Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and Alice A. Martin Foundation of Elkhart, celebrating the spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.

In Sing for Your Life, the author, Daniel Bergner, beautifully tells the story of what it means for a young man to quite literally find his voice in the life of Ryan Speedo Green.

We see how a young black man can rise and hold on to hope and despite all the forces working against him.

Let's join my guest, Tuck Langland, to explore the life of this young man.

Welcome.

Hi, Gail.

Always great to be here.

Good to have you back.

And I want to, first of all, tell you, I am so pleased you suggested this book.

Well, I loved it.

I did, too.

And I think it should be required reading for musicians.

I mean, anybody but musicians in particular that have a goal to succeed.

And, well.

I am an opera lover.

That's part of it.

I am also a lover of the underdog.

Yes.

Yes.

I thought you wanted a Speedo bathing suit.

I'm also a lover of those.

Well, the thing is, we everybody wants to know why his middle name is Speedo.

You know, his father used to work out.

He was a bodybuilder.

He was?

Yes.

And he wore Speedo.

He named his son Speedo.

Anyway, we don't forget the name.

So we want to talk about this young man.

But first of all, let's talk about what we're cooking.

Well, since there's not a lot of food mentioned in the book, but he did have a lot of difficulty and a lot of effort to learn Italian, to sing, because so many operas are in Italian.

And so I thought I would just simply do some Italian food.

And we're going to start off with some spaghetti alla carbonara, which means spaghetti in the manner of charcoal burners.

And then we're going to move on to Chicken Marsala, which is very typical.

All right.

You're going to start that.

I'm going to be making a goulash.

That is a dish from Central Europe.

You have Hungarian goulash, you have Polish goulash, Czech.

And we're going to have Viennese goulash.

And that's in honor of Ryan and the beginning of his career.

And not the very beginning.

But we want to start with once upon a time we would say this young man probably escaped death many times.

I think he.

Did.

Yes.

He grew up in a family that didn't get along.

They fought they they.

Were violent.

Killing each other.

And and Brian goes to Ryan goes to a special school when he threatens to kill both his mother and his brother.

A special school is called juvenile detention.

Yes, it is.

It's a six by nine cement box.

Well, it was a special school in I think it was in Virginia.

And it was known for helping and not always helping, but training and soothing and quieting down very, very unhappy children who were cruel and mean.

And Ryan was one of them.

He was one of the cruelest and the meanest.

And he was big he was a big fellow, about six two or three and powerful.

And the first day in school, he began by taking his desk and throwing it at the teacher.

Yeah.

How's that for a beginning?

There you go.

Oh, my God.

Are going to come for that?

Yes.

He is.

Stepping out on the stage on the metropolitan freaking opera It was a very difficult beginning.

And he worked hard.

He.

Well, let's get back to the idea that when he came in, he had no skills.

But when he behaved, he was given a radio by one of his teachers in solitary.

And he started singing with the music.

And that's how he started his career as a musician.

But it was very it was really the school of hard knocks.

And like many people, we have a teacher that saved us or put us in the right direction.

And he had Mrs. Hughes the day he threw the desk at her and his paper was all landed on the floor.

She said, Oh, I see that you'd like to work on the floor.

Please go right ahead.

And that's how she got his attention.

And she was just a wonderful oh, my goodness.

Woman.

You know, children are so lucky to have you is really teach many ways the.

Turning point of his life.

Yes.

And he had other teachers that were also there.

They believed in him.

Yes.

There was another there was a mr. Hughes.

And then there was a Jack, Mr. Brown, big man.

And he went to several sort of medium training schools.

And every place he went, he had someone that would, you know, cover him, help him.

Yeah.

And one asked him to sing in a melancholy way.

He had no idea what the word meant.

He said, What am I supposed to do?

That's how, you know.

He had to start from scratch.

He had to start from scratch.

And like we're doing with our food here and I've got to be sure this is I just want to say this goulash.

