Scott Simon remembers Bob Edwards, the voice of NPR for 25 years

Former NPR host Bob Edwards died Feb. 10. He was 76. Edwards was the voice of “Morning Edition” for nearly 25 years.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

God rested on the seventh day, and on the eighth, he lent his voice to Bob Edwards.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

BOB EDWARDS: Good morning. I’m Bob Edwards. The Senate today is unsealing 4,000 pages of closed-door transcripts from the Joseph McCarthy hearings in the early to mid-’50s.

SIMON: That voice, which personified Morning Edition for almost 25 years and had hosted All Things Considered alongside Susan Stamberg before that, was resonant but not pompous. Bob’s voice rolled like a great river at just the right pace and toning about war, peace, politics, blooming camellias and baseball scores. At a time when NPR was a fledgling institution, Bob Edwards made it sound big league.

I heard the voice in person for the first time years ago, when a door at WBEZ, our Chicago station, was thumped open by a scuffed boot worn by a man in blue jeans and a trucker’s jacket. (Imitating Bob Edwards) What time do the [expletive] bars close in this burg? You’re not Bob Edwards, I said. He was in town for election coverage, and we became friends. He was sharp, funny and had a laugh like a great, deep bell.

Bob was the best cold reader in the business. You could throw a Budapest phone book at him, and he’d read it out with unwavering authority and enunciation that was proper without being stuffy. A phrase Bob once wrote of Edward R. Murrow applied to Bob, too. He engaged the high school dropout while not boring the intellectual. He’d often begin prerecorded interviews by saying, you start. Producers could find this baffling, but Bob told me his opening gave the person he interviewed a chance to begin with what they considered most vital and compelling about a story. Bob imagined his audience as people, not data points. He envisioned listeners hearing him as they blinked, open their eyes in…