Remembering Jazz Trumpeter, Singer And Actor Jack Sheldon

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, editor of the website TV Worth Watching, sitting in for Terry Gross. Buck Henry, the screenwriter and character actor, died of a heart attack Wednesday at age 89. In the 1960s, he emerged as one of the sharpest comic voices for a new generation. He co-created the TV series "Get Smart" with Mel Brooks, wrote the screenplay for "The Graduate" and even had a small role in that film as a hotel desk clerk. And in the '70s when "Saturday Night Live" premiered on NBC, he was one of the earliest guest hosts during that all-important first season.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE")

BUCK HENRY: Thank you all very much. Now, you're probably wondering, as I am wondering, why I have been chosen to host tonight's show. After all, it's quite true - I'm not a comic. I don't sing. I don't dance. Sure, I've acted in a few films, few television shows. I've written a few. But those aren't ordinarily the prerequisites to fronting a big show, like this one. I probably wasn't their first choice.

BIANCULLI: "Saturday Night Live" hit the '70s like a bombshell, and before that, in 1967, "The Graduate" landed with just as huge an impact. Directed by Mike Nichols, it told of an aimless college graduate, played by Dustin Hoffman, stumbling into an affair with an older woman and family friend, Mrs. Robinson, played by Anne Bancroft.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE GRADUATE")

ANNE BANCROFT: (As Mrs. Robinson) May I ask you a question? What do you think of me?

DUSTIN HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin Braddock) What do you mean?

BANCROFT: (As Mrs. Robinson) You've known me nearly all your life. You must've formed some opinion of me.

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin Braddock) Well, I always thought that you were a very nice person.

BANCROFT: (As Mrs. Robinson) Did you know I was an alcoholic?

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin Braddock) What?

BANCROFT: (As Mrs. Robinson) Did you know that?

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin Braddock) Look - I think I should be going.

BANCROFT: (As Mrs. Robinson) Sit down, Benjamin.

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin Braddock) Mrs. Robinson, if you don't mind my saying so, this conversation is getting a little strange. Now, I'm sure that Mr. Robinson will be here any minute now.

BANCROFT: (As Mrs. Robinson) No.

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin Braddock) What?

BANCROFT: (As Mrs. Robinson) My husband will be back quite late. He should be gone for several hours.

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin Braddock) Oh, my God.

BANCROFT: (As Mrs. Robinson) Pardon?

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin Braddock) Oh, no, Mrs. Robinson. Oh, no.

BANCROFT: (As Mrs. Robinson) What's wrong?

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin Braddock) Mrs. Robinson, you didn't - I mean, you didn't expect...

BANCROFT: (As Mrs. Robinson) What?

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin Braddock) I mean, you didn't really think I'd do something like that.

BANCROFT: (As Mrs. Robinson) Like what?

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin Braddock) What do you think?

BANCROFT: (As Mrs. Robinson) Well, I don't know.

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin Braddock) For God's sake, Mrs. Robinson.

BANCROFT: (As Mrs. Robinson, laugher).

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin Braddock) Here we are. You got me into your house. You give me a drink. You put on music. Now you start opening up your personal life to me and tell me your husband won't be home for hours.

BANCROFT: (As Mrs. Robinson) So?

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin Braddock) Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me.

BANCROFT: (As Mrs. Robinson, laughter).

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin Braddock) Aren't you?

BIANCULLI: Terry Gross spoke with Buck Henry in 1997. Their conversation took place at the Film Forum in Manhattan as part of a celebration of the then-30th anniversary of "The Graduate." They spoke after a screening of the film, which ended with Benjamin Braddock, played by Dustin Hoffman, barging into the wedding of Mrs. Robinson's daughter, Elaine, whom he now loves. They run off together, making their getaway on a public bus, but after a few moments of triumph and exhilaration, they're both staring blankly into space.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

TERRY GROSS: Well, let's start with the end of the film. In the end of the film, it's kind of, like, a few beats after the typical happy ending. You know, they run away together, boy and girl get each other, a real triumph. And then the camera just lingers longer on them than it normally would. And you see their faces drop, and this, like, oh, what now expression come over. Did you know that that's the way it was going to end when you wrote the screenplay? What...

HENRY: No. Well, let me lead you up to it. Nichols was always disturbed by the idea that in the book, Benjamin gets to the church in time to stop the wedding, before the vows have been taken. And he always thought it's too corny; it's like the cavalry coming in at the last moment. So we thought, well, let's let him get there after the ceremony is over and really wreak havoc.

It isn't Christ symbology when he's up there pounding on the glass. I mean, there's a guy in a church pounding on glass, so critics are inevitably going to make of it a Christ symbol, which it wasn't intended to be. Perhaps if he'd have pounded one-handed, it would - things would have been different.

