Fresh Air - Remembering Grateful Dead Founding Member Bob Weir

Episode Date: January 16, 2026

We remember Bob Weir, founding member of the Grateful Dead, who died last week at 78. The guitarist spoke with Fresh Air Executive Producer Sam Briger in 2016 about working on a ranch, learning to rid...e, and getting to know cowboys. Also, we remember jazz singer Rebecca Kilgore, who was known for her interpretations of the Great American Songbook. She died at age 76. Kilgore often performed and recorded with pianist Dave Frishberg. We listen to excerpts of their in-studio concerts with Terry Gross. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This message comes from Data Bricks, the data and AI company. Are your AI agents working? Most aren't reliable for business. You need AI that's accurate. Agent Bricks, AI agents grounded in your data and built for your goals. This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies. Trucking.
Starting point is 00:00:20 Got my chips cash in. Keep trucking. Like the do-dum man together. All less in. Bob Weir, the guitarist, singer, songwriter, and founding member of The Grateful Dead died recently at the age of 78. The dead were a unique phenomenon of rock and roll. Spawned by a chance meeting between Weir and Jerry Garcia on New Year's Eve in 1963, the band did plenty of recording, but was probably best known for its long improvisational concerts,
Starting point is 00:00:57 attended by dedicated followers who traveled on the band's tour route and camped out at multiple shows. While Jerry Garcia was the band's lead guitarist and singer, Weir became known for his inventive rhythm guitar. Bob Porellas of the New York Times wrote that Weir strummed his rhythm chords lightly, nimbly, and malleably, charting and shaping the ever-shifting undercurrents of the dead's songs and jams. While the band officially ended with Jerry Garcia's death in 1995, Surviving members continued playing their songs in new groups, including Dead and company. Weir and the other members of the Grateful Dead were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, given a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 2007, and named Kennedy Center honorees in 2004.
Starting point is 00:01:47 Bob Weir continued to play his own music and was on our show in 2016, when he'd released his first album of original songs in 30 years, titled Blue Mountain. Many of the songs were co-written with Josh Ritter. Weir said the album was inspired by the time when, as a teen, he ran away to work on a cattle ranch in Wyoming. The ranch was owned by the parents of John Perry Barlow, who later became Weir's songwriting partner. Weir spoke with fresh air Sam Brigger, and they started with the opening track from the album called Only a River. I was born up in the mountains. raised up in a desert town
Starting point is 00:02:39 and I never saw the ocean till I was close to your rage now oh Shannon Do long to see you Hey You rode Oh Shannon do To see you
Starting point is 00:03:19 Hey things right Things right You said that this album was inspired by a summer when you ran away to become a cowboy in Wyoming. How old were you? I was 15. So did you already know how to ride? Were you hurting cattle? Yeah, when I was a little kid, my folks were sort of in the horsey community.
Starting point is 00:04:03 And also we used to vacation up in Squaw Valley, which in the wintertime was in California here. In the wintertime, it was a ski resort. In the summertime, it was a cattle ranch. and during the summers when we were up there, there was a riding stable that we spent a lot of time at. And the old cowboys who ran the riding stable, a couple of them took a shine to me and sort of told me how to ride
Starting point is 00:04:31 and some of the basic skills of cowboy in, how to cut cattle and stuff like that. I never did really learn how to rope very well. But by the time I was nine or ten, I had pretty good grass. of the basics. Through your career, you've seemed to be drawn to cowboy and country songs. Some of them you've written, like Mexicali blues,
Starting point is 00:04:55 and then you've also covered a lot of songs like me and my uncle, Marty Robbins song, El Paso. You've also done songs like Johnny Cash's Big River. Why do you think you're drawn to those tunes? You know, I've actually wondered that myself. And, you know, it just occurs to me that I just, I lived that lifestyle for a little bit. Not just that summer, but I'd go back out there and work with Barlow.
