Remembering Grateful Dead Founding Member Bob Weir

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This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies.

Just keep chucking along.

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,

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 Porella's 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 2024.

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,

and I never saw the ocean.

Till I was close to your age now,

Oh, Shannon Dove, long to see you.

Hey, hey, hey, you row and river.

Oh, Shannon Dove, long to see you.

Hey, hey, hey, only you're ever going to make things right.

Only you're ever going to make things right.

Only you're ever going to make 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 heard in cattle?

Yeah, when I was a little kid,

my folks were sort of in the horsey community,

and also we used to vacation up in Squaw Valley,

which in the winter time was in California here,

in the winter time I was a ski resort,

and the summer time I was a cattle ranch.

And during the summer when we were up there,

there was a riding stable that we spent a lot of time at,

and the old cow folks who ran the riding stable,

a couple of them took a shot into me,

and taught me how to ride,

and some of the basic skills of cowboy,

and how to cut cattle and stuff like that.

I never really learned how to rode very well,

but by the time I was 9 or 10,

I had pretty good grasp of the basics.

Through your career, you've seemed to be drawn to a cowboy

and country song.

Some of them you've written, like,

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 it 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,

and part of working with Barlow,

when I was doing that,

we'd live on the ranch,

and we had the ranch to run.

And if I helped out, we'd have more time to ride.

So I spent a lot of time doing that kind of stuff,

and I kind of got steeped in that traditional a little bit.

And also, for what it's worth,

when I was a kid living there,

in the bunkhouse,

in the evening,

the old boys would pop a cork

and they'd tell stories and sing songs.

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 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 puttin' 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 us some kind of a story,

which I think contrasts with the other main songwriting team

of The Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, and Robin Hunter.

Their songs were often like impressionistic.

They were like, they would generally like a vokin 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,

and I'm comfortable with either of them,

but when I set pen to paper,

more often than not,

it comes out more or less linear.

I see songs as little movies,

short movies,

and I try to lift the characters

as fully as possible,

express themselves,

and let the story develop so that there's intrigue

and all that kind of stuff.

So you have a song in the new album,

it's called Kai Bossy,

which is about 12-step meetings and addiction.

The Grateful Dead had a long and intense history

with drugs,

like the band got its break as the house band

for Ken Casey's acid test,

and ever since then the dead had been linked to psychedelics.

And you've been forthright saying that

for a time LSD was very informative to your way of thinking.

But there was also a lot of tragedy around drugs

and alcohol in the Grateful Dead.

Band members either died from overdose,

like Brent Midland or from drug or alcohol related illnesses,

like pig pen,

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've informed 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,

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, we are speaking with Sam Brigger recorded in 2016.

We'll hear more after this short break.

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Let's get back to Wears 2016 interview with Fresh Air's Sam Brigger.

While they were talking, they listened to the Dead's Song Sugar Magnolia,

which we're co-wrote.

Music

Sugar Magnolia, awesome as to living.

That's all I have to do and I don't care.

So let me be down by the river

who should have to come up super dead.

Sweet blossom come on under the willow.

We can have high times if you look by.

We can discover the wonders of nature.

Growing in the brushes down by the riverside.

She's got hair that may be light,

but she's got everything I need.

Takes the wheel when I've seen a double-faced margin

when I see.

When the grape for Jed started playing, you were 17 years old.

And you lived in Ashbray 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.

You know, it's 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 Hade Ashbray was popping.

Now this was the summer of 1966, spring and summer of 1966.

That was the real summer of law.

The 1967, the media made it into something that we didn't recognize.

You know, called attention to it and everything that had rattled loose in the rest of the country

and ended up in the Hade Ashbray.

Things went kind of sideways there by then.

But in 1966, the Hade Ashbray 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?

Well, for instance, little things like I always go outdoors to clip my fingernails and toenails.

And he did too.

There were 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 in a Nate gentleman.

And I think of myself as such as as well.

And he had a 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 looked at me for leadership a lot.

It's just something that I can provide.

It's not something that I want.

I'd rather people left me alone, but 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 to actually meeting them?

As it turns out, my dad, he had no idea I existed to begin with.

He had 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.

And then came back and never let on that anything had happened.

And so when we met, 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 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 Dan.

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.

He was a guy named Jack Palmer in here.

He had been a student at University of Arizona.

And so I got a private eye with about, within about 10 minutes,

he turned up 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 an 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.

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 I figured I had three choices.

I could drive up to his house in Nevada up north of where I live,

about maybe eight, ten miles as a crow flies from where I live.

And I just knocked on his door, and I figured okay,

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, but he might crumble that up and throw it away.

So I figured okay, I'll call him.

