Cracked Actor is a 1975 television documentary film about the musician David Bowie, made by Alan Yentob for the BBC's Omnibus strand. It was first shown on BBC1 on 26 January 1975.
It was filmed in 1974 when Bowie was struggling with cocaine addiction, and the documentary has become notorious for showing his fragile mental state during this period.
The documentary depicts Bowie on tour in Los Angeles, using a mixture of documentary sequences filmed in limousines and hotels, and concert footage. Most of the concert footage was taken from a show at the Los Angeles Universal Amphitheatre on 2 September 1974. There were also excerpts from D. A. Pennebaker's concert film Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, which had been shot at London's Hammersmith Odeon on 3 July 1973, as well as a few other performances from the tour.
Cracked Actor is notable for being a source for footage of Bowie's ambitious Diamond Dogs Tour.
Today
I’m listening to David Bowie’s first 8 albums in chronological order,
and thinking about one my all time musical heroes.
When
I heard he’d died, I was shocked, but not surprised. There were
rumors of ill health, and he hadn’t looked well in recent videos. But
still…
In the 1970’s, I was obsessed with David Bowie. I first heard him when a local L.A. radio station broadcast his October, 1972 Santa Monica Civic concert. I ran out and bought the Ziggy Stardust album, which I LOVED, and then the reissues of his second album (Space Oddity), Hunky Dory, and my all time favorite, The Man Who Sold The World. The records blew me away like little else; so different, so original, such great songs, high concept but accessible. I played them endlessly. Soon there were bootlegs, and I bought those too.
One of my most prized possessions: the UK “Man Who Sold The World” album, signed by Bowie, Mick Ronson and Tony Visconti
I was already a serious record collector, but enlarged my focus from finding every Jimi Hendrix record in the world to include Bowie rarities too. Record collecting was far different (and exponentially more difficult) in those pre-internet days. There were no discographies of rock artists. You depended on other collectors, friends of friends, pen-pals in foreign countries (found through ads in Melody Maker), old magazines, people who worked in record stores. Anyone who might know more than you did.
In Los Angeles we were fortunate to have Tower Records and their incredible import section, and a monthly record swap meet in the parking lot of Capitol Records. In the early 70’s I was the only person in L.A. seriously collecting Bowie and Hendrix records, so things found their way to me. Somebody told me about a guy in Long Beach who had the legendary UK pressing of The Man Who Sold The World with Bowie wearing a dress on the cover, something I’d never seen. I tracked him down and paid him the outrageous sum of $25 for his mint copy of this ultra rarity, and a mint copy of Bowie’s first album on Deram. People at the swap meet though I was out of my mind–$25 for two David Bowie records!
Moby Disc Records would let you reserve import LP’s before they were released, if you put down a $1.00 deposit. My brother and I did so for Aladdin Sane, and when I called him a few weeks later from a camping trip and he told me Moby had our albums, I left the pay phone, went and packed up my tent, and headed home. I couldn’t wait another day!
We made sure to see Bowie when he came to L.A. in March 1973, at both the Long Beach Arena and Hollywood Palladium. Quite simply the best concerts I’ve ever seen, by anyone, to this day. He and the Spiders From Mars, especially the great Mick Ronson, were astounding.
I started buying rare Bowie records from UK auction lists in Alan Betrock’s pioneering record collector zine, The Rock Marketplace (the only place collectors could buy and sell records via auction and set-sale lists.) I searched for Bowie’s earliest efforts, non-album singles on Pye and Deram. I placed classified ads in Melody Maker looking for rare singles.
In 1974 my friend Harvey Kubernik, who wrote for Melody Maker, called to tell me Bowie and his band were rehearsing at that very moment at Studio Instrument Rentals in Hollywood. I rushed there and sat outside for five or six hours until Bowie’s bodyguard, Stuart George, emerged. I shyly asked him to sign a photo I had of him with Bowie, and we began to talk. I showed him the dress cover Man Who Sold The World, which he’d never seen, and he invited me inside. He brought David out to meet me, and he graciously signed it “For Jeff, with my very best wishes, Bowie ’74.” I couldn’t believe it. I’d met my hero.
Later that year, when the BBC made a documentary about Bowie, they wanted to interview a big fan. MainMan, Bowie’s management company, sent them to me. And today, on YouTube, you can see my 18 year old self talking about Ziggy in the Cracked ActorBBC Special (I’m 40 minutes and 30 seconds into the show.)
