We’re We’re talking about Rob Reider.

Rob Reider, he was like the boy next door, an everyman.

The kind of guy your parents would like, neighbors would like, and television audiences loved.

He was funny, down to earth, he could sing and dance.

He even did cartoon voices.

He was the ultimate pro, just ask anybody who worked with him.

He’s still doing voice work and announcing today.

Rob Reider, another major talent who contributed to the Golden Age of Local Television.

I am so happy to have you here today, Rob, because you were the reason I used to watch The Braun Show.

No kidding.

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah, really.

You were the reason that I -- well, I’m from Ludlow and it was part of the city ordinance.

You had to watch Braun.

[laughs] Did they give tickets to people who were watching another channel or something?

Or just a warning?

Just a warning.

No, Oh, was I ever.

Yeah, the songs that you would do.

I mean, well, you know, a lot of the kids that I’d grown up with and everything were listening to metal rock and to things like that.

I was listening to Denver, I was listening to John Prine, you know, those types of music that I was listening to.

And you were the only guy that was on the air that was actually playing that kind of music.

It was interesting that when I -- before I came to the University of Cincinnati, just the summer before, my parents in Columbus, Ohio, took me to a club that I would have been too young to go into myself.

And there was a group there, Denver, Boise and Johnson.

It was what had become of.. the original Mitchell Trio member left one, last one, Mike Koblik, left the group.

But John Denver was there and I got a chance to meet him.

I knew who he was.

At that point, John Dusseldorf or was he still there?

John Denver -- Deutschendorf, Deutschendorf, yeah.

And I said, “John, I’m going to the University of Cincinnati next month.

Where is folk music in Cincinnati?” And he said, “The Queen City Balladeers.” And so, I looked them up.

Turns out I was in a dorm right down the street from the YMCA and the coffee house where the Queen City Balladeers met in the basement of the Y every Sunday night.

And I showed up with my 12-string guitar and said, “John Denver sent me.” [laughs] Well, that’s kind of a nice calling card to have.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then I sang his version, his rendition of the Bells of Rhymney, the Pete Seeger song that’s done on 12-string.

And then later on, I was John’s intermission act at one of the concerts he did before he was a star.

And he let me do Bells of Rhymney that night.

Holy cow.

That’s incredible.

His signature song, he let me do.

That’s wonderful.

So when did you start playing?

I started playing when I got a ukulele from my parents for my eighth birthday, 1956.

And I don’t have the ukulele, but I still have the case.

Okay.

And ballpoint pen on the.. Reider that I wrote in there.

But there were guitars.

There was music around my house forever.

My grandmother came from Cincinnati.

She attended Hughes High School and was a student at the Conservatory of Music at the time.

Then my mom got involved in music.

She was at Ohio Wesleyan University for a while, went to New York to study at Juilliard, and in 1939 was voted society’s number one songstress.

She had a date with Robert Stack.

We’ve got pictures of her.

She had a date with John F. Kennedy.

She had several dates with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s son.

She was a comer.

But she ended up getting married, getting out of the business, being in television in Pennsylvania, radio in Pennsylvania.

And then my dad came to Columbus, Ohio, and my mom, we all followed.

My dad obviously was 55 or 56, and he went to work in Columbus.

My mom started working at WBNS TV and eventually connected with Dick Murgatroyd.

So, by 1964, when Dick Murgatroyd, who became the producer.. Lyons show and then the Braun Show, in ‘64 he was working at Channel 4.

I was a guest with my folk group, my Peter, Paul, and Mary sound-alike or attempt to sound-alike group.

Okay.

But I got to ask you.

Everybody has a name for their first band.

The band was named?

The Waysiders.

The Waysiders, there we go.

Yes.

So we sang on what was then Jerry Rasor’s dance party on WLWC in Columbus.

That’s when I met Murgatroyd, ‘64.

We’re going on 60 years that we’ve known each other.

He’s older than I am.

[laughs] So now, it’s Murg who brought you into then the fall, so you get to UC.

Sort of.

You get to UC.

Got to UC.

Now, after high school, I ha.. and the Pennsylvanians.

And as a result of that, when I got t..

Rouse, a name we all know around here, huge beneficiary -- benefactor of the arts in town, Jack asked me to sing at the 150th birthday celebration of the University of Cincinnati in the garden room at the old Beverly Hills Supper Club.

Marian Spellman heard me, told Bob Braun about me.

