(Up beat music) ♪ The simple things in Life ♪ - My guest is producer, director, radio host and music aficionado.

TJ.

Lubinsky welcome to lifestyles.

- Lillian.

It's a pleasure to be with you.

Thank you - TJ.

It stands for?

- Terry James.

- Okay.

But you go by TJ and have for years.

You know, much of your career has been working and producing PBS pledge programs.

Your shows have raised millions of dollars for PBS stations.

- Not, not to brag, but billions with a B.

(Laughs) - Okay.

Thanks for the correction.

All right.

Let's go with billions of dollars over the years and it hasn't just been a Doo-Wop, but it's been folk.

It's been rock, it's been soul.

It's been the carpenters.

And I want to talk to you about the making of those concerts and the PBS pledge shows, of course but first I want to talk to you about your love of music and how it runs in the family.

So, music has been in your blood for a long time and it's been kind of passed down through generations.

Share a little bit about your grandfather, your father and even your uncle.

- Well, interesting.

Wow.

And thank you for, for learning all that.

My grandfather had a record label called Savoy which at its time in 1940, was very much gospel, rhythm, blues Jazz.

So all those names, you always hear like Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.

All those people were on my grandfather's label.

His main business was, was really was jazz and gospel.

That's what, what was unique to him.

And it created an incredible library of work that represents American history the culture of what people went through.

Now, in fairness, he was not a record man.

I don't think he loved music.

I think he was, you know, a Jewish businessman, who was out to make money in whatever businesses and that happened to be one of his businesses.

So, a lot of the times I don't think he treated the artists the way they should have been treated back then.

And so, part of my coming into the world was in a sense to rewrite that history was to not repeat that but to kind of make penance, if you will to go back and say, you know, I'm going to make sure that if I can meet people that have inspired me, that I love that I'm gonna be part of something I'm gonna build.

That they're always going to be treated, a hundred times better than I wish to be treated myself.

So that was the lesson I learned from him.

- And how did your father work in the business?

Was he, what did he, and I know your uncle was a DJ I think?

- Yeah.

My father, God rest his soul.

Was a guy who worked for his father.

His father wouldn't let him upstairs where the record company operated because in Newark, in New Jersey, at that time there was a certain element that you kind of had to do business with.

And my grandfather wanted to keep my father away from that element.

He didn't want, my father touched by that.

- Got it.

He was running the record store downstairs an electronic store and a tube store but he could never get upstairs to be with his father who we just loved.

And it disheartened me for years afterwards because eventually the business was sold on my grandfather's death bed.

The business itself was supposed to go to my father.

He said look, son, I want you to take this all.

I wish you were part of this.

You should be a part of it.

Here it is.

It's yours.

And my father being the great guy he is, was, said.

No dad, I've got three sisters and I've got a brother.

This should be yours to share.

And at the last minute he was successful in getting his lawyer with his father to change the will.

And then all the husbands of all the sisters they all started suing each other.

Everybody wanted this to be sold.

They were after the money one guy wanted to run the business.

And so, it ended up my father having to under a state Marshall.

Having to drill the records, that his father made.

Because the way the judgment went out, nobody got anything.

And that was the hardest thing I saw in my father for years.

He never could get over that.

He tried to do the right thing for the right reason and - It didn't work out.

- [TJ] Everything was just destroyed.

And so in a way, I always want to pay tribute to him as well but he helped me in every part of the business and helped me build the business that we've done So successfully now for nationally 25 years, locally, 35 years in local public television stations.

- Talk about your early career.

You went to work for a PBS station in Florida.

What did you learn there that eventually led you to the Pittsburgh station, where you would go on to be you know, the King of public television pledge shows in the music genre.

Let's talk about that - Just remember, The King is only as good as his last show.

(Laughs) So, that's a great motivator.

I had actually started years earlier volunteering and being a paid phone operator volunteer which is a system that used in Miami at WPBT.

And I was a big, big, big, big, big, big fan of the British TV show doctor Who.

I used to practice before going to volunteer for this station of what it would be like to be on the air.

