Remembering Action Hero Chuck Norris

Action Hero died last week. He was 86. Norris broke into movies with a cinematic fight to the

“death against Kung Fu Master Bruce Lee in Return of the Dragon. Norris first learned karate in”

Korea while serving in the Air Force. Back in California, he kept at it and became the world middleweight karate champion, a title he held for six years. He also set up karate academies where he taught several Hollywood celebrities. One of his students, Steve McQueen, encouraged him to pursue a career in acting. Norris went on to make a dozen Kung Fu films and became a Marshall Arts Cult Hero. Then he diversified to become an all-around tough guy action star. His films include

Code of Silence, Invasion USA, Delta Force, Missing Inaction Parts 1 in 2 and Braddock, Missing Inaction

Part 3. From 1993 to 2001, he starred in the TV series "Walker Texas Ranger" playing a

lawman you don't want a mess with. Here he is confronting a couple of bad guys. Did you walk her? I'm so sorry about the tragic death of you partner. Sure you are. I know you're the one that rings the head. And I know you're the one that pulled the trigger. I've seen you approve. If I had proof you'd be dead right now, then I'm going to take you down and I'm going to take you down hard. You want me walker? Are you got me? Just name the time and place. If you got the guts.

Jack Norris also wrote an autobiography titled "The Secret of Inner Strength." We're going to listen to Terry's 1988 interview with him. She asked him to describe the kind of karate he learned while stationed in Korea. Well, at that time it was called "Tonksudo" today it's more prominently known as Taekwondo, which is an emphasis on kicking. Okay, now you taught

karate in America won many karate championships. Bruce Lee got you your first film roles.

Did you already want to break into acting when you met Bruce Lee? No, not at all. When I did the film with Bruce, I had no desire to be an actor. I was still in the karate business and still competing and I did return to the dragon strictly as a kick. No pun intended. No pun intended.

“That was in 1972. Would you describe the fight scene that you were in and return to the dragon?”

Well, when the fight scene is to the death and the Colosseum and Rome, about basically like two gladiators putting their skills against each other and it was very exciting you know to be in the Colosseum and Rome and just look out into the arena there and think that a few hundred years ago they were doing it for real. So it was quite exciting actually. Now you both choreographed the scene together, right? You shove them Bruce Lee?

Yeah, we'd worked out together for about three years prior to this and so when we decided to do the fight itself, you said well what do you want to do and I said well I'll do this this and this so we just kind of choreographed right there on the set. No, you did Korean karate Tekwondo and he was a Chinese form of karate kung fu. Were there any differences in style that you had a reconcile before getting the choreography together? No, not at all because we'd both

studied many other styles as well and I'd studied the Chinese and when you know with Bruce and the Japanese style. So I was really a conglomeration of several styles and so was Bruce Lee. Bruce didn't stick strictly to the Chinese styles. He'd studied many different styles. So there was a real good channel, you know, build a div as working together. No, in the scene I imagine that you didn't really hit each other hard. I mean what are the rules there when you're choreographing a fight

scene for the movie? How did you do it in 1972? Well we you know of course we didn't go to hurt each other. There's light contact but just as we would make contact we would pull the blow right at the point of contact rather than following through with it so we could finish the fight. Is that something you're used to from sparring? Yeah, you you learned to control your kicks and especially from my movies, you know, I have to learn to do that in my films to keep them

hurting the stuntmen. Did you enjoy kung-fu movies at the time? Did you see a lot of them? In the beginning I did but they became redundant. They were all the same. You know when you have a movie that just has fight from beginning to end and there's no story or no emotion involved, it becomes redundant and it gets boring after a few minutes of watching kick kick punch punch

“and so it's important I think that's why they died out this way. There's no longer those kind”

of films in the American market is the fact that after while you get bored of them that's why I didn't want to do those kind of films. But early on didn't you want to convince Hollywood

when I was trying to break through into the film business you know when Bruce Lee died the karate market or the kung-fu market and movies died with him. All producers thought well since Bruce died there was no one else that could fulfill that bill and so when I finally broke in in in '77 you know I was known as the kung-fu star you know in Hollywood or in the media but I knew that if I was stuck strictly as a kung-fu star that my career would be very limited and

