Slam Slam Blues Charlie Parker A Studio Chronicle 1940-1948 CD 2
Vacila Con Tu Trago Abelardo Barroso y la Sensacion Bruca Maniguá
No Banker Left Behind Ry Cooder
To The Golden Lady In Her Graham Cracker Window Mal Waldron/Marion Brown Songs of Love and Regret
Boulevard Of Broken Dreams Ferlin Husky Boulevard Of Broken Dreams
Born to Lose Ted Daffan Honky Tonk Blues
I Forget And I Can’t Tell (Ballad Of The Lights Pt. 1) Arthur Russell Love Is Overtaking Me
Over the Rainbow Art Pepper Tete a Tete – Art Pepper-George Cables
The funeral of a very old friend, Steve Fletcher, was on Monday. We hadn’t met for decades, but kept in touch; a few email exchanges every year, a card at Christmas, fragments of news of family and friends, shards of memory. Steve and I met in the late 1950s when we were both working at The Wellcome Foundation in Euston Road. I was in the basement, unpacking returned medical supplies: he was on the top floor — a photographic studio. He had been one of the select few National Servicemen to be sent to Hong Kong to learn Chinese. We spent a lot of time zooming about on his scooter, hanging out in Soho. Steve lived in Notting Hill. Elgin Crescent. Not the Notting Hill of now, but the place of race riots, of slum landlord Peter Rachman and his nasty (with dog) rent-collector Michael de Freitas (who tried to re-invent himself as Michael X and was hanged in Port-of Spain). David Jenkins, a painter friend, lived nearby in Powis Square in a room you had to reach up a ladder through a hole in the ceiling. We drank and ate in Old Compton Street. In a long-gone cafe known as “The French”. In the Star Restaurant. For a while Steve worked on the door at Cy Laurie’s jazz club, opposite the WIndmill Theatre. I’d sometimes stand-in for him there. Without Steve, there possibly would have been no “outburst” magazine, no Matrix Press — even no Goliard. The treadle press I had by the very end of the 1950s had to be somewhere permanent and not dragged from flat to flat. Out in Edmonton I’d met Steve’s family. I remember his father had shares in the Channel Tunnel — the old one that was proposed; not the present. I met his brother Syd and his wife Elvira. Syd was an engraver and shared a workshop with Dick (a letterpress printer) and Stan (a die-stamper) on the top floor of a building off Oxford Street. Thanks to Steve and Syd the press found a home there. Steve got me interested in photography. I learned what “reticulation” is and found the work of Irving Penn and Edward Steichen through him. Both Penn and Steichen were in “outburst“.
The Foundation was a good place to work. We hung out with Nigel Black; with Ken and Pat Lansdowne (Ken back from the Navy and Suez where, directing the landing of supplies, he’d bawled out a dim Major who now turned out to be his boss); with Peter Burns (a mod from Woolwich who, wearing his no-longer-fashionable collar-less jacket to work, had noticed the then almost unknown Beatles being photographed in front of the National Union of Mineworkers building and had gone over, so allowing John Lennon to copy the already-defunct-in-London style); and with Peter Bradley, a bright bio-chemist.
Then Steve met Wendy from Hoxton (again, the Hoxton of then, not the art-trendy now). I remember Stan the die-stamper taking Aikido classes and demonstrating moves to Wendy’s brother Tommy who looked quizzically, shrugged, and said “Well Stan, all good, but like we say down ‘Oxton… there’s no substitute for a shooter”. Steve and Wendy’s wedding was the best ever, and my most drunk.
Lives drifted apart in the late sixties. We moved out of London, and then to the USA. Steve and Wendy had three sons. Steve taught photography, then pottery. Wendy taught show-biz children off set; then ran an agency for child performers. They retired. Went to live in Spain.
In Southend on Monday the crematorium was packed. Wendy spoke movingly of their almost fifty years together. Their son Graham simply listed things his father liked: music, people, places, food. An excellent thought that had Steve present in the room. In the sunlight outside I thought how Steve would have enjoyed this juxtaposition. He was seventy-four. There’s a scrap of newsreel from 1957. Steve with beard and glasses.
NOTE October 5, 2015. Since Apple in its “progress” has made this link unusable, here’s a direct link to a download that I hope will work in your browser.
This morning I am angry with the American judge who, in delivering him to the mob of papparazzi in front of the Harlem courthouse, pretends as if he (Strauss-Kahn) were an accused just like any other.
Body & Soul Art Pepper Unreleased Art, Vol 1: The Complete Abashiri Concert
I’ll Remember April Richard Twardzik The Pacific Jazz Piano Trios
Keep Your Heart Right [R.Rudd] Archie Shepp & Roswell Rudd Quartet Rome, November 17, 2004
Benwood Dick Sparrow Sparrow (1959)
I just got the sad news, from Trevor Joyce, of Paddy’s death two days ago. Our condolences to Mary, to all family and friends.
