speaker
that's great book I have since finished it I hadn't finished it when we recorded this interview because we are we jammed a few days earlier than I was prepared for what we got done we got done anyway amazing book
00:02:59
Speaker
I honestly don't know how these podcasts are getting produced, man. I think the podcast gremlins are coming out at night and editing and packaging the show. I don't know how it's going. I wish the marketing gremlins would get off their asses and help me out.
00:03:16
Speaker
The fact that they're not coming out, it's showing. I think there's been quite a bit of audience erosion, and maybe that means I'm annoying people despite getting these headlining guests on the show. I mean, I don't know. I don't know what to do, man. I make the show for you. I hope you know that. I hope you like what we're doing, but I think we lost some of you. But that's fine. Not for them, as Seth Godin might say. It's for you. And if you're here, that's all that matters.
00:03:43
Speaker
How are you? You doing all right? You're doing okay? You're working on the thing? Writing the thing? Filming it? Podcasting it? I hope you are. That's good. Hey, well, are you subscribed to this show? You can find it just about anywhere. Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify. Keep the conversation going on Twitter, at cnfpod, and I'll jump in the garage and jam with you. Feeling kind? Leave review on Apple Podcasts.
00:04:13
Speaker
30 to go until we hit 100. It matters, and it doesn't matter, I don't know. It makes the show look good when you guys leave these awesome, shiny reviews, and it shows. It looks good, it's validating, and for the passerby who might be thinking of picking up a CNF and new podcasts, and they see that there's almost 100, they might be like, I'm gonna give this guy a shot. I'm gonna say shat.
00:04:41
Speaker
Give this guy a shot, like gross.
Career Transition and Inspirations
00:04:45
Speaker
Anywho, okay so Mark Graham Jr. is here and he's a tremendous writer. Just a brilliant career. He's in the book writing business now. He's a long time sports writer. He's been anthologized everywhere.
00:04:59
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He's got he's got the the writing bug in his blood. His father was Mark Kranz senior long storied writer for SI and you know Mark is out of that shadow. He admitted it took a long time for him to get out of that shadow and we talk a little bit about that.
00:05:18
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But Mark is his own amazing writer with an incredible body of work and it was an honor to speak with him and I hope you enjoy this conversation that I recorded with Mark Cramm Jr. Episode 161. Alright, let's do it.
00:05:47
Speaker
You know Glenn Stout, right? You've been anthologized. Oh, sure, yeah. Glenn's a friend. He's been on the show a couple times. One of my favorite things, yeah, he's been on like three times. Always have great conversations with him. I think in our first one, he said something like, in terms of writing and freelancing, especially features writing,
00:06:10
Speaker
He's just like, nothing about this game makes any sense. And pretty much all you can control is your effort. And if nothing about this makes sense, I wonder for you, how did you get the bug and just make a go of it, given that in so many ways this is not a logical profession to hang your life on? Well, it's true. When I started out in 1978,
00:06:38
Speaker
It made a lot more sense then than it does now. I guess I was one of the last of the generation that was able to, you know, more or less make gainful employment in the newspaper business. And, you know, I had a job for three different papers for about, oh, geez, close to 35 years.
00:07:03
Speaker
And it was only in 2013 that I got out of it that I sort of went off on my own to do books. And I sort of confined my interest to doing books because I found that the freelance market is really dwindling, almost down to nothing. So, you know, with the emergence of the Internet, there's so much free material out there and there's the expectation
00:07:30
Speaker
From what they call now content providers, I guess internet sites to get stuff free, even established outfits like SI.com and so forth, they want the stuff for free. They want to put a buy button in your piece. What I'm saying is excerpts, right? Book excerpts, they don't want to pay for that. I guess they pay a nominal fee for
00:08:00
Speaker
for original material. But I guess my point is that, like everyone else, I'm trying to figure out the new new, as they say. Right. And when you were starting, who inspired you? Who were you reading at the time that really informed some of your early writing and maybe the writer you would ultimately become?
00:08:27
Speaker
Well, you know, my father was a prominent writer at Sports Illustrated in the 60s and 70s. He covered Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, all those three fights. And he had a, you know, he was a marvelous writer. He was really more of a poet than he was a journalist in many ways. He really wrote exquisitely and
00:08:54
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wrote long-form pieces in the back of Sports Illustrated. They were called bonus pieces. And he and many other writers on the magazine really had an understanding of the craft. I guess they call it new journalism at that time. But there's a great attention to narrative, putting together a narrative piece for beginning and the end. So I studied those pieces rather
00:09:24
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closely, you know, growing up. But the truth of the matter is I was anything but a sure thing when it came to writing at that time. I was a rather uninspired student. In fact, I, you know, I went to the University of Maryland but only lasted a little over two years.
