Well, 2022 is in the books. A year when we really started to crawl out from under the pall of Covid and started to live again. There has been war in the Ukraine, continued upheaval in U.S. politics and the grind of terrible things occurring on an almost daily basis. But hey, if you are reading this you are north of the dirt as they say and not in the position of those you are poised to read about. So count your blessings, be grateful for what you have and embrace life with all you’ve got because nothing is forever and none of us are getting out alive. You just want to give life all you can and leave the world a little better for your having been here and we’ll call that success. Heck, you might even make it here and then your life will truly have been worth living. Have a happy, healthy and safe New Year. Let’s get to it because I don’t know if they wanted to avoid 2023 taxes (although this doesn’t count for a retired Pope) or what, but we’ve suffered a lot of losses this month. I mean, Pele, the Pope (I put them in order of popularity), Barbara Walters, Kirstie Alley, this has been a month for the ages. Hopefully we won’t replicate it any time soon. I apologize in advance for the length but blame it on the dead.
I am going to start off with Barbra Walters who died at 93. At first, I was almost on the fence about her but then I realized it was my subconscious bias as a male. The more I thought about her career and what she had done to move a woman’s place in our society forward, the more I thought not only should she be in, but she should also be in at the top. Again, it is not so much that she was the first female news anchor as much as it was that, in that chair, she was in a place where society never saw a woman and her career really normalized a woman’s role where before her, they simply were not - driving the conversation in news, politics and world affairs. Today, women in news positions are taken for granted. In a larger sense, their doing that has really put them in a place of equality that perhaps nothing else has. That happened because of Ms. Walters who is universally seen as a trailblazer. The greater effect she has had on a woman’s place in society, beyond what she did for a living, cannot be understated. She was the first female co-host of “Today,” the first woman to anchor a network news broadcast (we are talking well before cable was even on the drawing board) and an interviewer of the rich and powerful. She created “The View,” but I want to stick with the positive. When she co-anchored the ABC network news with Harry Reasoner, Mr. Reasoner was not pleased, believing the move to be a gimmick. His unwillingness to accept her as a true partner doomed the chemistry and the pairing, but it did not deter Walters. In her Barbara Walters specials, she interviewed every president from Richard Nixon through Trump (as a candidate, not in office). She was able to attract the biggest draws like Yasir Arafat, Maggie Thatcher, Bo Yeltsin, Muammar Qaddafi, Katherine Hepburn, Barbara Streisand, Monica Lewinski and scores of others, many of whom only agreed to be interviewed because of who was conducting the interview. She did a joint interview with Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt and Menachem Begin of Israel when they were negotiating the 1979 peace accord. She didn’t always just toss softballs either. For instance, she asked Morarja Desai, the Prime Minister of India, whether he drank his own urine to bolster his health, to which he answered yes. That’s gotta make you wonder. As an aside, to highlight the difference in press coverage between the mid 70’s and now, Walters did a White House tour with a visibly inebriated First Lady and decided not to run the piece which she later said she regretted not going with. I would stick with her 70’s mentality. All-in-all, she had a great, glass shattering career that, it could be argued, did more to vault women forward than any other single person. Perhaps the pinnacle of her career, however, was being parodied by Gilda Radner as “Baba Wawa.” It simply can’t get any better than that.
Another marquee loss of the month in entertainment (sadly, I now have to include news under entertainment) is Kirstie Alley who died at 71. Ms. Alley was relatively unknown when she was cast as the replacement for Shelley Long’s character Diane Chambers, who had been the on-again-off-again love interest of Sam Malone (played by Ted Danson) in Cheers. Shows like Cheers, with an ensemble cast, often falter when a main character leaves but perhaps because, rather than replacing Diane Chambers with a similar character, Ms. Alley’s character, Rebecca Howe, was cast as the manager of the bar and therefore, Mr. Malone’s boss, a decided difference from what had existed, the show flourished with her. Ms. Alley won an Emmy and Golden Globe for her work as Ms. Howe, a career-minded woman whose sexy voice drove Sam crazy. She appeared in nearly 150 episodes before Cheers went into re-runs. As for Ms. Alley, she went on to portray a lingerie executive in “Veronica’s Closet,” won another Emmy for the miniseries “David’s Mother,” where she played the role of a single mother raising her autistic son, and starred in several movies including “Look who’s Talking,” with good friend and fellow Scientologist John Travolta, “Drop Dead Gorgeous” and “Deconstructing Harry.” She, like most of us, had trouble controlling her weight which, in Hollywood, is wholly verboten. She did not try to hide from it which was courageous (not in the sense of fighting in a war or anything like that, but in a 2022 sense of courage) and flaunted it in shows like “Fat Actress” and “Kirstie Alley’s Big Life.” To most, however, she will be known as the incredibly gorgeous Rebecca Howe in the place where everyone knows your name. That image, quite frankly, is fine with me.