Starting point is 00:05:20 And, you know, part of working with Barlow when I was doing that was we'd live on the ranch. And we had the ranch to run. And if I helped out, we'd have more time to write. So I spent a lot of time doing that kind of stuff. And I kind of got steeped in that tradition a little bit. And also, for what it's worth, when I was a kid living there in the bunkhouse, there were, you know, in the evening, the old boys would, they'd pop at cork and they'd tell stories and sing songs.
Starting point is 00:05:53 And I was the kid with the guitar, so I was their accompaniment. And so I learned a bunch of that stuff. And as I say, got steeped in that tradition. And I just sort of carried it around in my hip pocket for, you know, for the rest of my days. But it's not so much the songs that stuck with me as the delivery. And particularly the storytelling aspect of singing those songs are putting them across. Well, I wanted to ask you about that because I've noticed that it feels like you like songs that have a narrative to them. A lot of your songs, they tell some kind of a story, which I think contrasts with the other main songwriting team of the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, and Robin Hunter.
Starting point is 00:06:41 Their songs were often like impressionistic. they were like, they would generally like a vocam mood or something. Whereas when I listen to your songs, I find myself imagining a specific narrator, character. Do you think that's true? Well, that's kind of my approach. That's what I'm most comfortable with. For years of held forth with the opinion that every artist of any stripe is first and foremost a storyteller. And the story can be impressionistic or it can be linear in nature.
Starting point is 00:07:12 And I'm comfortable with either of them, though. When I set pen to paper, more often than not, it comes out more or less linear. You know, I see songs as little movies, you know, short movies. And, you know, I try to let the characters most fully, as fully as possible, express themselves and let the story develop so that there's, you know, there's intrigue and all that kind of stuff. So you have a song on the new album, Blue Mountain, that's called Kai Bossie, which is a song. about 12-step meetings and addiction. You know, the Grateful Dead had a long and intense history with drugs. Like the band got its break as the house band for Ken Kesey's acid tests. And ever since then, the dead had been linked to psychedelics. And, you know, you've been forthright saying that
Starting point is 00:08:01 for a time LSD was very informative to your way of thinking. But, you know, there's also, there was a lot of tragedy around drugs and alcohol and the Grateful Dead. Band members, you know, either died from overdose, like Brent Midland or from drug or alcohol related to illness. like Pigpen and of course Jerry Garcia. And I'm not really sure what my question is, but I guess I was thinking about all that history and we'll listen to that song. And I was wondering how it might have informed
Starting point is 00:08:25 the way you wrote it. Christ, I don't know how to address that. Well, I can't deny that I had a fair bit of, you know, either personal experience with drugs, alcohol or whatever, or close friends of mine had intense experiences with them. So I kind of, I guess I know what I'm talking about to some degree when I'm helping a character flesh himself out in that regard. Bob Weir speaking with Sam Brigger recorded in 2016.
Starting point is 00:09:03 We'll hear more after this short break. This is fresh air. This message comes from Databricks, the data in AI company. AI agents work best when they have the right context. Your unique data, your rules, your workflows. Agent Bricks helps companies build agents that are accurate, continuously learning, and automate everyday tasks. It's AI built for how your business actually runs. Agent Bricks by Databricks. AI agents grounded in your data and built for your goals. If you're a super fan of Fresh Air
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Starting point is 00:10:34 Let's get back to Weir's 2016 interview with Fresh Air's Sam Brigger. While they were talking, they listened to the dead's song Sugar Magnolia, which Weir co-wrote. Sugar Magnolia, bosses were in, that's all empty and I don't care. So might be She'll keep it down by the river Do she had to come up soon for there? Sweet blossom, come on, under the will of, we can have high times if you look by, wonders of nature,
Starting point is 00:11:25 rolling in the rushes down by the river side. She's got everything we like for, she's got everything I need, takes the wheel when I see and double, lays my ticket when I speak. When the Grateful Dead started playing, you were 17 years old. And you lived on Ashbury Street at the height of the counterculture in San Francisco. And The Grateful Dead and its music was really at the heart of that movement in a lot of ways.