Other versions of “The Man Who Sold The World”, as pictured in my book “101 Essential Rock Records”
During preparations for the BBC doc, I got to try on Bowie’s cape (me on the right!)
In 1975, I made my first trip to Europe, and on the very first day scored a copy of Bowie’s first record, “Liza Jane” by Davie Jones and The Kingbees, for 20 pounds at London’s Vintage Record Center. That was a LOT of money to pay for a single in 1975, but I was floating on air. That summer I spent every cent I had at record stores and flea markets in the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Holland.
I loved Aladdin Sane and Pin Ups, and Diamond Dogs too, but Young Americans threw me for a loop. I loved rock music. People who liked rock hated disco, and Bowie had gone disco. But I was back soon enough, with Station to Station, Low and Heroes.
Harvey continued to give me hot tips when Bowie was recording or staying in L.A., and I would stake him out. I’d begun a Bowie discography, and along with getting autographs, there was no better source of information than the man himself. I met him two or three more times, and he was always very kind–signing things, confirming his participation in singles like “I Pity The Fool” by The Manish Boys, and chatting for a few minutes. In 1975, he recorded Station to Station at Cherokee Studios in Hollywood, and on more than one occasion I waited outside until 2 or 3 AM, when he’d emerge. As always, he couldn’t have been nicer.
Another thing people tend to forget about Bowie. He deserves a great deal of credit for popularizing Iggy Pop and the Stooges, and Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground. Bowie’s passion for Iggy was the impetus for new management and record contracts, the Stooges’ Raw Power, and a lot of ensuing publicity. His constant championing of the Velvets, cover versions of their songs and co-production (with Ronson) of Reed’s Transformer album brought the band a great deal of publicity, and Lou his first and biggest hit, “Walk on the Wild Side.”
While many love Bowie’s later albums, my interest began to drop off by the time of Lodger. Though I would check in with his albums from time to time, I found his post Spiders/Ronson and post Fripp/Eno albums far less compelling than his earlier work.
But I’ve never stopped listening to (and loving) his classic albums; and have always had the utmost respect for him as a continunally evolving, boundary pushing artist. So his death yesterday hit me hard. As I was processing it, I realized, yes, it’s very sad. But we are lucky indeed to have so much great music (and filmed performances) to savor for years to come.
So blast Ziggy, or Aladdin Sane, or Hunky Dory. Or watch the Ziggy farewell concert, or sample Black Star, released only two days before his death. Few will leave as enduring a legacy as David Bowie. Let’s make the most of it.
Jeff Gold
January 11, 2016
Also see our great friend Jon Savage’s Bowietribute
Produced Linda Gail Lewis record, played Buddy Holly, GBOF, retired (over 100) club, National Enquirer photog and I watched Jerry and Kerrie's backyard wedding from roof and partied till dawn at Hernandos. Popped tabloid cherry by selling original Jerry Lee mugshot and arrest report from Elvis "assassination attempt." Front row for Fats and Friends. karate chopped by Killer, New Year's Eve, Ritz, 198?, after he saw my girlfriend and said, "Git rid of him, and we'll make love."
Interests:
jerry lee lewis, linda gail lewis, frankie jean lewis, myra gail lewis, killer, chiller, International Affair, Hernandos Hideaway, Bonnie Bakley, K.K., Pumpkin, Jaren, Sean
Read more on this video, which borrows heavily from Tony Palmer's"All you need is love."
The epic depiction of the Killer on his Golgotha, here: - orig. posted 11/6/10 - updated 1.6.19.
Before Mike Judge made them cartoons, this documentary explored the life of Jerry Lee Lewis by the PEOPLE who knew him best: little sister Linda Gail Lewis (i produced her first solo record in 15 years, International Affair 1991), and unbowed, relentlessly-crucified Myra Lewis Williams, the first Rock 'n' Roll girl, who not unlike Tracy Lords, nearly annihilated the entire music industry, innocently laying waste to the Killer's career for years - and the only reason Jerry Lee is alive.
(2) Jerry started dating her in 1972 when she was 15.
