Computer programmer Linus Torvalds

DATE June 4, 2001 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Linus Torvalds discusses creating the LINUX operating
system and his new book, "Just for Fun"
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Linus Torvalds likes to say that a big part of his appeal is that he isn't
Bill Gates. Who is Torvalds? He created the operating system LINUX, an
alternative to Windows. But unlike Windows, the program code for LINUX is
made public and can be used for free. Torvalds is a hero of the open source
movement, programmers who believe that the basic code of software should be
free and available so that others can modify and improve it. Hewlett-Packard
and IBM have started working with LINUX, making this free system a force even
within the corporate marketplace. In fact, LINUX has become the
fastest-growing operating system for network server computers. It's been much
slower to catch on with individual desktop users, in part because many users
find it too complicated.

Torvalds grew up in Finland and developed the first version of LINUX in the
early '90s while he was a student at the University of Helsinki. He now lives
in California and works for the mobile computing company Transmeta. He has a
new memoir called "Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary."
Since LINUX is an operating system, I'll let Torvalds explain what an
operating system is.

Mr. LINUS TORVALDS (LINUX Creator): The operating system is kind of an
interfaced layer between the actual hardware and the actual applications that
people use on a computer, so the operating system's only purpose in life is
basically to be a resource manager. And it doesn't do anything on its own,
it's just waiting for requests by the real applications to do something. And
that makes it kind of hard to point to anything specific. When you see a
computer, you never really see the operating system itself.

GROSS: When you wrote the first LINUX program, what were you trying to do or
improve on? Why did you feel like you needed to write your own program?

Mr. TORVALDS: Well, I mean, one of the reasons for writing my own program was
just because that was what I was doing. That was my hobby. That is still my
hobby. It's not just my work. It's what I do. Programming is just very
interesting to me. So I was always working on some project or other, and the
things that made me choose projects was--I was basically trying to find
something interesting to do, but also something that I would use myself, and
give whatever project I was working on meaning that way. And LINUX really
started out as just another of those projects I've had. I needed an operating
system, or I felt I needed a better operating system, on my computer, and I
started small, with certain specific things I wanted to do, and it just grew.

GROSS: And at what point did you decide to put it on the Internet and make it
available to other people?

Mr. TORVALDS: I was at a university. I was doing a lot of reading of news
groups. It felt like the natural thing to do. So it wasn't actually a big
decision at any point to say, `OK, let's make this a better system by making
it public and by getting other people involved.' It was more of a, `Hey, I've
done this. I think it's cool and useful and I know there are other people out
there who are interested in the similar kinds of things I am' and then it took
me quite by surprise just how many other people like that there were, and how
the whole process changed by making it available on the Internet.

GROSS: What kind of feedback did you get after you put your LINUX operating
system on the Internet?

Mr. TORVALDS: Remember that all the people initially who were even looking at
it were very technical people, so most of the early feedback was fairly
technical. It was all very positive. I mean, people would say that, `Hey,
this looks really interesting,' even when they couldn't actually get it to
work on their machines. And that was one of the unexpected advantages of
making it available on the Internet was just the feedback on what kinds of
features people wanted. And suddenly the project turned into something much
more than my personal project. Suddenly it turned into--it was still my
project, but it was something that was--where other people had ideas for
things I could do, and eventually other people started doing things on their
own, and it really changed how the whole process happened.

GROSS: Linus Torvalds is my guest and he's the inventor and the developer of
the operating system known as LINUX, and he has a new book out called "Just
for Fun."

Now as you started to refine the LINUX operating system, you decided that
instead of copyrighting it, you would go with what's called the open source
approach, where something is available on the Internet for free to anyone who
wants to to download. Why did you want to do it that way instead of
copyrighting it and selling it?

Mr. TORVALDS: Well, to clarify one issue, it is actually copyrighted, but
it's a strange kind of copyright which says that we use copyright law to
ensure that, yes, you can copy it freely, but when you copy and distribute it
to other people, you have to give the same rights to those people, too. So
we're actually--LINUX and a lot of projects like LINUX do use copyright law,
but it's kind of like a judo trick where it uses copyright laws' own strength
against copyright law itself.