And I'm talking I'm 11 or 12 years old at this point.

And I would go to channel two in Miami where my brother was also a highlight player.

He used to practice highlight right up the street somewhere where the studio was.

And I somehow convinced him to let me in.

And the people I met there eventually ended up running the PBS station in West Palm beach.

And so they said, Hey, there's that kid.

You know that kid?

Yeah.

You know that kid, the one who loves Dr. Who, but if we could bring them in and teach him that to do the things he wants whether it was with a science fiction or whether it was with British comedy or whether it was with music.

If we could teach him that he can be successful in making money for the station, then it would open a door for him to do these things.

Let's do it.

And so, they hired me probably 10 years after that.

Same people remembered hiring WXEL to be their director of on-air fundraising.

But then, because they knew my skillset, they said, listen, you talk about music all the time.

You love music all the time.

Make sure when Yanni's is here, he gets, you know whatever he needs for himself in the green room.

And when any performer comes in or wherever the people were at the time, make sure they get what they need and be successful on those nights.

And if you can do that, we'll give you one night to do this.

- Music thing.

do thing that whatever you call it you can just have a night and see what happens.

And that was the beginning.

That was the beginning.

- Let me reintroduce our guest is TJ.

Lubinsky, he's responsible for many PBS music specials.

Whether it's the 50s, the 60s or the 70s.

You know, for 20 years you have produced for 25 years, you just said my music specials.

You have a different way of recording and producing these specials.

I had no idea about this, but you I thought when you're there, you're recording the concert.

But, there's really so much more going on behind the scenes that you're doing a little later.

Do you mind sharing how that works?

- Wow, you are good.

(TJ.laughs) And that's very few people understand that.

As someone who loves the music and lives the music, there are certain cues in the records that if you don't have the records you will never have the sound of the group.

And so, the difference for me and other producers in Hollywood is that they would just get a group.

They get them on TV.

The pictures would look fine, terms of how they would shoot it but the sound never sounded like the record.

It always sounded like some live band and it never sounded like the original records.

So for me, it was how can we get the sound of the original record in a live situation?

So I always made my show, still make them to this very day, for audio first.

Because there are certain cues in that sound of the records that if you don't have, people will say, that's nice but they're not going to be emotionally moved to feel it and to take an action.

Which is basically, see something they see for free on their local PBS station and take out their wallet and support the local station.

And that was an equal goal to me both of those things are in tandem.

And so, if you have a group like the four tops let's say, singing Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch or it's the same old song, Reach out I'll be there.

standing in the shadows love.

Yes, you hear the four guys but you also hear, six women behind them.

And if you don't have those women involved with the recording, both on stage and in the studio, you'll never have the sound of those records.

Cause that was the key part of sound.

And so if you don't have the female soprano and mezzo-soprano singers, you're never going to have the magic of the record, Ronnie Spector once told me, recreating the wall of sound with the the amazing productions that her then husband had made.

And you know, I'm listening to Be my Baby and I'm listening to, Baby I love You.

And the Christmas songs, which we also recorded and the something wrong.

I mean the castanets are on the record I hear we're playing the castanets doesn't have the tonal quality that it should have.

And this is driving me crazy.

So I'm driving back and forth to and from the studio what's wrong with this?

And no one could actually tell me what's wrong until, I see a picture of the original group and the musicians that were in the studio, Gold Star Studios.

And they had Ebony castanets.

- Ooh - Ebony castanets that's it.

Now of course, try to find those today.

Right?

(laughs) I think at a Flamenco dancers somewhere in Argentina I think who heard them and was willing to let us borrow them so that we could record them.

And so it's that dedication to the sound that I carry and all the things.

- I can't imagine the funding needed or the logistics of putting those together.

When you're working on a project like that, is it six weeks six months in the planning?

A year in the planning?

Before it actually is recorded.

And then maybe another year before it actually gets to the PBS stations?

- Yeah, that's exactly right.

It takes typically two to three years to make a show.

And there's different parts of it.

If it's a simple show, like a Doo-Wop show, what I mean by simple, it's only four voices or five voices.