Below is the note in Trevor’s message: I take the liberty of repeating it unacknowledged until I know its provenance.
NOTE: the piece is from Workers Solidarity. Here’s a more mimsy obituary from The Irish Times.
Patrick Galvin – renowned poet and socialist has died
Date: Tue, 2011-05-10 12:45
Patrick Galvin, the renowned Cork writer and socialist, has died. Born in Margaret Street in Cork in 1927, Paddy was a prodigious and accomplished writer producing many works in poetry and drama, as well as writing the memoir The Raggy Boy Trilogy. He was also a most accomplished balladeer and many of his early works were in this form.
Galvin’s early life was spent in and around the Barrack Street area of Cork – an place that he described as ‘desperately poor’ but ‘highly atmospheric’. Following charges of ‘being disruptive’ he was sentenced in the 1930s to a term of three years at St. Conleth’s Industrial School in Co. Offaly – an experience that was to mark him hugely and make him into a lifelong socialist and an advocate for the oppressed. On his return to Cork, following this harrowing experience, he worked as a newspaper boy, a messenger and as a projectionist at Cork’s Washington Street Cinema. In 1943, using a forged birth certificate, he went to Belfast and joined the RAF at the age of sixteen. Following service during WW2, he was demobilised and worked in London at various odd jobs. He later travelled around Europe.
He began writing poetry, by his own admission, in the late 1940s. However under the influence of Seamus Ennis, the traditional uileann piper, he first made his mark as a folk singer going on to record over 7 LPs of songs and ballads. Among many fine compositions, there is of course his renowned version of ‘James Connolly’, a song later popularised by Christy Moore.
Patrick Galvin’s first book of poems – Heart Of Grace – was published in London in 1959. He later went on to produce Christ In London (1960), The Wood Burners (1973), Man On The Porch (1979) and Folk Tales For The General (1989). New And Selected Poems (1996) established his position as a major poet of his generation. In the introduction to this work he was described as “a poet who combines a very strong sense of the community that shaped and formed him, and gave him his voice, with a broad set of human concerns that range from social idealism through pity for the victims of power, to anger at wrongs doneâ€.
Galvin was also a very fine dramatist. He wrote and produced many works for, among others, the Lyric Theatre and the BBC. He also worked on many adaptations for the BBC and also as a writer in residence in England, Ireland and in Spain. In the 90s he returned to Cork and played a pivotal role with Mary Johnson, his partner with whom he had two children, in establishing the Munster Literature Centre in Cork. In 2003 with his reputation on the rise he was struck down by a debilitating stroke. He survived and recovered with the loving support of his family but his ability to continue writing was severely curtailed – a factor which was to become a huge burden for him.
Patrick Galvin was angered by the publication of the Ryan Report in 2009 into the abuses at the Irish Industrial Schools. Not only did the Report remind him of his own period of incarceration, it also reminded him of reality that he was one of the first to speak out about what was going on in these institutions – and was pilloried for doing so. He had always been incensed at the vile and cruel abuses that went on in these institutions, and had long contended that they had occurred under the ever watchful and approving eye of the Irish State and the Catholic Church.
In an ironic testament to his lifelong commitment to socialism Patrick Galvin spent nearly twenty hours waiting on a hospital trolley at CUH (in Cork) on what was to be the last weekend of his life – this weekend just gone. Despite receiving excellent care he died peacefully at CUH late last night. He will be remembered not only for beautiful and evocative writing, but also for his opposition to capitalism and his lifelong commitment to struggle for a just workers society.
Reposing at Connolly Hall tomorrow, Thursday, from 4pm until 8pm (May 12th), fittingly, on the anniversary of the execution of James Connolly. Cremation on Friday at 2pm at the Island Crematorium, Ringaskiddy.
Crepescule With Nellie Tony Kofi Quartet Plays Monk: All Is Know
Roof Over My Head Sugar Minott Showcase
Du Doo Barry Guy, Howard Riley, John Stevens, Trevor Watts Endgame
Me And My Gin Dinah Washington The Complete Roulette Sessions CD 1
Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus Frank Zappa & The Mothers The Grand Wazoo
Concerto for Oboe, Violin & Strings in D Minor, BWV 1060 – III. Allegro Josef Suk J.S.Bach – Concertos
Ifran Ya Galbi Oum Kalsoum Magie de l’Orient
I Remember Stu Peter Warren Solidarity
Dammi i Colori!…Recondita Armonia Giacomo Puccini; Kurt Adler; The Metropolitan Opera Puccini: Tosca Disc 1
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