At the crowded CBS party the other night on press tour, the guy I sought out first had more to do with music.
Eddie Gorodetsky has a long history in TV comedy having worked on “Prince of Bel Air,” “Saturday Night Live,” “Late Night with David Letterman,” “Two and a Half Men” and “Mike & Molly” before his current stint on the upcoming “Mom.”
But I knew him chiefly for curating the great holiday album “Christmas Party with Eddie G.” which came out on Bob Dylan’s very short-lived record label.
Gorodetsky has a long association with Dylan that included producing all 100 episodes of his “Theme Time Radio Hour.”
That rambling journey through their shared music libraries was a lot of fun to work on, says Gorodetsky, who even went on tour with Dylan so they could find time to record before and after shows.
In coming up with ideas of what to play on “Theme Time,” Gorodetsky credits Dylan with “choosing the obvious ones.
“He’s the one that suggested ‘Mama Says Knock You Out,’ the L.L. Cool J song for our show on mothers,” he said.
Though Dylan’s radio show is credited with brining out some obscure old recordings, “He always told me, ‘there is a reason some songs are obvious.”
It’s a theory that also serves Dylan’s live shows, which are always sure to include favorites like “All Along the Watchtower” or “Tangled Up in Blue” amid his new songs.
A Providence native, Gorodetsky also is a longtime NRBQ fan, who has followed the band through its various incarnations over the decades. His “Christmas Party” album came out of doing holiday mixes for friends for over 20 years. But despite its success, Gorodetsky says there won’t be a second volume; nor does he even make the mixes for his friends any more.
“People have forgotten how to use those little things called CDs,” he said.
That means “Christmas Party” was the only release for Dylan’s Strikin It Rich Records, though he would later come up with a second label, Egyptian, to put out the 1997 release, “The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers: A Tribute.”
As for his role on “Mom,” Gorodetsky said his job was to keep it rounded in day to day life.
“There’s more working people than there are people that work in television,” he said in the “Mom” panel. “I don’t know why there’s so many shows about people that work in television. You know, I came from a blue-collar background, and there are a lot of things that were funny. There were a lot of things that weren’t funny, but I met a lot more people in that world than I’ve met in this show, and I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a show for those people.”
“Mom,” with Anna fairs, Allison Janney, French Stewart and Nate Corddry, starts this fall on CBS.