GROSS: This is called a general public license?

Mr. TORVALDS: It's called a general public license, and the whole--the idea
behind the license is that a lot of programs are very useful to a lot of
people and you don't want to take away the rights of people to improve all
those programs, so especially among programmers, this is a very interesting
notion where you have the right to improve on these programs and distribute
your improvements to other people. And it's fascinating. It results in this
community of people who program for the fun of it. And it's surprisingly
effective.

GROSS: So in other words, I could take your LINUX operating system and make
my improvements to it and I could circulate my improvements on the Internet,
but I couldn't sell it.

Mr. TORVALDS: Oh, no, you could even sell it.

GROSS: I could sell it?

Mr. TORVALDS: Oh, absolutely. So what you can do is you can go to any ftp
site or Web site that has the LINUX sources online, you download all the
sources, you make your own improvements to it and you sell it as your own
version of UNIX, and that's perfectly legal and a lot of people are doing
that. What the copyright license says is that when you distribute it--whether
you distribute it freely on the Internet or selling is not an issue. When you
distribute it, you have to give everybody else the same rights to that drive
work. So now somebody else can take your improved version and improve on it
further and sell the improved improved version. Which means that the whole
process becomes one of everybody can see everybody else's work, and everybody
can try to choose the best improvements and sell them or support them or do
whatever they want with it.

GROSS: So have you tried to follow all the permutations of LINUX and tried to
incorporate the best ones into your version of it?

Mr. TORVALDS: Well, I've actually taken a more passive approach, which is
it's too time-consuming to try to follow every single change that's going on,
and what actually works a lot better is to see which changes get a lot of
people excited and which changes make people want to use particular versions.
And that's kind of--the approach is somewhat similar to evolution in biology,
that you let all these changes take place. It's kind of like mutations of the
whole program, and the ones that work the best, the ones that are the fittest,
those are the ones that tend to survive in later versions.

GROSS: You've decided to not make money from the act of selling your
operating system. You've made a lot of money along the way and you've become,
you know, very famous along the way, but you haven't made money selling the
operating system. Did you ever feel bad--particularly maybe early on before
you knew that money would be coming through other sources and that you would
become so well-known, did you ever feel bad like you were missing your big
opportunity to actually get some money?

Mr. TORVALDS: I didn't, and the thing is, I never really decided, `I don't
want to sell this.' It was not a--some people make it sound, and you made it
sound, like I did this for some higher ideals, that, `I don't want to get
involved with this dirty business of selling my operating system.' That was
not the point. What made me not sell it was that I was not interested in the
selling process. And I was not interested in all the stuff you have to do
around the selling process. You have to do all the support, you have to get
marketing involved, all the things that I am so completely uninterested in.
So at all points in time I felt that I was doing what I was interested in. It
wasn't that I was some saint trying to improve the world. It was because I
was a selfish bastard that just--I knew what I wanted to do.

And I was never worried about going hungry because that's one of the great
things about programming. Not only is it a lot of fun, it's also a real job
and you can actually make real money doing it. So I always felt like I can do
my own projects for my own fun, I can do what I want, and I can support my
family doing it. And it ended up that I could support my family even better
than I ever expected, but I was never worried about not making enough to live
on.

GROSS: Are there any uses of the program or attempts to sell the program that
have bothered you?

Mr. TORVALDS: No. No. What's actually happened was there's been a lot of
uses of the programs and sales of the programs in places that I never expected
to. And rather than be bothered by the fact that people were using it in ways
that I didn't intend to, it was very exciting to see how people took something
like this and did things that I could not have imagined being done. And
that's been one of the kind of fun parts of the process, seeing how it evolves
to something much more than I initially ever expected to.

GROSS: My guest is Linus Torvalds, creator of the computer operating system
LINUX. His new memoir is called "Just for Fun." We'll talk more after a
break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Linus Torvalds is my guest and he's the creator of the operating
system known as LINUX. There's also a new book called "Linus Torvalds: Just
for Fun."

Now the best-known operating system is Windows, and Windows is on lots of
computers. Bill Gates has worked really hard to make sure that Windows is on
lots of computers, and you know, Microsoft is really excellent at marketing
and distributing. You're not interested in marketing and distributing, so how
did LINUX catch on without a big company to distribute it and market it?

