Heaven has a new angel; Dolly Parton, 1946-2026

I've been neglecting the blog lately. My remunerative work, my labor of love for the Brooklyn Heights Blog, and other things have kept me busy. My last two posts, dated July 8 and 27, were obituaries, the first of a cat and the second of a friend of over sixty years. I was hoping that my next post wouldn't be another obituary. My wife quotes the folk wisdom that deaths come in threes.

"Coat of Many Colors" is my favorite of Dolly Parton's songs. I had assumed it was autobiographical until I learned she was one of twelve siblings. Could her mother have had the time to put so much effort into making a garment for one of them? Then again, I don't doubt that her mother was a remarkable woman. Another of her songs, "Jolene," her biggest hit, is by her own telling autobiographical. It's about a bank teller she suspected of flirting with her husband, Carl Dean, whom she met outside a Nashville laundromat the day after her high school graduation. They married two years later, and their marriage lasted almost sixty years. He died on March 3, 2025.

There's little I can write that would add meaningfully to the outpouring of praise and remembrances that quickly followed the news of her passing. I did write about her on this blog in a review of Run Rose Run, the novel she co-authored with James Patterson. In that post I noted that I first heard of Dolly when a Rolling Stone article mentioned that Jerry Garcia admired her singing. I wrote in my earlier piece that I didn't like her voice as much as those with what I called the "harder edged" quality exemplified by Emmylou Harris or Lacy J. Dalton. Since then I've come to appreciate its delicate, airy quality to which I've given the term "willowy." 

For a good summation of what made her great, I turn to Robert Reich, whom those who follow me on Facebook know I admire:

To me, Dolly Parton represented the very best in America. Her kindness, compassion, laughter, love of life, hardscrabble beginnings, humanity, ambition, and extraordinary talent were what this country is — or should be.

Farewell, Dolly. Your willowy voice will be a welcome addition to the heavenly choir.

Allan Michael Tremmel, 1946-2026 - a friend of many years

At my age, I find myself often having to pay final tributes to old friends, or to people I've admired from afar. My last post here was an obituary of a cat. Now I mourn a friend of very long standing. I met Allan Tremmel in 1958 when we were students at James Monroe Junior High School in Tampa, a city to which we were both recent arrivals. I found his accent intriguing. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, a place I would then have been very surprised to know would be my home for over half of my life.

As schoolmates, Allan and I quickly found we had common interests. One was in astronomy and space travel. My parents gave me a small refractor telescope, and we spent many clear evenings looking at the planets, the M31 galaxy in Andromeda, and other celestial sights. Another was trains, particularly model trains. We each had small train sets, and would visit each other to play with them. My parents were always happy to see Allan, whose unfailing politeness and unassuming disposition appealed to them.

As we went together through high school, Robinson in Tampa, and college, the University of South Florida, our common interests expanded to include art, history, literature, and music. During junior high and high school we had both listened to pop music - Chuck Berry through the Beatles - but in college our now late friend Mike Starling and I introduced Allan to the baroque music of Bach, Telemann, Vivaldi, and others, which Allan came to enjoy. I remember that he loved, as did I, Robert Penn Warren's novel All the King's Men, a required reading in our first year "The American Idea" course at USF. 

After USF Allan and I separated geographically. I went north to law school, while he stayed in Tampa, got a job with Verizon, and married Marcia. I saw both of them during summer breaks, and later, when I settled in New York and into my career as a lawyer, when I visited my parents in Florida. We also kept in touch by email. He was delighted when I told him I'd moved from Manhattan to his native borough. When I told him that a well known theater couple had paid a hefty sum for an apartment on Sterling Place, his childhood home, he replied that he regretted having left Brooklyn. 

The last time I saw Allan face to face was in March of 2013, at the ceremony for the commital of my mother's ashes to lie with my father's, who had died in 2008. Marcia, who is an ordained Episcopal priest, read the appropriate liturgy. I introduced Allan to Julene Gordon, who had been my parents' across-the-street neighbor, and whose late husband Robert had, like Allan, worked for Verizon. Allan said he had known Robert well and had enjoyed working with him.