I never you know wouldn't be able to grow so I started working more into the action orientation

of my films with you know martial arts a karate integrated into the action and that way I

“would be limited to be strictly a kung-fu star and that's what it worked for me. What were some”

of the things that you had to learn in order to broaden into more general action films? Learning how to act was the main thing. I remember I jumped in the films with absolutely no experience as an actor had a very little acting classes and so forth so I had to kind of learn on the job and it was an easy to do that. Steve McQueen who was a friend of yours and whose son studied at your karate school gave you some advice on acting he told you not to verbalize what's already on the

screen. It almost seems like that became a code for you. I mean you really know in your movies it's not. I think that's saying a lot. Most of your actions actors to learn a swishnager. I think all of us kind of stick to that mode to you know is that when there's something to say say it it isn't important and keep your mouth shut you know and you know whether that's right or wrong is up to debate but you know the thing is that we're not Dustin Hoffman who's got that ability to

express in words and because he can express in words and you can visualize them. But not many actors have that ability to verbally express himself and you can in your mind see what he's saying and so the thing is if you can show it on the screen visually rather than verbally

it's much better. Let's talk about stunts somewhere now. Do you always do your own stunts?

Not all of them. Some I don't do this way out of my range of ability then of course I won't do it.

“I don't do fire burns which is really extremely dangerous. That's what like you're walking through”

an exploded bomb or something. Right or catching on fire. Uh-huh. And things like that I you know I wouldn't want to do. There's just certain things or high dives and I'm not a high diver so I have to have a stun double do that but anything that requires balance a coordination or certain amount of strength then I can do that. Well I remember in Code of Silence there's a great scene in which you're fighting with someone on top of a New York City train. Right. Yeah I did that.

And the train is moving. That's you. That wasn't a stuntman. No no I did that.

Now the train was actually moving. What was doing that wasn't it? It was doing about 35 miles an hour.

In fact you know the thing is the stuntman that I was fighting with was a little bit apprehensive about made doing that because we were relying on each other to keep our balance on that train because we're 50 feet in the air. That's an L train. We're 50 feet in the air. And he said I don't know if

“you should do this or not. I said well look let's do it with a train stopped. If you feel I'm not”

capable of doing it then we'll bring in a stunt double. So we did it with a train stop and he said no no he says you'll do okay so we so I did the fight with him. You carry any kind of insurance. Well of course the studio gets very upset when I do that because if I do get hurt then production stops and it cost a lot of money. But the audience today is very sophisticated they look. They look to see if it's a stunt double or if it's the stunt man or it's the actor doing it.

And so if it's something that I can do then I like to do it. Especially when you do an acting scene you really don't know if it's good or bad until it gets on the screen. But when you do a stunt you know immediately whether it's good or bad and there's an immediate acceleration when you do a stunt that you don't get as an acting scene. I want to get back to this fight scene and coat of silence on top of the train. How did you and the stunt man that you were working with

keep your balance while the train was moving? What were some of the tricks to doing that? All the tricks are just having the ability to maintain your balance up there. It's we had the fight pre-arranged of course but we're rolling all over the top of that train and we're really controlling each other. We're preventing each other from falling off. So we're really balancing each other's we're fighting on top of that train and you just you know you have the athletic ability to do it or

you don't have it. Now as you're actually holding on to each other and trying to help each other keep balance you have to look as if you're fighting each other and trying to throw each other off the top of that train. Can you talk a little bit about how you kind of make it seem like you're trying

to describe you know because you're up there and you're just doing the thing as strong as you can

“without losing your balance and a couple times you know I broke my balance once but he controlled it”

for me and then he broke his balance once and I brought him back on balance and it just a matter of being able to have the experience and the ability to be able to do that. Okay let's look at

fight scenes for a second when you're choreographing a fight scene where you'll be using martial arts.