Mr. TORVALDS: Well, I think one of the reasons is that while I'm not
interested in marketing and distribution, there are others who are, and the
license allows those people who are interested in marketing and distribution
to do so. And so that's part of the picture. The other part is that while
Microsoft has been very effective in the marketplace, LINUX kind of changed
the rules on how the marketplace works. Unlike a lot of other Microsoft foes,
like IBM and Apple and Oracle, historically, they've tended to try to become
the next Microsoft. And by trying to be and work in the same commercial space
that Microsoft has worked, they've been very vulnerable to the kind of
marketing tactics and very strong market share that Microsoft has.

And LINUX didn't do that. LINUX just became like hundreds and thousands of
different projects all improving LINUX in their own ways for their own
reasons, and there was no single company that was vulnerable to Microsoft
marketing or Microsoft ad campaign. And that, I think, made it very hard for
Microsoft or any of the other commercial competitors to kind of grapple with
LINUX because it was this formless thing that was everywhere and yet nowhere.
And I think that's one of the reasons why LINUX has been able to take over
markets that actually have been hard for big commercial companies.

GROSS: Now recently some really big companies like Hewlett-Packard and IBM
have become involved in LINUX. I don't know exactly the nature of those
arrangements and whether you've been in on it or not. Maybe you could talk a
little bit about how some of the bigger companies are working with LINUX and
where you fit in.

Mr. TORVALDS: See, I haven't been on it, and again, the reason I haven't been
in on it is the same reason that I haven't been interested in marketing and
other aspects. I care about the technology and that's what I do. And what
happens is that a lot of companies actually like this. A lot of companies
like the lack of politics, like the freedom, like the ability for companies to
do their own thing with LINUX. And so you'll find companies like IBM, one of
the biggest companies in computers ever, who had a lot of trouble with their
own operating systems. Everybody has at least heard of OS/2 and nobody
actually uses it. And suddenly big companies like this have the possibility
to take something like LINUX and modify it for their needs without having to
go to all the trouble they had to go to with OS/2 and fighting licensing
issues with Microsoft. And that's a big relief to some of these companies.

GROSS: What is IBM doing with LINUX?

Mr. TORVALDS: Well, IBM or any of these companies have all the same rights
that anybody has.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. TORVALDS: They have the same rights that you have and, perhaps a bit
surprisingly, they have the same rights that I have. That I don't have any
special rights to LINUX really either. They have the right to do whatever
they want. They have the right to make their modifications. They have the
right to sell them on their computers, and that's actually what they do. That
you can buy IBM computers ranging from laptops up to supercomputers running
LINUX, and that's one of the advantages for IBM when it comes to LINUX is that
LINUX is actually the first operating system that works across the whole range
of hardware that IBM sells. We're talking about not just working on PCs, but
they're working on the IBM C series and the IBM P series which are completely
different beasts.

GROSS: Is there any way you could talk about what the difference is between
LINUX and Windows that would help us understand what LINUX is a little bit
more?

Mr. TORVALDS: Well, there's a lot of differences. One may be--the most
noticeable one to the user is that Windows is more than just an operating
system. Windows is a way of life to some degree, and more specifically it's
Microsoft's way of life, and you'd better like to live the way they tell you
to live, or else. So Windows is a very `in your face' operating system and,
in my opinion, has failures as an operating system exactly because of that.
Microsoft has made a lot of decisions about what you're supposed to be able to
do with the system. So when you see Windows, you see a lot of decisions made
for you by Microsoft.

While LINUX is really just the kernel of the operating system and you can use
it in a hundred different ways. It doesn't have to have a graphical interface
if you don't want one, and there's a surprising number of people who don't
want a graphical interface at all, because if you're running an Internet Web
server, you don't want to have a screen attached to every machine. In fact,
you don't want to have a screen at all. You just want to be able to
administer hundreds of machines at the same time, and you don't care about the
graphical capabilities.