And so I did.

And he was on another line.

I was disturbing him at the time.

I said, listen, can you call back in ten minutes.

I told him, listen, my name is Robert.

We're in our live in Millville.

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 ten minutes?

And so that was a long ten minutes.

I called him back and said, can I ask you a question?

Or to regarding certain events that took place in Tucson 50 years ago?

And he got real quiet.

And he said, well, okay.

And I said, well, did you know where 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.

He said, well, yeah.

And I said, okay, well sir, I don't know how many kids you have,

but there's a strong, strong likelihood that you have one more than you know.

And he got real quiet.

And then he said, okay, the only Bob weirder than I know of is this guy

who sings in plays with the Grateful Dead, apparently his kids were fans.

And I said, well, sir, that would be me.

And then he 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 in here in Marin County.

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 in a stage, right?

Yeah.

And 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.

So the one who I never met was probably the least a Grateful Dead fan.

He was more on his own.

He was kind of into 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?

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.

Early on with Ratdog, after Jerry checked out,

I didn't do much Grateful Dead material at all.

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.

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, slowly,

all the songs came in 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, Barbara, thanks so much for speaking with us.

Well, thank you.

Bob, we're of the Grateful Dead,

speaking with Fresh Air Sam Brigger, recorded in 2016.

We were 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.

Crazy rooster growing midnight.

Balls of Latin roll along.

Roll men sing about their dreams.

Women laugh and children scream,

and the band keeps playing on.

People dancing, people dancing, people playing.

We're born in heaven's songs.

No one's not with the bands of the pack of gold.

We'll do it all here at all.

But they kept on dancing.

Come on, children, come on, children.

Come on, pack your hands.

Well, the cool breeze came on Tuesday.

And the corn's a bumper cry.

And the fields are full of dancing.

Well of singing and romance.

The music never stops.

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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.

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 her show

than any other performer.

Her repertoire was American popular song,

dating as far back as the 1930s.

She performed a 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,

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 trade I loved.

She called attention to the song and not herself.

She didn't try to impress you with 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 describe 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.

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.

Music

I got my trousers pressed, shoes shine.

I had my coat and vest, real line.

Take a look at my lapels, see the flower catch a tell.

I'm happy as the day is long.

I 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?

Jive out, I'm the lucky one.

Got my piece of mine, knock wood.

I hear that love is blind, that's good.

Cause the things I never seen, never seemed to worry me.

I'm happy as the day is long.

I'm happy, happy, happy as the day is long.

I'm happy, so happy, happy as the day is long.

I got a heavy affair, and I'm having my fun.

Am I walking on air?

Jive out, I'm the lucky one.

I got a piece of mine, knock wood.

I hear that love is blind, that's good.

Cause the things I never seen, never seemed to worry me.

I'm happy as the day is long.

I'm happy as the day is long.

Wonderful.

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,

so I had lots of practice in my own living room.

You gave up your day job 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,

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.

Do you have a good musical memory when you're trying to learn a song?

Do you get it first time or...?

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,

so I absorb it both with sight, sound, and playing it physically on the guitar.

It's a tedious procedure.

So you're learning a melody that has a difficult interval?

What's your idea of a difficult melody to learn?

Well, a lot of life comes to mind, although I've never sung it,

and I don't even have any aspirations of singing it, but...

Ballerina.

Ballerina.

Oh boy, that took me a long time to learn.

Dance ballerina dance, and do your pirouette and rhythm with your aching heart.

Dance ballerina dance, you mustn't once forget,

a dancer has to dance the pirouette.

See what I mean?

No, what makes that tricky, because there's a lot of identifiable quick notes,

and what's an accidental?

It's not in the scale, it's...

Sure, it's not in the scale, yeah, but I think this part...

Those all those non-cord tones land on those big heavy accented beats,

and you better hit them.

Otherwise, you just sound awful.

I'm interested in how you started performing together,

which you do every week now in Portland.

I came to Portland to do my act at a place called Fathers,

and Becky was playing with this band Holy Cance.

This was about 81, I think, when I first met you, wasn't it?

82.

So we've known each other quite a long time.

I was knocked out with her then.

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?

Well, later on, when I moved to Portland,

I was offered this job at the Heathman,

and they said they wanted to sing her, and I thought, Becky.

And Becky did a change of 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.

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

that's increased my repertoire.

It's enriched my repertoire quite a bit, too.

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 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.

I promised him I'd wait for you

till even 80's froze.

I'm lost some evidence,

but what I said still goes No Love No Nothing.

And that's a promise I'll keep.

No fun with no one.

I'm getting plenty of sleep.

My heart's striking though it's like an empty article.

