Remembering NBA legend Bill Russell

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. Bill Russell, one of the most iconic players in pro basketball history, died Sunday at the age of 88. Russell was a big man who was the game's first noted shot blocker, and his rebounding and passing made him the ultimate team player. He led the Boston Celtics to eight straight NBA titles, 11 in all in his 13 seasons. He was a five-time league most valuable player. In 1967, Russell became the NBA's first African American head coach when he replaced Celtics coach Red Auerbach. Russell served as a player coach for three years.

Russell had an uneasy relationship with Boston fans. In 1987, his daughter wrote an essay detailing the racism Russell had faced, including racist vandalism visited upon the family home in 1960. Russell refused to sign autographs, and when his number was retired by the team in 1972, he insisted it be at a private ceremony at the Boston Garden. Russell was also active on civil rights issues. He joined the 1963 March on Washington and was in the front row for Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech. He went to Mississippi after civil rights leader Medgar Evers was murdered. In 2011, President Barack Obama awarded Russell the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Terry spoke to Bill Russell in 2001, when he'd published a book called "Russell Rules: 11 Lessons On Leadership." Russell began by talking about how the Celtics developed defensive skills among their players.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

BILL RUSSELL: We had a drill that we would put our hands out in front and move them away, left hand go left and right hand would go right. And see how long - how far you could take them and still see them, both at the same time. And you see, so that if I'm in the right position using my peripheral vision, about 90% of the time I can see all 10 players and two or three referees.

TERRY GROSS: Well, let me put this into play for a second. Say, I mean, you led the NBA in rebounding for several seasons. Say you're getting a ball on the rebound, and you're using your peripheral vision to see where the rest of your team is so you can figure out who to tap the ball to. Tell me what's going through your mind, what you're doing physically and mentally on this rebound.

RUSSELL: Well, first of all, to get the rebound, I try to get to position before the shot's taken. You see, if you watch a player, see, you have to count on players being good, first of all. And one of the things that make you good is consistency. So when I say, for example, I see Jerry West setting K.C. up to take a jump shot from the right side. Well, I know most of the time, if he misses where the rebound's going to go because he's consistent. I have to count on his greatness. So I started going to where his misses go. OK.

Now, when you mentioned I get a rebound, I've collaborated with Cousey or K.C. or whoever my point guard is. When the shot's taken, they had to go to an open spot, either on the left side of the right side, which we've talked about before. And so I use my peripheral vision as I make sure I got rebound first. And then I look out the corner of my eye. And if we're at home, I look for a white uniform in that spot, just the white, the color. Or if we're on the road, I look for the green. And so all I know is I see that green just as the color. I don't have time to focus in so that I can see the whole person. And then I just - most of the time before I landed, I would have passed the ball to the uniform. And that would start our fast break. There's only one problem with that, though.

GROSS: Yeah.

RUSSELL: I don't get to shoot very much, right? Because by the time I get to the top of the key from the defense, K.C. or Cous (ph), they've gotten one of the guys a shot. 'Cause we used to get a shot - when I was having a good rebounding night defensively, we were shooting most of the time within 6 seconds. And they didn't wait for me (laughter). And every player likes to shoot.

GROSS: Let's talk a little bit about your approach to blocking your greatest opponent, which was Wilt Chamberlain. He was 5 inches taller than you were. Now, you had the ability to jump. How did you use jumping and anything else that you could do to block Chamberlain?

RUSSELL: Well, one of the things that I learned maybe in high school or in college, that when people should jump shots, for example, or most of the shots now very rarely do people shoot standing still without jumping. Now they shoot - sometime they shoot a three-pointer without jumping. But most of the shots are jump shots. Well, when you jump to shoot, you cannot jump as high as you can. Because if you do, you won't be able to shoot at the end of the - at the height. 'Cause, see, the shot starts in your feet and flows up to your body. And these are your fingertips. They may sound - Terry, but it's the truth. And so most guys that are good jumpers would jump as high as they - maybe half as high as they can jump when they shoot offensively. The defensive player is not under those constraints. He can jump as high as he possibly can because he doesn't have to shoot at the end of the jump.