Well, if you're doing a desktop machine, obviously graphical capabilities are
just about the most important part, so you take all these programs available
for UNIX and specifically for LINUX and you create a desktop around LINUX, and
that's what a lot of people then associate with LINUX is not just the kernel
that I'm working on, but all the paraphernalia that goes along with it: the
user interfaces, the compilers, the technical programs, and also like the
office suites and graphical programs that people tend to associate with
Microsoft.

GROSS: You've also been working for the past few years with the Transmeta
Corporation. And this is a big commercial corporation, it's a fairly new
corporation that's been kind of secretive about what they're developing.
Having given away LINUX for free, how has it felt to work in the commercial
world?

Mr. TORVALDS: Well, as I tried to explain, the giving away LINUX for free was
not so much a `for the goodness of my heart' decision as a--that was a much
more fun and rewarding way of doing my own project than the alternative. So
working for a commercial company doesn't feel like I'm selling myself, because
I was never really doing this for idealistic reasons. I was doing it because
it was fun. And working for a company has some advantages. It's fun in
different ways, and that was one of the real selling points for me as far as
Transmeta was concerned was, like LINUX, the things that Transmeta did and
does are really technically very advanced and are like cutting-edge
technology, which makes them really interesting to work on. And being in a
company setting makes for a very different way of doing things, and I kind of
enjoy having seen both sides. And actually one of the things I like about how
I live my life is that I try to be not too black and white. I have my
family's side, I have my work side, I have my LINUX side, and they all melt
together well, and I think it makes for a much more interesting experience
than somebody who just does one thing and does it in one way.

GROSS: Linus Torvalds is the creator of the LINUX operating system. His new
memoir is called "Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary."
He'll be back in the second half of the show. I'm Terry Gross and this is
FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music; credits)

GROSS: This is NPR, National Public Radio.

Coming up, linguist Geoff Nunberg on why the adverb is his least favorite part
of speech. Also, a look at the career of singer Maria Muldaur, and we
continue our conversation with Linus Torvalds, creator of the LINUX computer
operating system.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with Linus Torvalds. He
created the computer operating system LINUX. He's a hero of the open source
movement, a movement of software pioneers who make the basic code of their
software available for free and allow users to modify the code. Torvalds has
a new memoir called "Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary."

You say in your book that your earliest and happiest memories involve playing
with your grandfather's old electronic calculator.

Mr. TORVALDS: Right.

GROSS: He was a professor of statistics at Helsinki University. What did you
love about playing with this little calculator?

Mr. TORVALDS: Well, I mean, I don't know why that calculator has stayed in my
mind so well, because it's one of the things I remember from my childhood, how
it was--I don't remember how old I was, but I can't have been very old at all.
And this was one of the very first calculators that could do more than just
the four basic additions, so this calculator was one of the first scientific
ones. And it didn't have an LED display like they have now, or one of these
regular displays of today. It had an old-fashioned display which had these
wires that were glowing and showing the numbers that way, and when it was
calculating something, you could really tell. It was thinking hard. And
these days, when people use a calculator and it calculates so fast that you
get the reply immediately when you press the buttons. This one took
like--some calculation took half a minute for it, and it was flashing all the
time while it was doing this. So that calculator made a big impression on me,
much more than modern-day calculators that are much more powerful.

GROSS: How were you introduced to computers?

Mr. TORVALDS: My grandfather, that very same one, he upgraded his calculator
to what to him was a programmable calculator. It was one of the early home
computers. It was one of the first ones that he didn't have to actually put
together from a kit, but you could actually go out, buy it, just connect the
cables, one cable to the TV, one cable to the power mains, and there wasn't
even a cable to the keyboard because the keyboard was the computer. They were
in the same box and it would just be ready. And to him this was just a much
faster calculator that could calculate a lot more complex things than where he
could actually tell it to do certain things thousands and millions of times.
And I ended up being kind of his Igor then, mad scientist's helper, and
helping him type in programs. And he obviously--well, obviously in retrospect
wanted me to learn about and become interested in the same things he was, and
he certainly succeeded, so it took time.

GROSS: What did you use the computer for yourself?