(LAUGHTER)

HENRY: They...

GROSS: Through the blood coming out of the palms of his hands (laughter).

HENRY: Yeah. With a - yeah, with a few scars. But that was not intended, and had we foreseen it, we might have done something differently, but probably not. The - and the cross - which I think was my idea, but I don't remember any longer. I just thought of it as, you know, a kind of vampire thing. Get back, you bloodsuckers. And then naturally sticking it in the door seemed the next logical thing to do.

So they're running away, and they got on a bus, and they ride. And Mike had a long roll left on the film. And I don't remember him - I think he just didn't tell Katharine and Dustin anything in particular except, sit down there and take a ride, and we'll see what happens. And, of course, what happened was they had nothing to say, nowhere to look. And so the sort of sense of, good lord, what's going to happen next, which is a perfectly reasonable thing for the actors to feel, became part of the character and now has become this sort of legend in some people's minds, who haven't seen it in the last few minutes, that the scene lasts for 10 minutes.

GROSS: (Laughter).

HENRY: And they're sitting there and it's - as I read in someone's critique of it in the last few days, it's a whole - it looks forward to the end of the '70s and the doom of that generation - blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Well, in the film world, I mean, I think it's fair to say, now that a lot of producers are uncomfortable with ambiguous endings, and a lot of test audiences at the focus groups before a movie is released, they don't like unhappy endings. And a lot of endings nowadays are changed so that viewers get what they want, which is a happy resolution. There was no such thing in '67, '68 when this was coming out, right? You didn't have to test market it?

HENRY: No. Actually, no, I don't think we did test market it. But also - well, there are two aspects of this that are interesting. One is that it tested - when it was first shown in theaters in previews, the audiences were receptive beyond any of our dreams. The other thing is that - the opposite of that is when Mike showed it first to a kind of friends screening, it wasn't quite that respect - the audience wasn't quite that enthusiastic. I mean, they said, oh, it's terrific. It's funny. It's interesting to look at. The kid is weird, isn't he? It's a shame. He's so odd-looking - big nose.

(LAUGHTER)

HENRY: So it's always - you know, you can't second-guess from any particular group.

GROSS: Any producer saying that the ending is too ambiguous, you've got a make it a more...

HENRY: No. No, nobody ever said that. And also, it is a happy ending with a little slice of lemon in it. I mean, it is - he's got his girl, and they've run away from the people that they're scared of, and they're going to have either a long or a short happy life - for a while. Who knows.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: When the film came out in late 1967, it really tapped into something. There weren't really many films at all that were addressing this generational split, that were addressing the alienation that college people felt when they went home back to their parents' houses, and they knew they didn't fit there anymore, and they didn't want to be there anymore, and their parents' friends were kind of scary to them. So this tapped into that at a time when Hollywood was always, like, several beats behind what was really happening in the world, and TV was even more beats behind that.

What do you remember of what people were saying about what "The Graduate" meant, you know, to our culture when it was released? And what rang true to you, and what did you think was really, like, absurd?

HENRY: Gee - that's a lot of questions in one.

(LAUGHTER)

HENRY: You know, it's odd because we didn't think of it as defining a time or a place and went about making it assiduously avoiding the errata of contemporary politics. And the only vague mention is when the guy who has the rooming house says, are you an outside agitator? Which was more about Berkeley than it was about the time. And actually, a critic when the movie was released took us to task for saying nothing about Vietnam, which I thought was really stupid because it's simply not what it's about.

It does come from a sensibility of some years before the time it was made, although I think the sensibility is universal. The sense of alienation that people have between teenage-dom and 20-something years old, when they feel most hostile - a lot of people do - most hostile to their environment, to their parents, to their schools, to all that stuff. And since we all came out of the same time and the same sensibility - that is, Charles Webb who wrote the book, Mike Nichols, Larry Turman and I - all got out of school, got out of college in the '50s, we all related to the same sources of that displeasure or anomie or whatever you want to call it.

GROSS: To me, one of the greatest paradoxes of the movie is that it's about, you know, a young man who comes home and he's just so lost in his parents' environment. And so what does he do? He has an affair with his parent's (ph) mother (laughter), you know. It's the first film that really addresses the culture - you know, the generation gap. And so he's sleeping with somebody of the other generation. It's really paradoxical.

HENRY: Always a good idea...

(LAUGHTER)

HENRY: ...To pass the time and to get to know new friends.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: I remember when I saw it, when the film came out, one of the things I couldn't imagine - I couldn't imagine any of the men I know, any of the men I knew, any of my friends sleeping with my mother's friends or with any of the mothers that we knew. It was just unimaginable to me. I think most of us saw our mothers as not being sexual. And so this was, like, a different world to me. Now, speaking about your mother...

