I think I just invented a new word. Sounds better than memorial to me right now. Inspired by Dia de la Muerta and my promise to never forget. I would like to invite anyone who wants to publish a memory of anyone they wish to.
Fran Landesman, Lyricist With a Bittersweet Edge, Dies at 83
Jack Kerouac played bongos outside her window and tried to date her. She turned a T. S. Eliot poem into a song sung by Ella Fitzgerald and Barbra Streisand. Bette Davis memorized one of her poems.
Fran
Landesman made her life into an art form — not least because of the
exuberantly public extramarital sex life she delighted in sharing with
London tabloids. But her lasting footprint was the mordant, biting, yet
strangely tender lyrics she used to chronicle the world’s lovers,
lunatics and losers.
Her song “The Ballad of the Sad Young Men”
— whom she described as “drifting through the town, drinking up the
night, trying not to drown” — was recorded by Roberta Flack, Petula
Clark, Rickie Lee Jones and, in an instrumental version, the pianist Keith Jarrett. With music by Tommy Wolf, it became a jazz standard.
Another
song she wrote that became a standard — but, like “Sad Young Men,”
never a hit — was “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most.” It sprang
from Ms. Landesman’s asking jazz musicians to put T. S. Eliot’s phrase
“April is the cruelest month” into their own words. Its music was also
composed by Wolf. Bette Midler and Sarah Vaughan were among the many who
sang it.
Ms.
Landesman also published five volumes of poetry, some of it raw. The
poem Bette Davis memorized, “Life’s a Bitch” contains the line “First
love makes you itch, then it dishes you the dirt.”
Ms. Landesman died on July 23 at her home in London at 83. Her death was announced on her official Web site. She left an epitaph, something she said on more than one occasion: “It was a good life, but it wasn’t commercial.”
Frances
Deitsch was born in Manhattan on Oct. 21, 1927, attended Temple
University and the Fashion Institute of Technology, and fell in with the
group that came to be called the Beat generation. She thought Kerouac
was “the best-looking man I’ve ever seen,” and the feeling seemed
mutual. He and Allen Ginsberg serenaded her with bongos. “Be my
girlfriend, I’m so lonely,” Kerouac pleaded.
But
she ended up marrying Jay Landesman, who published Neurotica, a
magazine that gave the Beats a platform while seeking to explore
America’s “inner darkness.” “He’ll make a good first husband,” she
decided.
They
were wed for 61 years; Mr. Landesman died at 91 in February. They had a
remarkably open marriage in which each brought partners home to sleep
in separate bedrooms. Everyone then had breakfast together. Their
teenage sons, Cosmo and Miles, were appalled.
In
his 2008 book, “Starstruck: Fame, Failure, My Family and Me,” Cosmo
Landesman wrote: “The thing that upset me the most was their dress and
appearance. I can remember when I thought of having them committed to
the Institute for the Criminally Dressed. It was parents’ day at school.
They arrived looking like two hippies who had failed the audition for
the musical ‘Hair.’ ”
Soon
after marrying, the couple moved to Mr. Landesman’s native St. Louis
and started a nightclub that became one of the hippest in the Midwest.
Called the Crystal Palace, it booked performers like Woody Allen, Barbra
Streisand and Lenny Bruce — who, she liked to recall, once urged her to
leave her husband and run off with him: “Let’s you and me go on the
road and send him a little money every month.”
The Landesmans collaborated with Wolf on a musical called “The Nervous Set”
as a vehicle for Ms. Landesman’s lyrics. It was a smash in St. Louis,
then flopped on Broadway. They moved to London, where Ms. Landesman
continued her career as a lyricist, singer and poet. (Mr. Landesman
wrote, founded a publishing company and managed the career of a kung fu
stripper.)
Since
the mid-1990s, Ms. Landesman, who is survived by her sons, collaborated
with the composer and pianist Simon Wallace on some 300 songs and kept
performing.
Last
March, the singer Shepley Metcalf performed Ms. Landesman’s songs in
Manhattan. The New York Times critic Stephen Holden likened the lyricist
to “a cranky, jazz-steeped Beat Generation Dorothy Parker.”
He
continued, “In those days of hanging out in bars into the wee small
hours, dragging home strangers whom you can’t remember the next morning
and generally acting in the name of hip, dissipation was a competitive
urban sport and Ms. Landesman one of its champion chroniclers.” But
she long ago gave up the sport herself. “When you reach 60 — forget
it,” she said in 1998. “I think it’s unattractive after that.”
********************
November 2, 2014
I was moved by this tribute to Ramon Novarro, first Latino Movie Icon, published by Adelante Magazine, a monthly publication focused on the Latino LGBT community in Los Angeles, so I am posting it here in honor of Day of the Dead. Mr. Novarro retired from acting in 1934 rather than sign a contract with MGM stipulating that he would a agree to a prearranged heterosexual marriage arranged by the studio, having earned enough .
Día De Los Muertos USA
Posted on 02 October 2014 by Adelante
Honoring the Dead, Living and the First Latino Movie Icon
By Joseph R. Castel
By Joseph R. Castel
Because of her strong Cuban beliefs in the spiritual world, Day of the Dead has always been a special holiday for Rodri J. Rodríguez, founder of the famed Mariachi USA festival. “It’s so important to pay tribute to those who came before us and to those who made a significant contribution in our lives,” said Rodriguez.