Mr. TORVALDS: Well, I mean, when you're, like, 11-, 12-, 13-year-old boy,
what you tend to want to do is play games or play around with the computer in
not very serious ways. So my first programs were basically, once I started to
get really into programming, tended to be very simple games, not very
professional at all, not even by the standards of that time. But that's the
kind of things I started off doing, and delving more and more into the
technical side of the computer. I then started to make programs for my own
technical needs, so a lot of my early programs after games were about
programming actually. So I wrote programs to help me program better. I think
a lot of aspiring programmers start that way.

GROSS: In your book, you say that you made a clone of the video game Pacman.

Mr. TORVALDS: That's one of them. I've always felt that I was a good
programmer, even back when I wasn't, but one thing I was never very good at
was game design. I did not have that visual ability. I did not have the very
important ability to come up with a great idea for a game. So I could
program, but I used to make mostly clones of existing games that I'd seen.

GROSS: You probably learned a lot doing that.

Mr. TORVALDS: Oh, yeah. I mean, games especially are very interesting to
program because they're really pushing the envelope of what you can do with
the computer, especially today when computers are so fast that just about
anything you do, the computer is fast enough that you don't even have to think
about how you do it. Games are special. Games make you really push the
machine.

GROSS: Why does the game push the machine more than just a regular program?

Mr. TORVALDS: Well, one of the things is that games are one of the few things
where you really notice about real time; real time meaning that when you press
a key, if the guy you're moving or whatever, the spaceship you're flying, if
that one doesn't react immediately, it's very noticeable from a psychological
level. So games really have to be about immediate action if they're action
games. And that means that you can't ever afford to take a breather thinking
about what you're doing. You have to go full bore all the time, and also
especially with graphics, there's a lot of data that you have to process to
create a graphical image on the screen, so graphical action games, even though
they have a bad name in the sense that a lot of people think they're
mind-numbingly boring and maybe even dangerous and make people shoot each
other in real life, from a technical perspective as a programmer, they're some
of the most exciting things you can do, especially if you're a teen-ager,
obviously.

GROSS: What do you love about creating an operating system?

Mr. TORVALDS: Well, I don't know. Any act of programming is really--you're
creating this world inside the computer, and the operating system to some
degree is the most fundamental level of programming you can do in a computer.
It actually ties into what Transmeta does, is that Transmeta goes on an even
lower level, and that's one of the things that always fascinated me about what
we do as a company, too. And there's a thread in my life, in my programming
life, that I want to be close to the hardware. I want to really control the
world of the computer, and the OS is a large piece of that. And you create
your own virtual world. It's not a world of people, it's a world of programs
where the OS is kind of the natural laws of that world.

GROSS: Linus Torvalds is my guest, and he's the creator of the operating
system LINUX, and he has a new book co-authored with David Diamond called
"Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary."

There's a company called VA Linux. I'm not sure what exactly they do but I
know it's related to LINUX, and you were one of the people who were in on the
IPO, the initial public offering, so you got the stock for, you know, the
opening price, probably less than the opening price. And the stock did
incredibly well at first, but because of this IPO offer, you couldn't sell
your stock for six months, and over the course of that six months...

Mr. TORVALDS: Well...

GROSS: Go ahead.

Mr. TORVALDS: Yeah. So I was--there's different classes of stock options and
stock offerings and things like that.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. TORVALDS: With a lot of the LINUX companies, what happened was that I
actually got stock options like employees of those companies did.

GROSS: I see.

Mr. TORVALDS: It's very common. In fact, it's almost unheard of in Silicon
Valley not to get stock options if you work for a technical company. And
these companies, even though I wasn't an employee of theirs, they gave me just
stock options because they felt that I had done a lot for them. And it
actually took a lot of people by surprise, obviously, how well the stock did.
This was before the whole dot-com and so on economy bubble burst. So I had
not IPO shares, I had stock options from pre-IPO which meant that they were
locked up for half a year. It is standard practice that when you give these
kind of special options to employees and others at the company before the
company has even gone public, the underwriter, the one who actually takes you
public and funds you early on, requires that these early people mustn't sell
immediately because they want to see the company doing well for some time, and
half a year is the standard time. So that was very interesting to see.
Slight disconcerting, too, because I saw the best bubble and I certainly saw
it starting to burst.