I'm going to I'm going to cook some onions, some garlic and three things for goulash.

You have to have green pepper.

And so I have also you can use any kind of meat, ground, beef, veal.

You can use chicken.

I'm using a little ground turkey.

And then we add tomato sauces and stewed tomatoes and we let this cook for a while and I add vegetable broth.

And then I'm going to add a cup of it, said Macaroni.

But there's something about macaroni.

So I decided to buy Rotini and we're going to put that in to cook.

And we can serve people, you know, forever on this dish.

Yeah.

So now you've got your bacon under control.

The bacon needs to be cooked till it's fairly crisp and broken up.

I see little pieces and I have here a bowl.

Yes.

And in the bowl I put an egg yolk.

And what did you put on top of it?

I put in a few hot peppers.

Okay.

May I borrow some?

Yeah, absolutely.

You'll have to pay them back.

I'll bring you I'll bring you.

Hot peppers.

With that.

And I'm going to put in a bunch of this parmesan cheese in the green cans.

You know, this has got sawdust in it.

You know, that does it.

It says contents.

I can't see which is but it's got cellulose.

Just to hold it together.

Give it volume.

So it doesn't clump.

Yes, just cellulose is sawdust.

Well, fancy that.

And I'm going to put in 215 ounce cans of stewed tomatoes and then some to the sauce and then we'll put in the the seasonings.

But I've got to get back to this hot oil here.

Here, make sure we are going to go up in flames.

Which we've done.

Yeah.

One onion.

Yeah, one big green pepper.

So I should have a little bigger pan.

But it got away from me this morning.

It didn't come with me from Elkhart This is about gas.

This is why I never can right find the right way to cook it.

And as long as gas.

Stove is forever.

I love gas stove.

To me, they're great.

Why do you like them?

Well, first of all, you turn it on.

You got heat as opposed to you turn it on.

You have to wait.

And the second thing is, if you turn it off, you haven't got heat as opposed to it keeps cooking and cooking and cooking well.

And those new burners, you know, the flat, smooth stuff.

I actually, like a lot of people, burn themselves because they for Yeah.

Okay.

I love garlic, so we've got to have a lot of garlic in here and you can add your own seasoning.

I happen to like it spicy.

And when people say goulash, you know, when I was growing up, it was kind of a term and I think it's because my family didn't cook it, but it seemed to be part of the immigrant experience.

But it's one of those one pot meals where you can throw all sorts of things in.

And if you haven't got this, you can use that.

Yes.

Not a specific, precise thing.

It's not like tornadoes, Rosine, where you have to have the paté in the right in Philly or.

Anything like that.

You have to be locked away in your kitchen by yourself and concentration.

Yeah.

And I always found that that was difficult in my family life.

So the other thing is that Goulash has no specific cooking time.

When it's done, you can you can hang on to it for an hour or 2 hours.

So if you're inviting people over, you can have the goulash basically done before they get there.

And it just sits there on the stove.

And that's what I like to do know for having people over.

I like to be talking with them and you know, but you do it well.

You talk and then you move to the kitchen.

Then we don't see you for a while.

You're cooking away.

It depends on what I'm cooking.

Yes.

Yeah.

And so I'm going to add some bay leaves I know you don't like them.

Baileys.

Baileys.

Big bay leaves.

Yeah, I never can taste them Oh, you better go to the doctor.

Better see what's happening.

Why do doctors taste like bay leaves?

No.

Okay, we have.

I'm just waiting for the old Al Venti here.

You know, the three times that Italian food, al dente Alfredo and al fresco, the three L's.

What's Fredo fried?

No, Alfredo.

Alfredo.

Yeah, that's.

That's a sauce, right?

Yeah.

That's just not making a sauce here for these noodles.

And the sauce is a raw egg yolk.

Now, are you are we moving ahead on this?

Oh, we're getting now the spaghetti is getting there.

