Diamond Tooth Mary
Diamond Tooth Mary
Mary Smith McClain is torn between what she loves and what she feels is right. For most of her life she was known as Diamond Tooth Mary, a dazzling blues singer who performed on star studded bills with Duke Ellington and Nate King Cole. She turned her back on the blues and joined the Baptist church. Her pastor said the music was evil. And she believed him. When Mary turned 82, her husband died. Money got tight. Old blues singers don’t have pensions. She accepted an offer to sing in New York City for the first time in 42 years.
Cultural Center of the Country
New York spends more money on the arts than other city in the country, but a lot of those dollars come from outsiders. If you subtract all that out of town money, the place that spends the most per person for culture is Bassett, Nebraska.
Lost Graves
I found myself in a forest filled with forgotten lives. Their final resting places were marked, not with names, but numbered stakes, unnoticed, until Bud Merritt stumbled upon them. He found the first of six lost graveyards at what was once the largest mental hospital in America: Milledgeville, Georgia.
“These are remarkable and poignant stories that need to be told.”
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KEN BURNS
“Those of us who know and work with Bob Dotson stand in awe of his gifts as a writer. Like the work so many viewers have come to love on NBC, this collection of stories captivates and inspires.”
- SAVANNAH GUTHRIE
“Throughout his remarkable career Bob Dotson has searched for the real essence of America – not by interviewing the so-called famous but by seeking out those unnoticed people we pass by every day. Dotson is a national treasure for caring enough to listen.”
- MEREDITH VIERA
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