In Celebration Of

Jack Gilbert  (1925-2012)

Horses at Midnight Without a Moon Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods. Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt. But there's music in us. Hope is pushed down but the angel flies up again taking us with her. The summer mornings begin inch by inch while we sleep, and walk with us later as long-legged beauty through the dirty streets. It is no surprise that danger and suffering surround us. What astonishes is the singing. We know the horses are there in the dark meadow because we can smell them, can hear them breathing. Our spirit persists like a man struggling through the frozen valley who suddenly smells flowers and realizes the snow is melting out of sight on top of the mountain, knows that spring has begun. In Umbria Once upon a time I was sitting outside the cafe watching twilight in Umbria when a girl came out of the bakery with the bread her mother wanted. She did not know what to do. Already bewildered by being thirteen and just that summer a woman, she now had to walk past the American. But she did fine. Went by and around the corner with style, not noticing me. Almost perfect. At the last instant could not resist darting a look down at her new breasts. Often I go back to that dip of her head when people talk about this one or that one of the great beauties. More about Jack Gilbert's life and death can be read here.

In Celebration of

I decided to change the title of these posts from In Memoriam to In Celebration Of. After posting so many lately it was getting a little morose around here– which was never my intention. Though always sad to hear about the loss of those we love and admire, it is incumbent upon we who live to celebrate their lives, in spite of the sadness.

Today we will celebrate the life of one of our greatest voices– Etta James who died this past Friday at the age of 73. It seems cosmically fitting she died the same week as Johnny Otis– without whom she may have never reached the fame she had.

Here are two performances by Miss Peaches over forty years apart!

In Memoriam

Johnny Otis (1921-2012)

To read more about Johnny's life click here.

In Memoriam

Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011)


There are many accidents that are nothing but accidents - and forget it. But there are some that were brought about only because you are the person you are... you have the wherewithal, intelligence, and energy to recognize it and do something with it. 
                                                                                                  -Helen Frankenthaler

 Helen Frankenthaler  In To The West   1977

Robert Beecher

I was thinking of an old friend yesterday. Hardly a day goes by I don’t think of him. A sip of a certain something, a song on the radio... things like that. We haven’t talked in some time, and I couldn’t possibly remember where I put his number or email address, so naturally I was compelled to “Google search” him. What I ended up finding, to my great sadness, was his obituary. He died only this past June, at the age of fifty-nine.

I met Rob Beecher twenty six years ago. I was only six months out of high school. I found myself a job as a photo assistant in the same studio where he worked as a photographer. There were three photographers then, and one other assistant. It was a pretty busy place in those days. The studio was in the heart of the giftware district of NYC. We photographed ads and catalogs for dinnerware companies, glassware companies, and just about anything else you might see in a home furnishing catalog or Brides Magazine.

Rob was considered the “hot shot” guy who got to photograph the fun stuff— the stuff that called for special effects, live models (sometimes pretty ones), or what we all liked to refer to as “mood.” I learned a lot from the other guys, but as a nineteen year old photo assistant I really only wanted to learn how to do that stuff. Not an easy thing to do when three photographers require a piece of you. Rob, could be at times, a real prima-donna, and after a while he saw to it that I got to assist him as often as possible. It was, as he would put it, a real gas!

After a year or two of assisting, Rob insisted that I start shooting for clients on my own. This was met with a little resistance from the company’s owner, so Rob was compelled to devise a little conspiracy. He had me photograph a few pages of a catalog in “his style” and passed them off as his own. After a glowing review from the art director and client, it was revealed the work was mine. You can only imagine how the owner took the fact he had been played. Nonetheless, the point had been made and it eventually turned out to be the real beginning of my photography career. For that I will always be grateful.

This was the time in my life when I was just coming of age, a victim of “late bloomer syndrome.”

To think about it now, Rob had quite an influence on my life far beyond my professional career. I experienced with him many of the firsts in my life. He was an existentialist bohemian and a first rate liberal intellectual who introduced me to a whole new literary world— Kafka, Kazantzakis, Hemingway, Steinbeck (who happened to be his father’s best friend and his godfather) to name a few. Not to mention a host of less lofty detective novelists, like Chandler, Parker, and Westlake.

And it wasn’t just my bookshelves that benefited from Rob’s influence. Much of my musical taste was informed by him as well. I can remember the very first time I heard Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits, or True Stories by Talking Heads, or most importantly Frank’s Wild Years by Tom Waits.

I listen to these albums all the time, and naturally think of him.


Rob Beecher was a sensualist of Falstaffian proportions in a skinny man’s body. We’d wax poetic over my my first bottle of Guiness Extra Stout, my first glass of Maker’s Mark, my first snifter of Courvoisier.  The first time I tasted a serious bottle of California Cabernet was with Rob. It was a 1990 Caymus Vineyard “Special Selection” drunk with a pan seared filet mignon which was purchased from the Union Square Farmer’s Market and prepared in a cast-iron skillet on a hotplate in our makeshift kitchen in the darkroom.


He was a fellow food lover who had a passion for baking bread. He had once shared with me his sourdough mother. Sorry to say it didn’t survive long, but I still have the crock it came in.
He made for me the first homemade english muffins I ever had, and they were nothing short of amazing! He was a proud cook who loved to share his knowledge and enthusiasm. He gave me my first cast-iron pan, which he pre-seasoned for me. (I made my dinner in that pan just last night.) As a wedding present he gave to my wife and me the same ceramic bread bowl he himself used . (I made pizza dough in that bowl just last weekend.) I was glad to learn from his obituary that, after leaving the photography game, he turned to artisinal baking during the last few years of his life.