The music producer just celebrated 25 years of her legendary festival at the Hollywood Bowl in June. But before the last trumpet note was played, she had already started planning her next cultural extravaganza which will take place Nov. 1 and 2, in the city of Coachella—the first annual Día De Los Muertos USA.
The vivacious promoter anticipates that 40,000 people will come together at Coachella’s Rancho Las Flores Park to listen to more than 20 bands. Rodríguez promises more than just a music festival. “It’s going to be a spiritually grounded affair rooted in Aztec tradition with a focus on honoring the dead and celebrating the living through art, entertainment and culinary enjoyment.”
The art component of the event will highlight ‘ofrendas-altars’ that will pay homage to various causes such as the United Farm Workers and those who have passed from AIDS. There will also be an installation where attendees can post photos of their loved ones and leave personal tributes to them on decorated walls. In addition to the public memorials, elaborate altars will be set up for cultural and musical luminaries like Selena, José Alfredo Jiménez, Cantinflas and many others.
One dearly departed and former cultural idol that Rodríguez plans to honor is silent film star Ramón Novarro. The Mexican born actor is unfortunately remembered more for his brutal murder at the hands of two male hustlers than playing the title role in the original 1926 version of “Ben Hur.” The producer’s connection to the movie star is quite personal since she currently resides in the sprawling west Los Angeles home where he was slain.
Imprint of a Murder
On the eve of Halloween 1968, brothers Paul and Tom Ferguson solicited themselves into Novarro’s home for a threesome. In reality, the young hustlers were in search of a nonexistent $5,000 which had been rumored to be hidden somewhere in the house. When the brothers couldn’t find what they came looking for, they tied up the 68-year-old actor with a lamp cord and brutally beat him with their fists and a cane until his nose was broken. The frail man then fell backwards unconscious and drowned in his own blood.
After the film star’s death, the property exchanged hands several times, all with tales from the owners that the house was haunted. Despite the disturbances of lights being turned on and off and strange noises being heard, Rodríguez firmly believes that Novarro’s spirit had never been actually trapped within the house.
She consulted a spiritual healer who gave an alternative explanation for the paranormal activity: because the murder was so traumatic, the violent act itself sent a dense electrical DNA-like charge into the ether creating what she refers to as a psychic imprint of the murder.
The healer meditated and played sacred monk chants continuously for a week in order to alter the vibration level in her home. The ritual was even taped for an episode onThe Christina Show. After the cleansing, Rodríguez noticed that the paranormal activity had calmed down considerably. “Now my home is really a creative, positive space for my artwork,” said Rodríguez.
Although the imprint of the murder may have been extracted from the home, the stigma surrounding its circumstances was not. Many people still associate the star’s murder with the false Hollywood rumor that his killers suffocated him with a stone phallic statue given to him by Valentino. Rodríguez dismissed the ridiculous gay urban legend and found it unfortunate that Novarro is primarily remembered for the scandalous killing. “After all, he was our first Latino movie star,” claimed Rodríguez.
Before Dolores Del Río, Anthony Quinn and Ricardo Montalbán, there was Ramón Novarro. The struggling actor became an overnight cinematic sensation after the blockbuster success of “Ben Hur.” He had millions of fans worldwide and was able to command a six figure fee per picture. However, in 1934, after a decade with MGM, he refused to renew his contract because it came with a stipulation of a prearranged marriage.
It was no secret within Hollywood circles that Novarro was gay. Because of his indiscretions, MGM executives insisted that their romantic box office attraction keep his sexuality concealed from the public. For years, publicists touted the Ben Hur star as the greatest Latin lover since Valentino. He had been carefully paired on the silver screen with MGM’s most luminous leading ladies: Myrna Loy, Lupe Velez, Joan Crawford and the great Greta Garbo. Novarro had survived the transition from silent films to talkies, only to walk away from it all.
After MGM, Novarro made a handful of films before fading into obscurity. He fortunately had saved enough money to live a comfortable lifestyle without having to work. In the late 1960s, he had secured several TV guest roles, but any idea of a comeback was squashed due to his heavy drinking.
Despite standing up to the studio bullies, the unemployed actor would gradually become racked with guilt and shame over his sexuality which conflicted with his staunch Catholicism. Unable to reconcile his religious faith and sexuality, the despondent actor spiraled into a haze of alcohol. On Halloween morning 1968, the scandal of Novarro’s demise at the hands of two male hustlers sent shockwaves through a pre-Stonewall nation. America’s matinee idol was finally exposed as being gay.
Rodriguez would like Novarro to be remembered with an altar at her Día De Los Muertos event for being the first cinematic Latino superstar. She’d also like people to know that the actor had the courage to walk away from Hollywood when it tried to make him pretend to be something he was not. And if there is any doubt that the star’s spirit still lingers in the home where he was killed, Rodríguez offered this bit of philosophy: “I was taught that death is not a destination but rather a transition into something wonderful. Once you complete what you were sent here to do, then you move on.”
For more information on the Día de los Muertos USA festival or to obtain General Admission or VIP tickets, visit www.diadelosmuertosusa.com or follow Día de los Muertos USA on Facebook @Día de los Muertos USA and on Twitter @DayOfTheDeadUSA.
