STRAW: Pinebrook, fantastic place for me as a kid. Music, again. Key to music would be coming into that auditorium and hearing piano played like I'd never heard it before in my life. Ruth Crawford, when she'd sit down at that piano, tickled those ivories. I tell you I'd never heard anything like it. It was at places like that I began to hear some trumpet trios and some other...maybe some sax and maybe a small quarte...quartet or a small ensemble of some sort. That was a tremendous thing. The music input with the message, you know -- the Crawfords were the best at it. I would...I would have liked to have spent my life at a place like that. I can remember as we'd pull away wishing we'd never have to leave a place like that because it...there was such a tremendous variety of material available. But the music and the message seemed to be equal, about as much preaching as there was music. I liked that.
[portion of interview omitted]
STRAW: He [Percy Crawford] was more enthusiastic [than Jack Wyrtzen], more loud, more physical moving around. Jack was loud, but I didn't...I don't think he was as much of a prancer, moving around as much as Percy Crawford did.
SHUSTER: Stayed more in one spot.
STRAW: Yeah, yeah. But then again, when Percy got behind a TV camera.... I don't know if you've seen some of those. You probably....
SHUSTER: Well, we...as a matter of fact, we have the very the first one.
STRAW: Yeah. When...when you see him standing there, you see he's so frustrated. He walks off camera and remembers that you can't do that. [laughs] I remember on TV, "There goes Percy off camera," and you'd see the cameraman trying to chase him down with the camera. You couldn't keep him behind a pulpit. He wanted to...he wanted to really feel it, you know, and get into it, be free. TV restricts you. Radio does to a degree. Of course, with lavaliere mikes you can strap them to you but normally in a studio setting you don't.
SHUSTER: We have in the [Billy Graham Center] Archives several, as I say...those very first programs.
STRAW: Yeah.
SHUSTER: They're interesting. They show how they were learning how to use the medium [of television].
STRAW: Well, it was a brand new medium to all of us, you know. And they were the ones that risked their necks and did it. Praise the Lord they did.