I don’t have a special religion category so I will put the Pope here as we lost the first retired Pontiff in 600 years when Pope Benedict XVI died at 95. The first Pope to retire for 600 years. Impressive. I wonder who negotiated that severance package. Didn’t realize that the clergy even had a retirement plan. Apparently, there were no rules and that is something we will see change. While Pope Benedict got along with his successor, Pope Francis, it could have been ugly because there were no rules of the road for retiring pope’s. When Pope Celestine V resigned in 1294 to become a Monk, his successor, Pope Boniface VIII, had him jailed to ensure he wouldn’t try to reclaim the position and denied him a Pope’s funeral when he died. Nothing of the sort will happen here. Benedict even continued to reside at the Vatican. That’s almost like Disney keeping Robert Iger on the Board when they appointed Bob Chapek as the New CEO. That didn’t work out too well for Chapek. Thankfully, the Catholic church isn’t the Magic Kingdom, and the two Popes were able to co-exist (they were not ideologically aligned), although there was some occasional friction which cause Frances at one point to state “there is only one Pope.” Benedict kept the title Pope Emeritus, but you can expect that will change in the future. Pope Francis recently told Televisa, a Spanish Broadcast, that were he to retire, he would not live at the Vatican and would consider himself “emeritus Bishop of Rome,” suggesting that he has given all of this some thought. Back to Pope Benedict, who was father Joseph Ratzinger, before he got the nod (or white smoke) for the big job, he was a conservative who remained a champion of priestly celibacy (at least outwardly, as I just read that Father Louis Gigante, the brother of the mobster, who died this month at 90, and who was a big force in the South Bronx, openly flaunted a son he sired while wearing the collar) and although he was harsh on priests who were found guilty of sexual misconduct, had criticism hurled at him for possibly having protected deviant priests in his earlier years. He was known as an intellectual. Sort of a Scalia of the Church. It is tough to end this with a snarky comment since he is, after all, the Pope. Also, Gilder Radner didn’t come up with anything for him. As he is close to the “big guy,” one suspects he’ll do alright if that whole thing works.
Last month I wrote about the loss of Bud Friedman at 90. He started the Improv which became the gold standard of comedy clubs. This month his wife of many years, until their divorce in 1979, Silver Saundors Friedman, died at 89. The Improv, and later the Improvs, were really a collaborative effort between Bud and herself. She was often the person who auditioned the talent. Although they divorced, their deaths so close in time must have some meaning.
As a huge baseball fan, I bemoan the fact that its players have become a bunch of overpaid, whimpering cry-baby’s. Take for instance all the players who lost to the Houston Astros . They lost. Shut up about it. I don’t want to hear that the Stro’s cheated. I mean really? Stealing signs and banging on garbage cans to signal to the batter? This was going on and no one tumbled to it? How many major league dugouts have the home of Oscar the Grouch banging around by the water cooler and now buckets of Big-League Chew gum that used to contain chewing tobacco? Sign-stealing is an age-old accepted ritual in the game. Tony LaRussa, one of the revered managers in the game, used cameras to steal signs when he was at the helm of the Chicago White Sox in the 80’s. Going back, Ty Cobb sharpened his spikes to use them as weapons as he slid into bases, steroids, bennies, over-caffeinated players and corked bats. Sammy Sosa’s bat broke in a game and cork was everywhere. Pete Rose is believed to have used them. Once in Comisky Park, Albert Belle had his bat, which was suspected of being corked, taken from him and it was locked in the umpires’ room. One of Belle’s teammates, Jason Grimsley, crawled in the ceiling with a flashlight in his mouth, lowered himself into the room where the bat was and switched it for another. The umpires, seeing clumps of ceiling tile on the floor and twisted ceiling bracketing, as well as a bat that was not as shiny as Belle’s and with a different signature stamp, called the Chicago police and threatened to press charges if the bat was not returned. When the American League threatened to call in the FBI the bat was returned. It was sent to the MLB offices in New York where, in the presence of Belle and others, it was sawed in half. It was corked and Belle received a 10-game suspension. Game over. Today they would be whining forever, having people fired and ruining careers for what was just good fun. The fact is that baseball used to revel in its cheating scandals (at least those not involving gambling) and it was part of the game. Cheating in baseball was like kids stealing confections from the cookie jar. Every parent knew their kids did it and it was a universally accepted right of growing up. When you were caught with your hand in the jar, your parents had no choice but to exact some pro-forma punishment, which they usually did with an inner sense of pride. Not in baseball today with these namby-pamby pant-loads.