00:09:48
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When I was able to get a job at the Baltimore News American, it was probably one of the last journalists out there that could get a job without a degree. But it was a scrappy little Hearst paper, and they were looking for cheap labor, and I certainly qualified as that. It was a lot of trial and error. I was a horribly slow writer. I was unsure of myself.
00:10:16
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But it's one of these professions that if you stick with it and you work through those difficult times, it's one of those things where you do pick up craft as the years pass. You do pick up speed
Writing Journey and Influences
00:10:31
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and confidence. That's a huge thing as well, confidence. This is not something that comes overnight. It's a long, you know, it's a long, arduous road.
00:10:43
Speaker
Uh, you know, and, uh, and I would say that I'm more or less kind of a late bloomer as it, as it were, and, and, and more or less self-taught, you know, um, uh, I'm not, uh, you know, I'm a w I'm widely read, but, uh, you know, I, I pick and choose what I read at different times. I'm kind of a sporadic reader. I, you know, you know, I read the big chunks of books, but often oftentimes not the full book, you know, you know, it's one of those kinds of things I,
00:11:13
Speaker
I kind of felt my way through the business more than anything. Yeah, it's kind of like what you were saying before we started recording that you really go a lot by feel and instinct. And oftentimes that just comes from trial and error and just being comfortable with being bad for a long time, right? Well, I wouldn't say bad. I mean, I wouldn't use that word bad. I'd say that it was, I mean, great effort went into it, you know, but you're certainly limited
00:11:44
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You can only work with the tools you have at any given time. Now the question is, do you stick with it? And do you work hard at it? And I certainly did that. As I say, I was a painfully slow writer and really, really tough, a lot of tough pieces over the years. But I always tried to do the challenging pieces
00:12:13
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I've learned the value of close reporting, and I learned how to work with transitions in long articles. And all that served me well when I transitioned over to books. I picked up a lot of skills that I used to write the various books I've written. So it's all
00:12:42
Speaker
Shall we say, it's a process. It's a process. And when you were in those early growing pains and asking yourself, like, do you stick with it, what gave you strength at that time to work through those growing pains and maybe not jump ship to something else? I wouldn't know what I would have done.
00:13:08
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I mean, this was the career I was in and I liked the lifestyle. It seemed like I could make enough money to raise a family with and the various benefits that no longer exist for writers today. And even now,
00:13:34
Speaker
the pension that I earned during all those years in the newspapers helped finance the writing books today for me. So, uh, you know, it was, it was a pragmatic decision to stay with it. I can't imagine what I would have done otherwise. I mean, I liked the travel. I liked, uh, I liked getting into, uh, uh, interviewing people and, uh,
00:14:01
Speaker
It was always interesting to sort of step into different people's lives and worlds. In many cases, I felt that what I was doing kind of helped people heal from traumatic situations, but just by the virtue of talking about it and getting it out. So that was an extremely gratifying thing to me.
00:14:29
Speaker
And, you know, as I say, I was able to raise two children and have a life, you know? I mean, it's not very, it's not like it's a, is anything complicated about it? Well, I'll put it that way. Yeah, that's great. And what kind of subjects were you and are you drawn to as a writer, especially as a young reporter coming up?
00:14:53
Speaker
Well, coming up, I always looked for stories where there was some, someone was faced with great adversity of some sort or where there was some sort of conflict that they had to work through, whether it be, you know, some, I tried to, you know,
00:15:22
Speaker
work the margins, if you will. I tried to get the stories that really no one else was really paying much attention to. And I was also very much willing to let the dust clear. Say, for instance, some situation happened. I'll give you an example. Former NFL player Alonzo Spellman once
00:15:50
Speaker
You know, it was suffering from bipolar illness and was not on his meds and he was on a plane and he started harassing a young family and the seed in front of him. It was a real mess. Well, I let that story simmer for over a year and a half before I contacted the people were involved with it. I always believed that it's always for me anyway, it was best to, you really couldn't get the story until people had a chance to sort of, uh,
00:16:23
Speaker
digested themselves and get some perspective on it. So many times I would come in a year later or sometimes two years later and sometimes even later than that. I mean the first book I did, I interviewed the main character in I guess 1993 for the first time.
00:16:44
Speaker
And the book wasn't written until, it wasn't published until 2012. It was like a period of 19 years. Now, a lot of different things happened. I wasn't working on the book exclusively during that period, but I was pulling on threads and building relationships and sort of preparing to do it in my mind. So these things take a long time.
