Before The Cheering Started with Budd Mishkin Budd Mishkin

I don’t think it violates some journalistic Edward R. Murrow code to say that some interviews are a labor of love. And if it does, so be it. This is one of them. Paul Shaffer and Will Lee have put a lot of joyful music into the world. They are best known for their work in the Letterman bands, first on NBC and then on CBS, 33 years in all. But their compelling stories begin long before David Letterman. So too their friendship.
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By 1963, Bill Persky had already worked as a lifeguard at Grossinger’s in the Catskill Mountains and watched the hotel’s standup comics make people laugh. He’d written a show at Syracuse University that won a national collegiate award. He’d worked at an advertising agency and radio station in New York before moving to California to write for television. And then in 1963, everything changed. He and his writing partner Sam Denoff started writing for a show that is considered a classic: The Dick Van Dyke Show. A door had opened and on other side stood the rest of his life.
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What is it like to create something early in your life and then watch as that creation has a tangible effect on people decades later? Musicians know the feeling. Actors and writers too. It’s a feeling Bill Persky knows well. He and his writing partner Sam Denoff wrote many of the classic episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show, a 1960’s show that is timeless and often held up as TV comedy writing at its best. 60 years later and we are still laughing.
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It seems easy for former professional athletes to live in the past. They practiced their whole lives to play the game and now it’s gone. Fans are constantly reminding them of games long ago, occasionally waiting on long lines for a picture and an autograph at a card show. New York Rangers fans often remind Stephane Matteau of his Game 7 overtime goal against the New Jersey Devils that led the Rangers to the Stanley Cup Final, arguably the most important goal in franchise history. It was a life changing moment for the fans. And for Matteau too, but not for the reasons you might think. The goal gave Matteau the platform to focus on the present and the future. Not his: the present and future of thousands of kids.
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Jay Z once memorably rapped “if skills sold, truth be told, I’d probably be lyrically, Talib Kweli.”
Many are the influences that have shaped Talib Kweli’s words and music for decades: the Brooklyn of his youth, the ubiquitous books and records in that Brooklyn home, the academic careers of his parents as professors and administrators. He once told me “if you combine sociology and humanities and English language (his parents’ academic specialties) with Brooklyn, you get hip hop. That was certainly the equation that worked for Talib Kweli.
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Adriana Trigiani has had a long love affair with the written word. And she’s pretty comfortable with the spoken word too.  She has quite a story to tell as a novelist/TV writer/film director/podcast host whose journey brought her from a small mining town in Virginia to New York. And she tells that story with insight and humor. Her thoughts on the lessons we learn growing up in our homes might be the most eloquent I’ve ever heard on the topic.  
Adriana’s beloved by many. Get ready to join the crowd.
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