(3) He used to brag that she could "suck the chrome off a car fender"
1
musician, producer of Linda Gail Lewis, retired Jerry Lee Lewis audience member, after realizing i could never beat Gary Skala, or PC. recently kicked out of some terrible Jerry Lee Facebook group by someone not qualified to shine JLLs shoes, much less run a page. i once camped out on a roof in memphis with a photog from The National Enquirer, and watched Jerry and Kerrie's backyard wedding at the McCarver house. I popped my tabloid cherry, said Frankie Jean, by obtaining and selling the original Jerry Lee mugshot and accompanying incident report from the night Jerry Lee tried to "assassinate" Elvis, and was arrested. Frankie Jean said, "I'm so proud of you. Linda Gail and I have been doing that for years." Lastly, I was front row at Fats and Friends, without a doubt, the greatest show I've ever seen from the front row. P.S. I was also karate chopped by the Killer, New Year's Eve 198?, after he saw my girlfriend and said, "Git rid of him, and we'll make love." oh, yeah, I played Buddy Holly in the worst movie of all time, GBOF. Jerry came to the set one night, and when Adam, the director, introduced me to the stand-in for Killer's best friend, he said, "Oh, Killer, I know Killer." Then he took the meerschaum out of the side of his face, really looked at me in costume, and said, "Son, you look more like Buddy Holly, than Buddy Holly ever did!"
2
Produced Linda Gail Lewis' comeback record. I played Buddy Holly in the worst movie of all time, GBOF. Jerry came to set, and when the director introduced me to the Killer's dead best friend, he said, "Son, you look more like Buddy Holly, than Buddy Holly ever did!" retired Jerry Lee (over 100) member, camped out on roof with National Enquirer photog and watched Jerry and Kerrie's backyard wedding. Popped my tabloid cherry by obtaining and selling original Jerry Lee mugshot and arrest report from Elvis "assassination attempt." Frankie Jean said, "Linda Gail and I have been doing that for years." Front row for Fats and Friends, greatest show ever seen. karate chopped by the Killer, New Year's Eve, backstage Ritz, NYC 198?, after he saw my girlfriend and said, "Git rid of him, and we'll make love."
3
Produced Linda Gail Lewis' comeback record, played Buddy Holly, GBOF. Killer said, "Son, you look more like Buddy Holly, than Buddy Holly ever did!" retired (over 100) member, on roof with National Enquirer photog, watched Jerry and Kerrie's backyard wedding and partied till dawn at Hernandos. Popped tabloid cherry by obtaining and selling original Jerry Lee mugshot and arrest report from Elvis "assassination attempt." Front row for Fats and Friends. karate chopped by Killer, New Year's Eve, Ritz, 198?, after he saw my girlfriend and said, "Git rid of him, and we'll make love."
4
Produced Linda Gail Lewis record, played Buddy Holly, GBOF, retired (over 100) club, National Enquirer photog and I watched Jerry and Kerrie's backyard wedding from roof and partied till dawn at Hernandos. Popped tabloid cherry by selling original Jerry Lee mugshot and arrest report from Elvis "assassination attempt." Front row for Fats and Friends. karate chopped by Killer, New Year's Eve, Ritz, 198?, after he saw my girlfriend and said, "Git rid of him, and we'll make love."
Jason D. Williams didn't want to pursue new DNA test to prove Jerry Lee Lewis is his father
Jason D. Williams didn't want to pursue new DNA test to prove Jerry Lee Lewis is his father . Jason D. Williams is happy to let rumors be rumors. The rockabilly musician has long been rumored to be the illegitimate child of music legend Jerry Lee Lewis.
Everyone seems to like Charlotte though, even Kay Martin (who seems to hate all of Jerry's other ex's with the exception of Myra) & Kerrie (who made Charlotte welcome at Jerry's birthday concerts).
Kenny Lovelace, Me, and James Burton, backstage at HOB NOLA - Mack said it was about playing touch football with elvis
Jerry Lee Lewis duets with Mack Vickery on Mack's Rockin' My Life Awayfeaturing legends James Burton and Bob Moore(Nashville Now 1984)
Mack was mine and the Killer's favorite songwriter (Rockin' My Life Away, nuff said?), and i had the opportunity to spend a while with him at Jerry Lee's birthday party at the ranch in Nesbit, 1990, while recording Linda Gail Lewis.
