This year’s Kennedy Center Honorees were announced yesterday. Three of them have been on Fresh Air:

Barbara Cook

Sonny Rollins

Neil Diamond

(Here’s Yo-Yo Ma on This I Believe and on NPR Music.)

Sonny Rollins (by Evert-Jan)

Ed Ward, on Neil Diamond’s earliest days:

Probably the strongest negative reaction I’ve ever gotten to anything I’ve written was when I panned a Neil Diamond show during my stint at Austin’s daily newspaper. His fan club’s newsletter picked it up, and for two and a half years we got letters denouncing me — the last of which came from Vanuatu, in the South Pacific. But my disappointment in the show was based on remembering where Diamond had come from. Watching him literally wrap himself in an American flag, I remembered his contribution to pop music and felt sad.

Tonight Dr. John will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He spoke to Terry Gross about performing his early productions, which combined voodoo psychedelic elements with old medicine shows: “When we first presented it, it was a little too authentic for the labels. They weren’t quite ready for a guy biting a chicken’s head off and stuff, so we modified the show down to be a lot less authentic [and made it] more showbiz-style and took it on the road.” 

Other Hall of Famers on Fresh Air: Neil Diamond, Darlene Love, Alice Cooper, Tom Waits

songsonmymind:

DARLENE LOVE - CHRISTMAS (BABY PLEASE COME HOME)

Tomorrow: Darlene Love, Neil Diamond, Dr. John. 

songsfromtreme:

Dr. John - Mardi Gras Day

On Friday, we’ll continue our Rock and Roll Hall of Fame series with highlights from interviews with Dr. John, Darlene Love & Neil Diamond