Genuine. Quirky. Rootsy.
BASEBALL
"Baseball's troubadour poet laureate...Chuck combines his gift for lyrics and melody with his love for baseball history and culture,
and in the process creates a new chapter in the
folklore of our national pastime."
-Tim Wiles, Director of Research Emeritus
National Baseball Hall of Fame
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1. Chuck's Baseball Concert Photos
3. Forwards for The Baseball Ballads
4. Reviews of the Baseball Ballads
7. What's Been Said About The Baseball Ballads
CHUCK'S BASEBALL CONCERT PHOTOS
Baseball Songs
Baseball Songs
Baseball Show w/ Chuck Brodsky, John McCutcheon, Atlanta Braves Organist Matthew Kaminski, and Jim Kaat
Chuck Brodsky "The Handshake" @ Eddie Owen Presents
Chuck Brodsky - The Ballad of Eddie Klep (Dugout of Rickwood Field, Birmingham AL)
Chuck Brodsky has the kind of love for baseball that helps people like me nourish the passion for what we do. For what seems like forever, I’ve been lucky enough to run into him on his annual spring-training pilgrimage with his dad, Frank. And there’s a certain glow they radiate on those sparkling spring afternoons that says it all – about fathers and sons, and about the way baseball on a March afternoon can bond them together in a way nothing else can. But luckily for all of us, Chuck Brodsky has more than just a love for baseball. He has a special gift that makes life brighter for all of us who share that love. In my job at ESPN and ESPN.com, I’m fortunate enough to get to tell baseball stories for a living. But I’m envious of Chuck, because he can do more than merely tell baseball stories. He can turn those stories into unforgettable five-minute musical pearls that draw you in, embed themselves in your head and keep your foot tapping, just the way his does when he sings them. I’ve always been amazed that more songwriters didn’t see what Chuck sees – the incredible, moving, real-life tales that baseball produces every day of every year. But fortunately, he has an eye for the best of those tales, the ear for so many gorgeous melodies to wrap them in and the talent to turn them into his own unique form of musical magic. I’ve been listening to his amazing baseball tunes for over a decade. And I couldn’t be happier that he’s bestowed us with another fantastic supply of songs that can keep us grinning, and thinking, for another decade – and beyond.
- Jayson Stark, Senior Baseball Writer, ESPN.com
FOREWORDS FOR THE BASEBALL BALLADS
"One of the great things about baseball, as Casey Stengel said, is that anything you want to know about the game's rich history can be found. "You could look it up," Casey said, and it is my job to do so. Along with several other individuals, my job here at the Hall of Fame Library is to look up baseball things for people. One day the phone rang and a voice on the other end said: "Hi. What do you know about Eddie Klepp?" Those were the first words Chuck Brodsky ever spoke to me. I responded that I'd never heard of Klepp, so Chuck started telling me that Klepp was the only white man who ever played in the Negro Leagues. Talk about an intriguing premise! I promised to send him whatever I could find, and then asked him, out of curiosity, what his interest in Klepp was. Was he writing a screenplay or a poem or something? "Actually, it's something like that," Chuck replied. "I'm a folksinger and I'd like to write a song about him."
That's when I proposed to Chuck what I consider one of the greatest trades in baseball history. I would, without charge, send him all the info I could, if he would send along the finished song for the Hall's library collection. Chuck said that he would, and also that he'd send a copy of another baseball song he'd written, about an aging pitcher known as "Lefty." Before too long, we'd set up the first of several gigs for Chuck, the first folksinger ever to play the Baseball Hall of Fame. Chuck finds the intriguing and offbeat baseball stories that need to be told, as in the case of Eddie Klepp, or retold and interpreted, as in the case of Fred "Bonehead" Merkle, forever remembered not for his great skill, but for a trick play pulled on him in his rookie season.
Chuck combines his gift for lyrics and melody with his love for baseball history and culture, and in the process creates a new chapter in the folklore of our national pastime. Through all of his story-songs shines Brodsky's love of life, its sometimes dark humor, and its most glorious game - baseball. These nine songs are the fulfillment of a dream for baseball's troubadour poet laureate, and also for one of his biggest fans. I have only one suggestion to make for Chuck: extra innings! Encore! And hey, if you like this music, check out Chuck's four other CDs. While he's a great baseball writer, his non-baseball stuff is also very compelling. If you get a chance, see him live; he'll blow you away. Lastly, if there's an Eddie Klepp you'd like to know about in baseball history, give me a call. "
-Tim Wiles, Director of Research Emeritus, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, NY
CHUCK'S BASEBALL BIO
Chuck Brodsky was born and raised in Philadelphia, and even though he now lives in the mountains of North Carolina, his blood still runs Phillies red. A folk singer and songwriter, Brodsky performs in concert all across North America, Ireland, and Europe throughout the year. The Baseball Ballads and The Baseball Ballads 2 each contain nine of his celebrated songs about the National Pastime and its colorful, off-beat cast of characters. Chuck has performed three times at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and eighteen of his Baseball story songs have been enshrined in the Hall of Fame’s sound recording library. He has also performed at the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame. The Ballad of Eddie Klepp, about the first white man to play in the Negro Leagues, has been heard on NPR’s Morning Edition and was the inspiration for a feature story about Klepp in The Washington Post. It was listed by Sports Illustrated magazine as being among the 25 Greatest Songs About Sports of All–Time (2012).
