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Fab Four if by Air: The Beatles in America

John Lennon Biographer & Roxbury's Own Voice of John Lennon

Author & authority on John Lennon/The Beatles, Jude Southerland Kessler, & Roxbury's own voice actor Scott R. McKinley, reflect on The Beatles in America through John Lennon's eyes & McKinley's voice.

Join us for a talk and a presentation with writer and leading authority on John Lennon and the Beatles, Jude Southerland Kessler, and with Roxbury audiobook narrator and voice actor, Scott R. McKinley.  The author talk will cover ‘The Beatles in America’, the beginning of which will have its 60th anniversary in February 2024. 

Kessler tells the story of The Beatles through John Lennon’s eyes, using dialog and scenes backed by research, interviews, and quoted sources to take the reader back in time to 1963 and 1964, when the longest-lasting popular music created…to date!...spread to the world.

McKinley narrates the multi-media presentation portion of the talk, giving a ‘lively character read’ of The Beatles and those who interacted with them. This portion of the talk also includes images, music and film of the events being described. Mr. McKinley will discuss narrating the presentation with the author, and on recording voice work from a home studio.

There will be a Q&A session following the presentation, as well as a trivia contest (with prizes to be mailed to the winners)!

This program will be presented in-person and virtually.

         (audiobook now available on Hoopla @ https://roxbury.aspendiscovery.org/Hoopla/16148818)

About the Presenter: Jude Southerland Kessler is the leading authority on John Lennon, having spent the last 34 years researching and writing the first five books in the anticipated nine-volume John Lennon Series. Jude attended Northwestern State University of Louisiana, garnering two degrees in three years. She did her master’s work at the University of Maryland and taught English and Business Communication at Troy State University in Alabama. As part of Kessler’s research for The John Lennon Series, she traveled to London and Liverpool 7 times from 1993-2000, interviewing over 100 Beatles friends, relatives, band members, and business partners including Julia Baird, Bob Wooler, Richard Langham, Rod Murray, Allan Williams, Bill Harry, Chas Newby, Helen Anderson, Roag and Pete Best, and many more. In the United States, she has interviewed Ken Mansfield, Ivor Davis, Gary Van Scyoc, Larry Kane, and other noted Beatles associates. Five volumes in the nine-book John Lennon Series are currently on the market, and Kessler is researching/writing about the latter part of 1965 in her historical narrative collection. Kessler hosted “The John Lennon Hour” on BeatlesARama radio for five years. She is now the co-host of the monthly Beatles podcast “She Said She Said” with Recipe Records Series author, Lanea Stagg and host of the bi-monthly podcast “Focal Points: A Lennon Perspective.” A monthly guest on BBC Radio with Martin Kelner and ABC Radio Australia with Rod Quinn, Kessler has also been featured on Radio Merseyside, “Up All Night” with George Noory, and numerous Beatles podcasts. She writes a monthly column for Culture Sonar entitled “Lennon Matters,” and pens articles for Beatlefan and Octopus’ Garden. For the last 10 years, Kessler has been the official blogger for The Fest for Beatles Fans and for 16 years has served as a Guest Speaker at the Fest in Chicago, New York, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. In 2016, Kessler chaired the GRAMMY Museum of Mississippi Beatles Symposium and from 2012-2019, she was also “The Authors and Artists Beatles Symposium” Chair for Beatles at the Ridge in Arkansas. Kessler was a co-author in Ken Womack’s collection of Beatles essays, Things We Said Today: New Perspectives on The Beatles and his later collection, The Beatles in Context. The first five books in The John Lennon Series – Shoulda Been There, Shivering Inside, She Loves You, Should Have Known Better, and Shades of Life, Part 1 – were recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, OH, and Kessler was selected to join the Author’s Guild, with Professional Author status. Her books are available on her website www.johnlennonseries.com, on all e-book formats, and in all online booksellers.

About the Presenter: Scott R. McKinley is a Narrator, Voice Actor and Teaching Consultant, and has been a resident of Landing, in Roxbury Township for 28 years, along with his wife, Jeanne and two sons, Richard and Kevin.  He narrates both the audiobook of, and this presentation from, She Loves You by Jude Southerland Kessler.  Prior to narrating, Scott spent 15 years in the book industry as a bookstore manager, and 19 years in the workforce management industry doing such services as tech support, training, and eLearning.  He currently enjoys narrating and doing character voices for audiobooks, of which She Loves You was his fourth book, and second on John Lennon, (of which the first was Lennon, The Mobster, and the Lawyer by Jay Bergen). As a voice actor he has performed in several different productions of ‘Old Time Radio’ shows such as the Jack Benny Program and Madison on the Air, and in Audio Dramas such as ‘You Can’t Take it With You’, and a new podcast series called Peculiar Springs.  An avid history reader, he hosts and reads from previously unseen Civil War Letters in Spared Shared Audio, a non-profit organization run by William Griffing, who transcribes these diaries and letters from private collections. Scott’s next audiobook is to be Bathsheba Spooner: A Revolutionary Murder Conspiracy by Andrew Noone, a true-crime history that took place in Massachusetts during the Revolution. He may be reached through his website at https://mckinleyco.com or at Soundcloud.com under Spared & Shared Audio.

Register online or by calling the library at (973) 584-2400.  This presentation, and all our events, are made possible through the generosity of The Friends of the Roxbury Public Library.

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