'Desiderata' vocalist Les Crane dies at 74

GREENBRAE, California (AP) -- Les Crane, a talk radio innovator and Grammy winner remembered as the first television host to take on Johnny Carson, has died. He was 74.

Crane died Sunday of natural causes at Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae just north of San Francisco, said his daughter, Caprice Crane.

Born in New York, Crane gained attention as a raconteur in the early 1960s while hosting a talk radio show out of a San Francisco nightclub frequented by hipster comedians like Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce.

His rapid-fire, opinionated style and sometimes confrontational handling of callers -- unusual at the time -- drew the attention of his radio station's parent company, ABC, which tapped him as a late-night talk show host for its local television affiliate in New York.

In 1964, Crane landed the first U.S. television interview with the Rolling Stones, and months later the network slotted him against Carson, who had started hosting "The Tonight Show" on NBC two years earlier. "The Les Crane Show" lasted only a few months.

Crane's won a best spoken-word Grammy for his 1971 recording of "Desiderata," an inspirational prose poem embraced by the 1960s counterculture. Casey Kasem also credited Crane in a 1990 interview with helping to develop the Top 40 countdown of most popular songs.

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