Are there certain things that you think have to get into the scene like a certain number of of kicks or certain amount of like really dazzling stuff? No the main thing when I try to when I do a fight scene I try to make it as real as possible you know the thing is that if I'm fighting two guys is one thing if I'm fighting four like in the coat of science I fall out 12 or 14 I got the daylight speed out of me you know I didn't I didn't win because it would have been totally

unrealistic for me to whip that whole bar room and so in turn you know I went up losing that fight

“and but but that's the realism of it if I'd have whipped everybody in that bar room”

it would have been totally unrealistic and I'm going to know how good you are as a martial artist you only have so much ability and so in turn I want up losing that particular fight but I try to make it as exciting as as dramatic as I could before I got whipped. You have a kind of spin kick that you do. Yeah spinning heel kick yeah. Would you describe that with that is for let's talk and see it. It's like having a baseball bat in your hand and swinging a like a baseball

like a batter would swing at a ball and but you you talk your whole body around in a full circle

on your legs swings around like a bat would and it's extremely powerful kick and I have to be

when I do that in my fight scene I got to be very very careful because if I hit one of my stuntmen with that it would cause real serious damage. In your autobiography you talk about

“having to break the pain barrier in karate and and you've had a lot of broken bones during”

your years as a as a karate teacher and as a karate student you've broken hands broken noses so so what do you mean when you say breaking the pain barrier? Well you you're able to eliminate and really ignore the pain. It's it's it's something you you practice and train and and you get to a point where you're able to really ignore the pain. Is this something you've had to practice as a stuntman to you know and your role is doing your own stuff? Oh yeah that's

still doesn't mean I like pain because I don't like pain I'd prefer not to be hurt than

being hurt but the thing is like an firewalker I did I broke my ankle in the second week in

the filming so I had to go eight weeks with a broken ankle and I couldn't put a cast on because I was still filming so I had to keep it taped through the whole movie so it was painful but you you learned to work with it. Other times when a stunt has gone wrong when someone who you were fighting with actually connected instead of almost connected or when someone fell off something that they were. Well my poor brother was taking a tremendous beating I knocked him out twice

I broke his leg once and so he's taken the worst beating of all this stuntman I've worked with because I work with him so much that sometimes we get carried away a lot of times and I try to I try to get too close to him or he tries to get too close when I'm kicking at him and so on turn we've made a little bit of contact and he's had his injuries from our fights together. Chuck Norris is my guest. I recently saw your new movie missing an action part three Braddock

and you know it's interesting you're without a shirt during a good deal of the movie and I wonder if that's intentional you know to show off all the muscles. No not really because I'm not an Arnold Schwarzenegger but you know in the torture scene that you saw you know it was conducive to not have the shirt on but conducive to what? Well you know because I'm being electrocuted and all this stuff here you know so you know they had you know I had to be able to see the reaction

of my body being electrocuted. Can I tell you my reaction to that scene? Sure. Just to describe it you're being tortured by South Vietnamese. North Vietnamese. Well he's a time he has now he's a from the Saigon yeah. Okay and they've kidnapped your son so you're being tortured in the cell you're suspended by your hands your hands are tied over your head and you're standing on your toes now your son is in bondage in a chair in front of you and there's a gun pointed at him and the

torture tells you that if you step down you know you're on your toes but if you if you he'll touch the ground and your arms lower about an inch that this gun is gonna go. Yeah and shoot your son. Now seeing you kind of arriving up there though your muscles exposed it struck me as almost a sexual bondage scene. Is that good or bad? I don't know. I'm not trying to put

No not not not what me it wasn't conscious no. I didn't I didn't see it as that.

“But maybe the women might I don't know or some then might I don't know really because I don't”

see myself as that way so but it's interesting you thought that way but the thing is what we're trying to you know show the mental torture as well because you know here he is trying to force my feet down so the shotgun will go off and kill my son so he was the tension in the mental torture that was going on as much as the physical torture because you know because it doesn't you know work out that way. A lot of adults in America especially like parents have children get

very upset it's certain action movies which there's a lot of violence depicted. Now I understand that you actually get more upset by movies that are sexually explicit. Well the thing is when we talk about violence again it's how you do it if you provoke violence in the screen if it's a provocation of violence on the screen then I don't think it's done in a very negative way. What I try my films are kind of a retaliation against violence and I don't see that as a bad thing for