They brought me in.

I sang that song, The Bells of Rhymney.

It meant nothing to the Braun Show audience.

Nothing happened.

About a year later, John Denver was coming down to appear on the Braun Show, and I heard about it.

And I called the show, got in touch with Bob’s secretary, Rhody Bender, who was also originally in the Columbus area.

And I said, “Hi, Rhody.

This is Rob Reider.

I don’t know if you remember me or not.” “Of course I remember you,” she said.

“ John Denver’s coming down.

Can I come down .. She said, “Yes.

I saw John.

He was on the show.” After the show, Murgatroyd calls me into his office and says, “We want to try another audition.

This time we will pick the song.” Bob loaned me his chart of a song by Andy Williams called Happy Heart.

And I sang that, and it connected.

And then Sesame Street and Rubber Duckie came out.

Yeah, we couldn’t get through any interview without Rubber Duckie.

Yeah.

It was transformational for me.

Because I could do, I can do the duck voice.

I can talk like a duck.

Rub-a-dub-a-dubby.

So I could sing the song and I could kind of mimic Jim Henson’s voice for Ernie.

Hey, Bert.

How you doing?

[laughter] It worked.

It connected.

And so, that song, more than any other, got me the 13 years of work on the show.

That’s fantastic.

And I got to spend 13 years with some of the best musicians, some of the best performers, meeting some of the greats.

I mean, Bob Hope was a friend of the show.

Dick Clark was a friend of the show.

So let’s get into that.

When you were playing, when you were up there, you obviously have a folk background wit.. Who came through that sticks in your mind?

That you were like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I’m sharing a studio with?” Other than the fact that in one day, both Jimmy Carter and Billy Graham were on the show.

As I recall, same day.

I would say that the guest most influential would be the Kingston Trio, because I love their music too.

And I maintain a relationship with George Grove, who used to be with the Kingston Trio.

Other than Bob Shane, the founder, who has since passed away.

All the other founding members have gone.

But George Grove spent more years with the Kingston Trio than anybody other than Bob Shane.

And George and I are still working.

As a matter of fact, he’s got a new group called the Folk Legacy Trio.

And I played bass for them in Illinois two weekends ago on two dates for them.

And I’m going to see him next week when I go out to Las Vegas.

So the Kingston Trio, another huge influence on my music.

And so, I count it all good.

Even though I’m not doing much music anymore.

Well, that’s one of the interesting things that you, when you left the show, really got into some of the production side, correct?

Yeah.

One of the things, Rick, that I picked up on is when we would go out and do personal appearances, the PA systems were really bad.

So I put together a sound system that we could carry in a van, and I owned a van, that we could put in the van, and I could set up, and we could have better quality sound for our Bob Braun appearan.. and my own appearances.

And I ended up being the secondary user of that as I developed my company, Bright Sides Audio.

And one of my best clients over the years was a group you were associated with, the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra.

The Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, you used to come out and do the amplification for the symphony.

And at Devou Park and other places, yeah.

So, JR Cassidy, you know, this great guy.

And I always liked what he liked about making a symphony orchestra sound symphony, and it was kind of like, make it a little bit rock and roll.

Make it a little bit more present than a symphony orchestra in a hall.

So I learned tons and got to do all sorts of stuff in the audio business.

Let’s talk performing without a net, as you say, for 13 years on both Braun and The Hayride.

What did you learn about the production value for your future companies that you learned from those shows?

The production values were that the standards of what was going on on Channel 5 and the productions there for not only the Braun Show and The Hayride, but Dixon and before that, Ruth and Vivian Della Chiesa and other shows that they did, very high standards.

When I look back at the videos that still exist of what we used to do on the show, the audio was incredible, and even more so, the lighting was incredible.

I never paid much attention to it.

But Ron Whittaker, who was the technical director, he’s the guy that ran the video switcher; he was also the lighting guy, and he made us look really good.

And Bill Staples and Keith Eustace, the two audio guys that ran the audio during those days, they were phenomen.. And I’ve got to tell you, Nancy, James, and I did a concert a number of years ago and she gave me some videos that she wanted me to put into a PowerPoint presentation to show as part of our concert.

Well, she gave me -- among the videos were two performances of Nancy and me singing Paul Simon’s Gone At Last, one of which was in the studio, one of which was at the Ohio State Fair.

