Stamberg's famed recipe gets musical treatments, C&W and classical

Originally published in Current, Dec. 4, 2000
By Mike Janssen

What's stranger? That NPR has given Special Correspondent Susan Stamberg airtime to dispense an icky-sounding cranberry relish recipe over the air for 30 years? Or that, this year, a composer set the recipe to music, while a fictional country star dissed it in a protest song?

Every year, in the days before Thanksgiving, Stamberg finds a new way to present the family recipe, a bright pink hash of cranberries, onion, sugar, sour cream and horseradish. Once she interspersed clips from classic movies throughout the delivery. Last year she chatted up Seattle fishmongers.

The recipe has a following of vocal fans as well as naysayers. Some in public radio have made a tradition of fighting about the recipe on the Pubradio e-mail listserv. Detractors call it self-indulgent and silly, while supporters call it ... self-indulgent and silly, but in a good way.

Few spoke up either way this year, perhaps throwing up their hands in resignation. But no matter. The disagreement lives on, in music.

In this corner, we have New Mexico satirist Jim Terr. Fed up with the annual relish ritual, the Santa Fe resident woke up one morning and wrote "Susan's Cranberry Sauce," a shuffling minor-key lament in the style of Johnny Cash that asks the musical question, "I, too, love my mother-in-law and want to see her shine, but do you see me tryin' to push her loganberry wine?"

"I don't mean to sound bitter," says Terr, who admits he has never tasted the relish. "It's in fun, but it was a matter of true irritation. . . . I just thought only somebody with some power or pushiness or standing could get this thing on the air for 30 years."

Terr plays bass guitar and sings, under the name Buddy Converse, with a friend who adds back-up harmony and what, with some generosity, could be called an "impression" of Stamberg. (Actually, she sounds nothing like Stamberg, but that's not surprising. Terr says she had never heard Stamberg before and was just going by his description of the NPR correspondent's voice.)

The chorus goes: "Shut up, Susan, go away, it won't be any loss, if we never hear again about your goddamn cranberry sauce." You can hear it at www.bluecanyonproductions.com/satire.html.

Terr admits that he was too muzzy with sleep when he wrote the song to recall that Stamberg's recipe is a relish, not a sauce. "I might have been able to rhyme relish. I might not have," he says.

Terr e-mailed Stamberg with the web link to his song, which also aired on Albuquerque's public station KUNM-FM. "Very funny," she wrote back. "Not WITTY, but funny." She also told Terr that this year's recipe rendition was her "swan song." (Stamberg was not available to confirm this.)

Swan song is an apt turn of phrase, because, this year, NPR's listeners heard the relish recipe delivered not in Stamberg's distinctive voice, but by soprano Denise Konicek in the key of A minor. Konicek managed to imbue lines like "Makes 1-1/2 pints" with moving sorrow. Composer Rodney Lister of the New England Conservatory of Music, who wrote the song, provided piano accompaniment.

Like Terr, the Muse struck Lister out of the blue. On his web site (www.rodneylister.com) he explains that he decided to set the recipe to music after hearing last year's broadcast. He also encourages visitors to his site to let him know if they perform his song — so keep an eye on your local concert listings for "Mama Stamberg's Cranberry Relish."

 

	.	To Current's home page
	.	Outside links: audio files of the country song and soprano air commenting on Stamberg's relish recipe.

Web page posted Dec. 14, 2000
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