HENRY: Well, they're two very different things. Sleeping...

GROSS: Yeah.

HENRY: You know, sleeping with your mother's friends or someone sleeping with your mother.

GROSS: Right.

HENRY: They're loaded in very different ways.

GROSS: Right. Now, I'm thinking - your mother was a silent film star. She was a beauty.

HENRY: An uncomfortable segue, but yes.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: But I'm thinking that you probably were brought up in a world where women were very glamorous and very sexual.

HENRY: There were many of my mother's friends I would happily have risked social approbation for.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: So the sentiment in this movie rang true?

HENRY: Oh, yeah.

BIANCULLI: Buck Henry speaking to Terry Gross in 1997. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's conversation with screenwriter and character actor Buck Henry, who died Wednesday at age 89. They spoke in 1997 at Manhattan's Film Forum, right after a screening of "The Graduate." It was the film's 30th anniversary.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: You know, when "The Graduate" came out, I think it was still very uncommon to have actual records used instead of just a score written for the movie. So the Simon & Garfunkel record's tie-in was very novel, and it was very successful. "Mrs. Robinson" rose to No. 1 on the charts, and it really certainly helped Simon & Garfunkel's career a lot. Whose idea was it to actually use records?

HENRY: Mike had Paul's music in his head from the very beginning. I didn't - I wasn't that familiar with it, but I listened to it a lot while - I listened to it a bit while working. He thought - well, Paul was going to write a whole new score. But hello darkness - is that what it's called?

GROSS: "Sounds Of Silence."

HENRY: "Sounds Of Silence." You think I'd know.

(LAUGHTER)

HENRY: "Sounds Of Silence" - they put - Mike and Sam O'Steen, the editor, put "Sounds Of Silence" onto the working track. And, you know, there was never anything that could replace it, finally. I think the only original song Paul wrote for it was "Mrs. Robinson," which we all thought was cute and catchy but hardly a world-shaker. And, you know, there we are. I mean, two years ago, three years ago - what are they called, the strawberries?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: The Lemonheads.

HENRY: Lemonheads. Yeah. Well, I was in sort of the right area.

(LAUGHTER)

HENRY: They did a really nice version of it.

GROSS: You've said that when you were writing the screenplay, you saw the character of Benjamin as being a very kind of prototypically Southern California, blond, surfboard kind of guy.

HENRY: Yeah.

GROSS: Not Dustin Hoffman, who...

HENRY: Everybody...

GROSS: ...Doesn't fit anything in that description.

HENRY: We thought of all of - well, we used to call them the surfboards. And we thought of all of them as being big and blond and Southern California. You know, the - I mean, there is a genetic thing that happens. I don't know how it happens, and I think science should investigate it is that...

GROSS: (Laughter).

HENRY: ...The darkest and most exotic Jews move to Southern California, and in one or two generations, all the children are blond and tall and blue-eyed.

(LAUGHTER)

HENRY: What happens? What - is it - sand gets in the genes.

(LAUGHTER)

HENRY: And so we thought of - and Charles Webb was tall and blond and very prep school-looking. So we thought of them all as being the blond family - you know, ideally, a Ronald Reagan, Doris Day mother and father and a Robert Redford, Candy Bergin kids. And, of course, that fell apart as soon as we came around to really looking at actors doing it.

GROSS: So when you saw Dustin Hoffman on the screen test, what made you think that, even though he didn't fit at all your image of what this character should be, that he was right?

HENRY: Yeah. Well, it was there. The soul was there. And also, he was - it was a great - it's a great screen test. He's - I think he did it with Katharine, and they're just terrific in it. It's really good, and you just see it. He just wiped everyone else out.

GROSS: Did you see the character as being insecure and neurotic in the way that he is in the movie?

HENRY: I don't remember anymore.

GROSS: He supplanted what you had in your mind.

HENRY: Yeah. You know, they become the thing you thought you'd invented but didn't really know was there. But it was so interesting. So then we rationalized it because we'd been talking about them as being surfboards for so long, we had to make up in our own minds what happened. So we thought, OK, it's a genetic displacement. It's the other way around. He's a throwback to previous generations. And then around him were fit actors and actresses who really could do it. Not that there aren't blond people who can do it; it just didn't have the same suption, as Faulkner would say if he were here.

GROSS: Now, how did Anne Bancroft get the part of Mrs. Robinson? She had, not too long before "The Graduate," played the saintly and sacrificing Anne Sullivan in "The Miracle Worker," the story of Helen Keller, and this is a long distance from that.

HENRY: Well, she was a famous and loved actress.

