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Pic of Fresh Air

Best Of: Ben & Ellen Harper / The Mob On Main Street

February 6, 2021
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Fresh Air

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Ellen Harper, and her Grammy award-winning son, musician Ben Harper, both grew up in the Folk Music Center in Claremont, Calif. Ellen's parents founded the center in 1958, and Ellen runs it today. Her new memoir, 'Always a Song,' is her story of the folk music revival of the '50s and '60s, and about raising her three biracial sons, mostly as a single mother.

Also, John Powers reviews 'The Copenhagen Trilogy' by Tove Ditlevsen.

Finally, writer Russell Shorto's grandfather was a mob boss in the industrial town of Johnstown, Pa., where Shorto grew up. He talks about uncovering his family's secret gambling operation in his new memoir, 'Smalltime.'