No Love No Sir No Nothing till my baby comes home.

But what I said still goes No Love No Nothing.

And that's a promise I'll keep.

No fun with no one.

I'm getting plenty of sleep.

My heart's striking though it's like an empty article.

No Love 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 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.

The 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 about it stuff 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 too.

I'll begin to reach my prime.

Now though I see what our end is,

all I can spend is just my time.

I can't give you anything but love.

Maybe that's the only thing I've plenty of.

Maybe dream a while, scheme a while,

we're sure to find happiness.

And I guess all those things that you always find for.

Gee I love to see a look and smile.

Maybe diamond bracelets will worth a dozen cents.

Till that lucky day you know darn well, baby.

I can't give you anything but love.

Gee I love to see a look and smile.

Maybe diamond bracelet will worth a dozen cents.

Till that lucky day you know darn well, baby.

I can't give you anything but love.

I can't give you anything but love.

That song was written about a year before the depression.

The depression hit shortly after.

Becky do you find Dorothy Fields lyrics particularly singable because they're so colloquial?

Take a line like gee I'd like to see a look and smile.

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.

Dorothy Fields 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 about 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 Fields said that the first time Jerome Kern played her the melody

right before she wrote the lyric for it.

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.

I love you.

And the way you look tonight.

Oh, but you're lovely.

With your smiles so warm and your cheeks so soft.

There is nothing for me but to love you.

Just the way you look tonight.

With each word your tenderness grows tearing my fear apart.

And that laugh that wrinkles your nose touches my foolish heart.

You're lovely.

Never, never change.

Keep that breathless charm.

Won't you please arrange it because I love you.

Just the way you look tonight.

Just the way you look tonight.

That was beautiful.

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.

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Drink responsibly.

Be 21.

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This is Fresh Air and we're remembering singer Rebecca Kilgort today.

She died last week at the age of 76.

Later in 1999 she and Dave Frischberg returned to Fresh Air for a concert of Hogi Carmichael's 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 is a composer and lyricist who's probably best known for writing the songs for guys and dolls.

But at the time he was just getting started as a lyricist.

And so with Hogi Carmichael, he wrote small fry, heart and soul, and to sleepy people.

I'm going to ask you to do to sleepy people.

It was sung by Bob Hope and Shirley Ross in the 1938 movie, Thanks for the Memory.

It's a wonderful song.

Would you do it for us?

Sure.

Here we are out of cigarettes.

Holding hands and yawning.

Look how late it gets.

To sleepy people by dawn's early light.

And too much in love to say goodnight.

Here we are in the cozy chair.

Picking on a wish phone from the fridge there.

To sleepy people with nothing to say.

And too much in love to break away.

Do you remember the nights where you still 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.

Just about the same.

Foggy little fella.

Drowsy little dame.

To sleepy people by dawn's early light.

And too much in love to say goodnight.

Well, here we are.

Don't we look a mess?

Lipstick on your collar.

Ringles in my dress.

To sleepy people who know very well.

There too much in love to break the spell.

Here we are.

Crazy in the head.

G your eyes are gorgeous.

Even when they're red.

To sleepy people by dawn's early light.

And too much in love to say goodnight.

Do you remember when we went dancing 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 slap us in the face.

To sleepy people by dawn's early light.

And too much in love to say goodnight.

I think that's one of the most successfully conversational songs I know, both in the lyric and in the music.

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 car Michael 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 Skarlock and Stardust and Rock and Share in Georgia.

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.

There.

It's not the pale moon that excites me.

That thrills and delights me.

Oh, no.

It's just the nearness of you.

It isn't your sweet conversation.

That brings this sensation.

Oh, no.

It's just the nearness of you.

When you're in my arms.

And I feel you so close to me.

All my wireless dreams come true.

I need no soft lies to enchant me.

If you only grant me the right to hold you ever so tight.

And to fear in the night the nearness of you.

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.

Dream when you're feeling blue.

Dream that's the thing to do.

Just watch the smoke rings rise in the air.

You'll find your share of happiness there.

So dream when the day is through.

Dream and they might come true.

Things never are as bad as they seem.

So dream, dream, dream.

On Monday's show we hear from Heather McGee.

Her book The Some 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.

Frischberg's executive producers are Danny Miller and Sam Brigger.

Our senior producer today is Roberta Schorock.

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 and Marie Baldinado,

Lauren Crenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth,

Thaia Challener, Susanya Kundi, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzales Whizzler.

Our digital media producer is Molly CV Nesper.

For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.

Dream when you're feeling blue.

Dream that's the thing to do.

Just watch the smoke brings rise in the air.

You'll find your share.

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