And so when Wilt would take his jump, his fadeaway jump shot, first of all, I was left-handed. And so I didn't have to reach across my body to get to his right hand. So I picked up 3 inches right there. Then I could jump as high as I possibly can. He's limited to how high he can jump. So I pick up another 3 inches. So now I'm up with the ball. Now - but with him, if I did that too often, that would not be a intelligent thing for me to do because with all his physical talents, he was also very, very smart. And so if you did something to stop him, what he wanted to do, he would make adjustments. And you did not want him to make an adjustment.

(LAUGHTER)

RUSSELL: So what I would do sometimes is, rather than try to block the shot, is when he's setting up for the shot, push him another 2 away from the basket. That changes the angle. It's very, very minor, but it changes the angle. And so he's shooting from a different angle. And that would throw off the shots half of the time. And so he's shooting and he's making some and he's missing some. But he - I want him to have the thought that it's just because he's just shooting - not shooting good, not that I was harassing him because I didn't want him to ever think that I was harassing him because that would not be a good idea.

GROSS: Now, it sounds to me that you take a very analytical approach to the game.

RUSSELL: Well, I wouldn't put it all, like, intelligence (laughter). You got to remember now, this is not rocket science.

GROSS: (Laughter).

RUSSELL: This is a game that kids play.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: In the days when you and Wilt Chamberlain were playing, and part of your job was to prevent him from scoring, could you have become friends with him off the court? I mean, would you ever hang out together? Or was it best for you to not really get to know him as a friend and as a person so that you could just be more kind of cold and calculating on the court and not...

RUSSELL: Well, a couple things. First of all, I never tried to stop him from scoring. That would be a bad idea 'cause first of all, I would be doomed to failure. To stop him from scoring - that wasn't going to happen. What - my ambition was to make him less efficient. Say if he gets 45 points...

GROSS: Oh, right, right, right. Yeah, stop him from scoring as much.

RUSSELL: ...If I can get...

GROSS: Yeah. Yeah. That's what I meant. Yeah.

RUSSELL: Right. If he gets 45 points, if it took him 40 shots, then I've had a good night.

GROSS: Right.

RUSSELL: You understand me?

GROSS: Yes.

RUSSELL: OK. As for a friend, for five or six years, we had a Thanksgiving night game in Philadelphia at Convention Hall. You know where that is?

GROSS: Mm hmm.

RUSSELL: OK. In the middle of the afternoon, Wilt would come to the hotel, pick me up, and we'd go to his house. You know, he came from a large family - six or seven kids, you know? And I would have Thanksgiving dinner with his mother and father, his sisters and brothers. And then his mother - bless her - would let me go and get in his bed and take a nap. And then we'd go to the game and just kick the hell out of each other (laughter).

GROSS: And that was OK? It didn't prevent - it didn't, like, inhibit your ability to kick the hell out of him after, you know, his mother made you Thanksgiving dinner?

RUSSELL: No. And it didn't bother him either. He didn't mind kickin' the hell out of me. In fact, one of those one of those nights, he got 55 rebounds...

GROSS: Right.

RUSSELL: ...Against us. And so he had no - he was not inhibited in any way, shape or form or fashion because, you know, when we got on the court, we were determined to outplay each other.

GROSS: Right.

RUSSELL: Now, the outplaying each other was for him to do what he did for his team as well as possible and for me to do what I did for my team as well as possible, which were two different things. That's why I never - and he agreed - we never considered each other rivals. We could consider each other competitors because in rivalry, one guy beats the other guy. In competitiveness, we were both enormously successful.

DAVIES: Bill Russell speaking with Terry Gross, recorded in 2001. Russell died Sunday at the age of 88. We'll hear more of their conversation after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF PROPELLERHEADS SONG, "TAKE CALIFORNIA")

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. We're listening to the interview Terry Gross recorded in 2001 with Hall of Fame basketball player Bill Russell. He died Sunday at the age of 88.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: Now, you were Boston's first African American star athlete. And I think - when you joined the Celtics, I think you were the only African American on the team for a short while. Is that right?

RUSSELL: Just for one year. You know, it's funny that with the Celtics...

GROSS: Yeah.

RUSSELL: ...Within the organization, that was never an issue.

GROSS: What about outside the organization, in Boston?

RUSSELL: Well, at that time in the United States of America, that was very difficult. Now, we're talkin' 'bout...