GROSS: She's wonderful.

HENRY: And nobody ever - I mean, there's no question that she could do it and really do it. She was advised by everyone except Mel not to do it. At least, that's the story they tell.

GROSS: Were they married then?

HENRY: Yeah.

GROSS: She and Mel Brooks?

HENRY: Yeah.

GROSS: I'm going to squeeze a little question into the couple of seconds we have remaining, which is, did you identify - aside from admiring some of your mother's friends, did you identify with the Benjamin Braddock character at all?

HENRY: Totally.

GROSS: With - you did.

HENRY: Oh, yeah, and so did Mike, and so did Larry. We all did. I think that's what drove us toward - drove them toward the book and me, subsequently, too.

GROSS: If you identified with Dustin Hoffman's character, that kind of adrift - I don't have a future; I don't know what my future is - what was the turning point for you where you found writing, you found theater and movies?

HENRY: Well, I always knew I wanted to do it. It was just a question of people not letting me. So when I was younger - I got out of the Army and I spent years - like, seven or eight years - sort of batting around. I'd go on tour with a show, I'd write things that nobody would buy, and I did all that stuff that actors do. And then finally, I started working in television, and it all became a clearer path. I was never - you know, I'm very lucky. I've never been out of work since I started working. But the number of years before that were very edgy.

GROSS: Buck Henry, thank you so much for coming. It was wonderful for you to be here.

(APPLAUSE)

HENRY: Thanks.

GROSS: Wonderful of you to do it.

HENRY: Thank you, Terry.

BIANCULLI: Buck Henry speaking with Terry Gross in 1997. He died Wednesday at age 89. Coming up after a break, we remember Jack Sheldon, jazz trumpeter and "Schoolhouse Rock!" singer, who died last month at age 88. And as we say goodbye to Buck Henry, let's revisit his famous scene from "The Graduate." He plays a front desk hotel clerk welcoming a young and very nervous Benjamin, played by Dustin Hoffman, who wants to get a room for an intimate encounter with his parents' friend Mrs. Robinson. I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE GRADUATE")

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin Braddock) A room - I'd like a room, please.

HENRY: (As Clerk) Single room or a double room?

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin) Single, just for myself, please.

HENRY: (As Clerk) Would you sign the register, please? Anything wrong, sir?

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin) What? No, nothing.

HENRY: (As Clerk) Do you have any luggage, Mr. Gladstone?

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin) Luggage? Yes. Yes, I do.

HENRY: (As Clerk) Where is it?

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin) What?

HENRY: (As Clerk) Where is your luggage?

GROSS: (As Benjamin) Oh, it's in the car. It's out there in the car.

HENRY: (As Clerk) Very good, sir. I'll have a porter bring it in.

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin) Oh, no. I mean, I'd rather not go to all the trouble of bringing it all in. I just have a toothbrush. I can get it myself if that's all right.

HENRY: (As Clerk) Of course. I'll have a porter show you the room.

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin) Oh, well, actually, I'd just as soon find it myself. I just have a toothbrush to carry up and I can handle it myself.

HENRY: (As Clerk) Whatever you say, sir.

HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin) Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MRS. ROBINSON")

SIMON AND GARFUNKEL: (Singing) And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson. Jesus loves you more that you will know. God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson. Heaven holds a place for those who pray. We'd like to know a little bit about you for our files. We'd like to help you learn to help yourself. Look around you. All you see are sympathetic eyes. Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home. And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson. Jesus loves you more than you will know. God bless you, please, Mrs. Robinson. Heaven holds a place for those who pray.
DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli in for Terry Gross. Jazz musician Jack Sheldon died last month at age 88. As a big-band and recording soloist on trumpet, he was featured with Sinatra, Bennett, Goodman, Basie and Gillespie. His bandmates have included Chet Baker, Art Pepper and Zoot Sims. For listeners of a certain age, Jack Sheldon may be even more familiar for singing one of the bounciest and most memorable songs from "Schoolhouse Rock!".

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK!")

JACK SHELDON: (As Bill, singing) I'm just a bill. Yes, I'm only a bill. And I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill. Well, it's a long, long journey to the capital city. It's a long, long wait while I'm sitting in committee. But I know I'll be a law someday, at least I hope and pray that I will, but today I am still just a bill.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Hey, Bill. You certainly have a lot of patience and courage.

SHELDON: (As Bill) Well, I got this far. When I started, I wasn't even a bill. I was just an idea. Some folks back home decided they wanted a law passed, so they called their congressmen. And he said, you're right. There ought to be a law. And he sat down and wrote me out...