And as I looked at them and listened to them, I thought, “Oh, my gosh, the tempo’s the same, the key is the same and the audio’s good on both.” And for that concert, I intercut the Ohio State Fair performance and the studio performance and it was freaking seamless.

Wow.

I mean, to the folks that are listening to this, to try and match up two separate performances, one live, one studio, and match them up into one tape is incredible.

Yeah, it was incredible.

And the other probably best thing, the best thing we ever did was Teddy Radcliffe’s arrangement of his Cole Porter medley.

With Mary Ellen and Nancy, Teddy and the band and I got to sing those great songs.

And what Teddy wrote and won an Emmy for was magic.

I miss Mary Ellen, but what the three of us got to sing on that that Teddy wrote was absolutely brilliant.

There was one line in Night and Day, Night and Day, why is it so?

That this longing for you follows.

Wherever I go.

I sang the melody, and Teddy wrote this parallel chromatic harmony against that.

It was the best harmony I’ve ever sung in my life.

The musicianship, the technical production, and the talent of the people I got to work with was unsurpassed.

There was nobody better out there on TV than we were, nobody.

Not the Woke people, not anybody.

And we got to sing anything we wanted.

Murgatroyd said to us once, “You guys don’t know how good you have it.

You’ve got your performing life where you get to perform anything you want to do,” which we did.

I mean, we did Earth, Wind & Fire, I did John Denver, I did show tunes, I did whatever.

And we had our personal lives as well, where we could go home and just be at home.

It took away my desire to chase Broadway or Hollywood.

I was doing everything I wanted to do.

When you were doing those performances, for instance, the Cole Porter stuff, how were the rehearsals versus the live version of that when you would, you said the harmonies were -- you know, harmonies are the toughest thing to do .. And so, you have these, you know, the harmonies coming through in the rehearsals, and yet you nail them on the live.

It’s a tough qu.. Rick, because we did that kind of stuff all the time, and it became second nature.

But when -- So when you sang with somebody, you knew where they were -- you were able to tell where Mary Ellen was going or where Colleen was going to follow them?

Yes.

Or they would follow you.

Yes, they would do that.

And so, what we had was the ability to put things together ahead of time and work out, “Here’s where you’re and then everybody watched everybody and everybody listened to everybody, so the blend was good.

But my son, Robbie, saw the Cole Porter medley at our old house years ago.

He said, “You guys did that live?” I said, “Yeah.” Not thinking.

He said, “How much did you rehearse?” I said, “I don’t know, probably four hours at home to learn it and two hours with the band, and then we did it.” He couldn’t believe it.

But I would bet that if I were to take the original recording of the Cole Porter medley, which we have on tape, and put it together with another recording that we did of par.. as part of the Emmy Awards presentation that Bob hosted downtown, I think it was in the Hall of Mirrors, if not the Hall of Mirrors, something downtown.

If we were to do all of that, put those together, I bet you it would go together just as well as that Garnet last did.

That was the kind of people we worked with.

And the kind of musicians you had behind you as well.

It was not only the era of the boy singer and the girl singer, but you had musicians that came through powerfully.

Oh, that could sight-read like crazy.

And that wasn’t just the Braun Show and the Hayride.

The Hayride, it was a lot of head arrangements and Nashville numb.. but the Braun Show and the Dixon shows, those shows were, everybody knew exactly what they were going to do except for the Dixon show, but they didn’t know what they were going to do.

[laughter] Speaking about not knowing what you’re going to do, I almost feel like I should segue into a commercial because anybody doing the Braun Show would have to do live commercials.

Did you ever get with the live commercials with Murgatroyd pointing at you what to talk about?

No.

Or Bob wouldn’t punt that to you?

We knew ahead of time.

He says, “You do Tide today.” I say, “Okay.” So if we did Tide, that was, we just figured out, .. the .. Rick, was Tide’s in, dirt’s out, as I recall.

But we would do the commercial.

We would sit there.

And there were some interesting situations where some peo.. a little difficulty.

They said they should go into announcer mode to do the Tide, to do the commercials, and Bob said, “No.

No, just do it like you.” And it is so amazing, Rick, that now in voiceover -- [crosstalk] you found a voice with that.

Exactly.

Yeah.

But they have to really hear.

Hi, this is Tide.

You should buy it.

Bu.. Bob knew that.

Ruth knew that.

Paul Dixon knew that.

We all knew that inherently way back in those years.

They just wanted it to be genuine and real as we live with it.

