Oh my, so many alerts! Four, to be precise. First is Nick Cordero, the Tony-nominated actor who recently died of COVID-19 at 41. Richard and I saw him in *Bullets Over Broadway,* a lousy show but he was wonderful in it. He's the first guy who sings in this clip:
Charlie Daniels wrote, sang, and played a fierce fiddle on "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." Hm, if the devil lives in hell, wouldn't he go UP to Georgia? Here's a live performance of that song:
And a truly hilarious washing machine tribute (over 8 million views on YouTube):
Hugh Downs was a stable of my youth, my family watched *20/20* every damn week. His 1986 memoir was titled *On Camera: My 10,000 Hours on Television.* Which was an actual statistic! He held the Guinness-certified record for the most total hours on commercial network television (that old floozy Regis Philbin eventually beat that record).
I'll pay tribute to Downs in my own way - - he comes on at 14:37 in this clip. What a line-up! The inevitable Arlene Francis, Soupy Sales (love his suit, hate his wig), the darling and delicious Dina Merrill, and in his first appearance on the show, Mark Russell! Who ever knew he was so young and so cute!
And I'm ending with the great Ennio Morricone. Here's a montage of clips from *The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,* featuring his most famous music. The ocarina never had it so good.
Here's the opening of *The Hateful Eight.* I was thrilled when I heard that Tarantino hired him to write the score for that movie, and I was over the freaking moon when Morricone won the Oscar for Best Score.
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