GROSS: What year are we talking? What year did you join?

RUSSELL: I joined '56-'57 season. Now, this was like seven years before the '64 Civil Rights Act and before the Brown v. School Board. This is before all of those things. And in this country at that time, it's very uncomfortable for African Americans in all walks of life. What made Boston unique was that in Roxbury, over 90% of the African Americans lived within two or three miles of each other. But that was also true of the North End with the Italians and it was also true in Southie with the Irish Catholics. And then there was Brookline with the Brahmans. And there was a phrase they used to use, that the Cabots only talk to the Lodges, and the Lodges only to talk to God.

GROSS: Right.

RUSSELL: And so - and then you had the Jewish community. And so all these communities were separate. And they were equally mean to everybody (laughter), you know? And so it was like - it was more than just a race thing. It was also a cultural and religious thing. And so - and I spoke about it. But I'll say this. The only reason I spoke about it in Boston was that's where I was living. You understand? I wasn't in San Francisco talking about Boston. I wasn't in Cleveland talking about Boston. I was in Boston talking about Boston. You understand me?

GROSS: Yeah. Now, what about the fans when you were playing? Did you feel that the fans in Boston were with you, or did you feel that, like, white fans were uncomfortable rooting for a Black player?

RUSSELL: To a certain degree - and that still exists. What happened is, for example, my second year in the league, I was the most valuable player. And in those days, the MVP was picked by the players. So my peers picked me as the most valuable player in the league. The all-league team was picked by the writers. I was second team all-league. So now, with my peers, I was the best player playing. But with the writers, I was just sixth or seventh best player playing. And so the fans - which, quite understandably - they said, you know, that's the way it is, you know? I'd always played to try to win every game. But of course, I had found earlier in my life that these awards and things were extremely political. That's a polite way of saying it. And I would never let people that really don't know what's going on define to me or assign to me a place in history.

GROSS: Right.

RUSSELL: None that I would accept. You understand me?

GROSS: Yeah.

RUSSELL: And so that I have a sense of self that I know what I did, how I did it and what I accomplished.

GROSS: Here's a really important question. How do you feel about the longer, baggier shorts that players wear today compared to the shorter, tighter ones that players wore in your day?

RUSSELL: Well, see, when we were young and energetic and the young ladies could see our thighs...

GROSS: Yeah.

RUSSELL: ...We thought that was very attractive (laughter). But do you know how the long shorts came to be?

GROSS: No. No, I don't.

RUSSELL: Well, that's another thing we can thank my good friend, Michael Jordan. What happened was when he went to the Bulls - now, this is a story that I've been told. When he went to the Bulls, he was - like all of us, he had some superstitions. So what he did was he wore his North Carolina Carolina blue and white shorts under his Bulls shorts. And so every time he'd fall or go do something like that, you could see the blue underneath. Well, from what I hear, Commissioner Collins says, hey, listen, that's out of uniform. You cannot have that showing. So rather than stop wearing his shorts, he had his Bulls shorts made longer so they would cover up the blue. And so when Michael starts wearing longer shorts - and Michael was the man - and so everybody started wearing it. Hey, if Michael's wearing them - if it's good enough for him, if that works for him, maybe I'll try it. It might help. And so all these guys are getting long and longer shorts. But they have a limit, you know, on how close they can be to the knees and all that kind of stuff. I just think it's amusing as heck, you know?

And (inaudible) - you know, in this culture, we have a hair thing, you know? It's like when Bill Walton was really playing great at Portland, he wore a ponytail and a beard, and people were up in arms about that, you know? Athletes are not supposed to do that. That's for the hippies, you know. And then when I was a rookie, I hadn't started shaving, so I had a beard. And you have no idea how much conversation about the beard, which had nothing to do with anything. And now these guys are wearing these - they call cornrows. And the white guys can't do that. But when I was playing, a lot of the white guys grew crew cuts. I couldn't do that.

(LAUGHTER)

RUSSELL: And so, you know, it's like - I just - it's so funny to me when I see things that people get upset about.

GROSS: And how things go in and out of fashion.

RUSSELL: Yeah. Yeah, you know?

GROSS: Bill Russell, one last question. Can you still jump? Do you have any reason to jump?