Weird trivia:
i asked him what the song was about, and you'll never believe what he told me.
find the answer under the video in the comment section
Thank you for posting this. My husband would have been 78 years old today. He and Mack were best friends and he worked for years as Jerry's road manager.
Merle Kilgore sings his and Mack Vickery's When You Get on the Whiskey (Let Somebody Else Drive) with The Bama Band, Hee Haw, 1985
Maybe you've heard John Anderson's version?
It says in this book excerpt that President Reagan gave him a signed letter of appreciation for this song, because of Nancy's 'Just Say No' drug movement. (it didn't work though, because when i met him, i think he could hear the grass grow.)
Lyrics
I heard it on the radio and six o' clock news
Said, "You'd better not drive when you get on the booze"
The sheriff was on TV an a shakin' his hand
Said, 'We're really crackin' down you better understand'
When you get on to whiskey
(When you get on to whiskey)
When you get on to whiskey
(When you get on to whiskey)
When you get on to whiskey
Let somebody else drive
Started drinkin' on Friday and by Saturday night
They had be blowin' through a tube charged with DUI
Cuffed and booked and thrown in a cell
I was tryin' to sober up and tell him myself
When you get on to whiskey
(When you get on to whiskey)
When you get on to whiskey
(When you get on to whiskey)
When you get on to whiskey
Just let somebody else drive
Forty eight hours is a long is a long time to kill
In a room full of drunks surrounded with steel
Hell's all the serve in a Metro Bar
So don't be drinkin' when your drivin' your car
When you get on to whiskey
(When you get on to whiskey)
When you get on to whiskey
(When you get on to whiskey)
When you get on to whiskey
Let somebody else drive
When you get on to whiskey
(When you get on to whiskey)
When you get on to whiskey
(When you get on to whiskey)
When you get on to whiskey
Let somebody else drive
When you get on to whiskey
(When you get on to whiskey)
When you get on to whiskey
(When you get on to whiskey)
"His name is Pete Drake. He got the brilliant idea one time to make his steel guitar talk and he actually does it, right now, with a beautiful song, Forever" -introduced by my hero Merle Kilgore
Pete Drake (George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Phil Spector) Talking Steel Guitar session
Performs:
"i'm just a guitar (everybody picks on me)"
"joggin'" only i've ever heard
"danny boy"
"bridge over troubled water"
thanks to the original uploader for finding and uploading to YouTube.
this little gem was found unmarked by a wonderful Memphis videographer, and lo and behold, through persistent viewing through reams of b-roll, i discovered this never-before-seen personal video message from Ringo Starr and Chips Moman to Pete Drake, wishing him the best for an unnamed award circa 1987. [Ringo and Chips were in Memphis preparing to record Ringo's Memphis album, which would soon be aborted and end in legal problems.]
the 'Pete'Ringo refers to, regarding finding country tapes in his car, is indeed, Pete Drake, who was the Nashville record producer responsible for convincing Ringo to cut a country record in Nashville with Nashville players, all on the basis of his coincidental discovery of Ringo's country music collection, discovered while picking him up at the airport. [their record became Beaucoup of Blues, winning more than a few top 10s, as well as critical accolades.]
1.the first thing that's on my mind, is,
and you better answer some of these. I know how to deal with you silent
but deadly types; twice as many questions as you want answered.
I went
and saw the Box Tops at Beachhead in Cleve, and saw Peggy and Sue
Million and the guys from Reigning Sound who were playing the next night
with Mary Weiss from Shanghai-la's. I vaguely even remembered the
singer guy, although it was the drummer guy who was married to Sue
Million who was nice enough to put me on the list, but back to the
Tops:
Fucking weirdest show.
Except maybe for James brown on PCP, or the
time George Jones rode off on the back of a motorcycle with a bottle of
Mariquilla in his hand and a 22-year-old Blond-driveler-Shintoist-yeah.
2. I know probably 99 different types of irony, and use them all the
time, and this was not one of them. Still not able to tell you if Alex
was being real or not, having seen his scroungy act (Little Fishes,
anyone?), and having seen his superconducting distant act (Panther Burns as sideman). This one was more like a Game Show host for the Sultana
Brunei. I knew the fee was six-figures or a hundred virgins. I
understood, but this was boring Cleveland, and an Oldies show at that,
and there wouldn't be more than 150 people. I guess it was Irony 101.