“children to see and I've got a kind of have that reputation I think with the audiences with the families”

throughout the country that they don't mind their children coming to see my movies because it's action oriented but not but there's no extreme language and there's no strong sexual scenes in the movie and I think most families are more concerned about that than they are the action sequences in the movies. Well there's a scene in the movie and this is part of the commercial that is

being shown on television to advertise the movie you're basically told by the CIA not to go into

Vietnam and don't step on any toes there and you say I don't step on toes I step on next. Well just funny how that term came up I was in New York about about a year ago and some kids are following me down the road you know and so they're all you know so they're talking to me and all this stuff here and and one kid says man he says you don't step on toes you step on next

“you know but and that's how I remember that so that that term I kind of stuck in my mind and”

so when the movie came about I said hey that's like I like that term analogy so that's the way you insert it into the movie. In your movies your character is constantly being provoked to use his martial arts skills and to pull out guns and knives as well. Do people ever try to take you

out in real life have you been called on in real life to use those skills? I've never had to use it

I've been all over the world and travel everywhere and I've never had anyone you know approached me in that respect. I think mainly again it's the philosophy that I demonstrate on the screen it's not a guy who's walking around looking for trouble with a chip on his shoulder and that's what brings that type of people on to challenge you. It's a guy who doesn't want trouble but he's forced into the situation to have to deal with it and with that philosophy in mind it's not the type of character that

people think that you're walking around looking for trouble and they and so in turn I don't think I'm that's probably one of the reasons I haven't been counted that way. I'm sure that knowing the martial arts gives you a lot of self-confidence. Have you ever used that to psych someone out in a potentially violent situation? I not and not in an antagonizing way. Again when you see trouble happening you try to diffuse it before it becomes uncontrollable and I've had to do that several times

where I've been able to diffuse a potential physical altercation before I got to that extreme and that's part of a thing is if you don't get emotionally involved and you analyze the situation of why it's happening generally you can't get out of it and and when especially when the person realizes you're not doing it because you're afraid but you're doing it just because you don't want the trouble and they can feel that they can generally get a sense of that and when they do

then if you give them an out then the general they will take it. Okay what effect do you think you've had on the American view of maleness? God Jesus. I don't know. I don't know if I've had any effect on that respect. You know because again I don't even think of having a maleness type of effect on the audience. I just play a particular type of character that I enjoy being. It was a character that I demonstrated as a karate instructor for 15 years and I've tried to carry it on

into my screen life and you know a guy who's a certain has a certain compassion for life and people and it doesn't want violence but then he's put into position that there's no choice

What you're nervous I want to thank you very much for talking with us. Thanks for being with us.

You bet my pleasure. Chuck Norris spoke with Terry Gross in 1988. He died last week at the age of

“86. Coming up we remember Augie Myers of the Texas tornadoes. He helped shape the sound of”

Tex-Mex on his Vox organ. I'm Dave Davies and this is fresh air. This is fresh air. I'm Dave Davies. Since introducing his Yellowstone TV series starring Kevin Costner in 2018, Taylor Sheridan has made a very successful career of building dramas around veteran stars. Jeremy Renner in Mayor of Kingstown Silvestor Stallone in Tulsa King and Billy Bob Thornton in Landman. But some of his best work has come in prequels to his Yellowstone story featuring Sam, Elliot and Faith Hill in the series 1883

and Harrison Fort and Helen Mirren in 1923. Now Sheridan has a new official sequel series Marshalls on CBS and a seemingly unrelated series, the Madison that our TV critic David be in Kulis's specs will connect to the Yellowstone storyline before too long. Here are David's reviews.

“The Madison is a six episode drama starring Michelle Fifer and Kurt Russell that streamed”

half its episodes when it premiered March 14 on Paramount Plus. It has been renewed already for a second

season. Its first three episodes were written by Taylor Sheridan and directed by Christina Alexander Voros, who directed many episodes of both Yellowstone and 1883. It set up as a sort of dramatic green acres and presents Fifer and Russell as Stacey and Preston, wealthy New Yorkers who are close to approaching their 50th wedding anniversary. They have daughters and granddaughters and Preston also has a cabin in some land he shares with his brother Paul in Madison River Valley Montana.