Well, the most vaunted form of cheating was perhaps the spitball. It struck fear in the hearts of batters. In December we lost one of the greatest cheaters in the game when Gaylord Perry left us at 84. Perry didn’t shy away from accusations of cheating. He embraced them and used them to his advantage in striking out batters who, whether he was throwing a spitter or not, were totally intimidated by the thought of it. Everyone was aware of his antics and trying to catch him added a whole other dimension to the game when he pitched. While people use lubricants for many reasons, Perry used them to screw batters. He won 314 games during his lengthy career and struck out 3,500 batters with a ball that didn’t always follow a normal trajectory. While the spitball was outlawed in baseball in 1920, Perry claimed to have been taught it by his Giants teammate Bob Shaw and, according to his autobiography (“Me and the Spitter: An Autobiographical Confession”) he graduated from saliva to “the mud ball, the emery ball, the K-Y ball, just to name a few.” Even when he wasn’t doctoring the ball, he would often swipe his hand on the lid of his cap so the batter would think he was throwing a spitter. One of Perry’s catchers was quoted as saying that there were times when the ball was so greasy he had a hard time throwing it back to the pitcher. For all the hype, though, Perry was only thrown out of one game and even then, the umpire didn’t find a foreign substance. He threw him out because no ball could have dropped as much naturally. Spitter or not, Perry was a great pitcher. He won the Cy Young award in both the American and National leagues, won 20 games or more in five seasons, was a five-time all-star and pitched a no-hitter. Cheating or not, he was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1991. The color he brought is seriously lacking in today’s game.
I am a huge tennis fan and probably one of the hugest (it is a word) figures in tennis was Nick Bollettieri who died at 91. He was a tennis teacher and coach who handled the likes of Andre Agassi, Venus and Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, Jim Courier, Monica Seles, Daniela Hantuchova and Jalena Jankovic amongst many others. Ten of his players hit Number one in the world. He established the Bollettieri Academy in Florida which was the Harvard, Yale and Columbia of tennis instruction for a long time before it was sold to IMG and rebranded as the IMG Academy. Mere acceptance into the Bollettieri academy was a sign that you were on the road to greatness in tennis. He did what coaches do he yelled at them, insulted them, pitted them against each other, all things that today would get you drummed out of coaching because we want to create namby-pamby athletes who complain about cheaters. It had the effect of getting the best out of his players and last I checked, none of his students who went onto greatness are complaining about the fact that he drove them to the heights they needed to be champions through tough love. The people who probably did complain were the seven ex-wives he created (he was still married to wife eight at the time of his death). But, hey, none of them played tennis well.
Before Madonna, before Bono, before Gaga, well maybe not before Cher, there was Pele, perhaps, well not perhaps, actually, the best-known soccer player in the world, who died at 82. I have tried to get soccer but each time I think I am starting to get it I come up against games where no one scores and the refs add time on at the end of regulation with apparently no rhyme or reason. Only they know the algorithm for how much time gets tacked on at the end and frankly, I think they just wing it. Take for instance the pinnacle game of the recent World Cup, perhaps the most important soccer game in four years unless you were Messi in which case it was the most important game of your life. And that’s Lionel Messi by the way – two names. Anyway, the most important game really came down to which goalie could read the face of the kicker and guess which way he was going to kick the ball. While the soccer masses were saying it might have been the greatest game ever, I thought it was a waste of my time. Be that as it may, Pele (Edson Arantes do Nascimento by birth) transcended the sport in much the same way Muhammad Ali transcended boxing. Both became world leaders recognized and revered wherever they went. Sadly, Pele didn’t know exactly how he got the Pele moniker. Were it me, I would have made something up. Pele won three World Cups with Brazil and scored what is believed to be 1,283 goals. Record keeping back when he started was suspect but most football aficionados agree on the 1,283 number. In the early 60’s, Brazil became concerned that Pele would be wooed to Europe for big money and so a resolution was passed declaring him a national treasure and making him non-exportable. Indeed when ultimately he came to the Cosmos to play (his last game was actually in the old Giant’s stadium) Henry Kissinger had to try and negotiate his way around the resolution. Perhaps Andy Warhol said it best when he noted that “Pelé is one of the few who contradicted my theory. Instead of 15 minutes of fame, he will have 15 centuries.” And so it is.