If you want me to talk about Oreo cookies, I’ll do you a minute on Oreo cookies.

You know, I can do that.

Show us.

Okay, wait a minute.

[laughs] The folks at Nabisco, they have the number one selling cookie in the world.

And there’s an old jingle that says, a kid will eat the middle of an Oreo first and save the chocolate cookie outsides for last.

It’s delicious, whether you’re going to dip it in milk or you’re going to crumble it up over some ice cream.

The folks at Nabisco have that all figured out with that great cream filling on the inside and the dark cookies.

It has become a staple all around the world.

There’s 30 seconds, and I’ll do 30 seconds more if you want.

[laughs] That’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

Bravo.

Thank you.

I want an Oreo right now, actually.

I like to read out a Kroger where the sad is.

I want to run down to Kroger and buy.

What is sad is that I never had to pay for my Oreos back then.

[laughs].

Too many people laughing off set here.

Still down.

[laughter] But working without a net made it possible for me to do air shows, to announce air shows.

There’s where I wanted to go next.

How does a guy who has been singing, who has been the boy singer, how do you end up announcing air shows?

[laughs] And I say this because I get ready for this interview, I thought I’d look up and find your Wikipedia page and do all this stuff, do the quick rundown.

I have a Wikipedia page?

[crossta.. and all I get are these things about air shows.

I’m thinking, “Oh, there’s another guy with your name that does air shows, apparently.” Then I look at the pictures and go, no, that’s Rob.

[laughs] So how does one go from doing what you were doing, get into the production side of it, now you’re doing air shows?

Long story short, 1978, the Braun Show gets invited to do a live remote.

We took the whole cast, band, crew, mobile unit, and goes, and went up to Dayton to Vandalia and to Dayton International Airport and did a remote, 1978, the fifth year of the show.

Through ham radio and some other things, I got to start volunteering there because I was interested in aviation, loved it.

My dad and I built models and stuff, and as time went on, I got a little mic time from some people and got encouraged, and so eventually, they’re the first people who ever paid me for an air show.

Although, I’ll step back, 1978 in September of that year, there was an air show at Lincoln Airport, and on Saturday, Todd Hunter, the weatherman from Channel 9, was the announcer, and he didn’t show on Sunday.

I was working as a ham radio operator communicator for that show, and they said, “We need you to announce.” I said, “I don’t know how to announce an air show.” Well, I announced the air show, and I have one picture from that, interviewing a guy named Walt Pierce.

The picture fortunately still exists.

But anyway, as time went on, 1995, I joined the International Council of Air Shows.

2006, decided to walk away from my job at Vineyard Community Church and chase after the air show business, and since that time, I’ve done over 300 shows.

I have been awarded the International Council of Air Shows Sword of Excellence back in ‘07, which is the highest award an air show professional can receive.

And there is not a moment that I’m on stage at an air show talking about airplanes or the people who flew them or doing the commercials that I’m not acutely aware of what I learned at Channel 5 watching Bob and working with Bob on that show, because once again, it was entertainment, and there was no net.

I think the no net concept in today’s television is so missing from the shows that you watch.

I agree with that.

Even the talk shows are prer.. Yeah.

Is there any show out there, if you were to watch a show right now, if you were and wanted to see something, where would you think that the influence of what you guys did is coming forward today?

It’s probably gone.

In terms of music and stuff.

I look at videos of The Tonight Show and how that happened, or Dean Martin’s show where they -- because of his deal with NBC and his success in Las Vegas, they didn’t do retakes there.

If something went wrong, they let it go wrong.

That was real back in those days.

But now I don’t think there is things.

Maybe Bill Maher’s television show on HBO.

He has segments where it’s pretty freewheeling, and I don’t know whether that’s the whole show or not, Rick, but his show seems to have some sense of being live and unedited.

I think one of the toughest things you do right now is your voiceover work.

[chuckles] And I say that because I’ve been asked to do voiceover work and I found it to be the most complicated and hardest thing to do in the world.

Announcing a football game, a basketball game, baseball, I got that.

[laughs] Sitting down and reading a script and using the ri.. inflections and as we say, putting the emphasis on the right syllable.

I think that’s very tough to do.

Again, is that something that kind of wanders through from your Braun Day, the ability to do it?

It’s not so much that as it is acting.. And just the desire to tell a story.

And I’ve gotten some great opportunities here.

Peter Bronson’s book on the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire is a book that I narrated for him.