Chuck and his song about Richie Allen, Letters in the Dirt, were featured in an article that appeared in The Philadelphia Daily News. His beloved Philadelphia Phillies featured his song “Whitey & Harry” along with an interview with Chuck in the documentary film about their legendary Hall of Fame player, "Richie Ashburn: A Baseball Life." The PBS film “Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story” (2010) featured his Moe Berg: The Song. Since releasing The Baseball Ballads 2 Chuck has recorded and released four more Baseball songs, and is currently working on more songs for a third volume of The Baseball Ballads.
Photo by Jerry Grillo
At AT&T Park, San Francisco, CA
From the 3rd base dugout
Playing The Ballad of Eddie Klepp in the locker room. It was at Rickwood Field that Eddie, a white man, was banned from playing with his black teammates on the Cleveland Buckeyes.
Cooperstown NY
National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown NY (photo by David Schofield)
WHAT'S BEEN SAID ABOUT THE BASEBALL BALLADS
"As baseball lore, well, Vin Scully surely could learn a thing or two. This is perhaps the most repertorial collection of music about sports ever put on disc....Brodsky delivers his tales with sweetness and obvious affection for the game...The stories: Grammy worthy."
-The Sporting News
“This is a grand-slam home run of an album! Most of these songs are not so much about baseball as they are about people - people who play baseball, or watch baseball - and the songs often become vehicles for larger messages.”
-Dirty Linen
“One of the most insightful and well-rounded collections of baseball songs in recent memory...The Baseball Ballads serves as a reminder to fans about why the game pulls on the heartstrings of anyone who has rooted for the home team...a fascinating collection of ballads that can be considered classics worthy of the national pastime.”
-Baseball America
“The Baseball Ballads” is a collection of brilliant Brodsky originals...Brodsky hits these tracks out of the park, and they go on for miles...These are tales of baseball’s quirky, dedicated and sometimes unloved participants...These are characters in the periphery, people who carved a unique niche in the game, on and off the field...”
-Asheville Citizen-Times
“The Baseball Ballads is a collection of songs celebrating little-remembered heroes and goats, a smorgasbord of bizarro baseball history...Brodsky turns his eye for irony on the whole of baseball history, and comes up with some spectacularly improbable stories...Brodsky sings about baseball the way it used to be: unpredictable, colorful, somehow laden with moral force...he enshrines a game that mostly exists in memory.”
-PopMatters
“The Baseball Ballads is full of songs about misfits and faded glories...These tales, obsessively researched and rendered with off-beat affection, put some skewed humanity back in a game that needs it.”
-No Depression
“Folksinger Chuck Brodsky hits a home run with this terrific collection of story songs about an eclectic mix of baseball personalities and personal heroes. Brodsky's focus is on the lesser known and least understood figures in baseball history, and his musical talents and appreciation for a well-researched story shine through in the words and lyrics.”
-Elysian Fields Quarterly Review
“Chuck weaves breathless tales of breaking the color barrier and creates short stories of some of his own favorite players with one of the most pleasing voices in the genre. The tales are marvelous.”
-Creative Loafing (Charlotte, NC)
"Brodsky specializes in wonderful folk songs about baseball."
-Sports Illustrated
“There’s more to this songwriter than fastballs and nostalgia, of course, but the baseball songs are illustrative of Brodsky’s strengths as a writer and performer.”
-Tulsa World
“The master of the baseball song.”
-Ed Becker, KDHX (St. Louis, MO)
“It’s to Brodsky’s credit that these baseball songs can appeal to people (like me) who don’t even like baseball much, and it’s because whatever subject he touches, Brodsky is able to give it powerful human interest.”
-The Canton Voice (Ohio)
“What is often overlooked when critics remark on Brodsky’s baseball tunes is that these songs, like most of his material, are, first and foremost, people stories.”
-The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC)
“Brodsky transports the listener back in time, where they sit in the stands watching the action with the smell of peanuts and popcorn thick in the air. His baseball songs are... often metaphors for life in general.”
-FFWD Weekly (Calgary AB)
“North Carolina's--and perhaps the world's--baseball song MVP is Chuck Brodsky...Brodsky has a knack for building songs around truly memorable baseball folk, the kind of characters that are so fascinating they have to be real: catcher/spy Moe Berg, tripping hurler Dock Ellis, white Negro League player Eddie Klepp, and the star-crossed Eddie Waitkus, the inspiration for the fictional Roy Hobbs.”
-The Independent Weekly (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill NC)
“Special with a capital S.”
-Baseballparks.com
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