Route 66 -- the TV show, the highway, the legend, and the dream. Everyone knows I'm fascinated with "life on the road", and today I learned something wonderful.

That the theme to the Route 66 TV show has lyrics!

Here's the backstory. CBS had refused to pay for the rights to the old 1946 standard "Get Your Kicks on Route 66." That older song had actually been written on Route 66. (According to Wikipedia, it was originally about Highway 40, until the songwriter's wife suggested "66" would be easier to rhyme with "kicks"...) But now it was 1960, and the network was launching a new TV show about two young men and their adventures living on the road. And they'd commissioned an original song...

Nelson Riddle cleverly included a tinkling piano as a nod to Nat King Cole's version -- then wrote his own masterpiece. It was one of the first TV themes ever to make it into the top 40. And it may even have become a part of the new show's mystery, magic, and mystique. Every week, as the boys drove off in their shiny Corvette, the network played Nelson Riddle's beautiful song.

Four years later, after 116 adventures, the journey ended for Tod and Buzz (and their traveling film crew of 50+ Hollywood technicians). But as the sun was going down, jazz singer Teri Thornton released an album called "Open Highway" -- and its first track was the Route 66 theme. A man named Stanley Styne had lifted his pen and tried to capture what it all had meant in a set of brand new lyrics. In the TV show's final season, the album "Open Highway" was released, and it opened with this exhilarating song.

Down...
the open highway, fancy free

Go...
you've got that wanderlust to roam.

Boy...
but just enjoy it, 'cause soon you'll be home.


Now...
you have no time to fall in love.

Now...
you want no permanent address.

Now...
you're steering clear of your own happiness.


(instrumental break)

Yet...
someday a voice will whisper, 'Stay...'

'Stay.'
and that's the day you'll find, my friend

All...
your open highways have come to an end.

9:03 AM