Russ Ellis Cut His First Album at Age 85, and It’s A Bop

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KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2021

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Russ Ellis is a man for all seasons. He was a track star at UCLA, the first black professor to teach at Claremont and a UC Berkeley vice chancellor for student affairs and architecture professor. When Ellis retired in 1994, he threw himself into new pursuits. Painting classes. Sculpture. A men’s group. His latest venture is his first album, “Songs from the Garden,” which includes 11 tracks he wrote and recorded and is available on local label Berkeley Cat Records. In his words, he’s “kissing the joy as it flies.” We’ll talk with Ellis about his music and how this age has given him the gift of being “too old to get nervous.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:32.1	From KQED.
0:35.3	Welcome back to Forum.
0:36.5	I'm Alexis Madrigal.
0:38.0	As life goes on, it can seem too late to take up a new skill or make something new,
0:42.9	which is one reason that when we read about Russ Ellis' new album in The New York Times,
0:47.1	we realized that we needed to have them on the show.
0:49.6	Ellis was a track star at UCLA. You should Google those pictures. They're amazing.
0:53.7	Then a UC Berkeley,
0:54.9	vice chancellor, an architecture professor. And when he retired in 1994, he took a painting,
0:59.6	sculpture, a men's group. And then at 85 years young, he released an album. His first album,
1:06.3	a melange of styles and sounds. And at least, you know, you hear about someone like this,
1:10.3	and I think, we just need to feed
1:12.1	this person's wisdom out over the airwaves.
	...

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