Starting point is 00:12:03 You know, at 17, were you prepared for that? It seems like such a young age to have all that thrust upon you. I was ready for anything. Come on. I was 17, 18, and the Hay to Ashborough was popping. Now, this was the summer of 66, spring and summer of 66. That was the real summer of love. The 67, the media made it into something that we didn't recognize, you know, called attention to it.
Starting point is 00:12:32 And everything that had rattled loose in the rest of the country ended up in the Hade Ashbury. And things went kind of sideways there by then. But in 66, the Hade-Ashbury was a youth. ghetto, but it was a joyful place. You were adopted when you were born, and you met your birth parents pretty late in life when you were around 50 years old. And I guess you had a close relationship with your father until he died last year. What did you learn about yourself from finally getting to meet him?
Starting point is 00:13:12 Well, for instance, little things like I always go outdoors to clip my fingernails and toenails, and he did too. There are little mannerisms that you would think that would be you'd pick up by watching, but they were there. We walked, we carried ourselves the same way. We had the same sort of sense of humor. That kind of thing. He was a gentleman. He was an innate gentleman.
Starting point is 00:13:43 And I think of myself as such as well. And he had quality of leadership. He was basically born to it, and people always relied on him for it. And I've found that that's more or less come my way as well. It's a gig. Everybody has to have one. And people look to me for leadership a lot. It's just something that I can provide.
Starting point is 00:14:11 It's not something that I want. You know, I'd rather people left me alone in that regard. But someone's got to do it. So over the years, you must have imagined what your birth parents were like. How did that compare it actually meeting them? As it turns out, my dad, he had no idea I existed to begin with. He had an affair with a girl in Tucson where they were going to school. And she got pregnant and very quietly slipped away and had me in San Francisco, the famous liberal city back then.
Starting point is 00:14:49 came back and never let on that anything had happened. And so when we met, you know, it was a big surprise to both of them. Now, I found out about his existence, my birth mother after my adopted parents, a number of years after my adopted parents had checked out, she contacted me because I'd tried to find her and it was not possible. So she ended up contacting me and she had 12 other kids. So I didn't feel like I needed to complicate her life all that much. But we kept in touch and I'd call her on Mother's Day.
Starting point is 00:15:31 And every now and again, we'd see each other and stuff like that. I'd send her flowers, that kind of thing. But she gave me my birth father's information last she knew of it. And he was a guy named Jack Parber, and he had been a student at University of Arizona. And so I got a private eye within about 10 minutes, he turned out the information that he was the commanding officer at our local Air Force base. And I sort of packed that under my pillow for a few years because I'm pathologically anti-authoritarian. And I didn't figure that I needed the rejection that I was sure to find from this guy, who's probably some sort of military, authoritarian kind of guy.
Starting point is 00:16:28 Then not long after Jerry checked out, my curiosity got to the point where I couldn't live with it anymore. And so I had to find that out. And so, you know, I figured I had three choices. I could drive up to his house in Nevada up north of where I live, you know, about, oh, maybe eight, ten miles from, as a crow flies from where I live. And I just knock on his door. And I figured, okay, that I don't want my first and last vision of my father watching him clutch his heart and fall over backwards. I figured I could write him a letter. might crumble that up and throw it away. So I figured, okay, I'll call him. And so I did. And he was on
Starting point is 00:17:17 another line. He, you know, I was disturbing him at the time. He said, listen, can you call back in 10 minutes? I told him, listen, my name is Robert Weir and I live in Millvale and I've been doing some research and turned up some information that might be of considerable interest to you. And he said, okay, well, I'm on another line right now. Can you call me back in 10 minutes? And so that was a lot. long 10 minutes. I waited. Called him back and said, can I ask you a question or to regarding certain events that took place in Tucson 50 years ago?
Starting point is 00:17:51 And he got real quiet. And he said, well, okay. And I said, well, did you know and were you perhaps romantically involved with a young lady by the name of Phyllis back in that time? And he said, well, he was alone. I could kind of hear it over the phone. And he said, well, yeah. And I said, okay, well, sir, I don't know how many kids you have,
Starting point is 00:18:15 but there's a strong likelihood that you have one more than you know. And he got real quiet. And then he said, okay, the only Bob Weirden I know of is this guy who sings and plays with the Grateful Dead. Apparently his kids were fans. And I said, well, sir, that would be me. and then it got quiet again. And we talked for a little while, and then we met the next day for lunch at both of our favorite Mexican restaurant here in Marin County.