That's a pretty straightforward show because it's just a rhythm section, playing behind the vocalists.

And so that's where you get a theater and you hope you get a live audience.

And then you try to get all the groups that are on your giant wishlist.

And that simple, once we went past Doo-Wop into the Burt Bacharach type music.

Into the sixties and once we got to the sound of Philadelphia and more advanced Motown songs, now you've got strings.

Now you've got horns.

Now you've two or three Percussionists.

And if again, you don't have that.

It's almost like, you know I wouldn't do the show because to do it, to do it right.

And to be respectful to the artists and to the audience most importantly, you've got to have those elements.

So what we started to do was go in the studio months early a year early, and we would lay down just the basic rhythm track.

Not exactly the track that was played live, but close enough so we could lock all the instruments together.

Then we would record the background harmonies.

Then just like a record would be made.

Then we record, the strings.

Now I might use six string players in playing in three different rooms.

So you get the sound of the players playing, four times in four different rooms.

So when you're done, it's a brick room, it's a wood room it's a cavernous room and all that gets mixed together.

And then suddenly you've got this huge orchestra and you do the same with the horns, especially.

And once you have that, then you just take these building blocks and you apply it as close as you can to the original record.

Cause I don't want versions that are like made for Vegas.

And like, Hey, here we are we're swinging through - [Lilian] Right.

- We want the original record.

And that's what it's about.

- So I want to talk a little bit about the, some of the artists that you have worked with.

Either, they've been your host., they've been your pitcher, your pledge pitcher but I'm going to send a, share a few names.

And I want you to share a story or a time with them.

Nick Clooney, of course, - Oh God - Burt Bacharach, Englebert Humperdinck, Dionne Warwick, Davy Jones which we lost way too soon.

BJ Thomas and Richard Carpenter.

I loved The Carpenter special.

I love her pure voice.

I love her songs and that's my era, you know, the seventies.

But tell me something about any of those that you might have that you've worked with and been involved with.

- When I was trying to convince Richard that we needed to work together.

I was trying to think of a way I could approach him.

That would be unlike anybody else that approached him.

- [Lilian] Right.

- And so I called them up and I said, Richard, my name is TJ Lubinsky, I do these little shows on Public Television.

He happened to have been watching the night before - Oh nice.

- The show with...

The show with Nick Clooney.

And so he starts singing.

There's a pawnshop, in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania which was old pop hit by Guy Mitchell.

And I said, listen, I will never ask you about your sister and all the questions that tabloids asked you.

I would just like you to share with me, what you felt about the music and what you felt about your memories and your time together.

Cause I knew for him, he lives every day in that tragedy still never ended for him.

- [Lilian] Right?

- And he, once he knew I was on his side he opened the doors for, for everything he wanted to do with The Carpenters.

And Karen's voice, I mean, you know, you just hear one note and you you've gone to a very special place.

And he understood that we cared that was for her.

We want to try and to explore any part of their another story or call them 'goody two shoes', like they used to be called.

We were just there to preserve her music and honor what Richard had done too.

'Cause Richard was just as part of the success of The Carpenters.

- [Lilian] Absolutely.

Absolutely yeah.

She couldn't have got more of what she did, without him.

- I remember one time, it's funny.

Aretha Franklin called me up one time and she said, "How come am not on one of these shows Lubinsky?"

at first of all, I'm thinking Hamana, Hamana, Hamana, what?

Who?

Huh?

What?

And she said, "I want to be on one of your shows".

Then a little time went by still trying to get in touch, now she's busy, she's doing a million things.

You couldn't quite reconnect with her.

So, I heard she liked a place called Pink's Hotdogs.

Which is out of your way.

- Yes.

- She was playing in Atlantic city and I flew in five cases of Pink's Hotdogs (Lilian laughs) - Got the little paper hat, cause I used to be a soda jerk in my younger experience before TV, got the paper hat and as soon as she came out of the dressing room, get your pinks, hot dogs here.

- Really?

- She smiled the biggest smile.

She said, you got me, whatever you want I'm there.

And that's how we got her host so many great shows.