Anyway, they played "Whiter Shade of Pale" and a couple other ones, LX
on bass for Green Onions. I really am not prepared to mine my psyche to
explain. I go directly to the backstage orgy of me and Lx. I walk
backhand-tentatively, after being convinced by Sue that it would be fun
despite the weird scenes that I had, and the complete schizophrenic
quality of our long but sparse relations. He'd just finished
Burn-N some High Grade Locoweed. Still, so Sue goes first and does
the'remember me? I met you at western sizzlin' when.
3. I was a waitress, and watching graceless; he's lookout-inchoate.
I can only describe a very lax Hamiltonian.
Not sure which way he's
gonna go with the whole remember me reply, but then. I look around and
it's a whole different backstage scene, man. Local radio DJs. I assume
from oldies stations, family members of other boxtops, Midwestern
people. I still have not figured out; and Sue is dressed like Adultery
Vaudeville. Somehow that took a little pressure off me in case he decided
to let her have it. I knew that it'd be OK. I knowing. I
make her cry, then Alex mightn't able to make her morph into a bush. So
he's doing that lx-thing, and cachepots, blowguns in the chasms of
his mind, and he's probably thinking about something, and she
finishes, and he says, "Oh, yeah, vaguely," and it works--shes happy and
he's still thinking, and nobody gets hurt.
4. Now its my turnaround course. Smart enough to just stand there
and look at him without risking saying any words that might be used
against me in his comeback--he looks a lot older, handsome. From the
last time, maybe 7, 8 years ago, we had a good, weird New Orleans
evening together, and he was the Incontestability. I was buying the Cuba
Libras, and he breaks out in the biggest grin you've ever seen and does
the whole what the fuck are you doing here-routine with, so far, no
repercussion I haven't seen anyone I know yet, except for the night
before with Peggy and that guy who frowns, and its great. I really am
believing in it, just a little suspicious. I don't know if it was
the extra ADD, or whatever. I couldn't keep my mouth shut. I talked
to Alex. I would have never done probably as the first person since I've been here; so it was 7 months-worth of stuff; and
with me, ya know, I can go a little bit overboard, to say the least,
with the questions, and if
5. you let me get away with one the second one's gonna be even
weirder and then exponentially on and onto. Up to the question about
something like, hey, Ive been meaning to ask you, do you remember a guy
around Stax nicknamed Super Whitey. I was doing Linda Gail's
record........you can imagine....well, that was the tipper: Jekyll met
hide and it was memorable: something like this.
I asked him about
that bouncer guy at that weird bar in the seventies that's in that
Memphis book who sang on that Bach's bottom stuff, and was an Eggleston/Chilton Quaalude-pal ... not a good start; so it was, you know, marry the
problem with questions about things you know a little bit, but you have
no idea what it is that you're talky about--it was kinda like Andy
Griffith and Barney. I was just smiley and lovey, but he smelled blood
and the whole place stopped and was presetting the oldies star who sang the letter. And then it got downright absurdity, denying knowing anybody
that was a bouncer, and, the best one was, and even Gary from boxtops
laughed at this one--that he never knew anyone in Memphis who carried a
gun.
I couldn't contain myself and. I think. I told him how. how I met Cyndi
Underwood; how she leaned over the Tenna bar to me. I just gotten offstage with you guys, and asked me if...I wanted to go back to her
place and have some Lemon Meringue pie, and she was wearing a fur
coat--nothing on underneath, and then her Derringer fell onto the floor out of her boots...well.
6. I don't know if he knew her, Vouchsafe, KNEW her, but he did some
more stuff, and about ten minutes later it normalized out when I brought
up Harold Cowart, my Louisiana bass player buddy, who used to play with John Fred, etc.
Ya know, trying to throw in the obscure cool thing.
I
think it heated off and worked. Cut to Gary Top; got in the conversation,
and Alex started telling stories 'bout the playboys, and it was
great. I never thought I'd hear those stories out of his mouth in a million years, and it was almost over.
I had a few more questions, like
about Katrina, which was his favorite subject apparently, and I got to
hear, I got rescued off my roof by a helicopter story.
I had not heard
before but which must have been almost rote, having been in New Orleans
for the past few months, and he told me some almost unreadable-for-sincerity--update about Gus, and that...I don't know.