I did that audiobook.

Is that the book?

I haven’t heard the narration.

But I -- Yeah.

I think it was the second boo..

But he has a little bit of historical fiction to help the narrative of it by giving some characters, some real characters, some dialogue that was made up from actual fact to work.

And so, I got to do so..

But I find it a big challenge.

I find it enjoyable.

I find it -- well, in 2019, Rick, I started thinking, “What am I going to do after air shows?

I’m over 70.

At the time of this taping, I am 75 years old.” And in 2019, I thought, “What am I going to do after air shows?” And I thought, “I think I’d like to see my studio in my basement pay for itself.” Because in my old house in Montgomery, Ohio, it did.

And after my wife passed away in ‘07, I remarried in 2012.

And I moved to Loveland.

And I built a studio in the basement of our house.

And I wanted to see that make money.

And also, my son, Robbie, observed something that I had not really thought of.

He said,.. reinvented yourself thre.. What am I going to do after 70 that I can still feel worthwhile?

I’ll reinvent myself, and I’ll go..

So I did the studio.

The studio was already built, and I’d already been doing some voice work for Sporty’s Pilot Shop as the host of their pilot training video series.

Had been doing that since ‘87.

But the idea of doing audiobooks was part of what I wanted to do, but I thought I’d do more commercial.

But the audiobooks is what the market has decided that I’m good at.

So that’s why I’m doing that.

And I’m busy between now and the end of January with books.

Good for you.

I find that fascinating to be able to do that again.

It was just so far out there for me to even try.

I tried it once, and it was, again, a complete and total disaster.

[laughs] So I admire you for ..

Thanks.

there are ma.. well at reading their own books.

Others do, but sometimes it’s better for an actor to do it and to work with the author at least in the first part of the book to say, “Do you approve my approach to the book?” And if the author says, “Yes,” then the contracts are usually worked out so that at that point the voice actor has control of how things go.

Now, I have chosen in some of my books to go chapter by chapter with some of the authors, and that’s been good.

One of the books I’m just finishing up is about the Chad Mitchell Trio, a folk group from that time that was responsible for giving John Denver his break.

And I’m eager to have that book come out on Audible.

Let’s jump back to the Braun Show and music.

You mentioned the Kingston Trio, we mentioned Denver.

Who else, singer-wise, came through that you just sat back and said, “Wow, I’m in the presence of something special?” [chuckles] Johnny Desmond is a guy, big band singer.

We did a big band special.

Our normal 8-piece band went to 17, and we put them all in there.

And Johnny Desmond, he delivered in such a way that just made so much sense to me.

And I think probably very few people even remember him now, but I remember his performances as one of the great ones.

There were also some good ones, but what’s difficult for me to think of is how many people there were who were better than the cast that was already there.

After Paul Dixon died, Colleen joined us, song and dance.

I mean, she was a double threat, triple threat when you talk about hosting.

People forget she was co-hosting the Braun Show.

Right.

So, .. Marian was brilliant as a performer.

She had the chops to sing legit and then do stuff that was just so silly.

And she carried it off every time.

People loved that because that was who Marian was.

People watched the show.

I don’t know w.. maybe 400,000 people in the four markets, but that’s huge for a show to have that kind of an audience.

Did you realize in looking at that audience how much of it came from northern Kentucky because of Bob?

I didn’t really, Rick.

I think that as I looked at the audience, they came from all over.

You can hear Mount Vernon up past Columbus or Indianapolis or Carmel or Muncie, Ball State.

I think that’s where Colleen was from, right?

All of those towns, so whether it was Ludlow or Fort Thomas or Montgomery or Vandalia or wherever it happened to be or Newark, Ohio, whatever.

It was just something.

Those people came.

They wanted to be on TV and get their potato chips free.

[laughter] No.

Murgatroyd is actually off-set, talking about what was in the goodie bag.

Did you get to take goodie bags home?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I’ve got to tell you.

When Randy, and Gwen, and Dave, and I were on the show, there was a point at which we were saying, “Why are we doing this waving time?

Why are we doing this?” I don’t know whether -- When the camera, when the camera, when the audience.

What a waste of time this is.

Everybody waves and the band’s playing.

White gloves, whatever, leftover from Ruth’s days, right?

I don’t know whether we were lectured or it just became apparent to us that that’s why the people were there.

They didn’t care about us.

