Of all the late night hosts, Conan O’Brien has to be one of the goofiest.
Though there are seemingly more late night shows than ever before on television right now, O’Brien has been on the air longer than most.
As it turns out, he’s been on the air hosting talk shows since 1993—and he’s been hilarious ever since. In fact, since David Letterman left the air, O’Brien took the title for late night host with the longest tenure of 26 years. Still, to come up with new jokes all that time is a challenge.
Fortunately, O’Brien’s comedic creativity has only gotten sillier as he’s gotten older.
That was made clear from one segment he and his staff did in 2012.
On the episode, the staff of Conan traveled to Chicago, Illinois to do a special show there. As he explains at the beginning of the clip, Chicago is a city that has become famous over time for it’s great blues music… but most of the newer generation remains pretty unfamiliar with it.
After that, O’Brien says that he wanted to fix that problem. To do it, he decided to visit Francis Xavier Ward Elementary School in Chicago to teach little kids all about blues music.
Needless to say, the results were hilarious and adorable.
At the beginning of the segment, O’Brien gathers up three seven year olds named Summer, Cal and Margot.
He and his show’s guitarist Jimmy Vivino sit together in front of the class and they explain that blues songs are supposed to talk about the hard things in life, and the sad things.
By singing about these subjects, the kids will either feel a lot better… or they might feel a lot worse. Before long, he’s interviewing the kids about what the biggest hardships in their lives are.
It doesn’t take long for him to get some pretty creative answers!
One of the girls, Summer, explains that she gets mad when she thinks about her sister taking her teddy bear.
Still, as the story goes on, O’Brien thinks they can do better for writing a blues song. Later, another girl says that she hates eating edamame… but her family loves it. Still they want to do better.
Finally, they get a little boy named Tommy who says that he doesn’t get to eat chocolate throughout the week as much as he’d like—with the exception of Friday. With that, O’Brien reminds Tommy that the blues is all about “the man keeping you down.”
Before long, an original blues song is born!
After that, O’Brien and Vivino start improvising a blues song called “No Chocolate.”
For those who don’t know, Vivino and O’Brien are pretty accomplished guitarists. The song sounds like an immediate classic and it has hilarious lyrics—and Tommy even gets in on the action playing the shakers!
Next, a boy named Nathaniel tells O’Brien his stories about getting balls thrown at his head… and O’Brien turns that into a song as well.
Even though the kids had never heard of the blues much, the segment was a huge success!
Above all, the segment was so adorable that it’s hard to resist.
Although there’s a common thought that comedy needs to be about pain or suffering, O’Brien also has a huge soft streak and an ability to connect with people of all ages—including little kids! Needless to say, if someone were to release the song “No Chocolate” as a single, we would be first in line to buy it.
Congratulations to the kids of Francis Xavier Ward Elementary School on their blues songs! Watch the full clip below:
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