Love the reason.

- You also worked with, and he was, you know I love the monkeys that was again my era and Davy Jones was one of your hosts.

- Yeah.

Davy was fun.

I respected Davy a lot and I respected him for his talent as the Artful Dodger, which he played most of his career and became very good friends with him at the end and his wife.

Davy understood what we were about.

He loved performing.

He loved the fact that we weren't trying to force a monkey's reunion.

- Do you know that Mickey and Mike eventually were starting to go on tour together and then COVID hit.

So, - Yes.

You know, I mean, that's all that's left in the floor.

- It almost happened with Mickey wanted to do it with Davy.

It was literally like the plane flight was canceled that day.

But Davy, he was just an amazing fun guy, in fact because it was just nonstop yucks.

Just joke after joke, after joke, after joke he made everyone feel so well and never took himself seriously.

- All right.

so I want to move around a little bit.

Many of your Pledge shows have a co-host it's Denise Richardson.

She is just a doll.

She's very friendly, inviting, always smiling.

How did you come to know Denise?

- At the time I grew up watching Denise on a channel in New York, which was called WOR.

And it was a super station at one time but I'm talking, I'm five, six, seven years old.

She would come on and do the news breaks.

- [Lilian] Oh.

- And she was the anchors and one of the anchors there.

And I loved her and I loved the guy named Tom Dunn.

Who was also the main anchor there on channel nine in New York.

And I happened to working at another TV station in Florida which I worked part-time at while I was working at PBS station.

I was also working for the NBC station as a director as tech director for the 5:00, 5:30, 6:00, 7:00, 10:00, and 11 o'clock news.

And my anchor happened to be Tom Dunn.

And I said Tom, you know, I loved you growing up and am a big fan, whatever happened to Denise Richardson, he said, here's her number give her a call.

- [Lilian] Oh - Well, it turned out that weekend, I was headed to WNET in New York, to do the first doo-wop show there.

And I walk in and who's the host they've scheduled but Denise Richardson.

- [Lilian] Oh.

- So a lot of this is synchronicity.

These things that happened.

And we instantly fell in love.

We had a chemistry unlike any other, and it's real.

It's not fake.

It's not staged.

And we're seeing you're laughing and goofing around.

That's us that's who we are.

And it doesn't matter of any differences we have either in age or anything else because those are all done when we need each other.

It's soul to soul, we care about the same thing, we feel the same emotions for the music.

And that's why from that point on, I said unless Denise's involved, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna do this.

I need Denise with me.

And we are celebrating 26 or 27 years on the air together.

It's a beautiful thing.

- It is it's a very nice team.

I'm going to ask you, what are you working on now or what's coming up for PBS stations across the nation?

- Well, we have a few things going on.

The thing that you hear first, sharing with you here first is we had done a show a couple of years ago which was very successful called Doo Wop generations.

And the idea of that show was because we had done all the Doo-Wop artists you possibly do with 20 shows prior and one that was left that were still with us to bring on - [Lilian] Right - It's hard to bring on a ghosts.

You know, I haven't quite figured that one out yet.

I said, what if we have these young kids come in and they have to really believe in the music they have to audition with the song that a group would have done but they have to dress the same as the person or the group that they're emulating.

And they have to do the same choreography.

And in some cases, we'll get them with the original surviving members as well if we can do that.

And so that show was tremendously successful so much.

So we'll coming back with another one in December and that show will go beyond, just Doo-Wop, into early rock and roll and a little bit of early soul.

And I'm very excited about it.

National opportunity for people to go in and audition, send in their tapes of what they're doing and then we'll bring them together and we'll do it again.

So I'm very happy about that one.

The other new thing we have coming up on most public television stations on June 6th is from seven to 9:00 PM.

Is a show called Murray the K it's what's happening.

Now, this was a show that was originally produced by the office of economic development for the government.

Trying to get kids to get back in school.

So they figured how can we get urban city kids back at school?

Well, we'll do a concert.

So this guy Murray the K got the who's who of R & B and soul and Motown, and some pop acts together, for this amazing tape.