00:17:14
Speaker
on the stoves. A lot of time on the back burner, if you will. Yeah, and it proves to the sources and those people and characters that you're not just coming in and swooping in and swooping out for that quick little bite. You're kind of there for the long haul, and then if you're patient and digest what they're going through, you come
00:17:40
Speaker
give them the time they're often much more willing to be to be open because you know you're not you're you're there for the long haul and not just swooping in for the next right yeah well that's absolutely true and the thing is you have to build trust and you have to be honest about everything and that comes down to money and everything else you know you can't be holding back with the people you're asking to be
00:18:10
Speaker
you know, they're asking to trust you. You know, you have to be totally honest with the people you're dealing with. Otherwise it doesn't work. Trust breaks down and then everything breaks down. So I've sort of, you know, learned that, you know, that became pretty clear pretty early in the game. You really can't withhold from the people you're working so closely with.
00:18:39
Speaker
And you collected a lot of your father's work as you were younger, cutting out his pieces and referencing them. And of course, you put a lot of his best pieces together in an anthology later. So you're reading your father's work, probably a lot of the other SI writers. Who were some other ones that you were aspiring to be once you knew that you could start hitting on the kind of cylinders they were hitting on after putting in all the reps and the spring training of writing, so to speak?
00:19:09
Speaker
Right, yeah. Well, you know, there was Jack Olson, who was, I guess, he lived out in your neck of the woods much of his life. He was a major writer in the 60s for the magazine. He moved over to do quite a few books. There was another writer, Robert Cantwell, who was not so well known, but
00:19:36
Speaker
really had did all sorts of interesting subjects you know frank de ford was a pretty prominent writer uh... really admired his work uh... quite a bit uh... and you know there were many writers that you know you probably wouldn't have heard of that uh... really handled their handle pieces with with you know is a terrific magazine during that period i mean the writing of it was it was really fantastic
Developing Writing Style and Father's Influence
00:20:05
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And I'm not the only writer today who will talk glowingly about reading the writers from the magazine during that era. I mean, many prominent writers today sort of grew up on that and grew up on the Ford. And, you know, Dan Jenkins was another one, although he was somewhat of a different sort of writer. You know, so as I say,
00:20:33
Speaker
I'm more or less self-taught that way. And I think most writers are, for the most part. I just didn't get much out of the academic setting. I really wanted to find my own way with it.
00:20:50
Speaker
Yeah, and this self-taught aspect to it, and the fact that you were able to cultivate a lot of patience with your own work is, I think, especially important these days. I think we put such a high value as a culture on precocity that if you're not really good out of the gate or proficient or skillful, it can be often really demoralizing.
00:21:16
Speaker
So when you were working through those things coming up, being very slow at first and so forth, how did you maybe keep the blinders on and focus on your own thing and not get into the comparison Olympics? Because that can often be extremely crippling to a developing writer and especially even a professionally sort of well-rooted writer too.
00:21:42
Speaker
Well, it's quite true, you know. Dad was a big figure in the business and, I mean, really, we had the same name. He took it from you when you were in the crib. Right, yeah, right. He had changed his name from George to Mark when I was about three. When he got into the business, I mean, it was, of course, he didn't have any idea that I would follow. You know, I didn't even think he thought
00:22:11
Speaker
beyond what was happening the next day at that point in his life. He cast a long shadow. I'm not going to lie to you, that was tough in many ways, but I learned so much from him. I think back now, a lot of our conversations and the time we spent together and
00:22:42
Speaker
You know, so much was passed on to me that I wasn't even aware of at the time. You know, I often think about the few batting tips he gave me with, you know, certain little, you know, nuances with writing that I employ even today. You know, when he, we were talking about writing books at one point, you know, about starting a chapter deeply into, you know, into a scene.
00:23:11
Speaker
and sort of working your way back. I look at kind of construction of chapters and what have you, it's almost like fly fishing. You cast out some line and then sort of peel it back. And that's sort of what you do in the chapter of a book. You start deeply into it and sort of bring the reader back around. So there's a great layering. And those are highly sophisticated concepts that
00:23:40
Speaker
that, you know, we talked about, you know, over the years here and there. He also talked about leaving one writerly thing on a page that sort of stands out, that's important to you as a writer. You know, one turn of phrase or one, just something on a page that sort of makes it unique. And over the course of a book, they sort of accumulate and you have
00:24:10
Speaker
you know, it kind of reaches a critical mass that way. So those are concepts that, you know, I wouldn't necessarily think I would get in a traditional classroom setting, you know, perhaps I would, but depending upon who the teacher was, but you know, I had the greatest teacher of all, you know, and dad. So as with everything in life,
00:24:37
Speaker
there's advantages and disadvantages to things.
Writing Joe Frazier's Biography
00:24:42
Speaker
But on a whole, on balance, I would say that I was really, truly blessed to have him in my corner all those years.
00:24:51
Speaker
Right. Yeah, and you said he cast such a long shadow, and it's always a struggle for any writer, journalist, or whatever to carve out your own niche and your own voice, so you're uniquely identifiable on the page. So when you were trying to carve out your own path, how did you arrive at that? When did you feel comfortable in your own writerly skin, if you will?