BIANCULLI: In addition to bringing his hip way of singing to "Schoolhouse Rock!," Jack Sheldon has played on the soundtracks of nearly four dozen films, including "The Pawnbroker," "The Pink Panther" and "White Men Can't Jump." And he recorded the very first rendition of "The Shadow Of Your Smile" for the film "The Sandpiper." For 18 years, Sheldon was resident comedian for the band on "The Merv Griffin Show," then led his own big band in Southern California. He played on such TV themes as "The Munsters" and "Peter Gunn."

Terry Gross spoke with trumpeter Jack Sheldon in 1993 when he had just released an album of duets called "On My Own," featuring Ross Tompkins on piano.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THIS LOVE OF MINE")

SHELDON: (Singing) This love of mine goes on and on, though life is empty since you have gone. You're always on my mind, though out of sight. It's lonely through the day. But all the night I cry my heart out. It will surely break since nothing matters. Just let it break. I ask the sun and the moon, the stars that shine, what's to become of it, this love of mine?

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

TERRY GROSS: Jack Sheldon, welcome to FRESH AIR.

SHELDON: Thanks. It's nice to be here.

GROSS: I don't know why I had this image of you, but I always thought of you as somebody who relied a lot on humor in their singing and music. And there's something so emotionally naked about some of the songs on your new record that really surprised me. I really love the singing and the playing on it. Is the choice of material or the kind of singing that you're doing a relatively recent development with you, the kind of...

SHELDON: Well, I've been trying to...

GROSS: ...Ballad that you're doing?

SHELDON: ...I think I'm singing better now. I'm studying singing. And I'm - so I just can do it better. But I've been doing it all my life. It's - yeah, it's more naked, I think, and more - I like that, emotionally naked. That's good. Yeah, I guess I'm just developing into where I can do more personal, you know, stuff and better pitch and just things I've been working on. And studying it, too, helps.

GROSS: Well, that's interesting. Tell me what you're getting from learning how to sing - I mean, taking formal lessons.

SHELDON: Well, just real simple stuff, but, you know, to have a lot of foundation, get a lot of air, and use your diaphragm. And I notice now when I am - if I'm having trouble with a note, it's really because I don't have the foundation there to, you know, get a lot of air in my stomach and my diaphragm and to open my mouth wide. You just learn real simple things that you think you do but you don't really. And then practice the pitch and the articulation.

It's just things like the trumpet with, you know, hitting every note precisely in pitch. And it's good to take lessons and study like that because then you have - you do what you do, and then somebody can criticize you and in a nice way. They're real nice to me, and they're real encouraging.

GROSS: Was there another change that happened to you besides taking lessons? Did something happen emotionally that left you more open to this kind of material?

SHELDON: Well, I got sober eight years ago. And I don't drink or take drugs or do anything like that. And I think that left me teachable. Before that, I thought I was really cool and I knew everything. So - and I didn't want to take lessons. I thought I was better than the teachers, you know? And I really just didn't know what I was doing. And then I - when I got sober, I found out there was a lot of stuff that I didn't know and that people didn't use me - not because they didn't like me or anything - because I couldn't produce what they wanted. Now I'm trying to get to be able to do anything any composer might want.

GROSS: When you were playing in the 1950s, bop was the thing.

SHELDON: Yeah.

GROSS: And very few of the instrumentalists sang. Did you sing back then, and were you self-conscious about singing at all?

SHELDON: Yeah, I was always self-conscious about singing. I wanted to sing, but it's so personal, singing. And I started singing with Benny Goodman's band. And that was about 1958. And I wrote a song, and Benny let me sing. He was the first bandleader that would ever let me sing. Stan Kenton wouldn't let me sing, no, because he always was afraid I would say something too off-color, which I probably would have.

GROSS: Did you have a reputation for doing that?

SHELDON: Yes. I worked with Lenny Bruce, and I was trying to kind of emulate him at the time.

GROSS: What kind of work do you do with Lenny Bruce? You were in the band plan playing at the club or something?

SHELDON: Yeah. In burlesque, I worked with Lenny Bruce. We worked with his wife, Honey, and Jo Maney and Philly Joe Jones and Kenny Drew and Leroy Vinnegar. We had quite a real good band there. And we played burlesque at a place called Duffy's in Los Angeles. And Lenny was the comic, and we did all kind of - he would write stuff, and we'd act out. We did "The Man With The Golden Arm" and...

GROSS: Oh, really? Like your own version of that? (Laughter).

SHELDON: Yeah, a burlesque version.

GROSS: Oh, that must have been interesting.

SHELDON: Yeah, it was funny. I think it ended up where the guy flushed the dope down the toilet, and then Lenny said, there's nothing - there's only one thing to do, is smoke the toilet. It doesn't sound so funny now. You really had to be there, I guess.