When you jump out of a balloon 20 miles, yes 20 miles, above the earth and live to tell about it you get in this rag when you die which is what Joseph Kittinger did at 94. No, he didn’t jump at 94. He did that at 32 as part of an experimental Air Force initiative, Project Excelsior, meant to see whether someone could survive a parachute jump from the edge of space which set the stage for the space program. They should have named it what they were really thinking, Project certain death. He died at 94 which is certainly age appropriate. When he jumped out of the balloon gondola over New Mexico, he free fell for 13 seconds before a small stabilizer parachute deployed which stopped him from spinning to the point of death (he was going at about 600 miles per hour at that point). He fell for another four minutes before his main chute deployed and he made it to the ground. The temperature at the point of the jump was 94 below zero (and we thought it was cold Christmas eve). He wore a specially designed pressure suit to survive but still, as no one had done anything like that before, there was no guarantee he would hit the ground alive. He gets the ballsy award in life if you ask me. It was all I could do to jump from the high board (ten feet) into the pool. Mr. Kittinger’s records held until 2012 when Felix Baumgartner broke them. Not to detract from Baumgartner’s feat, which was extraordinary and will probably get him here if I outlive him, he had better technology, the knowledge that someone before him had done something as death defying and survived and in addition, he had Kittinger as one of his advisors. After his balloon jumping days were over, Kittinger went on to fly over 400 combat missions in Vietnam before retiring from the Air Force, who as you can see, spent a good few years trying to kill the guy. He then went into the business of trying to kill himself and did a solo balloon flight across the Atlantic. Talk about a death wish. Kittinger was the recipient of the National Air and Space Museum trophy awarded by the Smithsonian. His quote, as printed in the New York Times: “You’ve gotta go for it. That’s the American way.” I guess that makes me Latvian or something.
A more noted man in American sports, Franco Harris, died at 72, days before the 50th anniversary of what was his greatest feat, but actually a piece of dumb luck – the Immaculate Reception. It was perhaps the most amazing play in NFL history, but Mr. Harris was much more than that play. He was a nine-time pro-bowl player, with four Super Bowl rings and in a big sports town, with stars such as Roberto Clemente, Terry Bradshaw, Mario Lemeiux, Willie Stargell, Jack Lambert and Sidney Crosby, it is Harris’ statue that greets you when you arrive at the Pittsburgh airport, along with George Washington. When he retired, he was the third greatest rusher in yards behind only Walter Peyton and Jim Brown. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1990. Harris was born in New Jersey and was a Penn State alum. He remained true to Pittsburgh and whenever asked, he was at whatever fundraising event where he was needed. According to lots of accounts, as great a player as he was on the field, he was even better where it counts most, off the field.