Starting point is 00:18:49 And we got real tight, real fast. There's a touching story that one of his sons, I think, died of spinal cancer. Yeah. But he was a musician, too. Yeah. And the family gave you that guitar. And for a long time, you would play that guitar on stage, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:19:13 He finally got stolen. Oh, it did? Oh, that's terrible. Yeah. And the son was a Grateful Dead fan, wasn't he? Well, all four of his sons were Grateful Dead fans, though. The one who I never met was probably the least a Grateful Dead fan. He was more on his own.
Starting point is 00:19:32 He was kind of into, you know, that country-esque style of, music that was real popular back in the 70s. He was a flashy but good telecaster player. You and Jerry Garcia were the two lead singers of The Grateful Dead, and he died in 1995, and you've said before that he was like an older brother to you. At some point, you started singing his songs in shows. Was that tough for you?
Starting point is 00:20:05 Was that an easy decision to make? or was it hard for you to sing those songs at first? No, actually, it was a while before I decided I was going to go ahead and do it. I just had to feel it out. I knew it was coming, but I didn't know when. So I just waited until the time was right. You know, early on with Rat Dog after Jerry checked out, I didn't do much Grateful Dead material at all.
Starting point is 00:20:34 I did as little as I could. to still keep people coming in the doors, but I wasn't quite ready to go back there. And it's not an emotional sort of deal. I guess there was a little of that involved. But I just wanted to take a pause. It just seemed like I ought to. And then when I started doing it again,
Starting point is 00:20:58 slowly all the songs came, and one by one, they just sort of, they demanded that, okay, it's time. I got to breathe again. And you can help me do this. And so I went with it. Well, Bob, Weir, thanks so much for speaking with us.
Starting point is 00:21:17 Well, thank you. Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, speaking with Fresh Air, Sam Brigger, recorded in 2016. Weir died recently at the age of 78. Coming up, we remember singer Rebecca Kilgore, a talented interpreter of American popular song. I'm Dave Davies, and this is Fresh Air.
Starting point is 00:21:37 Crazy rooster growing midnight. Balls of lightning roll along and sing about their dreams. Women laugh and children scream. And the band keeps playing on. Come on, children, come on Tuesday. Next, we're going to remember singer Rebecca Kilgore, a devoted interpreter of American popular song who died last week at the age of 76. You may have heard her in concert on the show, often with pianist Dave Frischberg.
Starting point is 00:23:07 Terry's joined us. to share some thoughts of her own about what makes Rebecca Kilgore special. Terry? Thanks, Dave. I think Becky did more concerts on our show than any other performer. Her repertoire was American popular song, dating as far back as the 1930s. She performed with songwriter, pianist and singer Dave Frischberg in the 90s. At the Heathman Hotel in Portland, Oregon, they both lived there. And that enabled her to quit her job as a secretary at Reed College and have a real music career, recording many albums and performing around the world. It was great to record her for our show because she was always right on pitch,
Starting point is 00:23:45 which meant we didn't need to do a lot of takes. It was her sense of rhythm that I love most. She had such a natural sense of swing. I loved her for singing relatively obscure songs and reviving songs I'd never heard of. She struck me as kind of shy, but that may have contributed to another trait I loved. She called attention to the song and not herself.
Starting point is 00:24:06 She didn't try to impress you with like high notes or dizzying scat singing. She knew how to bring a song to life and fill them with her delight in singing them. Becky died of Louis Body disease and that has symptoms similar to Alzheimer's. And Dave Frischberg died of Alzheimer's in 2021. I always described Becky as one of my favorite living singers. And I feel so lucky to have gotten the chance to work with her and to showcase her singing on our show. Rest in peace, Becky.