Since then we were in frequent touch on Facebook. Allan was always keen to send me news of planetary conjunctions, photos from the Hubble Space Telescope, videos of steam locomotives, and the like. I did my best to respond in kind, and to give him occasional news about Brooklyn that he might find interesting. I continued to hear from him into June, then got word from Marcia that he had been hospitalized with cancer. Several days later I got the news of his passing, which took place two days before his eightieth birthday. I've lost a friendship that I valued long and deeply. Marcia told me that his last days were painful for him. I'm grateful that he was released from that pain, and is at rest with God.

George Thorogood & the Destroyers with John Hammond (1942-2026) doing Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love?"

At New Orleans' House of Blues sometime in the 1980s George Thorogood invited John P. Hammond, who died yesterday, to join him onstage in a rendition of Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love." Hammond's growling vocal and his skill on blues harp, accompanied by Thorogood's guitar, made this a memorable performance. Hammond was the son of John Henry Hammond (1910-1987), record producer and civil rights activist, who promoted the careers of Black musicians. Young John's godfather, from whom he got his middle name, was Paul Robeson.

Neil Sedaka (1939-2026), "Oh, Carol" - a teenage trauma resolved through songwriting

Neil Sedaka, who died today at 86, was a prominent contributor to the soundtrack of my adolescence. From 1959 through 1960 he had a series of catchy pop hits that were staples on the radio and at James Monroe Junior High School dances. One of these, "Oh! Carol" (1959, clip above) was inspired by his own adolescent trauma. He dated a classmate at Abraham Lincoln High School, Brooklyn, named Carol Klein. It seems the relationship ended unhappily. She, later known to the world as Carole King, along with her husband Gerry Goffin, wrote a joking reply song, "Oh, Neil". 

Today, Carole King posted a tribute to Neil Sedaka, noting that he had inspired her to become a songwriter.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson (1941-2026)

Born in Greenville, South Carolina in 1941, he belongs in the company of Rosa Parks, The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, John Lewis, and others who, in the middle years of the past century provided the energy and knowledge that led our country out of the shameful past of legalized segregation and discrimination. Robert Reich provides the full text of Rev. Jackson's speech to the 1988 Democratic National Convention, in Atlanta, which included these words:

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lies only a few miles from us tonight. Tonight he must feel good as he looks down upon us. We sit here together, a rainbow, a coalition — the sons and daughters of slavemasters and the sons and daughters of slaves, sitting together around a common table, to decide the direction of our party and our country. His heart would be full tonight.

Rest in peace, Rev. Jackson.  We are a better nation for your having been among us.

Connie Francis (1937-2025), "Lipstick On Your Collar."

As her New York Times obituary notes, Connie Francis is mostly remembered for dreamy ballads like her first million seller, Who's Sorry Now (no question mark in the title). She did occasional rockers like "Lipstick On Your Collar" (video above, with an introduction by Dick Clark). She grew up in Newark's The Ironbound, a neighborhood that was probably grittier in her childhood than now as, like many inner city areas, it is undergoing gentrification. When Bobby Darin decided Connie was his Dream Lover, her father showed him the door at gunpoint. 

"Lipstick On Your Collar" is my favorite of her many hit songs. I like it because it shows her tough side. I like it for the same reason I like Doris Day as Calamity Jane.

Farewell, Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero from The Ironbound. You gave much to many. You also endured much, both emotionally and physically, but you always prevailed. Maybe you and Roberta Flack can thrill the heavenly host with a duet.

Rest in Peace, President Carter

I can't think of words more eloquent to mark our nation's great loss than those of Robert Reich, who served in President Carter's administration, as well as in that of President Gerald Ford, and who was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton. I especially like this passage from Reich's message:

"Carter believed passionately in the capacity of human beings to create civil societies that would contain the beasts in all of us. Civilization would prevail over brutality. Humanity over inhumanity.

Carter was a religious man who lived by this simple civil religion. He not only saw the good in others but he practiced the good. He was far from the best president America has had but he was one of the best and most decent people ever to serve as president."

UPDATE: Sabrina Lippman, CEO of Habitat for Humanity New York City and Westchester County, offers this remembrance:

“New Yorkers and global citizens alike have lost one of our greatest advocates for affordable housing, self-help homeownership, and shelter for all. We add our voices to the chorus around the world celebrating a life well-built.   

President Carter’s leadership and commitment to decent, affordable housing was rooted in his faith, belief in family, and an unwavering dedication to the idea that we can create a better life for all by lifting each other up and working together to accomplish our shared goals.