This is arguably in the “Sports” section. While I suspect every man, save for family members, would have no clue who Jule Campbell who died in December at 96 was, many of those same men marveled at her work, and some other things, for Sports Illustrated each March, when the swimsuit edition hits the newsstands. Ms. Campbell was the mastermind of the Swimsuit Edition and in so doing cemented the careers of many supermodels. The coveted cover of the yearly edition generally crowns the years greatest supermodel. Women who have been featured on the cover consists of a who’s-who of beauty including Cheryl Tiegs, Christie Brinkley, Paulina Porzikova, Elle McPherson, Rachel Hunter, Tyra Banks, Marisa Mille and Irina Shayk. Inside, women like Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford graced the pages. Ms. Campbell came up with the concept when the editor of SI, which had a slow month in February (we’re talking pre-Superbowl here) asked her to fill the void. Her first attempt was about diving in the Caribbean featuring a cover with a woman in a two-piece suit. That eventually morphed into what was known at the magazine as the “Sunshine Edition.” Rather than just feature the models, Ms. Campbell had them use their names (something as models they never got to do) thereby humanizing them and making them far more marketable to the masses. There has been a lot of criticism over the years about the edition objectifying women. Ms. Porzikova addressed the critics by saying that in some ways it objectified women “but so is all modeling.” According to Ms. Brinkley, “Jule knew what she wanted and what the public wanted. Yet she walked a fine line. She always kept it classy.” Perhaps the most controversial photo in the edition was a 1978 shot of Cheryl Tiegs in a one-piece white mesh suit that accentuated her nipples. It resulted in 340 cancellations (I’d like to know who they were) but, according to the New York Times, “[i]t made Ms. Tiegs, already a successful model, a megastar and Ms. Campbell one of the most sought-after editors in the fashion business.” The Swimsuit Edition also featured athletes over the years such as Serina Williams, Rhonda Rousy, Lindsay Vonn, Danica Patrick, Caroline Wozniacki, and Eugenie Bouchard amongst others. To avoid controversy, the magazine, which now publishes the Swimsuit edition in March, permits subscribers to skip the edition and get a credit. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to go to a party with the people on that list.
Sticking with sports, college football coach Mike Leach who favored what the New York Times called “an audacious, high-powered, pass-happy Air Raid offense, which influenced other colleges and N.F.L. teams,” died at 61. He was an attorney who preferred the football field to the courtroom. He coached for Texas Tech, Washington State and Mississippi State among others. I was on the fence about him but then read this posting on social media on how Coach Leach treated a young kid which speaks to his humanity which we should all emulate:
Three years ago, I took my 11-year-old son to a Mississippi State game. Jackson wanted to see pre-game warm-ups, so we were practically the first fans in the stadium. We took our upper-level seats, and my son asked if he could walk down to the field level seats to watch warm-ups, and I let him. Well, this kid somehow managed to convince a security guard that he was supposed to be on the field. The next thing I saw was my son walking up to Coach Leach and fist bumping him. The two started talking, and a few minutes later Coach Leach was calling over a couple of his players. Now, my son was a center on his YMCA team- Coach Leach had his centers showing my son how to snap the ball! I was in the upper deck, totally dumbfounded that an SEC coach just spent time in pre-game showing some kid he’d never met how to snap a football. My kid comes back to our upper deck seats beaming with pride- I saw it as a memory of a lifetime. Two years later we went to another game- my son was again in the front row watching warm-ups. A graduate assistant ran over and yelled, Are you Jackson?’ and my son said, ‘Yes!’ The graduate assistant said, ‘Coach Leach wants to see you,’ and he took my son out on the field. Coach Leach asked my son if he’d been practicing, and then made him do several snaps. Coach told him to keep working on it, gave him a football and sent him on his way. I was in the stands dumbfounded that a coach remembered my son’s name, remembered that day, and knew what spending five minutes of his time with a kid could mean.
By all accounts, Leach was a quirky (in a good way) and great guy and nothing I could write would capture the man better than that.
Everybody has a list of things they would run into their house and retrieve if it was on fire. For me, even in a world of streaming music, I would risk my life to grab my three-CD set of Otis Redding tunes. Had Otis been white he would have been Elvis. Bill Graham, the famous impresario said of Otis, that he was the sexiest person he ever saw on a stage. Anyway, this is not about Otis because he has been dead since the plane he was on crashed on December 10 (the day I write this) 1967. Rather, I write about someone you probably don’t know – Jim Stewart – who died at 92. Stewart was a banker turned self-taught record producer who along with his sister, Estelle Axton, started Stax records spawning the careers of Mr. Redding, Booker T., Isaac Hayes, Sam and Dave, Carla Thomas, Eddie Floyd and a host of others. He had over one hundred singles on the pop charts during his time at the helm of Stax with one of the first being Mr. Floyd’s “Knock on Wood.” Mr. Stewart, who told the author Peter Guralnick that “I had scarcely seen a black person till I was grown,” became hooked on what he called “Black” music after hearing Ray Charles do “What’d I say.” “I was converted immediately,” he said. “I had never heard anything like that before.” As important to Stewart as his hits was the atmosphere he tried to create in Memphis, Tennessee where Black and White artists could come together in a safe place to create as they wished. We may no longer have Mr. Stewart but we will always have his, and the Stax artists’, sweet soul music.
