California

(Dragnet Theme in Background)

“This is the city: Los Angeles, Ca...Sometimes you want to know about more than just the city, you want to know about the whole state. That’s where I step in, I host the radio show.”

(Dragnet Theme in Background)

“This is the city: Los Angeles, Ca...Sometimes you want to know about more than just the city, you want to know about the whole state. That’s where I step in, I host the radio show.”

Singers and Songs

  • Al Jolson
    California Here I Come

    “Worlds Greatest Entertainer”

  • Joni Mitchell
    California
  • Woody Guthrie
    (Clip)

    Woody talks about California, the dust bowl and fruit picking

  • Webb Pierce
    California Blues
  • Geraint Watkins
    Go West

    “That two-handed piano pounder”

  • Dionne Warwick
    Do You Know the Way to San Jose
  • Sir Douglas Quintet
    Mendocino

    “There’s a lot of earthquakes in California. If you feel a tremor there’s two things you should do: get in a doorway and makes sure that doorway’s in Cleveland.”

  • Thee Midniters
    Whittier Boulevard
  • Dave Alvin
    Surfer Girl
  • Jesse Fuller
    San Francisco Bay Blues

    “(The Fodella) never caught on enough to get it in your local music store. I wish it had, it’d sure cut down costs on the road”

  • Dorothy Shay
    Been to Hollywood
  • Bobby Womack
    California Dreamin’
  • Jolie Holland
    Goodbye California

Other People and Players

  • John Steinbeck
  • Bud Desilva
  • Joseph Meyer
  • Tracy Ullman
  • Hal David
  • Bert Bacharach
  • Hank Ballard
  • Willy Garcia
  • The Beach Boys

    “The Kennedy family with surf boards”

  • John and Michelle Phillips
  • Richard Nixon
  • Archimedes
  • Fred Allen

    “California is a wonderful place to live if you happen to be an orange.”

  • Walt Disney

    (clip played) Wish Upon a Star

  • John B. L. Soule
  • Horris Greeley

    “Go west, young man, and grow up with the country.”

  • John Sutter
  • James Marshall
  • President Polk
  • Levi Strauss
  • Gucci
  • Queen Califia of Spain
  • Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo
  • Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev
  • Pachuco

    (Background- Mambo Del Pachuco by Don Tosti Y Su Conjunto)

  • Dwight Eisenhower
  • Jimmie Rodgers
  • Paul McCartney
  • Van Morrison

The Places

Record Labels

  • Anti
  • National Label

Other Songs and Albums

  • Blue
  • Feudin' and Fightin’
  • Escondido

The Guests

The Movies and TV Shows

The Books and Poems

Bob Reads from Woody Guthrie (This Land is Your Land in the background):

”We rounded a few hills and knolls, curving in our little jitney, and all at once, coming over a high place, the lights of Los Angeles jumped up, running from north to south as far as I could see, and hanging around on the hills and mountains just as if it was level ground. Red and green neon flickering for eats, sleeps, sprees, salvation, money made, lent, blowed, spent. There was an electric sign for dirty clothes, clean clothes, honky tonky tonks, no clothes, floor shows, gyp-joints, furniture in and out of homes. The fog was trying to get a headlock on the houses along the high places, Patches of damp clouds whiffed along the paving in crazy, disorganized little bunches, hunting some more clouds to work with. Los Angeles was lost in its own pretty lights and trying to hold out against the big fog that rolls in from that ocean, and the people that roll in just as reckless, and rambling, from the country as big as the ocean back East.”

“West coast schemes, California dreams and specific Pacific themes”