We cannot overstate our appreciation for just how much Habitat for Humanity and the people we’ve served around the world have benefited from the support of President and Mrs. Carter, may they both rest in peace." 

Photo: Department of Defense. Department of the Navy. Naval Photographic Center, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

 

Flaco the Owl, 2010-2024

Flaco ("skinny" in Spanish, though he appeared anything but), a Eurasian eagle owl, was hatched in a sanctuary in North Carolina in March of 2010. Two months later he was taken to New York's Central Park Zoo, where he lived alone in an enclosure until February 2, 2023 when a vandal broke the screen and allowed him to escape. In the photo (Wikimedia Commons) he's peering through the window of poet, playwright, and lyricist Nan Knighton. 

During his year of freedom, Flaco was often seen in and around Central Park, though he occasionally ventured to other parts of the city. Not surprisingly, he became a local celebrity and favorite photographic subject. To the dismay of his many admirers, though to the relief of the local rat and pigeon populations (but they still have to contend with red-tailed hawks), yesterday Flaco was found dead on an Upper West Side sidewalk, apparently the victim of a collision with a building.

Adios, Flaco. Gracias for the joy you gave to so many during your flights around the city.

Peter Schickele ("PDQ Bach"), 1935-2024

Peter Schickele, who died Tuesday at 88, was a serious composer of "more than 100 symphonic, choral, solo instrumental and chamber works" who also did arrangements of folk music for Joan Baez and Buffy Sainte-Marie; however, somewhat to his regret, he was best known for a fictional character he invented, P,D.Q. Bach, the least known of Johann Sebastian Bach's myriad children. Schickele claimed to have discovered P.D.Q. and his works while serving as professor of music at the University of Southern North Dakota's branch campus at Hoople.

The clip above shows Schickele introducing P.D.Q. Bach's "Classical Rap," followed by audio of the piece. Schickele explains that P.D.Q. wrote it about a neighborhood in early 19th century Vienna, but that he modified it to describe life on Manhattan's Upper West Side. 

Martha and I were fortunate to attend several P.D.Q. Bach concerts some years ago. Most began when Schickele "slid down a rope suspended from the first balcony." If I recall correctly, the opening number for one was another favorite of New Yorkers, the Concerto for Horn and Hardart. For non-New Yorkers, Horn and Hardart was the company that owned the famous "Automat" restaurants.

Thomas Curtiss, Jr., 1941-2023

The photo is of one of the the last times Tom Curtiss and I were together, some years ago, when he and his husband, Charles Neeley, visited New York from L.A., and Martha and I had lunch with them at a Midtown restauruant.

Tom and I were classmates at Harvard Law School from 1967 to 1970.  He stood out in the photo book given to entering students because he was wearing a dress Marine Corps officer's uniform. It showed his home as Novelty, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. We didn't have much contact during our first or second years. The third year we both joined a club for law students called Lincoln's Inn, named for one of the London Inns of Court. After we had been together there during meals and parties, he invited me to join a group that met in his large corner dorm room on Friday evenings to drink beer or cheap Scotch, socialize, and listen to tapes on his Akai reel-to-reel deck. These included Joan Baez's Farewell Angelina, Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home,and a collection of Wagner orchestral pieces, including the overture to Die Meistersinger.

The gatherings at "Club 222," as we called it after Tom's dorm room number, were typically all male. Tom was known to date women from time to time. One, a fellow Clevelander, became known by the sobriquet "Long Suffering Kate." There was a proposal to open membership in Lincoln's Inn, which had been male only, to women. I was in favor. Tom said, "A woman should be a date on your arm, not a competitor for a seat at a table." Tom lost; women were admitted. 

Tom had the sort of background that, before I arrived in Cambridge, I feared most of my classmates would have, and that would make them consider me, a public school and state university graduate from the South, something of a yokel. He was a corporate executive's son with impeccable prep and Ivy credentials: Exeter and Yale. The friends he chose for Club 222 didn't conform to those specifications.  They were more like our class as a whole, except for the absence of women or Blacks, both of which groups were under-represented in our class.  They were almost all non-Ivy graduates, about half from state schools, and from middle class families with homes in various parts of the country.

