Kirk Douglas, the Guitarist for the Roots, Revamps the Holiday Classics

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, David, Books, Arts, Storytelling, Wnyc, New, Remnick, News Commentary, Yorker, Politics

4.2 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2022

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As the guitarist for the Roots, the band for “The Tonight Show,” Kirk Douglas plays anything and everything. So David Remnick put him to the test on some holiday classics. And two longtime New Yorker staffers, Patricia Marx and Roz Chast, divulge their celebrated history playing together in a ukulele band. As the Daily Pukuleles, they claim, they influenced some of the biggest names in music in the sixties and beyond. But they were always a little too far ahead of the curve for the mainstream.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNWC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:10.6	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnick.
0:13.2	Now I don't want to be a grinch, but around this time when you've heard certain holiday
0:17.5	songs for, I don't know, the hundredth time you get a little cranky.
0:22.2	So a few years ago we invited a musical hero of mine to come join us in the studio to
0:27.4	shake things up.
0:29.1	That hero would be a man named Kirk Douglas, who professionally goes by the name Captain
0:33.7	Kirk.
0:34.7	He's the lead guitarist of The Roots.
0:47.5	These days The Roots are really well known as the house band for Jimmy Fowl and Tonight's
0:51.3	show, but for hip-hop fans, The Roots have been one of the most innovative and hardworking
0:55.9	acts in the genre for a very long time.
0:59.1	Kirk Douglas is a key part of the band's signature hybrid of Soul Jazz Funk in Rock.
1:05.3	And I thought he would be the ideal person to put a new spin on some very traditional
1:11.9	holiday tunes.
1:14.4	It's that time of year.
1:16.8	We hear the familiar songs over and over.
1:19.5	You're walking through a department store, you're in the backseat of a cab, you're overhearing
1:23.8	somebody else's headphones on the subway, whatever it is.
1:26.9	Now this isn't a matter of stumped the stars, but I want to ask you if there's something
1:32.2	you can play as a kind of standard in your own way so that we'll love it again.
1:38.8	Should we give it a shot?
	...

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