GROSS: Well, how did you react to go from having a whole lot of money on
paper, a fortune on paper, to seeing that fortune diminish and diminish and
diminish as the stock dropped?

Mr. TORVALDS: Well, in a very real sense, it was free money. It was money
that I hadn't asked for. It was obviously money that I had worked for, but
not really expected to ever make. And it was a very interesting experience,
partly for the psychological reasons, that I could watch my own reaction to
actually have that happen. And I'm certainly not complaining. I got a house
and a nice car out of it, and that was much more than I ever expected to get
out of LINUX in the first place. And it was interesting to see, especially in
this area where house prices are just outrageous. For a while, I was
concerned about money, and I did not like that feeling. For a while, I felt
that I could buy a house, and then I saw my net worth diminish and I was
worried about maybe I can't buy a house after all, and after I bought my
house, I went back to the good old Linus, the Linus I actually like being, who
didn't have to worry about money anymore. And I think that's actually--that
was very interesting in my life to, for six months, be this nasty person who
cared about money. And everybody should be that, but everybody should be that
for no more than six months, because I think that destroys you.

GROSS: Well, some people, though, don't come in to money the way you did, so
they have to kind of go on being sorry and resentful but they don't have money
to buy a home.

Mr. TORVALDS: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I'm convinced that one of the
reasons I never had to care about money is that I come from Finland and it's a
fairly--it has a very strong social network as a country, and for example,
university was basically free, health care was basically free. So I come from
a culture where you kind of don't have to worry about the basics of life, and
I think that's one of the reasons why I was able psychologically to just
ignore the commercial aspects of LINUX because I'd grown up in a culture where
commercial aspects aren't maybe as important as they tend to be in the US.

GROSS: Well, Linus Torvalds, thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. TORVALDS: Thanks. It was fun.

GROSS: Linus Torvalds is the creator of the LINUX operating system. His new
book is called "Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary."

Coming up, linguist Geoff Nunberg on why adverbs account for half the words on
his personal enemies list. This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Commentary: Overuse of adverbs in language
TERRY GROSS, host:

Aggressively, arguably, quite possibly--those are some of the adverbs on our
linguist's public enemies list. Here's Geoff Nunberg on his least favorite
part of speech.

GEOFF NUNBERG:

The other day, I was listening to a colleague describe a piece of software
he'd built that produces automatic summaries of newspaper articles. It picks
out the most topical sentences and then it shortens them by stripping off
their excess verbiage. `Like what?' I asked. `Well, for one thing,' he said,
`we leave out the adverbs.' I pointed out that there are some adverbs that
make useful contributions to the meaning of a sentence. Words like `never'
and `not' come to mind. You wouldn't want an automatic summarizer to come
back with a precis of a presidential press conference that read, `I had sexual
relations with that woman.' Even so, I got his point.

I recall when I was about 14 hearing my English teacher say that the most
beautiful sentence in English is `Jesus wept,' because it doesn't say `Jesus
wept bitterly.' At the time, I didn't realize that this was just his opinion.
I thought it was some generally accepted fact. But it's true, a lot of
sentences are improved when you take the adverbs out. Graham Greene once said
that if he opened a novel and someone answered tenderly, he closed it
immediately. And once the whole of English literature is living online, maybe
somebody will do us a favor by setting loose a virus that erases all of the
instances of tenderly and bitterly, not to mention plaintively, affectingly
and buoyantly.

It's like an editor friend of mine used to say, `Don't romance me. Just pour
the drink.' Adverbs tend to show people at their worst, posturing,
embellishing, apologizing or just being mealymouthed. They may be a
relatively small proportion of the English vocabulary, but they account for
about half the words on my personal enemies list. There are the lily gilders
like significantly and aggressively. Corporate publicists try to get at least
one of these into every press release, almost always in a split infinitive.
`We continue to aggressively reduce our cost base. We aim to significantly
accelerate our delivery of product.' Intensifiers like that always strike me
as sad, tokens of the anxiety that won't let people leave well enough alone.