00:25:21
Speaker
Well, sad to say, it wasn't until really after dad passed away in 2002. I think at that time, it was such a deep loss to me, but it also freed me to find myself, I think, a bit more fully than I might have prior to that.
00:25:50
Speaker
I started thinking in terms of doing a book and doing, you know, I've always wanted to do a book. I had always wanted to write books, but I was never sure what the right subject was. I just didn't want to do any book. I didn't want to do it as told to necessarily. I wanted to do something that had a little bit of a craft to it. And it was interesting. I started listening to, you know, you know, James Lee Burke, novelist,
00:26:19
Speaker
talks about how I think I have this right sort of inspiration whispers in your ear. And so I started listening to that, you know, I started listening to these getting, as I say, I tried to feel my way through, you know, what a good subject would be and, and why it would be important and how it's sort of interconnected with my own experience. I'll give you an example, the book I just have out now, Joe Frazier, the biography of Joe Frazier,
00:26:49
Speaker
For the longest time, I resisted that idea. In fact, a book publisher in 2008 had suggested it to me, and I didn't want to really get into that area because it was more or less dad's turf, and I sort of didn't want to go back over that. Well, lo and behold, Joe dies in 2011, and about four years later, I'm sitting in my office thinking about what my next project would be.
00:27:18
Speaker
And all of a sudden, I began thinking of Joe, and I became flooded with chills. And it was almost like some sort of cosmic traffic light at third from red to green. And it sort of gave me permission to move forward with this. So I made a few preliminary phone calls to people who I thought would be important sources. And I needed to elicit their support.
00:27:45
Speaker
And once they sort of signed off on it, it's almost like when you're starting a book, you're almost like building a business. You start with yourself and you surround yourself with a whole community of people over a period of time. In the inner circle, there are two or three key people that you really need to have for the book.
00:28:13
Speaker
And you can't get everybody you want for the book, but you need these key people to sort of keep things moving, who know the story intimately, who are willing to share it with you. And then from there, you build outward with a whole cast of characters. So over a period of time you're writing the book, you have basically, you know, a whole community of people who are invested in it in some way or another.
00:28:38
Speaker
You know? And that's sort of the way it goes. That's how I look at it. So I try to be instinctual about this as much as anything. And then of course there's the whole business part of it. Is there a readership for it?
Importance of Trust in Writing
00:29:01
Speaker
Is your agent hot or cool about the idea or is he
00:29:06
Speaker
You know, what does he think and what is, you know, often, you know, I run this past my wife, Ann Johnson, who, you know, she, her instincts are really super fine. So, you know, so, you know, you're always talking. You're always sort of living in the question, you know, as it were. So, and then, you know, you write a proposal and you see how that goes. You see if you can get any offers, what the marketplace says.
00:29:33
Speaker
It's a long, it's a long, arduous process, I think, as any writer would tell you. Yeah, building this community to make the book is such a great point to underscore. I remember when I was starting the Six Weeks in Saratoga book that I reported on in 2009 and came out in 2011.
00:29:56
Speaker
It was so key for me to get my first linchpin character, which ended up being Charlie Hayward, who was the president and CEO of the New York Racing Association. Once I had Charlie, all of a sudden lobbying the other main threads in the book, it was like it gave the story a bit more hafting credibility, and then I could recruit him. But without Charlie, I don't know if it would have gotten off the ground.
00:30:20
Speaker
So for Smokin' Joe, who was your linchpin, a man or woman that started to get you some momentum so you could then build out that community that turned into this great book? Well, the first call I made was to, and for no particular reason other than I knew her a little bit, was a woman named Denise Menz who was
00:30:50
Speaker
Joe's companion from 1968 until his death. And she had never, Joe had been married and so, and then later divorced years later, but Denise had been with him for so many years. And, but she had always been sort of in the shadows and sort of avoided attention.
00:31:16
Speaker
And we had a conversation and she seemed willing to speak with me and sort of, you know, get on board with it. And then I had a conversation with one of Joe's daughters, Wita, Fraser Collins, who was extraordinarily supportive of the book.
00:31:43
Speaker
She has a foundation for at-risk students called The Legacy Exists in honor of her father and a scholarship fund. We spent a lot of time early on talking about what our goals were, and they sort of meshed. She wanted to keep her father's memory alive, and I wanted to
00:32:09
Speaker
to do something that would actually do that. So she has been and continues to be a major force behind the book. So right there off the bat, two key people, right? Now, not everyone I approached in Joe's family and elsewhere were cooperative or wanted to get involved. Well, I get that. You have a wish list and people for their own reasons
00:32:39
Speaker
decline. But with those two people, I had Entrez into the rest of Joe's world, if you see what I mean. So that was an important step. If WIDA had not been interested in doing it, there's a good chance that the project would have been derailed early on, or if Denise had not been involved with it.