GROSS: (Laughter).

BIANCULLI: That's Jack Sheldon speaking to Terry Gross in 1993. He died last month at age 88. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MARVIN HAMLISCH'S "MULTI-TASKING")

BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 1993 interview with jazz trumpeter and singer Jack Sheldon. He died last month at age 88.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: It's interesting to me. You know, you're taking lessons now in singing and trumpet, and I'm glad for the fact that you're not becoming overly obsessive in your performance on technique. I mean, you still, like, play trumpet solos in which there's kind of clear, ringing notes but also these, like, wonderful, like, smudged arpeggiated kind of figures. You know what I mean? I'd hate for you...

SHELDON: Yeah, I don't think there's much chance...

GROSS: ...To give that up just because you're learning good technique. (Laughter) Yeah.

SHELDON: No, yeah. I'm going to have that smudge for life, I guess. My teacher says that. He says, I don't want to ruin your style or anything. But I don't think there's much chance of that. It just - I would like to get as clean as I can. But the smudge is there. I think it's in my bones.

GROSS: (Laughter). Why don't I play another track from your latest album, "On My Own?" And I thought I'd play some of "I Can't Get Started" 'cause it kind of shows off everything - your trumpet playing, your singing. And it shows both, like, the emotionalism of your singing and also some of the humor in it, too.

SHELDON: OK. Thanks.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I CAN'T GET STARTED")

SHELDON: (Singing) I've flown around the world in a plane. I've settled revolutions in Spain. The North Pole, I have charted. Still, I can't get started with you. Around the golf course, I'm under par. And Benny Goodman made me a star. I had a house, a showplace, now she got that, and I got no place. And I also couldn't get started with you (laughter). You're so supreme.

GROSS: That's Jack Sheldon on trumpet and vocals from his new album, "On My Own." There's a really interesting documentary about the trumpeter Chet Baker that you were featured in. You were one of the people interviewed about Baker. And I remember you saying that - and I should mention that like you, Chet Baker played trumpet and sang. And you were very funny about him. You talked a little bit about how frustrating it was that he never - you know, you were always in a room rehearsing, you know, practicing. And he never had to practice or anything. He always just had this sound. And he always...

SHELDON: Nope, he never did. I hear Harry James never had to practice, but I have to practice all the time. Doc Severinsen practices all the time. But, you know, I was singing back there with Chetty (ph) when we were little kids, come to think of it. We were both singing, and we'd sing together. And we were - we grew up together. And we would sing. We had a little quartet. We'd go around and play in little bars for $2 or anything we'd get. We just would drive up.

The bass player, Hirsch Hamill (ph), had a Pierce Arrow. And we'd have the bass in there. And, you know, it was a 12-cylinder old car with a place for a chauffeur and everything.

GROSS: How old were you then?

SHELDON: Oh, I was about 14, 15. I was about 15 - or 16, I guess.

GROSS: And how did you...

SHELDON: Yeah, 'cause I was in Florida when I was 14. I was 16, and Chetty was about - I think about 18 or 19.

GROSS: How did you meet?

SHELDON: I think at a place called the Showtime, which was on Sepulveda and Ventura Boulevard. And there was a jam session on Monday nights, and all the guys that were on the road would come in there. I got to play with Art Blakey in there and Stan Kenton and a bunch of people. Maynard Ferguson would come in there. And Chetty and I would always just sit in. To me, it was, you know, the - a glittering night of stars of jazz, and I was just thrilled to be there.

GROSS: Now how did you get to the West Coast from Florida, where you grew up?

SHELDON: Well, my aunt came out here first from Florida, and she was a swimming teacher. Crystal Scarborough was her name. And she taught babies how to swim. And then we moved out here, and my mother started teaching swimming. And I taught swimming, too. And we got a pool on Hollywood Boulevard. My mother taught all the movie stars' kids how to swim - Paul Newman and Lee Remick, every movie star at the time, Nat Cole. I taught Natalie and Kelly Cole how to swim.

GROSS: Really? (Laughter).

SHELDON: And used to have Kelly in the pool with me, and Nat Cole would be walking around the pool smoking cigarettes. He was a chain-smoker. And I'd have Kelly sing (singing) when the blue of the night meets the gold of the day - you know, Bing Crosby's theme song. And Nat would go ha, ha, ha.

GROSS: (Laughter).

SHELDON: Slightly humorous. But I taught a lot of kids. I taught all of Paul Newman's kids. In fact, one of his daughters used to bite me on the ankle when I'd be talking to Joanne Woodward.

GROSS: How old were you when you started working professionally and when you started playing with other bands?