Like I am a fan of the Stax artists, I was (am) also a fan of Blue-Eyed Soul embodied by The Young (then only) Rascals. The guy who drove their sound (no not the bass player) the drummer, Dino Danelli died at 78. In grammar school Joe Locicero and I would argue who was the best drummer, Keith Moon or Dino with me taking Dino’s part. I probably liked him because his roots were in jazz although I didn’t know it at the time. He played with Lionel Hampton and in New Orleans, both things which informed his playing and why I liked his style of play. Born in Jersey City, he Met Eddie Brigati and Felix Cavaliere and the three headed to Vegas to work on the music side of the casinos. They came back to New York and teamed with Gene Cornish to form the Young Rascals and had their first gig at the Choo-Choo Club (no, not the Stone Pony) in Garfield, New Jersey. The rest is history. “Good Lovin’,” “It’s a Beautiful Morning,” “Girl Like You,” “Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore,” “Groovin,” “People Got to Be Free,” “I’ve Been Lonely Too Long” and more. Steve van Zandt saw the band with Springsteen at the Keyport Rollerdrome (again not the Stone Pony) and after saying the Danelli was the greatest rock drummer ever (Danelli played with the Disciples of Soul for a time), said it was the best rock show he has ever seen, noting it was also his first. Van Zandt told the Asbury Park Press that “It stayed with us, half rock, half soul, so we trace our roots very much to them.” Danelli, in addition to the Disciples of Soul, also played with Leslie West and Fotomaker. He lives through all the drummers he influenced.
I am a big fan of New Orleans. Disneyland for Drunks. I love the food, the vibe and especially the music. A record store in New Orleans was where I purchased my three-CD Otis Reddingtunes – the one I would run into a burning building to retrieve. One of the mainstays of New Orleans music for the last 60 years, Walter Wolfman Washington, died at 79. I don’t generally mention the cause of death but this one was new to me. Tonsil cancer. Maybe I should have had mine out. Walter got the nickname “Wolfman” by musically challenging other guitarists onstage which was known as wolfing. One of his first professional roles was backing Irma Thomas when he was 19. He spent 16 years in Johnny “The Tan” Adams’ band where they had an eight-year, Saturday night, engagement at Dorothy’s Medallion Lounge on Orleans Avenue where they started at 3:00 a.m. and played till dawn. Only in New Orleans. Wolfman started the Roadmasters where Jon Cleary, my favorite New Orleans Keyboard player (by way of the U.K.), was in the band. I saw them at Tramps in New York years ago. For more than a decade, the Roadmasters played Saturday nights at the Maple Leaf, the famed New Orleans venue. He was one of the first musicians to play live after Katrina when they rigged up a portable generator to open the Maple Leaf and put on a live show. It was a manifestation of the indomitable spirit of the New Orleans music scene. More recently, he was for years at d.b.a’s on Frenchman Street on Wednesdays. John Cleary wrote a nice piece on his Facebook page about being a young musician paying with Wolfman which included the following:
I was in the shallow end though and had to learn fast. When, before a song started, Walter would turn to me, hold three fingers down and whisper 1,6,4,5, I'd have no idea what he was talking about. But I would nod sagely, pretend I knew, try not to panic and hope for the best. I'd have a split second to figure out that the hand signal meant that the song was in Eb (three flats) and the chord progression was Eb, C, Ab and Bb. It was in this Arcane language that a new musical vocabulary opened up for me. Diminished chords, Major sevenths with added 6's, flatted 9's and augmented 9's, crescendos and break-downs. There was never a rehearsal. Gigs were four hours long and I was bombarded from the downbeat with material I’d never heard before but which I had to play, from the first note, as though I’d been doing it all my life.
My first proper recording session was with Walter and my first tour. He was patient with me, took me under his wing and showed me the way forward. Thank you, Walter. What I learned from you opened up my ears and changed the way I play to this day.
If you want to be at one of the great assemblages of New Orleans musicians, including the Wolfman, his wake will be at Jacob Schoen & Son Funeral Home on Canal Street. Visitation is January 4 from 8 a.m. to noon. It will be followed by a funeral service at 2 p.m. Still time to get there.
