Terry Gross

What's an accidental?

And so you asked her to sing with you?

I mean, how did you start performing?

And Becky, did it change your singing at all to have Dave playing?

I mean, I think he's just a fantastic pianist, and I wonder if you think that that affected you.

On your album, I Saw Stars, you do a lot of songs that I love, and I love the way you do the songs, so I'm going to request a song from that CD, and this is No Love, No Nothin'.

Well, Dave, Becky, why don't you do one of Dorothy Field's, actually her first hit, it was her first hit, I Can't Give You Anything But Love, which, like The Sunny Side of the Street, has music by Jimmy McHugh.

This song caught on after it was featured in the review Lou Leslie's Blackbirds of 1928.

Maybe you can do the verse for us also.

And that song was written, I think, about a year before the Depression and obviously had particular resonance when the Depression hit shortly after.

Becky, do you find Dorothy Field's lyrics particularly singable because they're so colloquial?

You take a line like, gee, I'd like to see you look and swell.

See, I can get into a lyric like that.

You know, Dorothy Fields' trademark as a lyricist is her cleverness, but she could also write really tender lyrics, and I think this song really proves that.

This is The Way You Look Tonight, a ballad that she wrote with Jerome Kern.

It won an Academy Award.

It was written for the Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers film Swing Time.

And, you know, Dorothy Fields said that the first time Jerome Kern played her the melody, right before she wrote the lyric for it, she thought it was so beautiful that she started to cry and she had to leave the room.

Would you do the song for us?

I want to thank you both for performing songs by Dorothy Fields for us.