He goes there when he can to relax, when he does his wife Stacey stays behind in the city. It's a loving relationship, but one night when Preston checks in by cell phone he gives Stacey some news and she has some of her own. "You feel rested? Wait how do you land tomorrow?" "Okay, gonna have to push it back a day honey because Paul has something very very special plan for tomorrow." "It's a stretcher river that can only be reached by pack horse. It takes like a

week. Paul has permission to fly us into it honey. This is like well it's virgin water." "Oh, now there's virgins involved." "No, but he fishes this stretch on a nobody. Maybe a dozen people a year if that." "Hey, some bad news. Page got mugged today down in the village." "What?" "Mugged. She okay?" "Yeah, she just, you know, she got a pretty good shiner and a decent cut. The doctor saw her six ditches." "Damn it, I cannot come up with one plausible reason why we still

live in that city." "Well, I'll give you two, our children, two more, our grandchildren, my parents."

“"Make her use the car honey, that's what it's for." "She thinks it's a garish display of wealth."”

"Well, if my money is so offensive, maybe we should stop giving it to her." "Before long, Stacey decides to take her daughters and granddaughters to see the Montana

Cabins for the first time. The whole family is there. One older divorced daughter with two girls,

a teenager and one in grade school, and the younger married daughter who has just been mugged. Conditions and provisions are Spartan. And when a thoughtful neighbor arrives on an ounce, dropping off containers of pre-made meals to help them get by, Stacey is grateful for the food and the gesture. But once the neighbor leaves, her granddaughters are less so. This is one scene in which Fyther really gets to shine.

"Okay, do we really want to be eating some strange person's food?" "Fyther chicken, fried steak. I would day fry steak." "Don't eat it, then. Maybe ask what we like before you bring up?" "I blame myself. After all, she's raising you like I raised her." "Complete strangers spent. I don't know. How much time they spent. How much thought went in to this? Not to mention money. Looking at that truck, money isn't something they have in abundance.

And you have the nerve to judge it. It's filled little bitches we've raised." The Madison, like Yellowstone and all its prequel series, is all about legacy, and responsibility, and relationships, but focusing on the women instead of the men.

like the idea that the streets of New York are more dangerous than any wild west.

“But they're also our moments of true beauty and calm, and the valley setting itself, I suspect,”

eventually, will link to previous series in the Yellowstone canon. Flyfishing figures prominently here, as it does in most other Yellowstone-connected series. But Sheridan and the Madison, with Kurt Russell fully enjoying the piece of the river, nails the emotion. The new CBS sequel Marshalls, which also has a male bonding flyfishing scene, does not. Marshalls, which premiered March 1st on CBS, stars Luke Grimes as Casey Dutton, one of the

sons of Kevin Costner's John Dutton from Yellowstone. Sheridan co-wrote the first episodes,

but Marshalls isn't nearly as good a series as the Madison. It finds a way to get Casey hired as a U.S. Marshall, but mostly to give the character a chance to run around with more advanced

“weaponry. And his relationship with his son, Tate, played by Breck and Merrill from Yellowstone,”

is explored a lot less credibly and dramatically than the maternal dynamics on the Madison. Here's Casey, having a father's son talk with Tate in the premiere of Marshalls. "Your grandfather, are you wondering about this?" He said, "One day, you test me."

"Force me to make a decision, not only affects your future, but my place in."

"I want you to forge your own path." "You can't because you're home. It's not your destiny." "It won't hate me for that." Marshall's ads to the Yellowstone legacy, with its illusions to long-established storylines like a seventh-generation land surrender, and modern clashes that echo deadly standoffs of old.

But it's the Madison, like 1883 and 1923, that brings the best out of Taylor Sheridan. And bringing back veteran movie stars Michelle Fiverr and Kurt Russell, even in a modern western, that's a real banana. David B. and Cooley reviewed the Madison and Marshalls.

“Coming up, we remember Tex-Max pioneer Oggy Myers of the Texas tornadoes.”