Because once they were there, they cared about us when the.. watching us, but once they were there, they wanted their friends Newark or Mount Vernon or wherever it happened to be to say, “I saw you on the Bob Braun Show.” And once we understood that, it was good.

I work with a voiceover coach, a friend of mine who used to be in central Ohio.

And he’s now in Illinois, and he does a daily morning stream where he kind of gives voiceo.. His name is Bill DeWees.

And he talked about the people who were checking in and doing the roll call, and he said, “But YouTube, once people drop off, the YouTube algorithm, you won’t get as much.” I said, “Well, on the Braun Show, this is what we used to do.” And he knew me from the Braun Show.

That’s how we connected.

And I said, “I think you ought to read everybody’s name who checks in.” He does.

Because he knows that the people want to hear their names being mentioned.

And it makes things grow.

And it works.

So the Braun Show was the talk variety and show wave at home show, whatever.

There was a little like it.

Welk didn’t do that except when people were dancing, but they didn’t do that.

And Lawrence Welk was, I think, he had his one and a two, but he was disconnected, I think.

Oh, disconnected.

I mean, I still refer to the worst cover of all time as their cover of One Toke Over the Line.

[laughter] I mean, that is without a doubt the worst cover in the history of music.

[laughs] I should have my sense of camera.

this hand.

[laughter] You got Murgatroyd out there.

They’re trying to direct you.

One Toke Over the Line.

One Toke Over the Line.

It comes.. Toke Over the Line, Sweet Jesus.

I swear to goodness, they went ahead and did that song without any clue what it was about.

And I’m sure the musicians are going.

[laughs].

Musicians in the band.

Well, some of the hippest guys out there.

Well, yeah.

Half of them were One Toke Over the Line.

I’m assuming they didn’t walk back.

[laughter] The trombone player certainly was.

You know, there was one other guest that came on the show that just totally knocked me out.

Martin Mull.

Oh, my God.

One of the greatest comedians of all time.

And a satirical guy in terms of his musical knowledge and input.

A great guitar player.

And he came on over by the band, and he said to Bob, “I grew up during the folk music scare of the ‘60s, thought the major 7th chord was gone forever.” [laughs] And I’m going, and the guys in the band totally lost it.

And I sang a song of his called Normal.

That was you and I get normal for a change.

Yes, that’s the song.

But in the bridge, the original lyric is, it’s going to change us, honey, sexually.

From now on, we’ll just be once-a-winkers.

Now, I couldn’t do that on the road.

[crosstalk] What did you change it to?

I changed to -- I don’t know what Martin Mull was doing when he heard that, but I sang, it’s going to change our dressing habits, dear.

I’ll wear wingtips now instead of dirty sneakers.

So I did the rewrite.

It passed Buster with Murgatroyd.

[laughter] And the censors, the CBS censors, whatever.

But I don’t know what Martin Mull thought, but it was so fun to sing one of his songs with him there.

Interesting.

I never realized Martin Mull had been on the show.

Martin Mull ends up having his own talk show that is a satirical show called Fernwood Tonight -- Fernwood Tonight.

-- with Fred Willard.

Oh, gosh.

Yeah, Fred.

Happy Kyne an.. sitt.. spoof of the Braun Show, isn’t it?

Slightly.

I wonder if that affected that.

But he was a great actor.

He was a great performer.

His songs like Licks Off of Records and things.

It’s just -- Dueling Tubas.

Dueling Tubas was another great one.

To think of the folks we had, there was once when Bob was on vacation and I got to guest host the show while Bob was gone.

Richard Harris came in from the Broadway series, I think, in Columbus.

Or was it Kenley Players?

Kenley Players out of Columbus.

He came down to be on the show.

He came in, he was in sweatpants.

He did not want to be there.

And I didn’t know Richard Harris’ acting chops from anything.

But I knew what he did musically.

With MacArthur Park and The Yard.

Tramp Shining was that album.

And then the other ones, The Yard Went On Forever.

And there was a song on the second album, The Yard Went On Forever, My Boy, where he had this high A.

And so, I got to sit down with him.

I’m thinking, “Oh, I’m in trouble now.” But I got to talking about his music, and he liked it.

I said, “Where’d you get that high A?” And from then on, we were friends.

And then I was able to close it.

Murgatroyd was gone by then.

This other producer, whose name will not be mentioned, was on the show.