Rob was, from my experience, not a very sentimental man. The one thing I know
made him beam, however, was his daughter Delaney. I knew her only as a very young child (she is now seventeen!) and by all accounts, appeared to be a daddy’s girl. She had him wrapped around her little finger. I hope that never changed. In the years after I left NY, Rob and I talked only sporadically, but anytime I asked about Delaney, he’d say “she’s fine” in a way that sounded like he was the proudest man alive.


As I write these words, I’m listening to the bittersweet moan of Mark Knopfler’s guitar playing Your Latest Trick. I can close my eyes and imagine the studio as it was all those years ago— with Polaroids pinned to a wall and Molly the cat curled up under a desk lamp next to a large glass ashtray, in which the butt of Rob’s Camel still smoldered (It was a time when smoking at the office wasn’t quite yet unacceptable). This is the time in my life I still think of the most.


Tonight I plan to pour two glasses of Courvoisier, and drink to the memory of my departed friend.


Cheers Mon!

In Memoriam

It was a bad day for music.

Jerry Leiber  (1933- 2011)

Jerry Leiber– the lyricist of the legendary songwriting duo Leiber and Stoller (Mike) passed away at the age of 78. I will allow the NY Times to better eulogize him in yesterday's obituary section, but allow me to post this footage from 1965 of Willie Mae-Big Mama-Thorton singing her rendition of Hound Dog. A song written for her by Leiber and Stoller in 1952! The same song of course was covered by Elvis Presley in 1956. Apparently they were not very fond of it.

By the way, that is Buddy Guy to her left on the Fender!

Nick Ashford  (1941-2011)

Nick Ashford was another singer-songwriter who– along with his wife Valerie Simpson– was responsible for writing a staggering amount of hit records over several decades. The nineteen-sixties and seventies were their real hey-day, writing songs for the likes of Diana Ross and the Supremes, Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell, Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, and just about everyone else at Motown Records.

I happen to be a sucker for Gladys Knight. Her voice stops me in my tracks! Here she is (yes, with the Pips) singing Ashford and Simpson's Didn't You Know You'd Have To Cry Sometime, from 1969. 

In Memoriam

Cy Twombly 1928-2011


My line is childlike but not childish. It is very difficult to fake... to get that quality you need to project yourself into the child's line. It has to be felt. (Cy Twombly)

Cy Twombly  Tiznit 1953

In Memoriam

Sidney Lumet  (1924-2011)


If you are a cinephile– and perhaps a New Yorker of a certain age– the movies of Sidney Lumet certainly have had some impact on your film viewing pleasure. He was truly one of the great, gonzo film makers of his generation. One of my favorite films is Twelve Angry Men – his first film– which he directed in 1957 at the age of 33! I've recently watched it with my young daughters and they were as riveted as I was. Here is a clip from the final scene, featuring the great Lee J.Cobb. This scene grabs me by the throat every time.

In Memoriam

Composer John Barry  1933-2011


Here is Toots Thielemans playing the Main Theme of John Barry's score to the 1969 Academy Award winning film
Midnight Cowboy. If you look closely, you'll see fellow composer John Williams conducting.

Solomon Burke 1940-2010

Frank Frazetta

In 1978 I was in the seventh grade at St. Agnes Elementary School in the nether reaches of downtown Brooklyn. I was kind of a misfit. Not cool or popular by any stretch and not quite nerdy enough for anyone to take notice. The one and only thing that made me feel comfortable 

in my own skin was drawing. I loved to draw. I'd draw anytime,

anywhere, on anything. 

I'd draw epic detailed pictures of knights and castles on my desk in math class. I'm proud to say I've served detention for my art! 

One day, Robert Beck-fellow misfit and vandal brought in a couple of glossy paperback books on the art of Frank Frazetta. I nearly lost my mind! It was like seeing the Sistine Chapel ceiling for the first time! 

It was the Renaissance meets Sci-Fi, meets Rock and Roll. I ran home that day and nagged my mother to take me to the book store to buy my own copies. I couldn't take my eyes off these epic images; the heroic figures, the moody landscapes, and the women! 

Wow! I've never seen anything like it. Any of it. This was pretty heavy stuff for a twelve year  old. What I think really amazed me most was the fact that a living person created this work. The closest I ever came to it was seeing pictures of church walls in Italy. For a twelve year old who loved art more than anything else, looking at these books was like going to church! Albeit church where the nuns were scantily clad, buxom heroines, wielding broad swords.

My love of Frazetta opened a whole new world to me. A world of books I may not had otherwise read; from Tolkien, to Bradbury, to Greek mythology.

For me, Frazetta was an introduction to art history, literature, and classicism all in one. Pretty heavy stuff for a twelve year old indeed! 

Frank Frazetta passed away on Monday. He was 82. He was an icon. He made his art on his terms. It's how he made a very successful living. His art, though quite commercial, was masterful in every way-and for that I think he'll be most remembered. As I write this, next to me are the copies of those glossy paperbacks I escaped into thirty two years ago. Tomorrow I'm bringing them to work to show all my nerdy friends.