The tape hasn't been seen since 1965, when it aired once has been on DVD.

And so put together a great package CD package to go with the DVD that we're releasing and the show.

And I mean, everyone from again, Dionne Warwick to Four Tops, Temptations.

My favorite of all time, there'd be none of this shows if it wasn't for my main influence, which is Smokey Robinson and The Miracles.

There on that show in their prime doing 'Ooh Baby Baby.'

We're excited by it just about every station's they're airing it.

So we're real hopeful that people will be happy when they see this.

- We'll Forward to that.

You know, the music concert that you put together are true way of sharing and saving moments in history.

Right?

Music in history and moments in history.

Why do you think this music is still so popular?

Because it is taking them back to a time they miss or look fondly upon - Short answer.

♪ Long ago and so far away ♪ put Karen's voice in your head.

- [Lilian] Yeah, I hear it.

- That's the answer hopefully it's better than I just did, but that's the answer.

Think of her singing 'Yesterday Once More' or 'We've Only Just Begun' or 'Close To You.'

The emotion that you felt the first time that you now feel again.

It's like no time has passed.

You're back there again, but you're also here today in a really good place, but it feels so good to go back to the first time you heard that maybe, your family was around you, maybe you had the record player.

It was just a better part of life but we didn't have to worry about COVID.

And in the case of the older audiences cancer, prostate problems and insurance and all these terrible things in the world.

You could just go back and start where it was all starting again.

And so that's the medicine that I try to serve up.

That's what it is.

Healing through the emotions that we all feel in these songs.

And it doesn't matter what the genre is.

- Everybody has these emotions with different songs.

- I think of some of the songs that, you know I was playing minutes ago for this guy that I went on for a first date, and I heard they were playing it.

And it was a Carpenters song or whatever it is.

I think music does bring back memories or takes us back or just makes us feel good.

Right?

- Yes, that's exactly the point.

And that's my goal.

You know, one of my first jobs in life was working in a nursing home and I was very young.

I was 13, 14 years old.

And these are mostly disoriented patients but the one thing I can always connect with them was the music.

In that case, it would have been big bands or the great vocalists in the 50s and the pop sounds.

And so it was connected, no matter how far gone perhaps their orientation may have been, you could sing with them a Patti Page song or Rosemary Clooney song or Jo stafford song.

And they were back.

They were back and we could have that fun experience.

So, I guess that's kind of what I still do.

It's not a nursing home anymore.

It's mass broadcasting, but I'm just trying to bring that wonderful peace, love, respect, good times giving back to people in their lives.

That's what the mission's about.

And also to give the artists the respect they deserve because you got to remember, especially as we talk about Motown and R & B and those kinds of shows we've done, they were never allowed to be on TV because of something called race music.

Because they were, you know, different than us.

And so that had to be corrected too.

And that is probably what I'm most proud of.

I don't see a color line, you know what I grew up, Lillian.

I came at a time when everybody was mixed whether it was black, white, whatever, your ethnicity whatever your religion was.

I'm a nice Jewish boy with Italians, with Irish.

We all got along together.

We all live in the same neighborhood.

And there wasn't a hatred for someone because they're different.

And I think because I came at that time I was also able to hear all this music whether it be Carpenters or Bee Gees for the first time.

And or KC and the Sunshine Band for the first time.

And it would feel the same way as when I heard the flamingos or the Cadillacs or the Harptones.

And it was just a wonderful time.

And that's why I'm so glad I was able to experience this because, not a lot of.

If I came earlier, I wouldn't have been able to experience it that way that came later, it all would be gone.

Because you can't really find this on radio.

I mean, we say it all the time.

Public Television is, pretty much the only place you're going to get it.

I wouldn't have dreamed that I'd be the last guy doing it.

The last guy to make physical CDs.

No one else makes physical CDs, but we still do it.

- [Lilian] Right.

- And so that's a blessing.

It's am blessed very much.

- Well Tj thank you so much for your time.

Thank you for your stories and thank you for the music.

- Thank you Lillian My pleasure.

(Up beat music)