RUSSELL: I jump for joy sometimes because that's an integral part of my life. One of the first things that I remember as a kid was running along and just jumping just for the joy. I think jumping is really, really, really important part of our psyche. You can jump for many reasons, you know, and it's an expression. And so now I don't try to dunk anymore. I go for more pedestrian type of activities nowadays. So I'll - there's a place where I - if I have to get from one place to the other, I'd rather walk than run. So then when I get there, I can do whatever I want to do instead of having to sit down and rest for 10 minutes.

GROSS: Right. Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us.

RUSSELL: Terry Gross, you have no idea what a thrill it is to converse with you.

DAVIES: Hall of Fame basketball player Bill Russell speaking with Terry Gross in 2001. Russell died Sunday at the age of 88. Coming up, we remember musician and folklorist Mick Moloney, who revived long-forgotten Irish songs. And Ken Tucker reviews "Renaissance," Beyonce's first studio album in six years. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF WYNTON MARSALIS AND THE LINCOLN CENTER JAZZ ORCHESTRA'S "JUMP START - THE MASTERY OF MELANCHOLY: JUMP")

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. Mick Moloney, a beloved musician and folklorist who revived centuries-old, forgotten Irish songs, died last week at the age of 77 at his home in Manhattan. A colleague at New York University's Glucksman Ireland House where Moloney taught said upon hearing of Moloney's death, a great flame of musical joy and friendship has been extinguished. Moloney is credited with bringing traditional Irish music to a wider audience and with encouraging female instrumentalists in the male-dominated field of music. He sang and played guitar, mandolin and banjo and recorded or produced more than 70 albums of Irish music.

Moloney was born in Ireland and emigrated to the U.S. In 1999, he received a National Heritage Award for his work in public folklore from the National Endowment for the Arts. Moloney was passionate about exploring connections between Irish, African and American roots music. He wrote the book "Far From The Shamrock Shore: The Story Of Irish-American Immigration Through Song," which was accompanied by a CD of songs.

We're going to listen to excerpts of two of his interviews with Terry Gross. The first was recorded in 2006 after the release of his album "McNally's Row Of Flats," which featured Irish American songs of New York in the 1870s and '80s by the songwriting team Ed Harrigan and David Braham.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

TERRY GROSS: Mick Moloney, welcome to FRESH AIR. I'd like you to introduce the first track on the new CD, which is called "McNally's Row Of Flats." Would you describe this as an - one of the really early songs about city life in America?

MICK MOLONEY: It is indeed one of the early songs about city life in America, and it comes out of the context of Lower East Side Manhattan where Ed Harrigan lived along with David Braham. This was a time in the early 1880s - when the song was written - when Irish immigrants were living beside Italian immigrants. And they were also living beside African Americans and Chinese immigrants, Eastern European immigrants arriving - mostly Jewish - from Russia and Ukraine. And the whole thing was a real multicultural mosaic. And the song gives a very good flavor of that.

GROSS: OK. A song about multiculturalism long before anybody invented the word. (Laughter) Here it is, "McNally's Row Of Flats."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MCNALLY'S ROW OF FLATS")

MOLONEY: (Singing) Down in Bottle Alley lived Timothy McNally, a decent politician and a gentleman at that - beloved by all the ladies, the garsuns (ph) and the babies that occupy the building called McNally's row of flats. And it's Ireland and Italy, Jerusalem and Germany, Chinese and Africans and a paradise for rats. All jumbled up together in the snow and rainy weather, they constitute the tenants in McNally's row of flats. That great conglomeration of men from every nation, the tower of Babylonium (ph), it couldn't equal that. A peculiar institution where the brogues without dilution, they rattled on together in McNally's row of flats. And it's Ireland and Italy, Jerusalem and Germany, Chinese and Africans and a paradise for rats. All jumbled up together in the snow and rainy weather, they constitute the tenants in McNally's row of flats.

GROSS: Would you just place us musically here? I mean, this is an era - we're talking, like, 18 seven - 1870s to 1890s?

MOLONEY: Mmm-hmm.

GROSS: And so it kind of precedes Tin Pan Alley.

MOLONEY: It does, yes.

GROSS: So what are the entertainments of that time?

