How many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
Bob Dylan song made famous by Peter, Paul and Mary (Mary Travers 1936-2009)

Mary Travers was 72. among the groups big hits were: 'If I Had A Hammer,' 'Leaving on a Jet Plane,' 'Blowin' in the Wind,'and 'Puff the Magic Dragon.' The cause was complications from chemotherapy.

Objective journalism and an opinion column are about as similar as the Bible and Playboy magazine.
Walter Cronkite (1916-2009) journalist

I am delighted that I was able to see Walter Cronkite live a couple of years ago where he was interviewed by Anderson Cooper.

All the news reports on Cronkite tonight show how far news delivery has declined, which also includes understanding by viewers.

Sadly, that's the way it was and is today.

The post I wrote about seeing Cronkite: My Post

All publicity is good, except an obituary notice.
Brendan Behan (1923–64), playwright

From the New York Times:
Buddy Miles, the drummer in Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys and a hitmaker under his own name with the song “Them Changes,” died on at his home in Austin, Tex. He was 60.

Mr. Miles suffered from congestive heat failure, his publicist, Duane Lee, said, according to Reuters. Mr. Lee said he did not know the official cause of death.
Mr. Miles played with a brisk, assertive, deeply funky attack that made him an apt partner for Hendrix. With his luxuriant Afro and his American-flag shirts, he was a prime mover in the psychedelic blues-rock of the late 1960’s, not only with Hendrix but also as a founder, drummer and occasional lead singer for the Electric Flag. During the 1980’s, he was widely heard as the lead voice of the California Raisins in television commercials

I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art—and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position
Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) French artist

During the summer of 1972, I really became a Rolling Stones fan with the release of "Exile on Main Street," which was the background music to all our neighborhood chess games. I played every chance I could; Bobby Fischer and his game against Boris Spassky is who I can thank for my interest in the game. With my new iMac computer, I was pleased that a chess game was included.

From the New York Times: Bobby Fischer, the iconoclastic genius who was one of the greatest chess players the world has ever seen, has died, The Associated Press reported Friday. He died on Thursday in a hospital in Reykjavik, Iceland, his spokesman, Gardar Sverrisson, said. He was 64. No cause of death was given.

The world championship match against the elegant Spassky was an unforgettable spectacle, the cold war fought with chess pieces in an out-of-the-way place. Mr. Fischer’s characteristic petulance, loutishness and sense of outrage were the stuff of front page headlines all over the globe. Incensed by the conditions under which the match was to be played — he was particularly offended by the whirr of television cameras in the hall — he lost the first game, then forfeited the second and insisted the remaining games be played in an isolated room the size of a janitor’s closet. There, he roared back from what, in chess, is a sizable deficit, trouncing Mr. Spassky, 12 ½to 8 ½. (In championship chess, a victory is worth one point, a draw a half-point for each player.) In all, Mr. Fischer won 7 games, lost 3 (including the forfeit) and drew 11.

Through July and most of August, the attention of the world was riveted on the Spassky-Fischer match. Americans who didn’t know a Ruy Lopez from a Poisoned Pawn watched a hitherto unknown commentator named Shelby Lyman explain each game on public television. All this was Mr. Fischer’s doing. Bobby Fischer the rebel, the enfant-terrible, the tantrum-thrower, the uncompromising savage of the chess board, had captured the imagination of the world. Because of him, for the first time in the United States the game, with all its arcana and intimations of nerdiness, was cool. And when it was over, he walked away with a winner’s purse of $250,000, a sum that staggered anyone ever associated with chess. When Mr. Spassky won the world championship, his prize was $1,400.

Mr. Fischer, the most powerful American player in history, had renounced his American citizenship and moved to Iceland in 2005.

Do not fear death... only the unlived life.
You don't have to live forever;
You just have to live.”
Natalie Babbitt, author and illustrator of children's books

Every year when I see the entire list (this is from the LA Times) of those famously talented who have passed away, I’m always amazed at how much knowledge and talent disappears with them and from us. It seems the grim reaper took more than his share of writers (novelists, poets) and jazz musicians this year:

Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, Tillie Olsen, Robert Anton Wilson, Art Buchwald, Peter Tompkins, Sidney Sheldon, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., David Halberstam, William Meredith, Mark Harris, John Graham, Grace Paley, and these are the famous ones. I am sure there are many other near famous who were not mentioned.

In the world of jazz, a number of talent people have left us:
Oscar Peterson, Frank Morgan, Art Davis, Tommy Newsom, Andrew Hill, Danny Barcelona, Joe Zawinul

In tribute a song written from a twenty-something musician who left us a while ago:

Anyone can learn what Louis Armstrong knows about music in a few weeks. Nobody could learn to play like him in a thousand years.
Benny Green, jazz pianist

What the heck? We are losing jazz greats at a rapid pace here. Again, I have seen Oscar Peterson a couple of times, but the one I remember most was at the Hollywood Bowl and a relatively new comer was the opening act -- Diana Krall.



Here is what the NYTimes said:
...[Oscar] Peterson was one of the greatest virtuosos in jazz, with a technique that was always meticulous and ornate and sometimes overwhelming. But rather than expand the boundaries of jazz, he used his gifts in the service of moderation and reliability and in gratifying his devoted audiences, whether playing in a trio or solo. His technical accomplishments were always evident, almost transparently so. Even at his peak, there was very little tension in his playing.

...it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's a feeling.
Bill Evans, (1929-1980) jazz pianist

I discovered the jazz of Frank Morgan at sometime in the 1980s and finally saw him live a year or two ago with On The Mark. The show at Catalina's Bar and Grill was good, but Morgan was old and tired, so it didn't match up to my expectations. I attempted to find a video to post here today, but there were none. If you like jazz you'll love Frank Morgan who captured the spirit and style of Charlie "Bird" Parker.

In America few people will trust you unless you are irreverent.
Norman Mailer (1923-2007), author

Here is the link to the New York Times story.

Norman Mailer, Pulitzer prize-winning author, is shown in in this Sept. 1984 photo. Mailer, the macho prince of American letters who for decades reigned as the country's literary conscience and provocateur, died of renal failure early Saturday. He was 84.

At different points in his life Mr. Mailer was a prodigious drinker and drug taker, a womanizer, a devoted family man, a would-be politician who ran for mayor of New York, a hipster existentialist, an antiwar protester, an opponent of women’s liberation and an all-purpose feuder and short-fused brawler, who with the slightest provocation would happily engage in head-butting, arm-wrestling and random punch-throwing. Boxing obsessed him and inspired some of his best writing. Any time he met a critic or a reviewer, even a friendly one, he would put up his fists and drop into a crouch.

On The Mark and I heard him speak at least a couple of times. One of my favorite events was his lecture on Picasso at the Design Center in Los Angeles in the mid-'90s. His book I enjoyed best was "The Executioner's Song." An incredible journey in the life of Gary Gilmore and his senseless killings.

Philip Roth has an poignant passage on Mailer in his new book "Exit Ghost."