00:33:07
Speaker
I think the book would have been far less than it actually turned out to be, because she was quite – I mean, she loved him to death. Well, here's the thing. She was with him at his death, and I always believe that whoever's at somebody's deathbed, they have to be important figures. There are important figures who have to be developed.
00:33:32
Speaker
through the course of the book, right? So you work your way back. Whoever's with them at the end, you have to figure out how to incorporate them in the book in a meaningful way, so when they show up at their deathbed, it makes sense. So by virtue of that, Denise was a major figure in the book, so it had to be developed as a character. Now the book is character-driven, you see.
00:34:02
Speaker
It's not event-driven. It covers all the events in Joe's life, but the engine behind the book or the characters in the book, the various people, I wanted to create a landscape which not just told about Joe, but the times that he lived in and then include Frank Rizzo, the mayor of Philly.
00:34:28
Speaker
and all sorts of other people who sort of populated that world. And so we get a sense of Joe through those characters.
00:34:36
Speaker
I'm interested too in this conversation that you might have been having with Denise early on too, where she wanted to honor Joe's memory, but also you as a journalist and a writer want to tell the truest story and paint the most authentic picture of him in moments that might not always be the most flattering to hear.
00:34:59
Speaker
Did you have any of those kind of conversations with her, like, listen, I want to keep his memory alive, too, but I also, you know, we need to show some warts on the story, too. Oh, I never put it that way. I never really put it that way, you know, as far as warts are concerned. I think, you know, I spent hours and hours and hours with Denise. You know, we talked about a lot of things and never made it into the book, you know, and
00:35:27
Speaker
So, but the essence, you
Exploring Joe Frazier's Life
00:35:33
Speaker
know, the essence of things is certainly in there. What I'm saying is, you know, I don't look at them as warts. I look at them as, you know,
00:35:53
Speaker
the various dimensions of his humanity and the light and shadow that comprises life. I just don't... I wasn't looking to be provocative in any way. I wanted to paint a human portrait of him. And I think when you express that to people, they begin to understand
00:36:22
Speaker
where you're coming from with it. I think that the book was written with a lot of love. I think it was written with an appreciation for the human condition in the world that he came out of, which was one of the poorest counties in America, in Beaufort, South Carolina. I described it
00:36:50
Speaker
where he started out in life, it was like standing at the bottom of a well, looking up at the night sky at the furthest star, you know, and, and he, you know, he took a bus at age 15 to from South Carolina to New York city to live with, uh, live with relatives, you know, cause things were, you know, there was no future for him in South Carolina, you know, under Jim Crow.
00:37:16
Speaker
And he got in trouble in New York, you know, stealing cars, never arrested, but, you know, on the fringe of really getting into trouble and found his way to Philadelphia to live with other relatives and found his way to the gym. And there, you know, his story began. But I guess the point is that that's, I wanted to bring those times, that era to life and, you know, and,
00:37:47
Speaker
I guess the point is that the obstacles were far more than he could ever have imagined, and the payoff was huge too. So I just found him to be a fascinating guy who hadn't really been explored as deeply as he should have been.
00:38:08
Speaker
Something that struck me too about it that I didn't know existed at the time were these cloverlay, like these syndicates that essentially... Yeah, right. Well, it was kind of a community endeavor in Philadelphia. You know, Joe had won the Olympic gold medal in 64 and when he had come back, it was far different then than it was today. Today, someone comes back with the gold and
00:38:36
Speaker
is immediately packaged as a commercial entity and, you know, is rich beyond belief even before he throws his single punches a pro, right? Today, or back then in 65, the thought was that Joe was not going to be much of a heavyweight because he was too small. You know, he was perceived to be too small. And so he had trouble getting, getting connected with, you know,
00:39:05
Speaker
you know, some source of funding or backing. But a pastor up in North Philly at the Bright Baptist Church, William Gray, was connected in the community and they put together a group of Philadelphia businessmen, about, I guess, 40 of them, who added up about 20 grand between them. And, you know,
00:39:35
Speaker
They organized Joe's life, you know, and on the other hand, Joe had a trainer, a black trainer, Yank Durham, who guided his ring career along with Eddie Futch a little later. And they handled it brilliantly. They really placed them with the right opponents. And so I guess my point is that Joe was well seen to, right? And there was the thought too, they brought in Cloverlay,
00:40:04
Speaker
brought in, this fellow, Joe Hand, Sr., became part of Cloverlade. He was a Philadelphia cop. And they thought that it was a good idea, given the times, that Joe had some kind of a cop on the beat, you know, to kind of keep an eye on things. And Hand was very close, became very close to Frank Rizzo.