Okay, I'm crumbling bacon into it.

This is the bacon I just cooked and that just crumbles up.

So you just beat up an egg and put a little red pepper.

Well, red pepper.

A little salt pepper.

And you're cooking for one, right?

And you would double this.

Thing for two.

Oh, you are.

But in typical Italian veal dinners, they will very often be a pasta dish, which is very small.

We would we would say, I want a piece of spaghetti like that.

No, you get a little tiny thing like this because it just takes a little bit off your appetite and you can spend less money and time on expensive things like roasts and meats and stuff.

Well, and that's I think if you have someone helping you and you are doing the different courses and so here that's the last.

I'm actually using.

Boy.

Sauce.

Oh, boy is right.

You got enough there for the eighth army?

I do.

I'm going to welcome to we've got that put together now.

What am I going to do with these rotinis?

I'm going to guess that I have a cup in here and Tuck.

I'm getting the wrap sign that we should be ending this segment.

Well, how are you doing there?

I'm doing fine.

And all I want to say is that at this point in Ryan's life, he's discovered that he has a voice.

Yeah, well, he tries out for the Met, the young people and 1200 students, and guess who wins?

He does.

He does.

Well, there are actually several winners because there's tenors and concertos and But he's a bass or bass baritone.

But he needed.

Training.

Oh, the.

Thing I think I noticed a lot of people knew he was lacking in skills and they would help him.

They'd give him extra help because he tried so hard.

Don't you feel that?

I think so.

I think they just believed in him.

You know that this kid's got potential.

Yes.

He's going to go somewhere and we're going to help him.

Right.

And we're going to go somewhere pretty soon.

Yeah.

He's whining.

We're going to go away.

And I'm going to put some vegetable.

You can put anything in here.

You can put a beef, you can just fashion it to your diet or what you like.

So we're going to let this cook and I will sample it before I serve it because I like it hot, but a lot of people don't.

So.

And that's true.

What do I have in here?

Oh, these guys.

Yeah, they've got to go in here.

The onion and the green pepper there they are.

So that's the basic goulash?

Yes, this is the basic goulash.

Now, we're going to take a little break, get ready for the second segment.

And in the meantime, we want to show you some pictures of young Ryan Speedo green.

And we'll be right back.

And we are talking about the book Sing for Your Life.

It's about the life of Ryan Speedo Green.

And right here we're looking at the life of Tuck Langland.

Tell us what you're doing in this pot.

No, I'm going to tell you what I'm doing in this pot.

Okay.

You go there.

On this pot here.

I'm making spaghetti alla carbonara.

I've got spaghetti noodles.

I've cooked it.

They're hot, I've taken a bowl, I've put in an egg yolk, crumbled bacon and some parmesan cheese.

And that gets poured in there.

Oh, you were a busy lad, weren't you?

Oh, I'm a busy lad.

I'm a busy lad that this gets poured in there and this gets cooked by the heat of the noodles.

Right.

So that's the trick to them.

So I put it in when it's very hot, stir the noodles around.

So that becomes a very interesting little pre main course Italian dish.

And look at that very nice.

And it's a small amount because you've got to eat a main course.

It must serve it courses.

Your dinners are several courses.

Yes.

And so there's course number one.

Yeah.

And of course, a pasta course.

Yes.

And you've all heard of antipasto.

That means before the pasta.

That's little pieces of salami and olives.

Yes, there is that.

All right.

Let me have the pan.

All right.

And you get cracking and tell us what you're doing.

And this is putting a little proper Parmesan on top.

Proper parmesan like that.

And over here, I'm going to make spaghetti.

Sorry, chicken.

What I call it Marsala.

Oh, yes, I have.

Is it.

Marsala?

Because I'm using Marsala, which is an Italian fortified wine as part of the sauce.

Yes.

These are chicken breasts that I pounded out flat.

I'm sprinkling some flour on them.

