Devil May Care Package

Bob Dorough - Better Than Anything

Happy New Year everyone, and thanks to you all for sticking with my page for another year. I will do my best to do the same, taxing as it can be sometimes.

I've got some truly wild stuff cooking for January, but we'll kick it off on the mellow side with one of my all-time favorite song-shapers.

He's gone from us now, but whilst here he made quite an impression and left quite a few marks. High ones, at that.

Composer, pianist, songwriter, song interpreter, educator, Jazz icon. Bob Dorough was all these things and much more.

Not too many people can say they hung out with Bird, recorded with Miles and created one of the most beloved cartoon series in human history.

From Blue Xmas to I'm Just a Bill, this guy brought a sensibility and a humor all his own to whatever he did.

Of course my entire generation worships the ground he trod because of Schoolhouse Rock, but he made plenty of records and performed plenty of concerts over the course of a very long life, so he's way more than just the tip of that Multiplication Rock iceberg.

Not that those songs and the conceptual films that went with them didn't alter the world, because as we know they most certainly did.

It's just that that project, transformative and constantly parodied and still-beloved in the culture as it is, is just a corner of the guy's life work, and there's a whole other geography to him beyond what he did to our minds when we were 7, and just figuring out our 12s times tables.

Did I mention I met him once, and hung out with him between sets at a Schoolhouse Rock Live! show in San Francisco? He was as super affable and approachable as the stories say.

He left us at the ripe old age of 94 in 2018, having had a beautiful and impactful life for 9 of the most eventful decades that humanity may ever see.

The fact is inescapable that Bob Dorough left this world in a far better state than he found it, at any rate. And isn't that all any human life can wish for?

Here he is on Public Radio 43 years ago today, holding court with Fresh Air's Terry Gross for an hour of singing and talking.

Bob Dorough

WUHY Studios (now WHYY)

Philadelphia, PA

1.5.1982

01 "Fresh Air" introduction

02 I'm Hip

03 interview

04 But for Now

05 interview

06 Nothing Like You Has Ever Been Seen Before (Extravagant Love Song)

07 interview

08 Memphis In June

09 interview

10 Ole Buttermilk Sky

11 interview

12 Whatever Happened to Love Songs?

13 interview

14 There's Never Been a Day

15 interview

16 Dichotomy

17 interview

18 Better Than Anything

Total time: 55:34

Bob Dorough - vocals and piano

MC is Terry Gross

192/48k audio streamed from the Fresh Air Archive homepage 

converted to 16/44 CD audio, edited, repaired, tracked & slightly remastered by EN, December 2024
279 MB FLAC/direct link

I'll be back in a little over a week with the main thing I've been working on, which because it involves new tools is taking a metric ton of work to get hammered into place like I want it.

While you're waiting for that BEAT to drop, though, I'd highly recommend this lovely and swinging 55 minutes with one of the true masters of the Magic Number.--J.

12.12.1923 - 4.23.2018