SHELDON: I was 12 in Jacksonville, Fla. And I had just started playing the trumpet, and I started working with Jean Brandt's (ph) band at the Washington Hotel there. Everybody was gone in the war, and so I started working. And then I came to California and went to - started college at 16. I started to go to USC, and then I switched over to City College 'cause they had such a good music department.

So I went to college there for a couple of years, then I joined the Air Force. And I got out of the Air Force, and I worked a lot with Mexican bands. I worked the Million Dollar Theater, downtown Los Angeles, all-Mexican shows. And then I went in the - I joined Stan Kenton and went round, went to New York and played at Birdland with Stan Kenton and Chet Baker was already there in New York. And he was already acting real wild. He got - he played opposite Miles Davis. And this threw him off. Before he went to New York, he would just - he would smoke grass sometimes. But then he got all involved in heroin and everything else in New York. And then, you know, he got really messed up then. And he never really was the same after that 'cause he was a great kid, and then he got too wild. But he always was a great genius of a trumpet player.

GROSS: I want to ask you something else about your sound. Do you think that there's a connection between the way you sing and the way you play trumpet?

SHELDON: Oh, I think so, yeah. Just, you know, all the wrong things I do on the trumpet I do with the voice, too. But I'm trying to eliminate that now and get - so I - you know, I want my pitch to be better and preciseness now. That's what I'm getting with my lessons. You know, in jazz, we can hit a note and go (vocalizing) - kind of come up to it. And in classical music, you have to be precisely on the pitch, singing and playing the trumpet. And this is something that I never really watched when I was - I always had pretty good pitch, but I would, you know, come up to notes or go down to them. And in the classical music, my teachers always stopping me and say, no, right on the pitch. Hit the note on the pitch. I think it just helps, if anything. It just makes you more efficient and competent.

GROSS: Jack Sheldon, thank you very much for talking with us.

SHELDON: Well, thank you. I'm so flattered you had me on. It's a thrill. I love your show. And it's a great show. And thank you very much.

BIANCULLI: That was trumpeter and vocalist Jack Sheldon speaking with Terry Gross in 1993. Jack Sheldon died last month. He was 88 years old. Let's hear one more of his great performances from "Schoolhouse Rock!"

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CONJUNCTION JUNCTION")

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Conjunction junction, what's your function?

SHELDON: (Singing) Hooking up words and phrases and clauses.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Conjunction junction, how's that function?

SHELDON: (Singing) I got three favorite cars that get most of my job done.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Conjunction junction, what's their function?

SHELDON: (Singing) I got and, but and or. They'll get you pretty far.

And - that's an additive, like this and that. But - that's sort of the opposite - not this but that. And then there's or - O-R - when you have a choice like this or that. And, but and or get you pretty far.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Conjunction junction, what's your function?

SHELDON: (Singing) Hooking up two boxcars and making them run right. Milk and honey, bread and butter, peas and rice.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Hey, that's nice.

SHELDON: (Singing) Dirty but happy, diggin' and scratchin', losing your shoe and a button or two. He's poor but honest, sad but true. Boo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Conjunction junction, what's your function?

BIANCULLI: (Singing) Hooking up two cars to one when you say something like this choice. Either now or later or no choice. Neither now nor ever.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Hey, that's clever.

SHELDON: (Singing) Eat this or that to grow thin or fat. Never mind. I wouldn't do that. I'm fat enough now.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Conjunction junction, what's your function?

SHELDON: (Singing) Hooking up phrases and clauses that balance, like out of the frying pan and into the fire. He cut loose the sandbags, but the balloon wouldn't go any higher. Let's go up to the mountains or down to the seas. You should always say thank you or at least say please.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Conjunction junction, what's your function?

SHELDON: (Singing) Hooking up words and phrases and clauses and complex sentences like, in the mornings when I'm usually wide awake...

BIANCULLI: That's Jack Sheldon from "Schoolhouse Rock!" If you want to hear interviews and performances with the jazz musicians Bob Dorough and Dave Frishberg, who wrote many of the songs for Schoolhouse Rock!" - visit our website freshairarchive.org and click on the magnifying glass search icon and type in "Schoolhouse Rock!" Or visit the Jazz Legends collection to listen to our interviews with other giants of jazz, such as Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck, Nancy Wilson and Max Roach. After a break, our critic-at-large, John Powers, reviews the new HBO series "The Outsider," based on a novel by Stephen King. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. The new HBO series "The Outsider," based on a suspense novel by Stephen King, stars Ben Mendelsohn and Cynthia Erivo as detectives trying to solve a murder that seems to defy all logic. Our critic-at-large, John Powers, says this adaptation takes the master of horror's work in an unexpected direction.

JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: If you made a list of the most important figures in pop culture over the last half century, near the top you'd have to put Stephen King since publishing his first novel, "Carrie," in 1974, the 72 year old writer has been a literary juggernaut whose books have spawned 26 TV shows and 47 movies. Still going strong, King is best-known for exploring and tapping into that most primal of emotions, fear - fear of madness and menstrual blood, fear of killer clowns and demonic pets, fear of addiction and entrapment. Such fear takes the form of a slow-building dread in "The Outsider," the new 10-part HBO series based on King's 2018 novel of the same title. Though this adaptation is probably too well-heeled for its pulpy material, the show has a terrific plot hook, and once I made peace with its moody rhythms, I found myself hooked. I devoured the six hours available for preview in two nights.

"The Outsider" begins when the body of a murdered and sexually assaulted 11-year-old boy is found in the Georgia woods. The investigation is led by righteously angry police detective Ralph Anderson, who's mourning the recent death of his own teenage son. Ralph is played by grizzled Ben Mendelsohn, who my women friends tell me is a sex symbol, though I've merely thought of him as one of those superb Australian actors that Hollywood now prefers to their grizzled American counterparts. The evidence quickly leads Ralph to arrest Terry Maitland - that's Jason Bateman - a beloved local schoolteacher who coached Ralph's son in Little League.

The case against him seems open and shut. Witnesses put Terry at the scene. Video footage confirms it, as do the DNA samples. There's just one problem, a huge one. Other witnesses, backed by video footage, put Terry in a full room in another city at the time of the murder. Ralph begins to have doubts, and here, he expresses them to the ambitious local DA who wants to nail Terry to boost his own career.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE OUTSIDER")

BEN MENDELSOHN: (As Ralph Anderson) If Terry Maitland is innocent...

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Which he's not.

MENDELSOHN: (As Ralph Anderson) If he is, we're not done. This happens again...

JASON BATEMAN: (As Terry Maitland) How badly do you want to win, Kenneth?

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) I don't know, Ralph. How badly do you want to lose?

POWERS: Faced with a baffling enigma, Ralph enlists the help of a private eye - Holly Gibney, a spectrum-y (ph) savant of astonishing mental gifts. She's exceedingly well-played by British musician and actress Cynthia Erivo, who recently starred in the Harriet Tubman biopic. As Holly pursues leads to other cities and crimes, things get spookier and spookier.

Although "The Outsider" is no masterwork in a TV era when we expect them, it is a finely tooled series, with the trademark HBO luster, sharply elegant scripts by Richard Price and Dennis Lehane and excellent performances, including Julianne Nicholson as Terry's wife Glory, who's furious at what's happening to her husband; Mare Winningham as Ralph's sensible wife Jeannie, still shell shocked by the death of their son; and Derek Cecil as a good-hearted ex-cop who is smitten by Holly, a socially maladroit woman other men just find weird.

Bateman directed the first two episodes, and he lays down a slow, surprisingly mournful template. Where most thrillers and horror tales don't claim to be more than good, trashy fun, "The Outsider" takes its story seriously - so seriously, in fact, that some viewers may find it pretentious or exasperating. Me, I thought this approach made an interesting change. Rather than amp things up to make a shriek, the series slowly fuels our anxiety by taking time to make us care about the characters. Despite its lack of visual ambition, the show works similar terrain to the recent run of art-horror movies like "Suspiria," "Midsommar" and "The Lighthouse," all of which care less about making the audience scream in terror than about exploring what underlies the terror. Without giving anything away, I can tell you that "The Outsider" deals with grief and the horrors unleashed by grieving as well as the fear of contamination by uncontrollable forces, a fear that influences everything from our immigration policy to the way supermarkets put hand sanitizer by their doors.

In the process, "The Outsider" captures the quality that has always given King's work its seductive power. It draws the connection between our inner demons and the ones roaming out in the world.

BIANCULLI: John Powers is FRESH AIR's critic-at-large. He reviewed the new HBO series "The Outsider," based on a suspense novel by Stephen King.

On Monday's show, in the 1890s, Wilmington, N.C., had a thriving black middle class, a large black electorate and black representatives in local government. But that ended in 1898 with a bloody campaign of violence and intimidation by white supremacists. On the next FRESH AIR, our guest will be journalist David Zucchino. His new book is titled "Wilmington's Lie." Hope you can join us.

(SOUNDBITE OF GUILLERMO KLEIN'S "MELODIA DE ARRABAL")

BIANCULLI: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support from Joyce Lieberman and Julian Herzfeld. Our associate producer for digital media is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. For Terry Gross, I'm David Bianculli.

(SOUNDBITE OF GUILLERMO KLEIN'S "MELODIA DE ARRABAL")

Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.