He hit the hit them once so people can hear that.

Well, I'll turn them over and hit them.

Now the flour is going to fly everywhere right?

Not really.

Not too bad, no.

And why do you put the flour in?

It helps thicken thicken the sauce.

All right.

There you go.

Yeah.

So you use a mallet like this, you put a little Saran wrap on it and you just bang the heck out of it.

And he wants everything to be uniformly thin and everything will be cooked roughly evenly.

Yes, evenly.

Julia Child has a recipe for these, which is absolutely the greatest in which it's 3 minutes on one side and two on the other end.

It's just fantastic.

So I put them in, I've got some mushrooms already sauteed, I've got a those little things we know.

Oh, oh little not onion thing.

Oh its shallots I got shallots in there and this will be done very quickly.

And what will add to it is some cream, some stock and some marsala.

So you're going to cook 3 minutes on one side and 2 minutes on the other side and then you're going to put your liquids in.

Yeah.

And you're going to sprinkle a little bit of.

This on your that goes on there.

No.

Oh yeah.

That I want, you know.

I got it.

I got it.

You're done.

Do you need this?

No, it's all right.

Thank you.

I need a servant.

We all do.

We need a sous chef.

Everybody needs a sous chef.

Yeah, I know it.

That's not a shoes, Chef.

Chef.

Anyway, one of the things that in the book, of course, is, his rise, Speedo Green's rise from absolutely the bottom rung of society to really very near the top rung of society.

And he does it in music.

This is it.

Yes.

Yeah.

And you know, Renee Fleming says people don't know just how hard it is to become an opera singer.

It is a difficult, difficult career.

And here he jumps in and he loves it and he goes, he tries out for the Vienna Opera and lo and behold, he gets accepted.

His first.

Major accomplishment.

I'm not accomplishment, but live opera.

Yeah.

And he says the book doesn't say much about his life in Vienna.

I would like to hear hear a little bit more about that.

But he does meet Irene and his Irene has had a pretty hard life too.

Can't remember if she is Russian, can't remember anything, and they hit it off because they both had to work hard after they came to the Vienna Opera.

You know, you have to have a great voice to be an opera singer, but that's only the start.

It's only the start and the rest of it.

One of the things that impressed me was music lessons, the voice lessons he got, which were amazing because one of the teachers brought in a diagram of the various small openings of cavities inside your head, which.

Are resonance chambers.

But you can't you can't say, okay, at this resonance chamber and I have to sing harder over here.

It is the way.

You say yes to to try to move his voice into these places.

Well, you know, and that.

Is the secret.

Sometimes you may have a nice sounding voice, which will never be an opera singer, because you don't have those.

Spaces where your body.

Or you haven't worked hard enough.

Yeah, well.

But you can't you can't, you know, change your your your head by singing.

But you can use your brains to.

Make it happen.

Well, I've read the book by Renee Fleming is a little salt.

Yeah.

You know, the Kentucky Fried Chicken, 11 secret herbs and spices.

You know, a laboratory did a test on those to find out what they were, and you know what they were.

Yeah, salt and pepper.

Okay, there you go.

That's your little secret of 11 herbs and spices.

Okay, now we're back to Ryan.

Now we're back to Ryan So anyway.

So what's the reaction to him in Vienna when he is singing the first time?

It was good.

It yes, he was very good.

And I think, you know, in the Opera world, they're really kind of snobbish and they want to find out what they want to talk about, what he didn't do right first.

And we didn't get a real in-depth discussion of that from the author, but we assume we did it all right because he is now building this career and I hope that we can get a little clip or you can go to YouTube and get a clip where Trevor Noah.

Interviews Ryan on his show.

And Trevor Noah also came from a very poor background, but had a loving grandmother, stayed with him and he was the cream going in.

And then he, oh, hey, this is good.

And don't forget us too.

I will tell you that.

So anyway, Trevor is Trevor Noah just looks like he is awestruck by this young man.