________________________________________________________________________
February 7, 2013
something i found while looking for something else, although I did not know Spencer, his life deserves to be honored as much as anyone's, and he has something to say worth thinking about regardless of whether others have expressed similar sentiment.
Treatment Activist Spencer Cox: This is What I Learned
http://
...
Spencer Cox, a smart and funny treatment activist, died in December 2012 at the age of 44 after more than two decades of engagement in the AIDS Wars. His astute, poignant and recent obervation to film maker David France of what he learned in those wars wound up on the cutting room floor, but it is worth repeating here.
Treatment Activist Spencer Cox: This is What I Learned
http://
...
Spencer Cox, a smart and funny treatment activist, died in December 2012 at the age of 44 after more than two decades of engagement in the AIDS Wars. His astute, poignant and recent obervation to film maker David France of what he learned in those wars wound up on the cutting room floor, but it is worth repeating here.
What I know is that miracles happen… I don't know what's going to happen… I just know you keep going, you keep evolving, you keep progressing, you keep hoping until you die. You make your life as meaningful as you can make it. You live it and don't be afraid of who's going to like you, or, you know, are you being appropriate…You worry about things like being kind, you worry about things like being generous. And if it's not about that, what the hell is it about? That's what I've learned."
http://www.hivlawandpolicy.org/posts/view/187
http://www.hivlawandpolicy.org/posts/view/187
___________________________________________________________________
Richard Adams dies at 65; gay marriage pioneer
Richard Adams and his partner,
Anthony Sullivan, were granted a marriage license in Colorado in 1975. They
tried to use it to prevent Sullivan's deportation but were rejected.
By
Elaine Woo, Los Angeles Times
December 22, 2012, 7:48 p.m.
Thirty-seven years ago, Richard
Adams made history when he and his partner of four years, Anthony Sullivan,
became one of the first gay couples in the country to be granted a marriage
license. It happened in Boulder, Colo., where a liberal county clerk issued
licenses to six same-sex couples in the spring of 1975.
Adams had hoped to use his marriage
to secure permanent residency in the United States for Sullivan, an Australian
who had been in the country on a limited visa and was facing deportation.
But Colorado's attorney general
declared the Boulder marriages invalid. Several months later, Adams and
Sullivan received a letter from the Immigration and Naturalization Service that
denied Sullivan's petition for resident status in terms that left no doubt
about the reason:
"You have failed to establish
that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two faggots," the
notification read.
Adams, who later filed the first
federal lawsuit demanding recognition of same-sex marriages, died Monday at his
home in Hollywood after a brief illness, said his attorney, Lavi Soloway. He
was 65.
Soloway described Adams and
Sullivan as "pioneers who stood up and fought for something nobody at that
time conceived of as a right, the right of gay couples to be married.
"Attitudes at the time were
not supportive, to put it mildly," Soloway said. "They went on the
Donahue show and people in the audience said some pretty nasty things. But they
withstood it all because they felt it was important to speak out."
Born in Manila on March 9, 1947,
Adams immigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was 12. He grew up in Long
Prairie, Minn., studied liberal arts at the University of Minnesota and became
a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1968.
By 1971 he was working in Los
Angeles, where he met Sullivan and fell in love.
Four years later, the two men heard
about Boulder County Clerk Clela Rorex: She had decided to issue marriage
licenses to gay couples after the Boulder district attorney's office advised
her that nothing in state law explicitly prohibited it.
On April 21, 1975, they obtained
their license and exchanged marriage vows at the First Unitarian Church of
Denver.
The Boulder marriages attracted
national media attention, including an article in the New York Times that
called Colorado "a mini-Nevada for homosexual couples." Rorex
received obscene phone calls, as well as a visit from a cowboy who protested by
demanding to marry his horse. (Rorex said she turned him down because the
8-year-old mare was underage.)
After their marriage, Adams and
Sullivan filed a petition with the INS seeking permanent residency for Sullivan
as the spouse of a U.S. citizen. In November 1975, they received the
immigration agency's derogatory letter and lodged a formal protest. Officials
reissued the denial notice without the word "faggots."
They took the agency to court in
1979, challenging the constitutionality of the denial. A federal district judge
in Los Angeles upheld the INS decision, and Adams and Sullivan lost subsequent
appeals.
In a second lawsuit, the couple
argued that Sullivan's deportation after an eight-year relationship with Adams
would constitute an "extreme hardship." In 1985 a three-judge panel
of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the hardship argument and
opened the way for Sullivan to be sent back to Australia.
Because Australia had already
turned down Adams' request for residency in that country, the couple decided
the only way they could stay together was to leave the U.S. In 1985, they flew
to Britain and drifted through Europe for the next year.
"It was the most difficult
period because I had to leave my family as well as give up my job of 18 1/2
years. It was almost like death," Adams said in "Limited
Partnership," a documentary scheduled for release next year.
The pair ended their self-imposed
exile after a year and came home. They lived quietly in Los Angeles to avoid
drawing the attention of immigration officials, but in recent years began to
appear at rallies supporting same-sex marriage, Soloway said.
They were encouraged by new
guidelines issued by the Obama administration this fall instructing immigration
officials to stop deporting foreigners in long-standing same-sex relationships
with U.S. citizens.