This is fresh air. This is fresh air. Oggy Myers, who helped shape the sound of Tex-Max music with the 60s bands or Douglas Quintet, and then with the Texas tornadoes, died earlier this month. He played keyboards, organ, and accordion. His signature sound came from using the Vox organ, a smaller, readier sounding instrument than the richer sounding

Hammond B3 organ used by more bands. The Vox organ came from England, and at one point, the Beatles approached Myers to ask how he got his distinctive sound out of the instrument. Author and historian Joan Nick Potoski described Oggy Myers and his Vox organ as the element in Tex-Max music that gives it the bounce, the appeal, that made Tex-Max more than a regional sound. Myers band made in the Sir Douglas Quintet

was guitar prodigy and singer Doug Somme, a childhood friend. The group formed during the British invasion, and the band name was chosen to sound British. Their biggest hits were she's about a mover and Mendocino, the group broke up in 1972. In 1989, Myers and Somme came together again to form the Grammy Award-winning band, the Texas tornadoes, with country and Tejano Star, Freddie Fender, and accordion of his Yenato Flacco Jimenez. Their hits include Hey Baby Kepaso,

soy the sound Luis, and who were you thinking of. Oggy Myers was also a side man on albums by Willie Nelson, Tom Wades, Rahul Malo, and Bob Dylan. Terry Rose spoke with Oggy Myers in 1990. They began with the Texas tornado song and where you're thinking of it. Where you're thinking of where I was making love to you. There was a smile on the face, I'd see it's all done. You got the love of it, did I put it to it last night? Who are you thinking of when we were

on both accordion and organ that recording? You overdubbing on that? Yes. I guess you'd have to.

My main instrument, I guess years ago was piano and that was a first-fox organ. It was ever in America,

bought in '60, '62. I didn't like the way it sounded trying to play solos on it, so I just started playing rhythm on it. Just use it as a rhythm instrument. I think a lot of people picked up on that. Did you have anybody to pick up on? I mean, did had you heard organ play that way before? No, no. I listened to I guess my piano player's way back then was Moon Morgan and right Charles. A lot of people would know right Charles played with

the guitar slam. He was called R.C. Richardson. He played a lot of shuffle stuff and it was mostly

“rhythm. piano was mainly used as a rhythm instrument, way back in the blues era and that's what”

I mainly play as rhythm. You play Vox and Hammond B3 on the new record? What's the difference between the two and what you can get out of it? A lot. I mean, Hammond B3 is a milkshake with whipped cream and ice cream in a Vox organ. It's just a glass of water but a good glass of water. So there's a lot of difference between that. You've got more sounds out of the Hammond organ for rhythm and blues and jazz and stuff where Vox was mainly used for a lot of the English stuff.

This is one of those little organs that kind of stand up. Right. You were the first person in

the States to have a Vox organ? How did you become the first person to do that? I used to prescribe a lot of English magazines back in the early '60s to check up and see what's going on. I remember it's $285 and a man got blessed and he's gone now but he owned a music store in San Tony and a Mr Woods. He helped me get his $285. Then after the Beatles in the stones in the Dave Clark 500, everybody came out. They ran up to like 1,500 bucks. I still have my original one.

I've got four of them. If anybody after his got one want to sell it, please let me know. I like the

“buy them all. So did this make you in demand having this new sound and new instrument?”

Yes, I did. I remember when me and Doug first went to England in the '60s, George Harrison and

Lyndon, John Lyndon called the hotel and wanted me to come to the studio because they wanted to see

how they had a Vox organ but they couldn't get the sound that I had out of mine. They couldn't get their sound out of theirs but it was only due to the amplification. They didn't have reverb and their amplifiers back then. The reverb was a new thing that came out. No, I know you had polio as a child. Yeah, I've told him when I was two years old until I was almost ten, I had polio, I couldn't walk. So you didn't start walking till you were around ten?

Well, I was about ten. So I live in my grandparents and when he's got in the field, everybody didn't pick cotton. They took me over to this black lady's house and her husband picked cotton from my grandfather's and they had a piano and he played in their church in the black church but they used to set me up on a piano just to pacify my time away all day.