And he was
eager to talk about the old gang, so we went over Rene, Ron (Easley), you (Doug Easley), Ross (Johnson), Don (Spicer), George R., and whoever else we could think of.
now keep in mind he's doing this. I think he can, at this point, at
least, give us barely perceptible rockstar eyebrow looks as one by one
the Beefaroni Midwestern middlebrows come by and hand him a Box Tops
record, DJs come up and talk about the show or their station, and one
woman hands him a picture of her boyfriend to sign crusher only piece of
paper she's got--on that one he starts to laugh and brings me into the
exchange, and gets close to the old evil LX.
I can recall couching
hidden sarcasms and practiced understatements... I was gonna write about
a bunch of stuff.
I say.
I'll save it for next time.
I may not ever
feel this prolific, thankfully, for you, again.
This is officially the
longest email I've ever written anybody.
Last night the festive stratosphere here at South by Southwest was interrupted when news broke that AlexChilton had died. As part of the Box Tops and Big Star...MIRACULOUSLY SOME EMBEDDED VIDEOS SURVIVE FROM THIS POST!
』【thanks to the original post which the internet has ruined】 ♫♩♪ ♬ ★ ☆♥℞№ ♨Ⓧ
∴◎×☼ 〓 ⊥ 〒 Ⓨ
Ⓧ 3D 3-D℞ 3-D
Bangkok
"Alex Chilton" R.I.P. sxsw "panther burns" "New Orleans" memphis "the
letter" "make a little love" box tops" "tav falco" "jim dickinson" "New
Rose" disque "patrick mathe" records Bangkok "My Rival" 3-D "like flies
on sherbert" "william eggleston" "jim dickinson" chilton "the box tops"
3d hd "greatest hits" punk mrjyn whatgetsmehot youweirdtube
yt:quality=high "george reinecke" coman "ross johnson"
“I suggest that the city cannot afford a cultural fiasco that will make it a laughing stock at best … Far better to have no jazz festival than a fake jazz festival.”
In August 1967, a particularly sharp-tongued letter ran in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
“… I suggest that the city cannot afford a cultural fiasco that will make it a laughing stock at best,” it read. “… Far better to have no jazz festival than a fake jazz festival.”
The writer was Al Rose, a notoriously opinionated New Orleans native, a pioneering jazz producer and historian, writer, artist, and adventurer. Rose, born Etienne Alfonse de la Rose Lascaux died on December 15, 1993, due to complications from a stroke. He was 77.
But what was Rose’s beef with the event that would become known as “Jazzfest”?
Well, apparently #NOLA has been able to afford it - it is laughably mostly not jazz (what little there is has been shunted to side stages in poor time slots in order to maintain a fig leaf of jazz cred), and yet people still go and pay..their URL tells it: https://t.co/PlOz93X5cLhttps://t.co/FvzBtWLcXR
The organizers, it seemed, had announced plans to bring performers Stan Kenton, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie to the city musicians that Rose did not consider true jazz artists.
No, he argued, this was orchestra music, “rooted in European forms and “…not related to, not derived from, not evolved from jazz in any way.” To be jazz, as Rose wrote in the preface to his reference work New Orleans Jazz: A Family Album, “music must be (a) improvised, (b) be played in 2/4 or 4/4 time, and (c) retain a clearly definable melodic line.”
There is only one type of jazz, wrote Rose to the Times-Picayune. You don’t think so? Come on, debate me. The festival went on, however. And Rose went back to work. Championing authenticity in jazz was Rose’s lifelong mission.
“He had a personal attitude towards himself and the world,” says fellow jazz historian and musician Danny Barker, a close friend. “He was a man you couldn’t argue with—you could not change his mind on nothing. He’d go down fighting.”
And like a jazz cat with nine lives, Rose spent his life fighting for ideas. His battles were waged on many fronts: music, art, politics. This included a stint in Mexico as bodyguard for exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. And, reputedly, Rose also spent some time smuggling guns during the Spanish Civil War, parachuting into Spain to free political prisoners and smuggling revolutionaries into this country in a boat with a false bottom.
“I’m still finding bullet holes and scars on Al that I’d never seen before,” his wife, Diana Rose, once told me.