Although the policy change came
more than three decades after Adams and Sullivan raised the issue, it gave
Adams "a sense of vindication," Soloway said.
The day before he died, Sullivan
told him that the most important victory was that they were able to remain a
couple.
"Richard looked at me,"
Sullivan told Soloway, "and said, 'Yeah, you're right. We've won.'"
Adams, who was an administrator for
a law firm until his retirement in 2010, is survived by Sullivan; his mother,
Elenita; sisters Stella, Kathy, Julie and Tammie; and a brother, Tony.
Copyright © 2012, Los
Angeles Times
Richard Adams, gay
marriage pioneer, dies
Associated
Press
Published
9:09 pm, Sunday, December 23, 2012
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/lgbt/article/Richard-Adams-gay-marriage-pioneer-dies-4142661.php#ixzz2G0PDBNC7
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/lgbt/article/Richard-Adams-gay-marriage-pioneer-dies-4142661.php#ixzz2G0PDBNC7
Los Angeles --
Richard Adams,
who used both the altar and the courtroom to help begin the push for same-sex
marriage four decades before it reached the center of the national
consciousness, has died, his attorney said Sunday.
After a brief illness, Mr. Adams died last
Monday at age 65 in the Hollywood home he shared with Tony Sullivan,
his partner through four decades, attorney Lavi Soloway
said.
Mr. Adams and Sullivan met at a Los Angeles
gay bar called the Closet in 1971, but their life and relationship would soon
be on display for a worldwide audience.
They were granted a marriage license in 1975,
but for years fought in vain to see it recognized by governments and a population
for whom the idea of two married men was still strange and foreign. They were
subjected to antigay slurs even from government agencies.
"They felt that in the end, the most
important thing was their love for each other, and in that respect they
won," Soloway said. "No government or no law was ever able to keep
them apart."
The couple's public life began when they
heard about a county clerk in Boulder, Colo., named Clela Rorex, a pioneer in
her own right who took the unprecedented step of giving marriage licenses to
same-sex couples after learning from the district attorney's office that
nothing in Colorado law expressly forbade it.
Rorex's office became what the New York Times
soon after called "a mini-Nevada for homosexual couples."
Among the first six couples to take advantage
were Mr. Adams and Sullivan, who traveled to Colorado, had a ceremony at the First Unitarian
Church of Denver, and were granted a license from Rorex, before the
state's attorney general ordered her to stop giving them to same-sex couples.
Rorex remained in contact with Mr. Adams throughout his life.
Agency's
blunt denial
Mr. Adams' and Sullivan's
primary motivation in marrying was to get permanent U.S. residency status for
Sullivan, an Australian, and they promptly put in an application with what was
then called the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
They received a one-sentence denial from the
agency that was stunning in its bluntness.
"You have failed to establish that a
bona fide marital relationship can exist between two faggots," the letter
said.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service
issued a follow-up response that removed the offending language but gave no
ground in its thinking.
Mr. Adams' attempt to have that decision
overturned was the first federal lawsuit seeking same-sex marriage recognition,
according to the Advocate magazine and the Los Angeles
Times, the first media outlets to report his death.
He took the Immigration and Naturalization
Service to court in 1979 and later filed a separate lawsuit on the
constitutionality of denying gays the right to marry.
His position appeared strong. Gay and lesbian
couples always thought they would have to sue for the right to marry in the
first place, but Mr. Adams was defending a marriage he had been officially
granted.
Keeping
case alive
Despite reaching the highest federal appeals
courts, he was met only with rejections.
The couple did became a hot topic, especially
as Sullivan's deportation became likely in the mid-1980s, and they appeared on
the "Today" show and "The Phil Donahue Show," giving some
of the first national attention to same-sex marriage when it was considered an
oddity even by future supporters.
Mr. Adams' application for Australian
residency was also denied, so the couple spent a year in Europe before
returning to the United States and leading a low-profile life in Los Angeles.
But they recently re-emerged as their issue
finally gained traction in courts and voting booths.
They're the subject of an upcoming
documentary, "Limited Partnership." And just two days before Mr.
Adams' death, they were working with Soloway on a challenge to the federal
Defense of Marriage Act, one of two laws opposing same-sex marriage the U.S.
Supreme Court has agreed to hear in its upcoming term.
"After 40 years of fighting, he missed
the outcome at the Supreme Court," Soloway said, "but he felt
optimistic."
He also got to see what he deemed a major
victory for his particular cause, gay couples and immigration, in October when
the Obama administration
issued written policy guidelines saying same-sex couples in long-term
partnerships "rise to the level of a 'family relationship' " when it
comes to deportation.
"You can draw a straight line from Tony
and Richard's efforts in the 1970s to that piece of paper in 2012,"
Soloway said.
__________________________________________________________________________
Remembering the
Fabulous Sylvester
Today the Castro
Biscuit honors the memory of one of our neighborhood’s most famous citizens-the
original Queer Disco diva-Sylvester-who lost his struggle against AIDS twenty
four years ago today.
There’s little doubt
of the lasting cultural influence Sylvester had on Disco and HI NRG Dance music
of the 70′s and 80′s or how strains of his genius continues to ripple through
today’s music inspiring two decades of artists in both style, uncompromising creativity
and being sampled to fuel their own endeavors.