00:40:32
Speaker
And thus Joe became close with Frank Rizzo. The idea was that, you know, Joe's idea is that Rizzo could be kind of a firewall, you know, between Joe and some of the more unseemly elements in the community. The court could sort of subsume him. And, you know, so that's how that all got going, you know. And it's funny, a pastor down in South Carolina told me that Joe's mother, Dolly,
00:41:01
Speaker
in talking about Frank Rizzo, who was thought of as racist in many ways and kind of a source of racial tension in the city. But Dolly said, God put that white man on earth to keep after my boy Joe, you know, that kind of thing.
00:41:27
Speaker
You know, there's a lot of nuance in these relationships and the way this sort of unfolded for Joe. And Ali too, you know, remember he was early on, he was supported by 11 Kentucky businessmen. Ali called him my 11 millionaires, my 11 white millionaires, you know, who sort of kept him and, you know, going before Ali got involved with the Nation of Islam.
00:41:54
Speaker
you know, there was precedent for clover lay. And, you know, I think that on balance, I think that it was better for Joe that it wasn't, you know? Yeah.
00:42:03
Speaker
And not too long ago, I just scribbled an essay about the sounds. It was a baseball essay, but kind of the sounds of the game that elicit an elite player, like the hitters that are the best. Like, if you close your eyes, the way certain guys make contact,
00:42:26
Speaker
You're like, oh, that is a special sound. They're making contact on a level that you just can't imagine. And there was a line that you wrote in here in the biography that just totally echoed that sentiment. It was the sound that emanated from the blows Joe tagged it with being the punching bag, I believe, produced the same singular acoustic effect that Ted Williams created when he squared off on a baseball.
00:42:56
Speaker
I just, I love that. And it's just, that is true. Like when you come across it, it is truly something special and often very humbling when you come across it and be like, whoa, that's a, that's what it means to be elite. Well, it was a revelation to those who were there that day. And, you know, when Joe, well, Joe, you know, when he came to the gym, he was about 35 pounds overweight, couldn't fit into any of his clothes.
00:43:25
Speaker
And his sister had told him to go to the gym because if, you know, the idea was that, you know, if he got into trouble in Philly, she said, there's nothing I could do for you. But if you go over to the police athletic league and get to know the cops, you know, maybe they could give you some guidance and keep you on the straight and narrow. Well, he went over there and began working out and he hit the heavy bag with that left hook of his.
00:43:51
Speaker
And George James, who was since deceased, but it was there that day, said that it was like you could hear it across the street. You know, of course, that's probably that's a bit of a hyperbole, but he said it was just, you know, and you could build on something like that. Right. So and those gyms back then, you know, they were they were extremely
00:44:19
Speaker
The fights that took place in those gyms and sparring sessions were ferocious. In fact, Stan Hawkman, who was an old colleague of mine at the Daily News, said that Philadelphia gym wars shortened more careers
Boxing's Appeal and Sports Coverage
00:44:39
Speaker
than cocaine. It was really true. Guys would come in there and there would be these tests of manhood.
00:44:49
Speaker
These guys tore each other apart in these gyms. And that was one of the reasons Cloverlay came up, got Joe his own gym to keep him out of the other gyms. Because, you know, I mean, a lot of times the fights in the gyms were more competitive than the fights on Fight Night.
00:45:08
Speaker
There's something, too, that was, you know, Frazier being so, his signature move was his just devastating left hook. And that wouldn't have been the case had he not, you know, broke his arm when he was young, which essentially deformed his arm to a point where it made that weakness turned into his greatest strength, right? Well, yeah, I mean, one could say that. That's often been said through the years that, you know,
00:45:36
Speaker
I don't think it fully accounts for his left hook, it just, but it was certainly a factor in it, it would seem. You know, and you know, he hit the heavy bag when he was a kid, you know, I mean, he would hang it from the tree and down the, you know, we'd fill a burlap bag with corn cobs and bricks and sand and whatever else to get fine laying around the place and fill it up and
00:46:06
Speaker
He hung it from a tree and he whacked on it for an hour or so a day. So he had a gift. He had a gift.
00:46:21
Speaker
what do you think it is about boxing in particular that has attracted writers throughout throughout the ages even as boxing has waned in popularity it's still such a uh... a topic that you know people like Bryn Jonathan Butler and and so many people still still love writing about what do you think it is about boxing that attracts that kind of writer well it's uh... uh...