“That's what I did because there was no TV back then. They didn't have radio electricity in the”

house. Were your hands and fingers strong enough to play? Well, my right one was my left one was a little affected by the polio but my grandfather, I owe it all to him and he made me walk and you're plus to get a large, but my grandfather, he did his home remedies on me. So do you think learning to play when one hand was still weak affected the way you ended up playing? No, the style that you ended up having? Well, I think so because I do a lot of rhythm on my right

hand and my left hand just kind of gets the dominant card on there. I still have problem. I do therapy, I play. That's why I bought my card for therapy and for my hands and my fingers and I learned to play guitar that way too. Did you get full strength back in your hands? Well, I'll put it this way. I appreciate what I got. If I got it, if I had any more, I don't know what I'd do with it. How did you meet Doug Som who you played with for many years?

And are still playing with on the Texas tornadoes record? Well, his folks traded in my mother's grocery store and he's coming in and buying his baseball cards and I was a sack boy and that was it. That was enough. We were, I guess we were 14, 15 years old. One of the great rock-and-roll stories was how when you were produced by Yui Mo, how we wanted to pass you off as a British invasion group?

Yeah, did you feel that way also? No, no, no, no, no, no. Freddy just looked at me and said who I just said who. Okay. No, but yeah, if he wanted to pass, but I mean it was really hard because there were two gringos and three Mexicans in the band, you know, I'm trying to get these Spanish dudes to sit turn and try to, you know, I like a spot of tea, you know, I'm trying to talk English when they'd sit and say, "If I thought, man, what time is a man, let's go get a beer." You know, and that was their kind of

accent, you know, so trying to be English, it pulled it off till Trinity Lopez on, I think it was Hala Blues said, "Man, they're from Texas, you know." Well, what is your ethnic group?

Freddy Gemini too. What do you mean, I think, back down here? Well, I'm thinking, you know,

“you're, you know, a gringo playing a lot of, you know, text Mexicans, Mexican-inspired music. So,”

I, no, I wasn't sure what, what your ethnic background is. I'm, I'm a German and Polish. German and Polish. Okay. So, you probably heard the music of a lot of different ethnic groups growing up in Texas. Oh, yeah. Well, back, I mean, actually, back now, I guess Freddy can say, when we were growing up in Texas, there was either country music or Spanish music. I mean, there was nothing, you know, then all of a sudden, M.O.R. came in,

which was a little richer than, you know, that was pressly. You know, so we, we kind of combined all three of them.

Well, you know, what did I play? Something that's kind of a half Spanish. This is a song that you wrote. Gold, hey, baby, k-paso. Do you want to say anything about the song? And about, uh,

“well, I mean, I wonder why something that was, you know, at one point, nobody had played my”

records back home because, uh, I either had a, the country station wouldn't play, they had horns on it. The rock station wouldn't play because I had a fiddle or steel. The Spanish station wouldn't play, because there was no Spanish in it. So I just did the k-paso, you know, to a half English, half Spanish, put a little cardigan in it. Actually, I wrote that song about one of my girlfriend's running off with my best friends. Uh-huh. Okay. I miss him too, because we used to go out and she pulled her right

bare. Well, this is the version of it from the new Texas tornadoes record. And it features Ogie Myers on vocals, accordion and organ, uh, Freddie Fender is on electric guitar. And, uh, here we go. You can hear him yelling in the background too. Okay.

“I can hear him yelling in the background too.”

I can hear him yelling in the background too. I can hear him yelling in the background too. I can hear him yelling in the background too. I can hear him yelling in the background too. Hey, that's Ogie Myers on organ, accordion and vocals with the Texas tornadoes.