Sylvester James found
his way to SF in 1969 from his hometown of Watts in LA where he’d been raised
within the confines of his local AME baptist church choir and as one of his
mother’s most cherished children.
Upon arriving
Sylvester found kindred, outside the box, spirits in San Francisco-most notably
SF’s Queer, gender bending, premier tripping, glitter doused, drag/theatre
troupe-The Cockettes. His vocal stylings of Blues greats like
Josephine Baker and Billie Holiday standards brought down the house when he
opened for many of the Cockettes wildly chaotic and grand productions. He
worked with them until after their infamous New York City debut and
disappointingly short Broadway run. Sylvester decided that he wanted to buckle
down and get serious. Now was the time to work on his own vision of his music.
Sylvester collaborated
with singer, writer and producer, Patrick Crowley-another out, popular and rising star of the SF, HI NRG, Disco
sound scene. Patrick co-founded the much respected Megatone Records, along with Marty Blecman. They introduced
him to many of the movers and shakers of SF’s Dance music world.
Sylvester put together a band. After two
disappointing LP releases via Blue Thumb Records, Sylvester and his newly named
‘Hot Band’, went looking for something extra to add to the mix. Head way came
when Sylvester and the boys enlisted the talent of two amazing singers whose
background were, like Sylvester’s own, deeply rooted in the experience of the
Gospel music. Martha Wash and Izora Armstead, who collectively became his
muses, best friends and back up singers whom he lovingly dubbed-Two Tons of Fun. These women were the last pieces of the puzzle
Sylvester had been searching for to help create the perfect sound that’d thrust
him and his music onto the world’s exploding Disco stage.
His third album, self
titled, ‘Sylvester’-the
first with his new, East Bay based label, Fantasy, was well received by critics
and fans. His fourth album, 1977′s, Step II, Sylvester’s perfect alchemy of music, rhythm, talent and
timing paid off spawning two big hits ‘You Make Me Feel Mighty Real‘ and ‘Dance Disco Heat‘.
With the success of these world wide hits came
more time under the often harsh and conservative public spotlight. Sylvester
kept his unabashed flame on high wether performing for the very white,
afternoon, talk show, television circuit or for a writhing throng of his
adoring people at the City’s largest dance club, The Trocadero Transfer Disco,
in SoMa.
Sylvester eventually
left Fantasy Records and joined forces with his friend and Dance music mentor,
Patrick Crowley, at Magatone Records ensconced here in the Castro on Noe
Street. Sylvester and Megatone created four more albums and one mega huge,
infectious dance track-‘Do You Wanna Funk? Sylvester’s ‘girls’, Two Ton’s of Fun, moved transformed as
well and signed with Megatone as, The Weather Girls, whose smash hit, ‘It’s Raining Men’ continues, like Sylvester’s songs, to be
played the world over.
Patrick Crowley
tragically died during those very early days in the Age of AIDS in 1982. As the
panic and reality around the pandemic gained steam who was cutting down man
after man in his prime in the eighties Sylvester worked tirelessly on many AIDS
benefits and causes to help raise funds and awareness until his own HIV
infection began to take it’s toll.
Sylvester’s last
public appearance was at the Castro Street Fair in October of 1988. The MC on
the main stage introduced him pointing up to the balcony of his apartment where
Sylvester watched all the action of the Fair on the main stage at Castro and
Market. The crowd, numbering in the tens of thousands, gave him a rousing
ovation that lasted for nearly 15 minutes. People openly wept realizing, as he
frailly waved to the crowd from his wheelchair, soaking in the love that was
being showered on him, in all likelihood this would be the last time any of us
would ever see our hero. Sylvester died two months later at the age of 41 on
December 16th, 1988.
Oakland based writer
and USF professor, Joshua Gamson, has penned the definitive biography of
Sylvester, The Fabulous Sylvester, found on the shelves of the Castro’s Books,
Inc. The lauded biography beautifully worms it’s way through every aspect of
his life, music and creative experience. The picture that unfolds is both
endearing and often much more complicated than many would believe. I highly
recommend it.
Getting inside the
minds and souls of our modern day ancestors of the LGBT movement and community
is an important way to learn one’s history and see just how far we’ve come as a
people. I am still inspired by the authentic, brave life that Sylvester led and
how he never gave up or compromised his dreams.
Reprinted from http://castrobiscuit.com/2012/12/16/remembering-the-fabulous-sylvester/#more-4088 at the website http://castrobiscuit.com/#
for photos that accompanied this article see Photos 2 on this blog.
for videos see Not Diana Ross on this blog
One of the many unknown to me who fought for civil rights, and he saw the similarity between the right to same sex marriage and his right to marry a woman of another race. Civil rights laws were passed, but are they being effectively enforced today? See my Careers page for my perspective of concern; Memoriams for full article. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/27/us/lawrence-guyot-civil-rights-activist-who-bore-the-fights-scars-dies-at-73.html?ref=todayspaper
November 26, 2012
Lawrence Guyot, Civil Rights Activist Who Bore the Fight’s Scars, Dies at 73
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Lawrence Guyot, who in the early 1960s endured savage beatings as a young civil rights worker in Mississippi fighting laws and practices that kept blacks from registering to vote, died Thursday at his home in Mount Rainier, Md. He was 73.
His daughter, Julie Guyot-Diangone, confirmed his death, which she said came after Mr. Guyot had suffered several heart attacks, lost a kidney and became diabetic.