00:46:51
Speaker
You know, it's life and death, literally. You know, there's nothing contrived when two people get into a ring and square off with each other. It's truly the stakes are as high as anything you can see in a sporting event. There's art and craft involved with it. But there's also the fighters themselves, you know, historically, and my dad talked about this, uh,
00:47:20
Speaker
hell years ago probably less so now but years ago there was an intimacy that developed between the writers and fighters uh... that uh... really lend itself to uh... to prose uh... you know uh... writers or fighters who always seem to be among uh... and uh... more than any other athlete able to bear their souls they often came from
00:47:50
Speaker
you know, abject circumstances and, you know, they were fine to, you know, trying to carve out an identity and you had concept of courage and all these sorts of things sort of swirling around them. And they were often the most humane people, oddly enough, given the inhumanity that in the game itself,
00:48:18
Speaker
There was a humanity outside of the ring that was very, you know, not always true, but they seemed good guys for a lot of ways. You know, they were honest in the sense that as far as they could be. And they enjoyed the attention, you know. And Joe was an example of this, you know. I mean, he was a guy who was
00:48:46
Speaker
as vicious in the ring as one could possibly be outside of the ring he gave himself he had a big heart you know uh... you know he would uh... he did many things uh... an alley did this too but he did many things for people actually strangers uh... uh... that uh... went unnoticed that no one really do about you know uh... he would stop on the side of the road and uh... when he saw a stranded car and
00:49:16
Speaker
pull over and change a tire. He didn't do that once. He did it again and again and again. It was like he was a one-man Triple H crew. He was a tinkerer. He loved working with cars and he saw this person in need and he would do that or he carried a roll of hundreds in his sock. He called it the love money. If he saw somebody that needed a
00:49:44
Speaker
a leg up and if it wasn't going to be used for drugs, which is a totally, a non-starter for Joe, drugs, he just wouldn't have any part of it. But if you saw that you genuinely needed a hand, he would take that money out of his, or take the love out of his sock and peel off one or two bills, just get you going. I mean, people tell these stories again and again about him.
00:50:10
Speaker
So that was one of the things I wanted to put a frame around is humanity. Who is the man outside of the ring, you know? And so, as you can see, that attracted me to Joe in many ways, the man as much as the fighter, probably more so. But this is, you know, fighters, your question was what attracts writers to fighters or to boxing. I think there's this element that's involved with it. You know, one other point.
00:50:40
Speaker
the accessibility that fighters had for writers back in the sixties and seventies. We'll never see that again. We don't see it now. And we'll never see it again across all sports. Uh, I can just imagine, uh, someone 20 or 25 years from now trying to do a biography of Bryce Harper who plays outfielder for the Phillies.
00:51:06
Speaker
There'll be no body of work for which that biographer can draw on. Yeah. Just a Twitter feed. You know, there'll be Twitter feeds. There'll be videos and, uh, of, uh, tourist locker room statements or whatever. Uh, there'll be, there'll be nothing. If you look back on what was written about Joe in the sixties and seventies, it was incredible. The pros, the writers, they always brought their A game. They were always, they had great turns of phrases. They,
00:51:35
Speaker
They were critical. There's this whole body of the sea of work out there that a writer can sort of dive into. You'll never see that again with athletes. That's my view anyway.
00:51:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think maybe where you might be able to get close to that kind of old-school access, and might be with women's sports to some extent, as they're gaining prominence, but they're still not getting the attention they deserve by and large. And so as a result, the access is a little easier to get to, not quite as insulated. LeBron James and Steph Curry, they have their own media companies. Good luck.
00:52:21
Speaker
with that they're gonna write well they're gonna control the content but but i think with women's sports i i love writing about women's sports and it tends to the barrier of entry to get the access is a little bit lower well you would know better than i i i haven't been
Joe Frazier's Legacy
00:52:35
Speaker
around it you know for a while but i would say that uh... uh... that it even so i think that there would be uh... uh...
00:52:49
Speaker
obstacles that didn't exist back then. I mean, you didn't have to make an appointment to see Joe Frazier in Philadelphia. All you had to do was walk up to Broad Street and knock on his door. And he would sit down with you if you had the time, if you wasn't running somewhere, he'd put his arm around your shoulder and it was that kind of thing.
00:53:16
Speaker
Everybody knew where Joe Frazier was, and Joe understood what it was to be the champ, right? That carries with it a certain designation in the city and in the world at large, you know? And so he was like Ali. They were men of the people, you know? Ali was the same way. He used to live in Cherry Hill, which is about five minutes from where I'm sitting in South Jersey.
00:53:47
Speaker
You know, kids would walk up to his door all the time and knock on the door and he'd let them in and they'd sit and talk. You know, I mean, uh, uh, these guys were accessible and that's why they're so beloved. If you get right down to it, everybody, since I've written the book, people have come up to me again and again. Oh, I was with Joe here. I was with Joe there. I was just not, no one's had a single bad thing to say about him.
00:54:14
Speaker
No one can – no one say, well, he brushed me off or he did that or he did that. I think that needs to be – we need to remember that this is how athletes once were.