As Tom and I spent more time together we found common interests beyond drinking and music. I was from a military family, and was in Army ROTC during law school as draft deferments for graduate students had ended the year I entered. Tom had deferred law school to join the Marines. He told me he had been accepted by both the Harvard and University of Virginia law schools during his senior year at Yale. When his four year Marine Corps tour of duty was almost over, he wrote to both schools, noting that he had been accepted before going on active duty, and asking if he could now attend. Virginia turned him down, saying their admission standards had increased, but Harvard said he was still welcome. Tom gave me some advice on what to expect during my active duty term. We also found a common passion in running. One time, after the party at 222 went later than usual, I collapsed on his couch. In the morning he said he was going for a run and invited me to join him. We ran down to the Cambridge bank of the Charles River, went about half a mile downstream, crossed to the Boston side, then ran back. We repeated this several times before graduation. 

I found a law firm in New York that was willing to take me on knowing I would have to leave for a possible two year Army commitment a year after graduation. Tom chose a firm in Los Angeles, a city he had come to love during his active duty Marine years. In October of 1970 I took my first vacation from my law firm and visited Tom in L.A., a city with which I was then unfamiliar. Tom was sharing an apartment with Joe, another Marine, Tom told me there's no such thing as an "ex-Marine"; one is a Marine for life. He suggested dinner at a Mexican restaurant. We got in his car and went a mile or so on the freeway, exited, and found the restaurant closed. He said, "There's another not too far away." We got back on the freeway and went what seemed like three or four miles in the direction opposite from which we'd come. We had a delicious Mexican meal, and I gained an appreciation of what "not too far" means in L.A. terms.

The rest of our short visit Tom showed me the Santa Monica Pier and some things off the usual tourist trail. One of these was a sprawling outdoor farmers' market. Several years later he told me he had walked by a live poultry stand and spotted an unusual looking rooster. Intrigued, Tom bought him and took him to the backyard of the house he'd bought on Micheltorena Street, where he made a coop. Hearing his staccato crowing the next morning, Tom gave him the ironic name Chanticleer.

Over the succeeding years Tom and I got together in L.A. and New York several times, and once at a Law School reunion. After a succession of housemates, Charles Neeley became a constant. I began to suspect that Charles was more than a housemate when Tom called and said both of them would be staying in New York for a few days before leaving on a trip to Europe.  During that visit Martha had a commitment one afternoon, so Tom, Charles, and I took Cordelia (then known as Liz) in her stroller on a tour of SoHo and the Village. Martha developed an immediate liking for both Tom and Charles.

Their last visit to New York was about fifteen years ago. They went with Martha, Cordelia, and me to mass at Grace Church, and after to brunch at Jack the Horse Tavern, a favorite neighborhood spot named for a lake in Minnesota, the owner's native state. During brunch, I asked Tom if, during our law school years, he'd been so far in the closet he didn't know he was there. He said , "No"; he had known he was gay since his teens. He also said he'd had a discreet affair with one of the Club 222 members.

After brunch I invited Tom and Charles to join me on a walk down to Brooklyn Bridge Park. Tom regretted that he couldn't; he was bothred by neuropathy. After that his health went into decline, and our communications became, apart from Christmas cards, exclusively electronic. It came as no surprise when Charles announced his death on December 23.

Tom's and my friendship lasted over fifty years. We came from different backgrounds and had some differing views, but it was a friendship from which I believe we both benefited. I will miss him.

Jimmy Buffett, "A Pirate Looks at Forty"

His New York Times obituary calls him a "rougish bard of island escapism." According to his website, "Jimmy passed away peacefully on the night of September 1st surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs."

The video above is of my favorite of his songs, "A Pirate Looks at Forty," a wistful mid-life take on what he'd seen and done and what he wished for. I liked his melange of country and calypso, and his commitment to the environment. Fair winds, Jimmy.

Tony Bennett - "Boulevard Of Broken Dreams"

 

If you've wondered what Tony Bennett's first hit was, this is it.

He was born Anthony Dominick Benedetto (the late British humor magazine Punch did a fake Italian to English phrasebook in which both Basso Profundo and Tempo Rubato were translated as "Tony Bennett's real name") in Long Island City, Queens, on August 3, 1926 to Giovanni and Anna Benedetto, who both came from Calabria, in southern Italy. Giovanni (later John) arrived as an immigrant at age 11. Anna was a native born Amrican, having arrived in the womb. 