Mr. Guyot (GHEE-ott) was repeatedly challenged, jailed and beaten as he helped lead fellow members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and student volunteers from around the nation in organizing Mississippi blacks to vote. In many of the state’s counties, no blacks were registered.
He further pressed the campaign for greater black participation in politics by serving as chairman of the integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, formed to supplant the all-white state Democratic Party. It lost its challenge to the established Mississippi party at the Democratic National Convention in 1964, but its efforts are seen as paving the way for the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
A famous moment in the civil rights movement occurred after Fannie Lou Hamer and two other civil rights workers were arrested for entering an area of a bus station reserved for whites in Winona, Miss., in June 1963. Mr. Guyot went to Winona to bail them out of jail. When he asked questions about their rough treatment, nine police officers beat him with the butts of guns, made him strip naked and threatened to burn his genitals. The abuse went on for four hours until a doctor advised the officers to stop.
Mr. Guyot was taken to a cell and beaten some more. The cell door was left open to the outside, with a knife lying just beyond. The guards’ apparent idea was to entice him to try to escape, but he saw two men lurking outside and stayed in his cell. “I didn’t fall for that one,” he is quoted as saying in “My Soul Is Rested: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South” (1977), by Howell Raines.
Mr. Guyot was released after Medgar Evers, another civil rights activist, was assassinated in Jackson, Miss., on June 12. Mr. Guyot thought that the authorities feared the effects of another assassination of a civil rights worker when national attention was focused on Mississippi.
Later in 1963, Mr. Guyot was imprisoned at the infamous Mississippi penitentiary Parchman Farm. He was beaten, and went on a 17-day hunger strike. He lost 100 pounds. “It was a question of defiance,” he said in an interview with NPR in 2011. “We were not going to let them have complete control over us.”
In a recent interview with The Afro-American Newspapers, Timothy Jenkins, an educator who worked with Mr. Guyot in the 1960s said: “He is significant because he knew there is a price more ultimate than death. It is disgrace.”
Lawrence Thomas Guyot Jr. was born in Pass Christian, Miss., on July 17, 1939. His father was a contractor. Mr. Guyot attended Tougaloo College in Tougaloo, Miss., a historically black college that had some white faculty members and welcomed white students. He graduated with a degree in chemistry and biology in 1963.
While in college, he became involved with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and traveled around the state conducting civil rights workshops and doing other organizing. He and his colleagues concentrated on voter registration, not desegregation. When he took someone to the courthouse to register, he was often followed by two cars of whites.
Mr. Guyot was haunted by a 1964 conversation he had with Michael Schwerner, the civil rights worker who would be murdered that year along with his fellow workers Andrew Goodman and James Chaney. As Mr. Schwerner was preparing to drive to Mississippi from a training session in Ohio, he asked Mr. Guyot if it was safe to go. Mr. Guyot said yes, and always felt responsible for what happened later.
“I told him to go because I thought there was so much publicity that nothing could happen,” Mr. Guyot said in an interview with The Sun Herald of Biloxi, Miss. “I was absolutely wrong.”
In 1968, while in Chicago as a delegate to the Democratic convention, Mr. Guyot went to a doctor after falling ill. The doctor told him that he had heart trouble and was overweight, and that if he went back to the civil rights struggle in Mississippi he had perhaps two months to live. Instead he went to Rutgers School of Law and, after graduating in 1971, moved to Washington, where he did legal work for city agencies and was an informal adviser to Mayor Marion Barry, a fellow native Mississippian.
In addition to his daughter, Mr. Guyot is survived by his wife of 47 years, the former Monica Klein; his son, Lawrence III; and four grandchildren.
Mr. Guyot favored same-sex marriage when it was illegal everywhere in the United States, noting that he had married a white woman when that was illegal in some states. He often gave inspirational speeches on the meaning of the civil rights movement.
“There is nothing like having risked your life with people over something immensely important to you,” he said in 2004. “As Churchill said, there’s nothing more exhilarating than to have been shot at — and missed.”
_________________________________________________________________His daughter, Julie Guyot-Diangone, confirmed his death, which she said came after Mr. Guyot had suffered several heart attacks, lost a kidney and became diabetic.
Mr. Guyot (GHEE-ott) was repeatedly challenged, jailed and beaten as he helped lead fellow members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and student volunteers from around the nation in organizing Mississippi blacks to vote. In many of the state’s counties, no blacks were registered.
He further pressed the campaign for greater black participation in politics by serving as chairman of the integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, formed to supplant the all-white state Democratic Party. It lost its challenge to the established Mississippi party at the Democratic National Convention in 1964, but its efforts are seen as paving the way for the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
A famous moment in the civil rights movement occurred after Fannie Lou Hamer and two other civil rights workers were arrested for entering an area of a bus station reserved for whites in Winona, Miss., in June 1963. Mr. Guyot went to Winona to bail them out of jail. When he asked questions about their rough treatment, nine police officers beat him with the butts of guns, made him strip naked and threatened to burn his genitals. The abuse went on for four hours until a doctor advised the officers to stop.
Mr. Guyot was taken to a cell and beaten some more. The cell door was left open to the outside, with a knife lying just beyond. The guards’ apparent idea was to entice him to try to escape, but he saw two men lurking outside and stayed in his cell. “I didn’t fall for that one,” he is quoted as saying in “My Soul Is Rested: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South” (1977), by Howell Raines.