Starting point is 00:24:41 Thanks, Terry. In 1995, Rebecca Kilgore first appeared on our show with Dave Frischberg at the piano. They opened their concert with a song from 1933 by Harold Arlen and Ted Kohler. I got my trousers pressed, shoes shined, I had my coat and vest, re-line, take a look at my lapel, see the flower kits,
Starting point is 00:25:06 you tell. I'm happy as the day is long. Haven't got a dime to lend. I got a lot of time to spend. Just a pocket full of air feeling like a millionaire. I'm happy as the day is long. Got a heavy affair and I'm having my fun. Am I walking on air? Gee but I'm the lucky one. I got my piece of mine. Knock wood. I hear that love is blind. That's good. Because the things I never seen, never seem to worry me. I'm happy as the day is long. I'm happy, happy as the day is long. Happy as the day is long. Got an heavy affair, and I'm having my fun.
Starting point is 00:25:56 Am I walking on air? Gee, but I'm the lucky one. I've gotten a peace of mind. Knock wood, I hear that love is blind. That's good, because the things I never see, never seem to worry me. I'm happy as the day is love. I'm happy as the day is love. Wonderful.
Starting point is 00:26:16 And that's Rebecca Kilgore singing with Dave Frischberg at the piano. Becky, welcome to fresh air. This has been an ambition of mine for a long time to have you sing on the show. And I'm delighted that we're actually doing it. It's remarkable to me that you can sing as wonderfully as you do. And yet having you started so late professionally to actually sing in front of people. That's right. But I was a closet singer before that.
Starting point is 00:26:39 So I had lots of practice in my own living room. You gave up your day job, what, just a couple of years ago? That's correct. Actually, two and a half. What was the turning point to give it up? I was working full-time and it was getting to be too much with all the gigs I had at night
Starting point is 00:26:54 and it was clear that I had to make a decision and I had the support of my boss and my colleagues and they said, yes, do it, so I quit my secretarial job. Equally remarkable to me is that you didn't even sing in front of people until, what, you were 30, 31? That's right.
Starting point is 00:27:10 Do you have a good musical memory? When you're trying to learn a song, do you get it the first time? No, I wish I did, and that's, boy, I wish I could just learn a song immediately, but I have to painstakingly play the melody on my guitar and sing along with it and read the notes and then read the lyrics and listen to it,
Starting point is 00:27:27 so I absorb it both with sight, sound, and playing it physically on the guitar. It's a tedious procedure. Say learning a melody that has a difficult interval. What's your idea of a difficult melody to learn? Well, Lush Life comes to mind, but although I've never sung it and I don't even have any aspirations of singing it.
Starting point is 00:27:52 Ballerina. Ballerina. Oh, boy, that took me a long time to learn. Dance ballerina dance, and do your pirouet in rhythm with your aching heart. Dance, ballerina dance. You mustn't once forget a dancer has to dance the part. See what I mean?
Starting point is 00:28:16 No, what makes that tricky because there's a lot of odd intervals and quick notes? What's an accidental? It's not in the scale. It's not in the scale, yeah. But I think this part, all those non-cord tones land on those big heavy accented beats and you better hit them. Yeah, you got to work, get them right. Otherwise you just sound awful. I'm interested in how you started performing together, which you do.
Starting point is 00:28:48 every week now in Portland. I came to Portland to do my act, you know, at a place called Fathers. And Becky was playing with this band, Holy Cats. This was about 81, I think, when I first met you, wasn't it? 82, something like that, you know. So we've known each other quite a long time. I was knocked out with it then.
Starting point is 00:29:07 She was the guitar player with the band, you know, but she was singing. She sounded great. And so you asked her to sing with you? I mean, how did you start performing? Well, later on, when I moved to Portland, I was offered this job at the Heathman, and they said they wanted a singer,
Starting point is 00:29:22 and I thought of Becky. And Becky did it change your singing at all to have Dave playing? I mean, I think he's just fantastic pianist, and I wonder if you think that that affected you. It's been the gig of my life. It's been the greatest gig, and I have the most sympathetic accompanist I could imagine with Dave.
