Ep 164 | Aired 10/30/2019
Two Jewish Guys
With an estimated 1,500 Jews in Little Rock and 500 or so more living elsewhere throughout Arkansas, the percentage of Jews in Arkansas is less than 0.001%. It is unusual, then, that a couple of Jewish men (Leslie Singer and Phil Kaplan) would be the must-see comedy act during the Christmas season in Little Rock.
Singer grew up in the Bronx and on Long Island and moved to Little Rock in 1972, soon getting into advertising. Kaplan moved to Little Rock in 1968 to work as an attorney. They first teamed up on KUAR in 1995 as volunteer on-air fundraisers for KUAR radio station. At that time, the co-hosts were barely acquainted.
Singer recalls only that “we found ourselves doing the same fundraisers and with the same complaint: They were terribly boring. I said to [Kaplan] before we went on, let’s do it as a radio show, ‘The Two Jewish Guys on Public Radio.’ We’ll tell jokes and do shtick and stories about growing up Jewish. It really caught on.” Besides the Hanukkah special (which began in 2001), they suspended their fundraising shtick a couple of years ago.
Philip Kaplan was born in Winthrop, Massachusetts, on January 4, 1938, and grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts, with his parents and one brother. He studied government at Harvard University and graduated in 1959. He graduated from the University of Michigan with an LLB degree in 1962. He was licensed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts but soon relocated to St. Louis, Missouri, to become field attorney for the National Labor Relations Board. He remained there until 1967.
Influenced in his youth by the Little Rock Central High School desegregation crisis, Kaplan moved to Little Rock in 1968 to practice law with McMath, Leatherman, Woods & Youngdahl. He left after a year to start Walker, Kaplan & Mays as a principal, staying until the end of 1977.
As a nationally known attorney focusing on civil and human rights, he helped inmates in the Arkansas prison system fight unjust treatment. He also argued cases against the teaching of creationism in Arkansas’s public schools and in support of a professor who lost his job for being a communist.
He was also lead counsel for the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) and its board of trustees in Richardson v. Sugg in 2006. UA head basketball coach Nolan Richardson had been terminated after the university decided that a comment he had made during a game was inappropriate. The decision was upheld in favor of UA, another victory for Kaplan and his firm.
Leslie Singer grew up in Long Beach, Long Island. He studied psychology at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan. After graduation, he played drums in several bands, recorded two singles and two albums for United Artists and Atlantic Records. He wrote his first album in the 60s, while visiting a commune in Arkansas.
After touring the Northeast promoting the album, he returned to Arkansas where he got a job with ad agency as a copywriter. Homesick for New York, he moved back only to discover very limited job opportunities. He worked for a short time at Bergdorf-Goodman selling women’s shoes – and sold a pair to the great Greta Garbo!
Singer again returned to Little Rock and rejoined the ad agency where he worked for the next thirteen years. He was hired away from them by Fairfield Communities, becoming the Vice President of Advertising.
He is a vintage toy enthusiast and has authored two books, ZAP! Ray Gun Classics and Do You Read Me? Vintage Communication Toys. He also collects authentic NASA used space equipment and vintage sci-fi pulp art.