Then there are the raincheck adverbs like arguably, which give us license to
make extravagant claims on credit. Sports writers love arguably. If you read
through one month's worth of Sports Illustrated recently, you would have
learned that Simon Gagne is arguably the Philadelphia Flyers' best forward,
that the Mets' Glendon Rusch is arguably the league's best number-five
starting pitcher, and that Mookie Wilson's 10th-inning appearance in game six
of the 1986 World Series was arguably the greatest at-bat in series history.

Now I'll grant you, that's one of the pleasures of talking sports, having
these endless arguments about superlatives that nobody can ever resolve. But
there's no excuse when Time magazine complained in its election coverage that
education is arguably the nation's biggest problem. I mean, that's true
enough, but then you could say the same thing about health care, the
environment, violence or drugs. Maybe we could just say that education is a
big national problem and save the argument for deciding who's the best
reliever in the National League.

As long as we're driving arguably into the sea, maybe we could also lose quite
possibly. This one is a favorite of advertisers who use it to drape their
hyperbole with affected diffidence. Quite possibly the world's perfect food.
Quite possibly the finest motor coach ever built. It manages to be unctuous
and grandiose at the same time, like a snooty butler.

Adverbs do have their fans. Henry James said that he adored them. And I'll
grant you there are some that have gotten a bad rap through no fault of their
own; hopefully, for example. The friends of the English language are always
jumping on this one, but it does journeyman work for us. A couple of weeks
ago, I heard a TV reporter talking about the floods in Iowa. He said,
`Hopefully the waters will soon subside.' I didn't see how else he could have
put that. `I hope the waters will subside'? Well, but who cares what he
hopes? `It is to be hoped the waters will subside'? Maybe a little stiff for
the 6:00 news. Let's hang on to hopefully. It's a credit to its syntactic
category.

But even so, when you see an adverb around, you have probable cause to stop
and frisk. One thing I've noticed over the years is how songs with adverbs as
their titles are usually sodden with lyrical bathos, like `the evening breeze
caressed the trees tenderly.' Or Stephen Stills' "Helplessly Hoping," the
quintessential example of rock lyric overreaching. And then there's
"Suddenly," an adverbial anthem that was a modest hit for Ray Peterson in
1960.

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. RAY PETERSON: (Singing) Suddenly...

Singers: Suddenly, suddenly, suddenly.

Mr. PETERSON: (Singing) ...the strings of my heart play a melody. And it is
haunting me, it happened so suddenly. Oh, and desperately...

Singers: Desperately, desperately, desperately.

Mr. PETERSON: (Singing) ...I wanted you so desperately. And if you'll be
true to me, I'll love you tenderly.

NUNBERG: But there are some great adverb songs, too, like Billie Holiday's
"Carelessly" and Brook Benton's "Endlessly." Oh, and let's not forget the
most widely recorded adverb title of all.

(Soundbite of "Stagger Lee")

Mr. LLOYD PRICE: (Singing) The night was clear and the moon was yellow and
the leaves came tumbling down. I was standing on the corner when I heard my
bulldog bark. He was barking at the two men who were gambling in the dark.
It was Stagger Lee and Billy, two men who gamble late. Stagger Lee threw a
seven, Billy swore that he threw eight. Stagger Lee told Billy, `I can't let
you go with that. You have won all my money and my brand-new Stetson hat.'

Singers: Go, Stagger Lee. Go, Stagger Lee. Go, Stagger Lee. Go, Stagger
Lee, Go, Stagger Lee. Go, Stagger Lee. Go, Stagger Lee.

Mr. PRICE: (Singing) Stagger Lee went home and he got his .44.

Singers: Go, Stagger Lee. Go, Stagger Lee. Go, Stagger Lee. Go, Stagger
Lee. Go, Stagger Lee. Go, Stagger Lee.

Mr. PRICE (Singing) Said, `I'm going to the barroom just to pay that debt I
owe.' Go, Stagger Lee. Look out there now.

GROSS: Geoff Nunberg is a linguist at Stanford University and the Xerox Palo
Alto Research Center.

Coming up, Milo Miles reviews a new blues CD by Maria Muldaur. This is FRESH
AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Maria Muldaur's new blues CD
TERRY GROSS, host:

Maria Muldaur has been singing the blues for more than 30 years. She's best
known for her hit from the early '70s, "Midnight at the Oasis." Milo Miles
has a review of her new CD "Richland Woman Blues."