MOLONEY: Well, you would think of Gilbert and Sullivan around that era. That's the late 1870s. Actually, Harrigan and Braham started writing songs about six or seven years before Gilbert and Sullivan. Some of the songs have somewhat of the same feel to them. Of course, Gilbert and Sullivan go into opera and operetta, and Harrigan and Braham and Hart, they stick with musical comedy, musical theater. Let's say a song like, say, "The Mulligan Guard," which was their first big hit - if you look at the sheet music, it'll go something like this.

(Singing) We crave your condescension. We'll tell you what we know from marching in the Mulligan Guard in the Sligo Ward below. Our captain's name was Hussey, a Tipperary man. He shouldered his sword like a Russian duke whenever he took command. We shouldered guns and marched and marched away. From Baxter Street, we marched to Avenue A. Our fifes and drums, so sweetly they did play as we marched, marched, marched in the Mulligan Guard.

Now, when I went and listened to that in sheet music, it didn't sound like that much of a big deal. And I knew that it needed something as a window into the past to make it more evocative of the original feel of the music in this context. This was the era of marching bands, of course. So I went to Vince Giordano, who has a band, the Nighthawks, and...

GROSS: They do swing tunes and early jazz.

MOLONEY: Yeah, early jazz. And this was a little bit before his time. With him and his arranger, John Gill, who also plays in the band, we sort of stepped back another few decades, said, what might this have sounded like in a pit orchestra in the Harrigan and Hart and Braham era? You're talking about the 1870s. And we did what we felt would be a fairly decent reconstruction of what it would have sounded like then with the feel, however, of today as well. Because the intent was never - when I started making this CD, the intent was never to reconstruct anything but to, more or less, get the flavor of what it was like and then do it as if it would have been done today by Harrigan.

GROSS: Well, why don't we hear how it sounds on your CD...

MOLONEY: Yeah.

GROSS: ...With Vince Giordano's band behind you? So this is "The Mulligan Guards" (ph).

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE MULLIGAN GUARDS")

MOLONEY: (Singing) We crave your condescension. We'll tell you what we know of marching in the Mulligan Guard from the Sligo Ward below. Our captain's name was Hussey, a Tipperary man. He carried his sword like a Russian duke whenever he took command.

Forward. March.

(Singing) We shouldered guns and marched and marched away. From Baxter Street, we marched to Avenue A. Our fifes and drums, so sweetly they did play as we marched, marched, marched in the Mulligan Guard.

GROSS: Now, this song is about - what? - a neighborhood militia?

MOLONEY: A neighborhood militia. Because after the Civil War, there were a lot of people dressed up with nowhere to go. And the whole idea of having militias that were going to target shooting really proliferated New York. Dickens wrote a lot about it. He was appalled by the number of people who clogged up the arterial routes of Manhattan any given Sunday - basically an excuse to have a big picnic and drink a lot. And a lot of these target companies, as they were called, were ethnically and fraternally based and often based in particular neighborhoods. So they were very competitive. So the whole idea was really to go and do some target shooting. But that somehow got overwhelmed by the idea of having a big party, lots of drunkenness. This was very New York, very urban New York.

So this was satire from the very start. And the strange thing about it was that the song became the most popular song ever for Ed Harrigan and David Braham. And it was taken up by almost all the military bands. John Philip Sousa's band played it. Gilmore's band played it. It was even played in all the British regimental bands. And Kipling in his novel "Kim" even mentions a regimental British band in India playing "The Mulligan Guard," even calls the first chorus. I doubt if that old imperialists would have known it was written by an Irish American as a send up of the military.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVIES: Mick Moloney speaking with Terry Gross in 2006. He died last week at the age of 77. After a break, we'll listen to portions of their 2009 interview. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MICK MOLONEY'S "REELS: DUNMORE LASSIES/MCFADDEN'S HANDSOME DAUGHTER")

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. We're listening to our interviews with musician and folklorist Mick Moloney, who died last week at the age of 77. He spoke with Terry Gross in 2009 after the release of his CD "If It Wasn't For The Irish And The Jews," which featured Tin Pan Alley collaborations between Irish and Jewish songwriters. They began with the title track, written in 1912 by William Jerome, who was Irish, and Jean Schwartz, who was Jewish. Moloney sings on the track and is accompanied by Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IF IT WASN'T FOR THE IRISH AND THE JEWS")