Mr. Guyot was released after Medgar Evers, another civil rights activist, was assassinated in Jackson, Miss., on June 12. Mr. Guyot thought that the authorities feared the effects of another assassination of a civil rights worker when national attention was focused on Mississippi.
Later in 1963, Mr. Guyot was imprisoned at the infamous Mississippi penitentiary Parchman Farm. He was beaten, and went on a 17-day hunger strike. He lost 100 pounds. “It was a question of defiance,” he said in an interview with NPR in 2011. “We were not going to let them have complete control over us.”
In a recent interview with The Afro-American Newspapers, Timothy Jenkins, an educator who worked with Mr. Guyot in the 1960s said: “He is significant because he knew there is a price more ultimate than death. It is disgrace.”
Lawrence Thomas Guyot Jr. was born in Pass Christian, Miss., on July 17, 1939. His father was a contractor. Mr. Guyot attended Tougaloo College in Tougaloo, Miss., a historically black college that had some white faculty members and welcomed white students. He graduated with a degree in chemistry and biology in 1963.
While in college, he became involved with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and traveled around the state conducting civil rights workshops and doing other organizing. He and his colleagues concentrated on voter registration, not desegregation. When he took someone to the courthouse to register, he was often followed by two cars of whites.
Mr. Guyot was haunted by a 1964 conversation he had with Michael Schwerner, the civil rights worker who would be murdered that year along with his fellow workers Andrew Goodman and James Chaney. As Mr. Schwerner was preparing to drive to Mississippi from a training session in Ohio, he asked Mr. Guyot if it was safe to go. Mr. Guyot said yes, and always felt responsible for what happened later.
“I told him to go because I thought there was so much publicity that nothing could happen,” Mr. Guyot said in an interview with The Sun Herald of Biloxi, Miss. “I was absolutely wrong.”
In 1968, while in Chicago as a delegate to the Democratic convention, Mr. Guyot went to a doctor after falling ill. The doctor told him that he had heart trouble and was overweight, and that if he went back to the civil rights struggle in Mississippi he had perhaps two months to live. Instead he went to Rutgers School of Law and, after graduating in 1971, moved to Washington, where he did legal work for city agencies and was an informal adviser to Mayor Marion Barry, a fellow native Mississippian.
In addition to his daughter, Mr. Guyot is survived by his wife of 47 years, the former Monica Klein; his son, Lawrence III; and four grandchildren.
Mr. Guyot favored same-sex marriage when it was illegal everywhere in the United States, noting that he had married a white woman when that was illegal in some states. He often gave inspirational speeches on the meaning of the civil rights movement.
“There is nothing like having risked your life with people over something immensely important to you,” he said in 2004. “As Churchill said, there’s nothing more exhilarating than to have been shot at — and missed.”
Brill Building Songwriter Helped Define the 'Girl Group' Sound
By Matt Schudel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 28, 2009
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 28, 2009
Ellie Greenwich, one of the most prolific hitmakers of the 1960s, who was the co-writer of such catchy and enduring pop hits as "Be My Baby," "Chapel of Love," "Da Doo Ron Ron" and "Leader of the Pack," and who was credited with launching the career of singer Neil Diamond, died Aug. 26 of a heart attack at Roosevelt Hospital in New York, where she was being treated for pneumonia. She was 68.
Ms. Greenwich was in her early 20s when she joined the celebrated Brill Building school of songwriters, named for the New York workplace of such renowned pop tunesmiths as Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Doc Pomus, Neil Sedaka, Gerry Goffin and Carole King.
With her then-husband Jeff Barry, Ms. Greenwich teamed with producer Phil Spector and turned out one Top 40 hit after another. Their songs, often written from a feminine point of view, helped define the infectious "girl group" sound of the early 1960s popularized by the Ronettes, Crystals and Shangri-Las, among others.
The New York Times once described Ms. Greenwich as "probably the least known of all the major songwriters from the Brill Building school," but seven of her tunes with Barry are on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest songs of the rock era. "Be My Baby," which reached No. 2 on the pop charts for the Ronettes in 1963, is ranked No. 22.
In 1964, Ms. Greenwich and Barry had three songs reach No. 1 on the pop charts: "Chapel of Love" by the Dixie Cups, which begins with the memorably upbeat line, "Goin' to the chapel, and we're gonna get married"; "Do Wah Diddy Diddy," by Manfred Mann (originally recorded by a girl group called the Exciters); and "Leader of the Pack," by the Shangri-Las, which included the menacing roar of a motorcycle dubbed into the record. They had another No. 1 hit in 1966 with "Hanky Panky" by Tommy James and the Shondells.
Another Greenwich-Barry song, "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)," has become a rousing holiday tradition on the "Late Show With David Letterman," performed every year since 1986 by its original singer, Darlene Love.
Besides her songwriting, Ms. Greenwich worked as an arranger, record producer and backup singer, including sessions with Dusty Springfield, Ella Fitzgerald, Bobby Darin and Frank Sinatra. In the mid-1960s, she encouraged Neil Diamond, then a songwriter at the Brill Building, to take up a singing career. With Barry, she produced and sang background vocals on his early hits, including "Solitary Man," (1966), "I Got the Feelin' " (1966), "Kentucky Woman" (1967) and "Shilo" (1970).
