{"id":949,"date":"2010-07-18T10:34:49","date_gmt":"2010-07-18T10:34:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/roddreher\/2010\/07\/billy-west-does-amazing-voices.html"},"modified":"2010-07-18T10:34:49","modified_gmt":"2010-07-18T10:34:49","slug":"billy-west-does-amazing-voices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/07\/billy-west-does-amazing-voices.html","title":{"rendered":"Billy West does amazing voices"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I was driving around and caught a Fresh Air interview with voice actor Billy West<\/a>. I don’t know his work on “Futurama,” and almost turned the interview off before listening to it. Boy, that would have been a mistake. The interview was terrific, and he was a real kick explaining (and demonstrating) how he does different voices and vocal patterns. He told this screamingly funny story about watching two old-school Jewish comic actors playing roles in “The Diary of Anne Frank,” and he provided the voices too. I thought I was going to run off the road I was laughing so hard. NPR provides a handful of excerpts from the interview on a limited transcript. Here West is learning how to do Popeye’s voice:<\/p>\n

“I loved Jack Mercer, and I got him. I understood him. And what helped me understand that Popeye voice — it’s a high voice and a low voice at the same time — cause when I was a kid, we all used to try to do that and we all stunk. It didn’t sound right. So one day, I see this film — it was an independent film called Genghis Blues. And it was about this blind singer in San Francisco who wrote a hit for Steve Miller. … And he was listening to a world-band radio one night, and he heard this strange noise. And it was a program about Tuvan singers. And Tuvans had a way of singing where they could do one and two voices. And I realized, ‘Oh man, that’s how this guy did it. Jack Mercer.’ [He imitates both voices.] There’d be two voices, an octave apart. And he’d put them together.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I was driving around and caught a Fresh Air interview with voice actor Billy West. I don’t know his work on “Futurama,” and almost turned the interview off before listening to it. Boy, that would have been a mistake. The interview was terrific, and he was a real kick explaining (and demonstrating) how he…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-varia"],"yoast_head":"\nBilly West does amazing voices - Rod Dreher<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/07\/billy-west-does-amazing-voices.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Billy West does amazing voices - Rod Dreher\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Yesterday I was driving around and caught a Fresh Air interview with voice actor Billy West. 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