Kim Simmonds the founder and long-time guitarist for Savoy Brown, the British blues band, died at 75. Savoy Brown was always on the fringes of stardom but were a constant for British Blues fans. Kiss, ZZ Top and the Doobie Brothers all opened for Savoy Brown in their early years. I saw the band at the New York State Pavilion in Flushing Meadows Park. Simmonds married a woman from the Syracuse area and that was where the band was based for many years. Quite odd for a British blues band.
I will also note the demise of Herbert Deutsch who, along with Robert Moog, brought the Moog synthesizer to the world. He died at 90. Deutsch lived on Long Island and was a music professor at Hofstra University and a composer of “experimental” music. Robert Moog was the scientist and the technology guy behind the Moog synthesizer, but Deutsch provided the musical perspective to the creation of the keyboard. It was the perfect match of technology and musicianship that created an instrument that expanded the bounds of music.
I was and still am a huge fan of the Rockford Files. Just the sound of the Mike Post theme music to the show makes me feel good. Jim Rockford (James Garner) was great but needed a surrounding cast to make the show as excellent as it was. One of the best characters on the show was Angel, a lovable rogue who lied with such a smile and glint in his eyes that you had to like him. Angel was played by Stuart Margolin who died at 82. Angel always referred to Rockford as Jimmy and he won back-to-back Emmy awards for his supporting role. In addition to acting in the show, Margolin directed a number of episodes. Margolin’s career often intersected with Garner’s. They were in “Nichols” and “Brett Maverick” together; two Western series that did not run long. Margolin was quoted in Garner’s autobiography as saying, “Jim has been better to me than anyone else in my life except my father.” At first NBC didn’t want him in the show but he made it into the pilot and a few episodes. The NBC execs then put their foot down on having him which changed once he won the Emmy. He turned down several college athletic scholarships to pursue acting. Margolin was also a musician and put out a Country album entitled “And the Angel Sings.” Good thing he didn’t quit his day job.
Borscht-Belt comics are going the way of… well… Freddie Roman, who died this month at 85. Roman owned a shoe store, like his father, but ditched it for the Catskills where, at the time, there were some 200 resorts in search of entertainment. He worked them until he got his national break and then performed in Vegas, and Atlantic City. He conceived the show “Catskills on Broadway” which ran on Broadway for some 453 performances and around the Country for years. By today’s standards his show was tame and as he aged, so did his audience. He was President of the Friar’s Club for years and oversaw many of their famous roasts. Don’t know if he had the tongue with the chopped salad, though.
Jay Goldberg, a skilled attorney who represented the likes of Matty “The Horse” Iannello, Joe Gambino, Donald Trump, Miles Davis, Sean Combs, Bono, Meyer Lansky, Willie Nelson and the Hells Angels died at 89. Goldberg boxed early in his life and transferred his pugilistic style from the ring to the courtroom where he also interjected humor to, as one judge put it, “laugh[] the case right out of the court.” Once when his client was being sentenced, the judge announced that the defendant should be economically harmed because of his crime. Without skipping a beat Goldberg deadpanned to the Court “Judge, I’ve taken care of that already.” A Harvard law grad who began his career in the Manhattan D.A.’s office, the finest local prosecuting office there is (or at least was), he wrote five books and several primers on trial preparation and execution. In a 1997 interview with the New York Times, he opined: “It’s theater in the courtroom. It’s the only place where you get to emote and try to convince juries that black is white.” He was able to do just that more than the average bear.
Here comes a rant. I am sure that every man, woman and most children own about six umbrellas. They are constantly in the way, except when it rains. Then, like David Copperfield and the Statue of Liberty, they somehow disappear and you wind up buying yet another one on the street somewhere at a hugely inflated price as you are half-soaked. I mean, there are so many damned umbrellas in the world that I am sure they have at times affected the tilt of the earth yet, when it rains, they are nowhere to be seen. My solution would be for everyone to give up umbrella ownership and like scooters in metropolitan areas, simply cast them out on the street so when it rained, you would just pick one up and when you complete your journey you toss it to the curb for the next person to pick up. There are probably three times the population in umbrellas so you wouldn’t really be giving anything up and it would almost guarantee that when it rained there would be one available.