MOLONEY: (Singing) I've just returned from Europe. I've seen London and Paris. And I'm glad to get back home to Yankee land. In fact, the little USA looks better now to me. It's the real place for the real folks. Understand? But still, I often sit and think, what would this country do if it hadn't men like Rosenstein and Hughes? We'd surely have a kingdom. There'd be no democracy if it wasn't for the Irish and the Jews. What would this great Yankee nation really, really ever do if it wasn't for a Levy, a Monahan or Donohue? Where would we get our policemen? Why, Uncle Sam would have the blues without the Pats and Isadores. There'd be no big department stores if it wasn't for the Irish and the Jews.

GROSS: Mick Moloney, welcome back to FRESH AIR. Was the pairing between Irish and Jewish songwriters different than any other pairing in Tin Pan Alley?

MOLONEY: I think it was because, first of all, the Irish had dominated American popular music, really, for the whole of the 19th century. You think of major figures like Thomas Moore. You think of Dan Emmett, who wrote "Dixie." You think of Stephen Foster, who would have been Scotch-Irish. You think of Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, who wrote "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." You think of Victor Herbert, who introduced operetta to America. The list goes on and on. And I think the Irish would have come from a performing arts culture where music and dance and storytelling were always highly valued.

And suddenly, you have new immigration from a very similar culture, a culture that - where it's very vocal. It's very much involved in the arts. It's a diaspora, like the Irish. They're not going back to where they came from for, perhaps, different reasons. And they take to the stage, you know, right away. And in the 1890s, you see people like Al Dubin arriving in Philadelphia. He's only three at the time. And he won't go to school. He wants to be a songwriter. And music was declasse. It was on the fringes. And both the Irish and the Jews at various times were on the fringes of society. And I think the entertainment world - the sports world, perhaps, in another way - has been a place where people who can't get on so easily in other aspects of life, that they tend to gravitate towards. So I think it was a very good mix.

GROSS: You mentioned Al Dubin. And he's, you know, a Jewish lyricist who worked a lot with Harry Warren in the '20s and '30s. And he wrote lyrics for, like, Busby Berkeley musicals, lyrics for songs like "Lullaby Of Broadway," "42nd Street," "I Only Have Eyes For You," "We're In The Money." But he also writes this, like, Irish song that you have featured on your CD. It's called 'Twas Only An Irishman's Dream. And the lyric includes, oh, the shamrocks are blooming on Broadway.

MOLONEY: (Laughter) Yeah.

GROSS: Every girl is an Irish colleen. And it's so funny to think of this, like, Jewish songwriter writing from the point of view of an Irish American who's, like, dreaming that everything in Manhattan is really Irish. On one level, it's really phony because he's writing from a point of view that he doesn't have. (Laughter) He's not he's not Irish American. He's Jewish American. His story is so different. On the other hand, that doesn't mean that the song would mean any less to the people who hear it.

MOLONEY: When I discovered it first, I thought it was complete, absolute nonsense, you know? Growing up in Ireland and growing up in the rain and digging potatoes - all these Tin Pan Alley songs, they had no connection with any kind of reality that I would have known in Ireland growing up. But, you know, my attitude to all that changed. In 1995, I was part of a team of a lot of Irish academics, historians, sports writers and musicians who travelled across America commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Great Irish Famine. And I was in places that I hadn't been before - Peoria, Ill., Mauldin, Des Moines, to mention but many. And after the talk, people in their 80s came up to me in shock and said, now we know for the first time why our grandparents never talked about Ireland.

And, you know, the penny dropped right away that these people were trauma victims. They were refugees. And, you know, my friends and colleagues tell me that there's the same kind of survivor guilt among Holocaust victims. It would have been that, perhaps, among the Irish. What are you going to tell your children, that you guarded your food supply when you watched your neighbors die or other members of your family die, that you were one of the lucky ones who came to America? And suddenly, I realized why Tin Pan Alley, these images, which are invented images of kind of an imagined wholeness, why they were attractive to people. It was good stuff. It was really good stuff. There was nothing bad about it. And I'm sure people realized that, you know, this was kind of a fantasy world. But, you know, we need good things to think about and good things to tell our children and our grandchildren. So I think that they were catering for a market. They were expert craftsmen. They knew how to construct sounds. The melodies are beautiful. The lyrics are clever. And "'Twas Only An Irishman's Dream," I think is one of the great songs of Tin Pan Alley and one of Al Dubin's greatest.