"Ellie Greenwich was one of the most important people in my career," Diamond said in a statement. "She discovered me as a down-and-out songwriter and with her then-husband Jeff Barry co-produced all my early hits on Bang Records."
Ms. Greenwich was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1991. Describing her partnership with Barry in 2001, she said, "Wherever our heartbeats were, they were kind of all beating together. We thought along the same lines. We were hopeful romantics, and our songs came out that way."
Eleanor Louise Greenwich was born in Oct. 23, 1940, in Brooklyn, N.Y., and grew up on Long Island. She played the accordion and piano, began writing songs at 13 and formed a singing group in school called the Jivettes.
"I learned songwriting by listening to the radio and pretending I was in the different groups," she said in 1984. "I sang along and became the Everly Sister. But it was the Shirelles who made me decide I had to try do it myself."
At 18, she recorded a few songs under the name Ellie Gaye, then attended Hofstra University on Long Island, graduating in 1962. She spent three weeks as a high school English teacher before quitting to marry Barry, whom she had known since childhood.
She joined him at the Brill Building to write music. They briefly formed a singing group, the Raindrops, and recorded their song "The Kind of Boy You Won't Forget," which reached the Top 20 in 1963. Ms. Greenwich overdubbed all the female vocal parts.
One of their best-known titles came about by accident. They couldn't complete the lyrics for a song and never removed the nonsense syllables meant to indicate missing words: "Da Doo Ron Ron." The record became a No. 3 hit for the Crystals in 1963.
"Da doo ron ron was literally a fill-in phrase because we didn't know what to say in that particular part of the song," Ms. Greenwich told the Green Bay (Wis.) Press-Gazette in 2001. "We figured we would get back to it later and say something."
After Ms. Greenwich and Barry were divorced in 1965, they continued to collaborate occasionally, including the landmark "River Deep, Mountain High" for Ike and Tina Turner in 1966, which Spector considered the best example of his "wall of sound" production style. The song later became a hit on a joint 1970 recording by the Supremes and Four Tops.
Ms. Greenwich recorded two albums of her songs in 1968 and 1973 and later wrote a musical revue, "Leader of the Pack," featuring her music and life story. It opened on Broadway in 1985 -- next door to the Brill Building -- and was nominated for a Tony Award for best musical. It has toured for years, despite a damning review from Frank Rich of the New York Times: "This show does lead the pack in such key areas as incoherence (total), vulgarity (boundless) and decibel level."
In the 1970s and 1980s, while battling drug problems, Ms. Greenwich made a living by producing radio and television commercials. One of her songs from the 1970s, "Sunshine After the Rain" became a huge British hit for Elkie Brooks, and she continued to write music for Nona Hendryx, Cyndi Lauper and other singers.
Summing up her career to an Australian newspaper in 2003, Ms. Greenwich said: "I did something that I loved. I was writing and singing and doing lyrics -- and playing the piano and doing backups and producing. I was very fortunate that these songs have lived on." Survivors include a sister.
I want to remember Jimmy Ramirez. It must have been 25 years ago, my boyfriend John Juarez met Jimmy working at the AIDS Foundation. Jimmy was from El Paso, 13th of 15 or so children, so many he had to be given to relatives to raise as his own family couldn't afford him. Imagine a young boy trying to figure that one out and not feel rejected, stigmatized. Jimmy was very dark skinned. I have to mention that as in my former work I found there was a reason for the term "color" in addition to race, I believe the darkness was stigmatizing, even in SF to a degree. Jimmy came out, to more family rejection, HIV +, more rejection. The love of his life would no longer touch him. Now I can say who is perfect, but I resented and worse that person in a way Jimmy could not. Jimmy was always smiling and dancing. How many times did a coworker say I saw your roomate Jimmy and tried to say hi but he was too busy dancing, dancing down the street, hood pulled up, cap down, earphones plugged in, I can still see his smile. Eventually he could not eat. Us nonmedical folks could not understand what that meant or what was wasting syndrome. I mean I read about it and heard about it but seeing is another matter. We decided to have a joyous dancing dinner party for him, featuring my mother's magical lasagne. He tried to hard to eat, he kept runnning to the br losing it, more upset he was disappointing us, who realized our expectation made it worst. This scene keeps playing, I can't think of dont want to think of a more what horrible depressing moment. We learned and coped and stopped trying and kept doing living finding joy. like Jimmy. I knew it was the end. I went to go to be in my brother's wedding. I didn't want to but I felt I needed to. I had the most bitter arguments with mom. i would not be happy. Of course he passed. I returned. There was an AIDS conference coming up. No one would go if I didn't. But a whole conference? Seeing movies about AIDS was bad enough. So I went, figuring I would leave when it got too depressing, wondering if I would last an hour or a day. It was the most uplifting experience of my life. Of course it made sense thinking of it later - surrounded and in the midst of people going through what I was experiencing it and trying to stop it and trying to help people - a true communal experience of caring. That's all we could do then, was care, and hope, and remember. That's when I decided, if that was all I could do, I would remember, remember Jimmy, remember his spirit, and that if he were here right now he would be dancing and laughing and enjoying life. How could I do any less?
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