Starting point is 00:29:44 It's just wonderful to have him as an accompanist. and the other reason is that I get to bring in new songs every week and just put him in front of him and he plays him. So I get to increase my repertoire by leaps and bounds. Becky's a good arranger and a good guitar player and she knows how to write a good lead sheet and it's increased my repertoire. It's enriched my repertoire quite a bit too.
Starting point is 00:30:09 On your album, I saw stars, you do a lot of songs that I love and I love the way you do the song. So I'm going to request a song from, from that CD, and this is no love, no nothing. No love, no nothing, until my baby comes home. No, sir, no nothing, as long as baby must roam.
Starting point is 00:30:43 I promised him, I'd wait for you, till even the Hades froze. I'm lonesome Have known But what I said Still goes No No nothing
Starting point is 00:31:03 And that's a promise I'll keep No fun With no one I'm getting plenty of sleep Though it's like An empty No love, no sir
Starting point is 00:31:26 No nothing till my baby comes home still goes. No love, no nothing. And that's a promise I'll keep no fun. I'm getting plenty of sleep. My heart's on strike. No, sir, no nothing till my baby comes home. No love, no sir, no nothing till my baby comes home. That's Rebecca Kilgore and Dave Frischberg recorded in 1995. She wasn't well known among the general public, but was a real favorite here at Fresh Air. She recorded a number of albums by herself and in duet with pianist Dave Frischberg. In 1999, they recorded a concert of songs by Dorothy Fields. Well, Dave, Becky, why don't you do one of Dorothy Fields, actually her first hit?
Starting point is 00:33:16 It was her first hit. I can't give you anything but love, which, like the sunny side of the street, has music by Jimmy McHugh. This song caught on after it was featured in the review Lou Leslie's Blackbirds of 1928. Maybe you can do the verse for us also. Okay. Gee, but it's tough to be broken. It's not a joke kid. It's a curse. My luck is changing. It's gotten from simply riding to something worse. Who knows someday I will win to I'll begin to. I'll begin to. reach my prime now though I see what our end is all I can spend is just my tie oh I can't give you anything but love baby that's the only thing I've plenty of baby dream of a while
Starting point is 00:34:26 Scheme of while We're sure to find Happiness And I guess All those things that you've always Find I'd love to see you Looking swell
Starting point is 00:34:44 Baby Diamond bracelets Wallworth doesn't sell Till that lucky day You know darn well I can't give you you anything but love to see looking swell. It doesn't sell a day.
Starting point is 00:35:53 You know darn where I can't give you. And that song was written, I think, about a year before the Depression and obviously had particular resonance when the Depression hit shortly after. Becky, do you find Dorothy Field's lyrics particularly singable because they're so colloquial? Take a line like, gee, I'd like to see you look and swell. See, I can get into a lyric like that. I love that. I'm not embarrassed to say that. Some corny lyrics I am, but it just sounds like you say colloquial, and it's fun to say.
Starting point is 00:36:40 You know, Dorothy Field's trademark as a lyricist is her cleverness, but she could also write really tender lyrics, and I think this song really proves that. This is the way you look tonight, a ballad that she wrote with Jerome Kern. It won an Academy Award. It was written for the Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers film Swing Time. And, you know, Dorothy Field said that the first time Jerome Kern played her the melody right before she wrote the lyric for it.
Starting point is 00:37:04 She thought it was so beautiful that she started to cry and she had to leave the room. Would you do the song for us? Sure. Someday, when I'm awfully low, when the world is cold, I will feel a glow,
Starting point is 00:37:36 just thinking of and the way you tune up. But your love With your smile so warm And your cheeks so saw There is nothing for me but too long Just the way you look tonight Your tenderness grows
Starting point is 00:38:32 Tearing my fear Touches my foolish heart Never never change Keep that breathless charm. Won't you please arrange it because I... Just the way you... Just the way... That was beautiful.