What triggered this thought process was the death of Arnold Fulton at 91. Fulton was a Holocaust Survivor and to those who read this blog, you know I am incredibly enamored of those folks. I should know better but each time I read about a Holocaust Survivor I sort of expect them to exhibit some sense of bitterness regardless of how slight, but they simply never do. They are the rarest breed of human being who has endured so much yet complain never. I complain bitterly if the drive thru lane at Chick-fil-A is slow and these folks have endured the unthinkable and they go about their lives loving ever precious moment while I have probably wasted at least the same number of years as it took to fight WWII bemoaning one meaningless slight after another. It’s sad, really, how shallow I am. Oh well. Let’s talk about Mr. Fulton who was born in Poland and when the German’s occupied the Country, as a Jew, he and his family were confined to an ethnic ghetto. He and his sister were smuggled out and for a time he lived in a prostitute’s room who hid him under the bed when she was “working.” One of her clients was a German officer so it was good she kept the guy occupied. He also spent time in a Roman Catholic Monastery. One wonders where he witnessed more sex. “There were six people who risked their lives to save mine,” Fulton recalled, “including one priest who was shot by the communists in 1969 because he was too outspoken.” Both his parents perished. A Rabbi arranged for his emigration to England where he studied mechanical engineering. His sister wound up in Sweden and on a visit, he toured his brother-in-law’s umbrella making factory. Figuring that soggy London could use umbrellas since no one ever seemed to have then when it rained (proving my point), he began manufacturing them and ultimately captured 30% of the British market which is rather robust. As a startup he could not get anyone to buy his product. He literally begged a buyer at a large London store (Selfridge’s) to take two dozen so he could keep the company alive. The buyer took 24 out of pity and later that afternoon it poured and they sold out, (again proving my point). It was easy going from then on as the store began buying Fulton Umbrella’s which started a big Fulton Umbrella trend. Mr. Fulton came up with innovations such as the two-person umbrella (I think that’s what we call a golf umbrella here and are those things obnoxious on the street) and the bird-cage umbrella which permits the user to be visible to others. It was a favorite of the Queen. No mention of whether King Charles cares for them. Of his childhood he wrote in his memoir: “I hold no grudge against the German people,” as he explained that he learned not to generalize about nationalities. I wish I could say the same for the people who slow me up at the Chick-fil-A drive-thru lines.
Those who work in Newark and recall walking to Nasto’s on a hot summer day to get what, to me, are the best lemon Italian ices in the world (with bits of rind mixed in), perhaps after dining at Tom and Josephine’s (on a Johnny Rocco), or Café Italia, will mourn the death of Frank Nasto, Jr. at 85. He was the “heart and soul” of what has become, the Nasto’s ice crème empire. Frank didn’t start Nasto’s (his parents, Frank, Sr. and Angelina did) but he and his brother Alphonse (who died seven months ago) took it to another level. An incredibly large amount of New Jersey restaurants offer Nasto’s confections on their dessert menu without giving attribution. I often ask in restaurants if the desserts are Nastos and get told yes a large amount of the time. Their excellence holds up. Frank, Jr. and Alphonse have passed the business off to the third generation who hopefully will carry the torch (or tartufo) for years to come.
Save for Eddie Van Halen, and whoring myself for Tom Calcagni, if you don’t make it in this blog the month you die, you’re generally out. Save for sometimes. I am going to invoke the EVH rule for Frank Lucianna who died last month, a fact I did not learn until after this thing went out. Lucianna is deserving as he worked the halls of the Bergen County Courthouse until damned near his death at 99, just six weeks short of the big 100. Perhaps the scariest part about that was he drove to the office each day. He was a giant in Bergen County. A World War II veteran who was awarded four Bronze Battle Stars, Good Conduct Medal, Presidential Citation, Air Medal, American Theatre Medal, WWII Victory Medal & Distinguished Service Medal, Lucianna was the first attorney to successfully interpose the defense of battered women’s syndrome. Ask any attorney in Bergen about Frank and they will have a colorful story about his tenacious defense of his clients. They don’t make them like him anymore and even if they did, they wouldn’t permit the color he brought to the profession. He was known for being very animated in the courtroom even into his 90’s. As he told his daughter, “You’ve got to keep the judge’s attention even if you go a little crazy because sometimes they’re sleeping up there.” We are all boring in comparison because we can’t get away with anything else. He, however, did.
That wraps up 2022. Look for the year’s top ten list in your mailboxes if you subscribe. I mean really, just hit the damned button for God’s sake. Hope that all your favorite people keep themselves out of this rag in the year to come. Enjoy the ride.