MOLONEY: Mick, I'm going to ask you to perform an excerpt of one of the songs on your CD called "The Old Bog Road." And I think this is a really good example of the you know, I'm in New York, but I'm yearning for my home in Ireland kind of song. And it's not a song I've heard before. So tell us the story behind this one and why you chose it.

MOLONEY: Yes, a song I heard, in fact, far too many times before. Every bad tenor in my native Limerick when he got drunk felt obliged to sing it and inflict it on the whole population. So I hated the song with a passion. I always thought it was a Tin Pan Alley song from Broadway, and in a sense it was because it was written by a woman called Teresa Brayton, who was a poet. And she was married in - her maiden name was Boyle (ph). She was married and living in Broadway and had a real strong sense of being detached from home and meeting people who never had gone home and couldn't go home. And she wrote it, and the music was put on later. But my great mentor, Frank Harte, sang it with a mournful style, not melodramatic at all. And I suddenly realized the beauty of the song. And all my resistance went away.

And it goes, (playing guitar, singing) my feet are here on Broadway this blessed harvest morn. But oh, the ache that's in my heart for the spot where I was born. My weary hands are blistered through work in cold and heat. But oh, to swing a scythe today through fields of Irish wheat. Had I the chance to journey back or own a king's abode, I'd sooner see the hawthorn tree by the old bog road.

GROSS: And growing up in Ireland, did this song make no sense to you? Because, like, were you thinking, exactly what are you yearning for?

MOLONEY: Well, it made sense on one level because almost everybody I knew in Ireland had emigrants in England or America. So the idea of being away from home, of being in an exile, as we called it, culturally, that made sense. But it was kind of schmaltzy. You know, and when you're young, you're not nostalgic, generally speaking. You want to get on with things. And I was more into listening to The Beatles and the rock and The Rolling Stones than I was listening to "The Old Bog Road." Then when I came to America, my attitude to the song changed, and the more years I spent here, the more I can empathize with those people who never could go home.

GROSS: Well, Mick Moloney, it's been great to talk with you again. Thank you so much.

MOLONEY: It's a pleasure.

DAVIES: Mick Moloney speaking with Terry Gross in 2009. He died last week at the age of 77. At the time of his death, he was working on a film called "Two Roads Diverged" about how Irish Americans and African Americans in the 19th and 20th century America found common ground through music and dance.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GREEN GROWS THE LAUREL")

MOLONEY: (Singing) Green grows the laurel. Soft falls the dew. Sorry am I, love, I'm parted with you. Sorry am I, love, contented must be. She loves another far better than me. I passed my love's window early and late. The look that she gave me - it made my heart break. The look that she gave me would 10,000 kill. She loves another, but I love her still. Green grows the laurel. Soft falls the dew. Sorry am I, love, I'm parted with you. Sorry am I, love, contented must be. She loves another far better than me.

DAVIES: Coming up, Ken Tucker reviews Beyonce's first studio album in six years. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF BRAD MEHLDAU'S "BLACK BIRD")

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. The first new Beyonce studio album in six years is here and it's called "Renaissance." The pop star says the 16 tracks were recorded during the pandemic. Our rock critic, Ken Tucker, says while the music is dense with allusions to different eras of pop music, Beyonce's performances have a lightness and agility that gives the project an often thrilling energy. Here's Ken's review.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BREAK MY SOUL")

BEYONCE: (Singing) You won't break my soul. You won't break my soul. You won't break my soul. You won't break my soul. I'm telling everybody, everybody, everybody, everybody. Now, I just fell in love. And I just quit my job. I'm gonna find new drive. Damn, they work me so damn hard. Work by nine, then off past 5. And they work my nerves. That's why I cannot sleep at night.