Despite his most remembered song being "I Left My Heart in San Francisco", Tony Bennett was devoted to his native New York. At the age of ten his music teacher arranged for him to sing with Mayor Fiorello La Guardia at the opening of the Triborough (now Robert F. Kennedy) Bridge.  Later, he began to get paying gigs, but his budding career was interrupted when he was drafted, He served in the Army in Germany, was involved in combat in the late days of the war, and was among the troops who liberated the Landsberg concentration camp.

Back in New York after the war, he began to get work as a singer in night clubs, using the stage name Joe Bari, a name he took from a port city in southern Italy. He was working at a club in Greenwich Village when the owner offered to make Pearl Bailey his headline act. She agreed, but only if he kept Joe Bari as her opening act. One night Bob Hope (I've given a link to Bob Hope on the optimistic theory that I might have one or two Gen Z readers who have never heard of him, even from their Gen X parents) was there to hear Ms. Bailey, and ws so impressed by Joe Bari that he offered to make him the opener for his show at the Paramount Theater. The conditon was a change of name; Mr. Hope didn't like the name Joe Bari. After a bit of rumination on "Anthony Benedetto," he came up with "Tony Bennett," 

At this point I could write, "The rest is history," but I want to mention a couple of perhaps lesser known facts about Tony Bennett's life. The first is his committment to the struggle for civil rights for Black people, perhaps springing in part from his friendly relationship with Ms. Bailey, and also with Harry Belafonte. He joined the Selma to Montgomery, Alabama civil rights march in 1965 and sang with many other stars at a rally near the end of the march.

The other relates back to his love for New York, as well as for children and for the arts. He and his wife provided the funds to establish a high school for the arts in New York City. In a typical gesture of humility, they insisted that it be named for his friend, Frank Sinatra.

Perhaps the best summing up of Tony Bennett's personality is this passage from his New York Times obituary, linked above, that quotes Simon Hattenstone in the Guardian: 

“He mythologizes himself, name-drops every time he opens his mouth, directs you to his altruism, is self-congratulatory to the point of indecency. He should be intolerable, but he’s one of the sweetest, most humble men I’ve ever met.”

Some thoughts concerning the legacy of Daniel Ellsberg (1931-2023)

First, I consider Daniel Ellsberg a hero. He broke the law. but did so not out of desire for personal gain but to expose to the public a pattern of deception concerning U.S. involvement in Vietnam that spanned both Democratic and Republican presidential administrations. He was willing to face the legal consequences of his action, which could have included a long prison sentence. Largely because of prosecutorial misconduct, the charges against him were dismissed. He spent the rest of his long life in a campaign to warn against the danger of nuclear war. 

My first reaction on learning of Ellsberg's death was sorrow. Soon after, though, it struck me that his re-emergence into public consciousness could provide an argument, in the form of "whataboutism," for those defending the former President's purloining of classified documents. I believe the cases are easily distinguishable. Ellsberg's motive was clear, and while his disclosure didn't reflect well on some government and military officials, "there was not a single secret damaging to national security" anywhere in the Pentagon Papers, as is admitted by Gabriel Schoenfeld in a New York Times opinion piece that is otherwise critical of Ellsberg's disclosure. Schoenfeld puts his thumb on the secrecy-as-"crucial"-adjunct-to-statecraft side of the scale; I put mine on the transparency-except-where-vitally-necessary side.

Former President Trump's motive for taking classified documents isn't clear. Bill Barr, his own Attorney General, attributes it to Trump's narcissism. Mark Esper, who served as Trump's Secretary of Defense, said that Trump's action not only endangered national security but put service members' lives at risk.

"Whataboutism" aside, what troubled me more deeply was the contribution that Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers had made, if unwittingly, to a corrosive cynicism about the very legitimacy of our liberal small "d" democratic system of government. As David Brooks puts it in his Times essay:

"This cynical attitude has become pervasive in our society. Proper skepticism toward our institutions has turned into endemic distrust, a jaundiced cynicism that says: I’m onto the game; it’s corruption all the way down."

Ellsberg responded to this concern when he was interviewed by Christiane Amanpour three months ago: 

"I.F. Stone, the journalist, used to say, 'All governments lie, and nothing they say is to be believed.' That doesn’t mean that everything they say is a lie. It does mean that anything they say could be a lie, and it’s not the last word. You have to look for other sources of information and check it against your common sense."