I met Al and Diana just five months ago, when I hoped to write a profile for LouisianaCultural Vistas of Al’s curious life. I had heard all the stories, and wanted to meet this Hemingwayesque character who lived in my city, and who offered a window to the secret courtyards of the 20th century.
Al Rose, at the microphone, poses with (from left) Earl Hines, Louis Armstong, Barney Bigard and Arvel Shaw at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music in 1947.
Sadly—for me, at least—that story will not be completed. Rose welcomed conversation, but his mysteries were now impenetrably closeted in his mind. Perhaps searching for a “Rosebud” during our only interview, I asked him if there was one thing he had learned that held true, whether he was working in jazz, art, or politics. He had a quick answer.
“People always resisted the idea of having an idea,” he said.
Rose started acting on his ideas early. At 14, he ran away from home after refusing to be confirmed into the Catholic church, reputedly writing on the bathroom mirror, “Don’t try to find me.” He changed his name and made his living drawing caricatures in Mobile, Alabama, and New York’s Coney Island, and invented a false past and enrolled in a prep school in Pennsylvania.
Rose had been exposed to jazz as a child, when his father hired a band for a traveling carnival, and musicians often served as his babysitters. In 1936, when he was 19, Rose produced what was the first jazz concert, in Philadelphia. For the first time ever, people bought tickets and sat in chairs and treated jazz as seriously as European classical music. The program that first night included Sidney Bechet, Sidney De Paris, and Freddie “Gatemouth” Moore.
Then Rose left for Mexico, where he studied art with the famous muralist, Diego Rivera. He lived with Rivera and, as part of his tuition, he protected Trotsky. “I had the conviction that he was doing important work,” he once said, adding that he wasn’t actually a Trotskyite. ‘There were 12 separate incidents in which we were fired on. I had a tooth shot out. And I had to use a variety of names. I was only 22.”
Returning to the United States, Rose worked as a welder in Philadelphia and helped organize the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). He produced countless jazz concerts and over a hundred records, and in 1946 he launched a syndicated radio program, Journeys into Jazz.
“The secret to my life is it doesn’t click,” he once said. “It’s not pointless, but aimless.” Rose met Diana, his third wife, at a Mensa meeting in Florida. She takes some credit for steering him into his late career as a writer. “I wanted him to start doing something that wasn’t so dangerous,” she explained.
New Orleans Jazz: A Family Album was Rose’s first book, which he published in 1967 with Edmond Souchon. Then came Storyville, New Orleans, which includes seven reminiscences by madams and prostitutes who worked in the infamous red-light district. One of these interviews became the basis for the Louis Malle film, Pretty Baby. But when Rose realized that the film was going to be historically inaccurate, he tried to return his money and begged that his name be stricken from the credits. He failed; his name remains at the end of the film.
One of Rose’s best friends was ragtime pianist Eubie Blake, and Rose published a biography of him in 1979. In his forward to the book, Blake himself wrote that “When I first read the manuscript, I learned a lot about Eubie Blake …” But it’s I Remember Jazz: Six Decades Among the Great Jazzmen, published in 1987, that reveals the most about Rose himself. It chronicles his own aimless, but never pointless journeys into jazz, 60 years of friendships and behind-the-scenes work with the music he so fiercely defined and defended.
Although Rose once said that he had “no fierce need for immortality,” his work shows no sign of slowing down. His collection of band arrangements, photographs, books, sheet music, correspondence, and recordings is a major attraction of the Hogan Jazz Archives at Tulane, and has been used in hundreds of doctoral dissertations. One of his books, a biography of Storyville madam Lulu White, has only so far been published in France. And a documentary team is currently producing a study of Storyville, using filmed interviews with Barker and Rose.
According to Diana Rose, her husband was physically incapable of raising his voice past conversational tones. But when he stood up at age 14 to deliver his lifelong solo, he blew loud and hard. Sure, Jazzfest organizers, Pretty Baby, and Trotsky’s assassins all eventually found their mark.
But in jazz, that great musical forum for the exchange of ideas, so did Al Rose.
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Michael Tisserand is a New Orleans-based freelance writer. A graduate of the University of Minnesota, his work has appeared in Offbeat magazine, Downbeat and USA Today. He is the author of The Kingdom of Zydeco (1998) and Sugarcane Academy: How A New Orleans Teacher and His Storm-Struck Students Created a School to Remember (2007).