And I had discussed with that producer what my closing bit with Richard Harris was going to be about, an article I read in TV Guide about he and a bunch of his drunk friends wanted to go to the big soccer tournament in Great Britain.

And they had the Prime Minister’s car without the Prime Minister’s flag sticking up.

And somehow, they coerced the driver to put the Prime Min.. flags up on that limousine.

And they were ushered right into the stadium, right onto the pitch.

And out they come with Richard Harris an.. how are you doing?” [laughter] producer cut.

He cued the band.

And the producer didn’t know what the bit was.

After I told him, he screwed up the bit.

I said, “Wait, wait, wait, not yet.” So we had to finish, and then he played it a second time.

But Richard Harris went home happy, and that was one of the highlights of my life.

Anybody else stand out just from your time there that you remember a story or two that stands out that’s one of those stories that has to be told?

Gosh, there are probably so many.

But we just, looking back, and even then, some, I had an appreciation of the people that I was working with.

Steve Womack, who directed the show for a long time, and I came in on New Year’s as Bob was doing a retrospective of the year.

And Steve and I sat up in the booth, and I helped him in the timing of the seg.. And he remembers that.

I had forgotten it, but we had a chat on the phone not long ago and talking about that.

I learned such good things, one of which is, and I can see it, and I’ve shown it to my wife when we’ve looked at some videos.

If the camera was over here, and that would be camera three -- well, on the show, camera one, two, and three, and they’d cross angles.

But if I was looking this way into this camera, and this camera went on, I would make sure that they could see the back eye.

So I was never in total profile.

And I was, I could see the tally lights on the cameras, and I would sometimes play directly to camera, but sometimes cheat toward the camera, but never, never so that you’d, like that.

So you’d always see the back eye.

It was just that little -- You got that?

Does everybody see my eyes?

[laughter] That’s the kind of thing that, those are the little things that make everybody look good.

And the things that you do when you’re playing without a net.

Yeah.

Playing without a net, working air shows, versus voiceover.

I think there are some voice actors who think they’re really, really important.

But if they screw up, they can either do a click, and back and edit, or punch and roll edit.

People in the air show business screw up, and they die.

And that has given me, in my new kind of career, if you will, as a voice actor, a real dose of perspective.

And not even talking about the Braun Show, but Simon Anderson, who was a musicology professor at UC, and I took one of his courses, and he said in those days, “A plumber, an actor or a performer or a singer or a musician is no more important than a plumber.

Everybody is important.

You know, if y.. or something in your house, or a water leak, nobody cares how well you can sing.

All they want is the sk.. or that person who can fix what’s wrong.” And there was a sense at the Braun Show that as Bob went into the audience and talked w.. he was no more important than that person who was there with their cousins who wanted their friends in Newark or Mount Annan to see them on the show.

They were all valuable, all important, and it was family.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Can you give us one rubber duck..

I mean, I was kind of hoping you would.

[laughs] Can you cut this segment with a rubber ducky outro?

No.

Okay, there we go.

We’re done.

Wow, well.

Be careful, I’m about to k.. [laughter] What was that country song?

What was it?

Take your tongue out of my mouth because I’m kissing you goodbye.

[laughter] Oh, god.

This will be the only community cable show that show, ever had outtakes, I.. [laughter] Outtakes?

No.

No.

You’re going to lead with this, right?

[laughter] Oh, and then Aaron Tippin song, Kiss This.

Have you ever heard that song?

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, oh man, it’s funny.

Aaron Tippin, what a great guy he is.

Pilot extraordinaire.

Really?

That’s right.

Yeah, flies everything.

Oh my.

Became good friends with him through the International Council of Lyric Shows.

He came to sing at one of our opening ceremonies things when I was going to direct it.

He said, “Aaron, excuse me, I’m Rob Reider, I’m the director, I’m going to be shooting.” He said, “I know who you are.” I said, “We’ve never met.” He said, “You taught me how to fly helicopters in the video from Sporty’s.” Oh my gosh.

Wow.

Damn good.

Yeah.

That’s cool.

Okay.

Remember George Uetz from UC?

George?

Wrote Music, Sex, and Cookies.

[laughter] Yes.

Music, sex, and cookies.

Cookies, music, and sex.

It doesn’t even matter what order you try them because I like them all the best.

I’ve tried therapy and LSD, I’ve been lost, but n.. And it’s music, sex, and cookies that makes my world go r..

Cookies, music, and sex.