If the National Weather Service tells me a hurricane is headed my way, "common sense" tells me to take precautions without looking "for other sources of information." Still, I think Ellsberg's advice is generally correct. We should be skeptical without being cynical.

Tina Turner (1939-2023) - "What's Love Got To Do With It?"; a remembrance.

As I noted twelve years ago, and gave the reason there, actors, artists, and musicians I have loved over the years are dying with frequency. The latest is Tina Turner, a two time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee.The first was in 1991, as Ike and Tina Turner, with her ex-husband, Ike, who got her career started in 1958, and gave her the name Tina (she was born Anna Mae Bullock, and took the name Turner when she married Ike). The second induction was in 2021 as a solo artist. 

I'm not sure when I first heard Ike and Tina Turner. It may have been 1960, when "A Fool in Love" made it to number two on the pop chart, and I could have heard it on WDAE in Tampa. I know I heard "River Deep, Mountain High", probably on Boston's WRKO during my first year of law school. She was not a bel canto singer; her voice had a rasp that conveyed struggle and the grit to overcome. "River Deep" gave her more melodic structure and a chance to broaden her vocal ability.

After she separated from and divorced Ike, she went through several years of struggle. Her big break came in 1984, with the release of her album Private Dancer, which includes "What's Love Got to Do with It?" (clip above), her first song to go to number one on the pop chart. Although the song was co-written by Graham Lyle and Terry Britten, it seems almost autobiographical. Much recording and touring success followed Private Dancer, She also appeared in two movies, including a leading role as Aunty Entity in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.  

She died on Wednesday, May 24 at her and her second husband, Erwin Bach's, home in Küsnacht, Switzerland. She has received many tributes from fellow musicians. My favorite is from Beyoncé, as quoted in the Daily News

“My beloved queen,” Beyoncé's post reads. “I love you endlessly. I’m so grateful for your inspiration, and all the ways you have paved the way. You are strength and resilience. You are the epitome of power and passion. We are all so fortunate to have witnessed your kindness and beautiful spirit that will remain forever.”

Another friend gone: Anne Hagman McDermott

The photo above shows Anne Hagman McDermott as I most remember her, in the company of a group of friends. I'm at the right, in my Mets cap (Annie was a Mets fan); she is behind me and to my left in the photo, with a hand on Jeanine Flaherty's shoulder. Her husband, Joe McDermott, is to her left. Others in the photo are, left to right photo-wise, Jack Deacy, Barry Murphy, and Ethan Eldon. The occasion was a gathering of Lion's Head alums  several years ago at the White Horse Tavern, a Greenwich Village fixture known in its heyday, like the Head, for attracting writers and artists.

I was introduced to Annie by my friend Allen Sack sometime around the cusp of the 1970s and '80s and we maintained a friendship that was a steady source of joy for me. We were with friends at the Head watching a Mets game when she proposed a version of West Side Story featuring the Mets instead of the Jets. She suggested,"When you're a Met, you're a Met all the way, from your first training camp to your last ball in play." Allen came up with "Ojeda, I just met a lefty, Ojeda!" My contribution was to have the players' wives and girlfriends get together during preparations for the World Series and having them sing, "They don't know how to play in the American, pitchers don't bat in the American, etc." That's now obsolete with the unfortunate universalization of the designated hitter rule.

Annie once unwittingly almost got me into a fight at the Head. It was a bitterly cold night. I came in and took the only vacant stool, at the corner of the bar nearest the door. To my left was a man I'd never seen before. Annie was around the corner, seated next to the wall. The stranger kept giving Annie, who was single at the time, pick-up lines, to which she responded politely but noncommitally. After a while, Annie said good night to all around her and went out the door. The stranger followed her and held the door open while he implored her to stay or to go with him. Annie continued to respond politely, though negatively, while freezing air billowed into the bar. Someone, probably the bartender, yelled, "Close the goddamned door!" Annie, hearing this, skedaddled. The stranger slammed the door shut and confronted me with "F--- you!" I was about to give a response along the lines of, "Sir, I'm not the one who complained, but I'm grateful to whoever did." Just then Nancy Duggan, a tough as nails redhead, came in and took the seat Annie had vacated. It was a classic instance of drawing fire. The guy turned from me to Nancy and deployed a line of breathtaking sophistication: "Hey, babe, you ever think about using your equipment?" Nancy shot back, in a voice approaching a snarl, "Ye-e-eah, I use it ALL the TIME." I decided this was a terrific time to visit the men's room. When I came out two minutes or so later, the guy was gone.