They both came from similar circumstances, I don't think.

Well, yes, Trevor was abused, too, by a stepfather.

Oh, my gosh.

Who don't you want half of this?

Oh, oh.

Oh.

Well, if we're doing.

Math, I.

Mean, it smells very good in here.

There we go.

We like that.

Just simmer a while thick with it, and we have ourselves a dish.

We look wrong.

One see how we're always, you know, on this show, everybody object out.

So I'm putting that out to.

Look at the flame.

And let the sauce thicken.

Now, you cooked it about 5 minutes.

Yeah.

But then you get to cook this down a tiny bit.

Cook it down a little bit, put it out it, put some parsley on it, and that's it.

Wow.

You're going to put it on there.

And we have and I have the the dish here for young opera singers who are at the bottom of the rung, you know, they're the first rung and they need to spend their money wisely.

And anyway, let's do a toast to Ryan.

Yes.

And Irene, his yes.

The new wife.

What a wonderful guy he was.

Oh, what?

Oh, I just wonder if we could stay here and plate if you like, or we can go to the table.

I think we'll stay in the kitchen.

What do you.

Think?

I like to say in the kitchen, you know, what do you say?

I like the heat.

So we're going to stay here.

We're going to put him in the heat.

We're having our little sip and we've toasted Irene and Ryan Speedo Green.

And if you I would say go to YouTube and enter his name.

And you will see him interviewed several times and you may even have a segment of him singing.

You got to hear him singing because he is they often call it the bass baritone, but in fact, it's a bass voice.

It's it's a low voice with wonderful, wonderful resonance.

I personally think the greatest baritone that ever lived was was Leonard Horn, but he was more of a baritone.

He was a higher voice than Ryans.

And this is probably done.

So here's one.

Look at this.

Look at this.

Isn't that gorgeous?

And so he has made this this for two people.

Yeah, there's and.

We are we're going to invite you to stay in our kitchen and we're going to we should have a sampling of something here.

We've got to have a sampling because, you know, I don't want to cook all that and have it just sit there.

Well, let's.

I want to try a little spaghetti carbonara.

Let's try it.

Sure, let's do that.

You have I gave you a for cases.

Well I'll give you another one.

Got one here.

If you'd like a fresh water you don't have to use the one with the flour on it.

Here, take a fresh round.

Do this under this.

All right, you do it well.

And this is this is carbonara.

This is the spaghetti carbonara with bacon and egg.

It's the whole egg or just the yolk.

I use the yolk this time.

I think the white makes it a little right here.

Very good.

Kind of a little corner right there.

We have one minute to go.

I have to give you a dish to put it on just a corner.

Just.

Here we go.

Voila.

You've got a dish.

Okay.

Oh, okay.

I'll eat it right over here.

This is fine.

Would you like a dish?

No, I'm okay.

This should be.

Perfect.

And another reason you.

Maybe you mentioned.

It, you.

Found it.

It cooks faster.

That means you have to stand in the kitchen and then invite your friends in.

Try seeing that video of our man Ryan Speedo and we are ending our show.

Tuck I know.

It's sad, isn't it?

Because it's been wonderful fun.

All I can say about this book is it is absolutely a page turner and it's so uplifting.

So uplifting.

It definitely is.

I highly recommend it.

And now we want to thank you for joining us.

Remember, good food, good friends, good books, and somebody who enjoys eating and cooking chuckling for joining me today.

I wouldn't work as much as I do if I didn't like eating well.

I do like eating.

And you you loved to prepare food, too.

I love it.

I love it.

So.

Oh, you've been the beneficiary of.

Oh, just the other night recently.

Yes.

We had a six course meal just the other night.

So thank you for watching and thank you for sharing your time with us.

And we'll see you next time This WNIT local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and Alice, A. Martin Foundation of Elkhart, celebrating the spirit of Alice.

Martin and her love of good food and good friends.