00:54:30
Speaker
Of course. They weren't managed the way they are now, shall we say. Yeah. And given that you spent so much time with Joe, writing the book, of course there has to be some kind of a personal connection to want to stay with somebody that long and endure the rewrites and everything.
00:54:53
Speaker
So you've definitely alluded to it, but what about him did you connect with and find inspiring so you could endure the process of writing this book and come at it with energy and rigor? Well, initially I asked myself the question when I started contemplating the idea of writing the book, which again was four or five years after Joe's death,
00:55:23
Speaker
I said, is this a subject that I'm going to want to stay with and spend time with? Is this a subject that I'm going to want to? Because you really have to want to like a subject enough to want to spend time with it. And I thought, well, given the totality of not just his career as an athlete, but the times that he lived through, his relationship with Ali, how that shaped him and how
00:55:52
Speaker
You know, I thought that there was a lot of things, you know, if you were making a stew on a cold winter day, there was a lot of things to throw into that stew, which would always keep it interesting, you know? And I liked Joe. I mean, I was like everybody else in town. I knew him. I didn't know him really well, but I was around him a lot and
00:56:19
Speaker
He was a very decent man. And I thought that, as I say, you know, so much had been written about Ali and some things had been written about Joe, but it was always through the prism of Ali. So I wanted to sort of uncouple him from Ali and sort of take him on his own and examine his life on his own terms. You follow me?
00:56:49
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Because he is so tethered to Ali that it was great that you were able to untether him from it as much as you could and give him his own life. Because he was a singer, too. He had so many other interests. Yeah, he was a singer. Joe in the knockout, Joe Frazier in the knockouts. He wasn't exactly Marvin Gaye, but I'll tell you, he worked at it.
00:57:19
Speaker
And he put a lot of time and effort and his own money into it. But it was a way of his, that he had of expressing himself, you know, from the area, from the world he came out of in South Carolina. That was, song was a form of expression, of bearing your soul. And, you know, so that was important to him.
00:57:48
Speaker
There was a lot more to Joe Frazier than people had been led to believe, I think.
00:57:57
Speaker
Yeah, and your book does such a great job of doing just that. It was such a pleasure to be reading it, and I'm almost through it. It's such a great experience, Mark. It's got a great ending if I do say so. The ending really wraps up, and I won't spoil it for you, but it really wraps up a question that I had had about Joe and Ali.
00:58:26
Speaker
And how they've sort of, you know, because there was such friction between the two over the years that sort of waxed and waned and got ugly at many times. And, you know, a question I had was how was that all resolved, if it was resolved at all? And I think that the ending sort of ties that up. Oh, awesome. I like, I'll be there in a day or two, right? So I can't wait for that. Right.
00:58:56
Speaker
Nice. Well, I want to be mindful of your time, Mark. Thank you so much for carving out time to do this. For people who might want to find you online and get more familiar with your work, where can people learn more about you? Well, you know, I'm all over the internet at CUNY these days. I have a Joe Frazier Facebook page, the life of Joe Frazier, the life of
00:59:24
Speaker
or Smoking Joe the Life of Joe Frazier. And I invite anyone to join that page and there's material about the book, but also you'll meet other fans of Joe. And so I'm trying to create a bit of a community for the book and for fans of Joe. So I hope people enjoy it.
00:59:50
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, yeah, it's a wonderful book.
Conclusion and Farewell
00:59:54
Speaker
And I'm so glad that we got to meet here and speak. And I hope this is the first of many conversations we'll have down the road with respect to your work and just the craft of telling true stories. Wonderful. I thoroughly enjoyed it, Brendan. Thank you. Thank you, Mark. Take care. Well, what did I tell you? What did I tell you? That was nice. That was real nice. Mark is great.
01:00:20
Speaker
I could talk to that guy for hours. He just might. He lives in New Jersey, very close to where my family is, so we might just go grab ourselves some brewskis and talk shop in person next time I'm on the east coast.
01:00:35
Speaker
Anywho, thanks to Mark. Thanks to our show sponsor in Goucher College's NFA Nonfiction and Bay Path University's NFA in Creative Nonfiction. Go on and share the show with a pal, a fellow CNFer, and link up to it on social. Join me on Twitter at cnfpod at Brendan O'Mara. Make sure if you share the podcast, which I hope you do across your networks, tag it. That way I will jump in the fire with you.
01:01:05
Speaker
Hey, let me know if there's anything I can do for you. Let me know what you think. How can I help? You know what? I'm very, very tired. So that's gonna do it, CNFers. I'm not gonna drag you down. I'm not gonna drag you down into the mud where I have a tendency to hang out. We're not going there. We're gonna rise up above it. We're gonna dust off, take a shower.
01:01:29
Speaker
of the