Yes, Annie could be, as the saying goes, kind to a fault. I don't doubt that, if she or someone for whom she cared (which was just about anyone) was in danger, she would have responded appropriately. She was a vital component of the Lion's Head scene, which proved vital to her in that she met her husband, Joe McDermott, there.

Goodbye, Annie. You are sorely missed.

Sane in the City by Sophie Malleret: a tribute to our friend, Barbara Cahn, 1952-2023

Barbara Cahn and her husband, Alan Ginsberg, have been treasured friends of Martha's and mine throughout our now almost thirty two year marriage. Yesterday we received from Alan the shocking and saddening news of Barbara's sudden, unexpected death. The video above, by Sophie Malleret and forwarded to us by Alan, gives a view of her activities in the LaGuardia Corner Garden and at her wheel in her pottery studio. She was a lover of all things beautiful and a superb artist, and brought joy into the lives of all who knew her. We miss her terribly.

Wayne Shorter, 1933-2023 - "Footprints"

"An important cog in the ever turning wheel of universal humanism has passed through leaving all he touched better than it was before. He was and will always be: purveyor of pentatonic perfection; master of blues inflected melodies; hero of vertical and horizontal harmonic implications, giant of saxophone regardless of register; improviser extraordinaire in any and all musical environments; mercurial wit and biting humorist with uncommon humility and depth of understanding, seer, reader, and interpreter of ancient and modern myth…..jazz messenger. Rest In Peace." - Wynton Marsalis

Burt Bacharach, 1928-2023, "What the World Needs Now is Love"

Burt Bacharach, who died on Wednesday, had a peripatetic life. He was born in Kansas City, Missouri, spent his teenage years in Forest Hills, Queens, New York City, began his formal musical education at McGill University in Montreal, then continued it in New York and California. He was "classically trained," with teachers who included composers Darius Milhaud, Henry Cowell, and Bohuslav Martinů. He considered Milhaud, who was influenced by jazz and by Brazilian music, and who, according to Bacharach's NPR obituary encouraged him "to follow the kind of music he felt compelled to write," to have been his greatest influence. When he was 28 he got an early career boost when he became arranger and conductor for shows by Marlene Dietrich, and "traveled the world with her for over a decade."

The clip above shows Bacharach at the White House during a 2012 tribute to him and to his lyricist partner Hal David, who was unable to attend, and died later that year. He gives a spoken entry and sings the opening verse of "What the World Needs Now Is Love," which he then accompanies on piano while it is sung by Stevie Wonder, Diana Krall, Sheryl Crow, Michael Feinstein, Mike Myers, Lyle Lovett, Rumer, Sheléa, and Arturo Sandoval.

A myriad of singers have sung and recorded songs by Bacharach and David. A particular exponent of their works during the 1960s and '70s was Dionne Warwick. In the clip above (audio with a montage of photos) she sings "Anyone Who Had a Heart" (1964). Again from the NPR obituary, she rebutted the notion that Bacharach's compositions were "simple" by noting that song has frequent time signature changes.

R.I.P. Tom Verlaine

Lately this blog has been a sad series of death notices of musicians I've loved: Jeff Beck, then David Crosby, and now Tom Verlaine, guitarist, singer, and songwriter of the band Television. Verlaine, born Thomas Miller, took his professional name from the French Symbolist, and later Decadent, poet Paul Verlaine. While Television was considered part of the punk rock scene that emerged in the mid 1970s, their style differed from the minimalistic three chord approach of groups like the Ramones or the Sex Pistols. Verlaine and Television's other guitarist, Richard Lloyd, played complex runs that reflected jazz influences as well as, according to Verlaine, inspiration from surf guitar bands like the Ventures. You can hear them, along with Verlaine's vocal, on the clip above of Television's live performance of "Foxhole."

R.I.P. Jeff Beck; another rock great lost.

Certainly one of rock's most exciting guitarists, Jeff Beck, died today. In the clip above he plays "Little Wing" as a tribute to Jimi Hendrix. Vocal and drums are by Naranda Michael Walden.