KEN TUCKER, BYLINE: That's "Break My Soul," the first single from Beyonce's new album, "Renaissance." "Break My Soul" was released a few weeks before the album, and with its lyric about escaping the deadening drudgery of 9-5 work was widely interpreted as Beyonce's take on the pandemic-inspired great resignation. Little did we know that what was to follow was a whole album about the freedom of escapism.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALIEN SUPERSTAR")

BEYONCE: (Singing) I'm one of one. I'm No. 1. I'm the only one. Don't even waste your time trying to compete with me. No one else in this world can think like me. I'm twisted. I'll contradict it. Keep him addicted. Lies on his lips, I lick it. Unique. That's what you are. Stilettos kicking vintage crystal off the bar. Category - bad - I'm the bar. Alien superstar. Whip, whip. I'm too classy for this world, forever, I'm that girl. Feed you diamonds and pearls, oh, baby. I'm too classy...

TUCKER: That's "Alien Superstar," over whose clattering beats Beyonce applies a layer of her patented positive thinking, only half joking that she's, quote, "too classy for this world." "Alien Superstar" gives you an idea of the way many songs here are constructed around rhythms and riffs that pulse and throb while Beyonce's vocal soars atop the music. The best example of this is the album's longest track called "Virgo's Groove," as Beyonce croons over a languid, sneaky beat.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "VIRGO'S GROOVE")

BEYONCE: (Singing) Baby, come over. Come be alone with me tonight. All the emotions. It's washing over me tonight. Right here. Right now. Iced up. Bite down. Baby, lock in right now. I want it right here, right now. Cuddled up on the couch. Motorboat, baby, spin around. Slow-mo coming out my house. I want it right here, right now.

TUCKER: At 6-minutes-plus, "Virgo's Groove" is at once very contemporary and very 1980s. Its sound owes something to the Michael Jackson-Quincy Jones albums of that era. And its hypnotic hook reminds me of Lakeside's great 1980 hit "Fantastic Voyage." Now listen to the way Beyonce rolls it back further to the '70s and nods to Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" on the song "Summer Renaissance."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SUMMER RENAISSANCE")

BEYONCE: (Singing) It's so good. It's so good. It's so good. It's so good. Oh, it's so good. It's so good. It's so good. It's so good. It's so good.

TUCKER: Elsewhere on "Renaissance," Beyonce offers the song "Cuff it," a thick slice of R&B that recalls Funkadelic's "Not Just Knee Deep." And on another standout track, "Move," she enlists dance music pioneer Grace Jones with some emphasis on Detroit techno music.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MOVE")

BEYONCE: (Singing) Move, move, move. Yeah, you got to move, move. Anything you do will be held against you. You have to move, move, move. Skrrt (ph) off, make room. Stampede coming through. Big boss on the move. Yeah. Bounce it.

TUCKER: There are some breathtaking moments on "Renaissance," which are all the more impressive for the way Beyonce delivers them so casually. Listen to the way she almost buries this gorgeously fluid burst of phrasing toward the end of the song "Pure Honey." Lesser artists would build a whole hit single around a verse that Beyonce just tosses off.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PURE HONEY")

BEYONCE: (Singing) You know it's Friday night, and I'm ready to drive. Throw me them keys. Baby, let's go. Friday night and I'm ready to drive. Throw me them keys. Baby, let's go. We jump in the car, quarter tank of gas. World's at war, low on cash. Jump in the car, quarter tank of gas, world's at war, low on cash. I ain't never felt a feeling like this. You been in love but not like this. Sweet honey sin, taste it on your lips. Up and down on it, light switch.

TUCKER: Except for the song titled "America Has A Problem" and a fleeting reference to the electoral defeat of Donald Trump, there's little of the social commentary that was laced through her previous album, 2016's "Lemonade." But the escapist aesthetic of "Renaissance" is its own kind of statement. Beyonce's way of asserting the primacy of Black musical forms throughout American pop history. And "Renaissance" places Beyonce at the very center of pop music right now.

DAVIES: Rock critic Ken Tucker reviewed Beyonce's new album called "Renaissance." On Monday's show, actor Melanie Lynskey. She's nominated for an Emmy for her leading role in the Showtime series "Yellowjackets." The show tells the story of a girls soccer team that went down in a plane crash in 1996 and had to survive in the wilderness for over a year. Lewinsky's other films include "Heavenly Creatures," "Up In The Air," "The Informant" and "Don't Look Up." I hope you can join us.

FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and Al Banks. For Terry Gross, I'm Dave Davies.

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.