Myers spoke with Terry Gross in 1990. He died March 7th at the age of 85. This is fresh air. This is fresh air. Our film critic Justin Chang recommends the German movie mere war number three from writer and director Christian Petzold, who's known for his earlier dramas, including transit and a fire. The new film stars Paula Beer as a young Berlin woman who forms a

strangely powerful bond with the family she meets in the country side. The film is now playing

and select theaters. Here's Justin's review. The title of the quietly haunting new film, Muir war number three, comes from a piano piece by Revell that beautifully evokes the movements of a boat sailing in the ocean. It's no surprise that such music would appeal to the superb German filmmaker Christian Petzold. In movies like the Inigmatic Refugee Drama transit or the watery modern day fairy tale, Undina. He loves to focus on characters word lonely and adrift. Muir war is also

the French word for mirrors and that meaning resonates throughout the new movie, which is full of mysterious reflections and distortions. There are also deliberate echoes of great movies passed. Petzold is famously obsessed with film noir, and watching his work can sometimes make you feel like you're wandering through that labyrinth of mirrors at the end of the lady from Shanghai. That's a very good thing. Muir number three begins in Berlin, where we meet a young woman named

Laura, played by Petzold's frequent collaborator Paula Beer. Laura doesn't say much, but we can tell from her piercing stare that she's profoundly unhappy. And her boyfriend Jacob doesn't seem to be helping. Jacob is an inconsiderate partner and it turns out a reckless driver. One day as they're speeding through the countryside and his cherry red convertible, he crashes the car and is instantly killed. Laura, though, miraculously survives with just a minor scrape. A middle-aged woman named

if, instead of going to the hospital, she can stay on and recuperate at Betty's house.

“Betty immediately says yes. She's played by the wonderful actor Barbara Hour, and you can tell”

just from how the two women look at each other, that a close and instinctual bond has developed. One of the oddball pleasures of Muir Number three is how readily we accept what's happening. Even though pets old with holds, and only gradually reveals, significant information about his characters. We have little sense of who Laura is, or whether she has any friends or family. In time, we learn that she is studying to be a classical pianist.

Betty proves similarly elusive, though we do meet her husband, Richard, and their grown son Max,

who work together at an autograge nearby. There's somewhat estranged from Betty for tragic reasons that eventually come into focus. Betty and Richard had a daughter, who's now dead, but who seems to have had a lot in common with Laura, right down to their shared love of the piano.

“But the music that you might remember best from Muir Number three isn't a classical piece.”

It's the 1972 song The Night, by Frankie Valley in the Four Seasons, which plays in the garage one day when Max and Laura are hanging out. It's a joyous song, but it's also a tale of romantic caution as the warning these two acquaintances not to get in closer. If the day you come last forever, you might like your right return, but the night begins to turn your head around. And you know you look at us more than you found.

What I love about Petzel's movies is that although they're very much tethered to the real world, they're not afraid to embrace implausibility, coincidence, and even hints

“of the supernatural. He has the head of a realist and the heart of a fantasist, or maybe it's the”

other way around. He also loves the conventions of classic Hollywood filmmaking, and clearly believes they can speak powerfully to the audiences of today. In Muir Number three, the notion of Laura serving as a stand-in for a deceased woman is clearly a riff on Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, one of Petzel's favorite films. The protagonist's name also reminded me of one of my favorite films, the 1944 auto-preminger classic Laura, which also has a memorable back from the dead element.

But you don't have to spot these illusions to feel captivated and moved by the story that Petzel is telling. The surrogate family bonds that Laura forms with Betty, and in time with Richard and Max, are undeniably therapeutic. And Petzel suggests there's something precious about these connections, even if they are built on a shared delusion, in showing us characters who feel the ache of love and

loss, and who dream of a second chance. Petzel holds up a mirror to us all. Just in Chang is a film

critic for the New Yorker magazine. He reviewed the new film Mirwaar Number Three. On Monday show an inside look at Info Wars, the conspiracy factory run by Alex Jones. Joshua and spent four years there in his 20s, where the staff learned to dread Jones' erratic behavior and constant demands for sensational stories about the dark deeds of the deep state. Owen's new memoir is the madness of believing. I hope you can join us.

To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR fresh air. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/thisisfreshair. We're rolling out new videos with in studio guests behind the scenes of shorts and iconic interviews from the archive. Fresh air is executive producer Sam Brigger. Our senior producer today is Roberta Sorock. Our technical director and engineer is Andre Bentham with additional

engineering supports of George Lieberman, Eugene Kurtzfield, and Adam Stanisha Scheski.

Lauren Crenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, say a challenger, Susan Yacundi, and Abelman and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesfer, from Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley. I'm Dave Davies.