(Soundbite of music)

Ms. MARIA MULDAUR: (Singing) When I's at home and ...(unintelligible) you
got me here, you're trying to mistreat me, I'm going back home. I'm going
back home. I'm going back home where I know I get better care.

MILO MILES reporting:

Who could predict that Maria Muldaur's 25th album would include the richest,
most assured performances of her career? On the other hand, nobody saw her
coming the first time around. Muldaur first surfaced in 1964 when she left
the Even Dozen Jug Band to become the chick singer, as they would have put it
then, for the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, which featured her husband Geoff Muldaur.
Maria and Geoff made two likeable, low-key records together, then split up.
In 1973, her world flipped over. Her first solo album took off like a rocket,
ignited by a rave review in Rolling Stone, then at the apex of its influence.
Called just "Maria Muldaur," the record mixed blues, rock, folk, novelty tunes
from different eras in a slickly produced package, sort of like a Linda
Ronstadt album just before there were Linda Ronstadt albums. A little
something for everyone, a dash of wistful nostalgia, a slinky child-woman
singer that couldn't miss.

(Soundbite of "Midnight at the Oasis")

Ms. MULDAUR: (Singing) Midnight at the oasis, send your camel to bed.
Shadows painted on faces, traces of romance in our head.

MILES: Muldaur didn't have either the personality or the organization behind
her to meet the demands of major pop stardom. Her next albums faltered, and
by 1981, she was doing hard-core Christian material. It looked like that one
solo release would be all you would need to know about her. Muldaur never
abandoned secular roots music, but her albums were spotty and she never seemed
to shake the main Jug Band problem: a tendency to make everything either cute
and quaint or solemn and stiff. There was no reason to assume she would ever
find the right tone for country blues, but a few years ago after an impromptu
performance with a street band in Memphis and a visit to the celebrated
Memphis Minnie's grave site, Muldaur was inspired to attempt a musical tribute
to early blues, stripped down to their bare essence, as she puts it.

(Soundbite of music)

Ms. MULDAUR: (Singing) Give me red lipstick and a pop of red rouge, a shingle
bob haircut and a shot of good booze. Hurry home, sweet papa, and don't you
take your time. If you wait too long, your mama will be gone. Hurry down to
the dress shop...

MILES: "Richland Woman Blues" involves people and even songs that Muldaur has
worked with before, but this time the stars are right and the air was still.
Everything came together.

(Soundbite of music)

Ms. MULDAUR: (Singing) Well, I'm leaving in the morning, papa, and I don't
know where to go. Well, I'm leaving in the morning, papa, and I don't know
where to go. 'Cause the man I been loving for 20 years, papa, said he don't
want me no more.

MILES: The new album is mostly voices and guitars, no drums, but the voices
are what count. Muldaur's tone is creepier and rougher than in her "Midnight
at the Oasis" days. That makes her a much more satisfying blues singer.
She's got nothing to prove anymore, but still has her passions. The overall
feeling is grown-up lewd rather than flirty. Mixed in is frank, rather
painful talk about love and loss among men and women, including guests Tracy
Nelson, Taj Mahal, Angela Strehli and Alvin Youngblood Hart. Even the
religious numbers sound loose and fervent, particularly a duet with Bonnie
Raitt.

"Richland Woman Blues" says good things about Maria Muldaur and about the
blues. She stuck with it, kept the faith in music that proved worth a
lifetime of devotion. You know, her old ex, Geoff Muldaur, is making the most
penetrating roots music of his career as well. Do you suppose they--nah.

GROSS: Milo Miles lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "Richland Woman Blues"
is on Stony Plain Records of Edmonton, Canada.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.

(Soundbite of music)

Ms. MULDAUR: (Singing) Won't you be my chauffeur? Won't you be my chauffeur?
I want you to ride me. I want you to ride me downtown. Oh, yeah. Well, you
ride so easy, I can't turn you down. Well, I don't want you. You know, I
don't want you to be riding these other girls, to be riding these other girls
around. Well, I'm gonna steal me a pistol, shoot my chauffeur down. Well,
I'm gonna buy you...
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