THE BOB EDWARDS SHOW HIGHLIGHTS – December 28 2009-January 1, 2010
Monday, December 28, 2009
This week, we’re playing some of the best of Bob’s interviews and documentaries from 2009. We start with one of the most popular interviews Bob has ever done, Carol Kaye. Kaye was THE session bassist of the 1960s and 70s, playing on dozens and dozens of hits for the likes of The Beach Boys, Ritchie Valens, Simon & Garfunkel, The Supremes, Ray Charles and the Monkees. It’s estimated that Kaye has been involved with more than ten-thousand recording sessions in her career. Kaye and her bass are also responsible for the distinctive bass notes of the Mission Impossible theme and for the theme song of The Cosby Show.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Best of Bob week continues and today it’s writer Luis Alberto Urrea. His latest novel, Into The Beautiful North, tells the epic journey of 19 year old Nayeli, as she sets out from her native Mexico to find her own “Magnificent Seven” to save her village from the drug dealers who have taken over the town. Then, Kurt Vonnegut is gone but not forgotten. His works are celebrated for their satirical humor and a startling creativity that experimented with traditional narratives. A new book collects some of Vonnegut’s previously unpublished short stories. It’s called, Look at the Birdie. Vonnegut’s longtime friend Sidney Offit wrote the forward, and he joins Bob to reminisce about Vonnegut’s early career and the heyday of magazine fiction.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Today, an encore presentation of our visit to the Army’s billion-dollar National Training Center where we met some of the people who help prepare our troops for combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Covering more than a thousand square miles of California’s Mojave Desert, Ft. Irwin and the NTC includes realistic mock villages populated by role playing Iraqi nationals and military wives who aim to give the soldiers a taste of what’s to come overseas. We also witness a group of Army reservists training in a “trauma lane.” Amid IED blasts and sniper fire, the untested medics have to deal with role players pretending to be the enemy, frightened villagers demanding their attention and actual amputees who act like they just lost their legs in the explosion. Their commander, Sergeant First Class Bertran Schultz, describes the action and gives a blow by blow account of what his soldiers are getting right and wrong.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Today, two of our listener’s favorites from 2009. Beginning in the late 1960s, Charles Kuralt headed out with a small crew to document unusual and overlooked stories from America’s back roads. Logging more than a million miles and going through several motor homes, the resulting vignettes became On the Road, and dozens of those segments are now available on DVD for the first time. Isadore (Izzy) Bleckman was Kuralt’s cameraman for most of those 25 years, and he shares his stories from the road. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of Sandra Cisneros’ seminal work The House on Mango Street. This slim book of vignettes about a young Latina girl is considered to be one of the most beloved and critically acclaimed books of the 20th century.
Friday, January 1, 2010
We start the new year with one of Bob’s favorites from 2009, author Patrick Radden Keefe. Cheng Chui Ping, also known as Sister Ping, was one of the criminal world’s most unlikely leaders, and yet for almost 20 years she headed a vast Chinese-American criminal underworld who dealt primarily in smuggling people. Patrick Radden Keefe charts Sister Ping’s rise and fall, and chronicles the violent world she commanded in The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream. And in our latest installment of This I Believe, curator Dan Gediman shares the essay of John Davis Drummey. “Jack” Drummey had a long career in advertising and public relations despite being a disabled veteran of World War II. He was also a cartoonist for several publications, and wrote “The Observant Bostonian” column for Boston magazine for many years.