It doesn’.. because I like them all the best.

I’ve tried therapy and .. .. thing was up at the Barons of Crawford years ago, 10 years back, wasn’t it, Murg?

The Bob Braun Show retrosp.. with all his memorabilia and such.

And we’re sitting down and we’re planning it.

I think I never saw that.

We’re sitting down planning it, and somehow, ..

I gave the song the wrong title.

I said, “Well, my favorite song that you ever did was the rover.” And that’s not the name of the song.

It’s actually Love’s Been Good to Me.

Oh, I am in a rover.

I have walked alone.

Hiked a hundred highways.

Never found a home.

Still at all I’m happy.

Oh, I am in a rover.

You ..

So I say that to Bob, and I sa..

The Rover,” and Bob said -- and he was in early stages of Parkinson’s at the time, but still sharp.

I mean, and he looked at me, and I said, “Rover?” and he went.

So I start singing like we just did.

And Bob comes in.

I’m singing lead.

Bob comes in on top of me to sing harmony.

Now here’s, I’m a kid from Ludlow, okay?

And here I got Braun singing harmony with you.

-- harmony to my lead.

And when he finishes, he looks around, and everybody’s sitting around the table and goes, “Only a boy from Ludlow would know all the words to a side B of one of my records.” [laughter] Oh, my.

You know, Sinatra recording Very Good Year, he said he heard that off a Kingston Trio album.

Really?

Yep, which he did.

And he said, “Got to have an arrangement written real fast.” And they said -- they asked Sinatra once, “Why didn’t you record Scotch and Soda?” He says, “Because nobody could sing it better than Bob Shane.” Oh, yeah.

Well, ..

It was recorded.

Part Well, but it was, I got a chance to interview him on the 50th anniversary of Eve of Destruction.

And it was somebody else’s song, wasn’t it?

Well, no, it was his song.

He was in, he was actually living with the gang from Mamas and the Papas.

And he actually wrote, gave them California Dreamin’.

He had recorded it.

[whistles] He gave them California D..

He said because they needed to come up with some money because Dennis was, they were all smoking pot on his dime.

[laughter] So he said they needed their own money.

And he gave them that song, but he went in one day, and this was on a Friday, and played a song for Lou Adler.

And Lou Adler was like, “No, I don’t like it.” He said, “Do you have anything else?” He said, “So I pulled out of my back pocket a song that I had written.

He hadn’t worked out all the arrangements yet.

We tape it to the music stand,” he said, “And I play Eve of Destruction for him.” And Lou Adler liked it?

And Lou Adler went, “That’s fantastic.

Let’s come in on Monday and cut it.” [whistles, clears throat] He’s driving down the street the next day, and he hears on the radio, the eastern world, it is exploding.

Adler had recorded that version and said, “He couldn’t wait.

The song was too good.” [chuckles] Gave it to a DJ, and Perry McGuire’s like, “I’m driving down the street.” And he’s added all the instrumentals.

He’s added, you know, the drum, that big kettle drum.

He said, “It was a one take.” He said, “We did it on a piece of sheet, you know, no sheet music, no anything.

It was just something I had written down.” I didn’t know that.

And we were going .. And I hear it.

[laughs] I’m driving down the street in L.A.,.. radio on Saturday.

Those were the days.

The Wrecking Crew, right?

Oh, the Wrecking.

You had the Wrecking.

But the funny part about tha.. because it was for the 50th anniversary of Eve of Destruction, and the question was, “Well, did you get it wrong?” [laughs] It’s been 50 years.

And his answer was, “No, it seems like 50 years, more people were on the Eve of Destruction than ever were,” which I thought was wonderful.

He’s born again.

He has new versions he’s added to it.

But his funny part was he said, “We were part of a crew that, you know, the .. we were going to change the world based on music.” And so, here it is, my song, you know, rockets to the top.

We’re celebrating.

Number one, Eve of Destruction.

We’re going to show the world music will change the world.

He said, “In the next week, I was knocked off the charts by Hang On Sloopy.” [laughter] Yeah.

Oh, geez.

That’s too funny.

All right.

We’re done here, right?

Yeah.

Thank you very much.

That was fun.

That was fun.

Thanks.

Oh, my goodness.

Rob Reider, a man of many talents that audiences just love.

We hope you enjoyed our time with Rob Reider.

We want to invite you to watch some more conversations with key players in the Golden Age of Local Television.

I’ll see you then.