Starting point is 00:39:41 I want to thank you both for performing songs by Dorothy Fields for us. It's really been a pleasure. Thanks. It's been a pleasure for us. Thanks, Jerry. Dave Frischberg and Rebecca Kilgort recorded in 1999 as part of our American popular song series. We'll hear more. of their performances after a break. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air, and we're remembering singer Rebecca Kilgore today. She died last week at the age of 76. Later in 1999, she and Dave Frischberg returned
Starting point is 00:40:12 to Fresh Air for a concert of Hogi Carmichael songs, which was part of our American popular song series. Well, early on Hogi Carmichael's Hollywood career, when he was a staff songwriter at Paramount Pictures, the studio teamed him up with Frank Lesser. And Lesser as a composer and lyricist is probably best known for writing the songs for guys and dolls. But at the time, he was just getting started as lyricist. And so with Hogi Carmichael, he wrote Small Fry, Heart and Soul, and Too Sleepy People. I'm going to ask you to do Two Sleepy People. It was sung by Bob Hope and Shirley Ross in the 1938 movie.
Starting point is 00:40:46 Thanks for the Memory. It's a wonderful song. Would you do it for us? Yeah. Sure. Here we are out of cigarettes. Holding hands and yawning. Look how late it gets Two sleepy people
Starting point is 00:41:06 By dawn's early light And too much in love to say good night Here we are In the cozy chair Picking on a wish phone From the fridge of dare Two sleepy people with nothing to say And too much in love
Starting point is 00:41:27 To break away Do you remember the nights we used to linger in the hall Father didn't like you at all Do you remember the reason why we married in the fall To rent this little nest And get a bit of rest Well, here we are
Starting point is 00:41:50 Just about the same Foggy little fella Drowsy little dame Two sleepy people by dawn's early light And too much in love to say good night Well, here we are, don't we look a mess Lipstick on your collar, wrinkles in my dress Two sleepy people who know very well
Starting point is 00:42:18 They're too much in love to break the spell Here we are crazy in the head Gee, your eyes are gorgeous Even when they're red Two sleepy people By dawn's early light And too much in love to say good night Do you remember when we went dancing
Starting point is 00:42:44 At the Palomar When it was over Why naturally we cuddled in the car That's when I ran out of gas And I was green as grass Well here we are keeping up the pace letting each tomorrow
Starting point is 00:43:05 slap us in the face to sleepy people by dawn's early life and too much in love to say good night I think that's one of the most successfully conversational songs I know both in the lyric and in the music
Starting point is 00:43:28 Well it makes it really easy to sing as a duet that way Yeah, oh yeah, it's real It's two real people Well the next Hogi Carmarkle song I'd like you to do for us, is called The Nearness of You. And although it's one of his most recorded songs, I don't think it's nearly as well known as his other famous songs like Skylock and Stardust and Rock and Cher in Georgia.
Starting point is 00:43:47 The lyric is by Ned Washington, who was given Hogi's melody by the Paramount Studio, and the song was used for the 1938 movie Romance in the Dark. Would you do The Nearness of You? Of course. Sure. It's not the pale moon that excites me. that thrills and delights me
Starting point is 00:44:14 oh no it's just the nearness of you and your sweet conversation that brings this sensation oh no it's just the nearness of you when you're in my arm And I feel you so close to me.
Starting point is 00:44:55 Come true. Need no soft lies to enchant me if only grant me the right to hold you ever so tight. And to feel in the night. That was lovely. Singer Rebecca Kilgore with pianist Dave Frischberg recorded in 1999. Rebecca died last week at the age of 76. We send our condolences to her family, her friends, and her fans. That's the thing.
Starting point is 00:46:26 Watch the smoke rings rise in the air. You'll find your share. So they is through and they mind. It's never as they seem. So, on Monday show, we hear from Heather McGee. Her book The Sum of Us asks why so many Americans believe that progress for one group means loss for another. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a conversation about the cost of that belief and who she says is really paying. I hope you can join us.
Starting point is 00:47:29 Fresh Air's executive producers are Danny Miller and Sam Brigger. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering. support from Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Deanna Martinez. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Marie Baldinado, Lauren Crenzel,
Starting point is 00:47:50 Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thaya Challoner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzalez Wizzler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies. brings rise in the air you'll find your share

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