Re: David Blue: "So Easy She Goes By" (Leonard Cohen content)
Will Dockery
newsgroups:
To a friend about a friend I never knew:
>
> "I know I may have told you about the late, great David Blue, and
> suddenly I've found one of his songs on YouTube... a momentous moment,
> indeed! Took me relatively forever to find this video... for some
> reason I didn't think about the possib...ilty of David Blue being on
> YouTube. I've spent too many years with the fact of Blue being an
> almost complete unknown. A rare live recording at the Unicorn Cafe.
> David Blue 1941-1982..."
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiHM0hotkPo
>
> Leonard Cohen wrote this elegy for him:
> He died running, he fell beside the square, to the street where, many
> years before he had begun to sing, he fell in the fullest expression
> of vanity and discipline. Many of us, in our songs, had touched on the
> type of man that he became. Dylan raised up such a ragged hero many
> times before he turned to solace in the shadow of American
> Chistianity. Joni Mitchell had spoken simply of that constant
> ambiguous lover, spoken of him over and over, before she entered the
> beautiful technology of jazz and virtuosity. Kris Kristofferson had
> described that gambler playing his way from Nashville to Hollywood,
> where finally the dangers of the game were too coarse for poetry.
>
> David Blue was the peer of any singer in this country, and he knew it,
> and he coveted their audiences and their power, he claimed them as his
> rightful due. And when he could not have them, his disappointment
> became so dazzling, his greed assumed such purity, his appetite such
> honesty, and he stretched his arrm so wide, that we were all able to
> recognize ourselves, and we fell in love with him. And as we grew
> older, as something in the public realm corrupted itself into
> irrelevance, the integrity of his ambition, the integritv of his
> failure, became, for those who knew him,increasingly important and
> appealing, and he moved swiftly, with effortless intimacy into the
> private life of anyone who recognized him, and our private lives
> became for him the theaters that no one would book for him, and he
> sang for us in hotel rooms and kitchens, and he became that poet and
> that gambler, and he established a defiant style to revive those
> soiled archeypes. In the last few years, something happened to his
> voice and his guitar, something very deep and sweet entered, his
> timing became immaculate and vwe knew that we were listening to one of
> the finest, one of the few men singing in America and I was happy then
> and perhaps happier now to say that I told him that.
>
> He did not put away his cowboy boots. He did not take a part-time job,
> he was fully employed in his defiance and his originality and his
> faithfulness to a ground, a style, an image of which he himself was
> the last and best champion exponent, a style that many of us had
> wanted, courted, and had not won.And finally, toward the end of his
> short and graceful life, he had the grace to recognize the woman to
> whom he had always been singing, and he courted and married Nesya and
> because a woman of talent and beauty does not choose lightly, she made
> manifest for all to plainly see the qualities of love and generosity
> that he had forced out of his distress. The death of such a man
> unifies us, and recalls to us how precious we are to one another
>
> -Leonard Cohen
--
"Red Lipped Stranger & other stories" by Will Dockery:
http://www.myspace.com/willdockery
Will Dockery
> On Oct 18, 11:18=C2=A0pm, Will Dockery wrote:
>
> Took me relatively
> forever to find this video... for some> reason I didn't think about
> the possib...ilty of David Blue being on> YouTube. I've spent too many
rare
> live recording at the Unicorn Cafe.> David Blue 1941-1982..."
>
>
> Leonard Cohen wrote this
> elegy for him:> He died running, he fell beside the square, to the
> street where, many> years before he had begun to sing, he fell in the
> fullest expression> of vanity and discipline.
<snipped for brevity>
> willdockery =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 hy -will=C2=A0 --- thanks for the info o=
n david blue. ---
> enjoyed both the song and the writing of leonard about him. --- may
> god bless and keep you always and may you stay forever young ..-----
> take care cindy and dennis
Hello, Cindy & Dennis, glad I could pass along some David Blue music,
there were many years where it wasn't even this easy to find. Other
locations of Blue music online, I found one more video someone has
posted, audio with their visuals, as well as the David Blue MySpace
page, that has 4-5 songs on the player there:
http://www.myspace.com/davidbluecohen
And one of David Blue's finest moments, "Train To Anaheim", on
YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D--YWenqVs-A
"...I like the lineup on this lp featuring Glenn Frey, Dave Mason,
Graham Nash, and Jennifer Warren, David Blue (February 18, 1941=E2=80=94
December 2, 1982), born Stuart David Cohen, was an American singer-
songwriter and actor. He was an integral part of the Greenwich Village
folk music scene in New York, which included Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs,
Dave Van Ronk, Tom Paxton, and Eric Andersen. Blue is perhaps best
known for writing the song "Outlaw Man" for the Eagles, which was
included on their 1973 Desperado album, as well as released as their
second single. Blue's original version of "Outlaw Man" was the lead
track of his own Nice Baby And The Angel album, issued on CD (with the
entire David Blue catalogue) in 2007 on Wounded Bird Records..."
Orson Wells as CitizenCain
"Will Dockery" <shado...@knology.net> wrote in message
news:cddc8$4adcd8e3$d8baf760$13...@KNOLOGY.NET...
> Hello, Cindy & Dennis, glad I could pass along some David Blue music,
> there were many years where it wasn't even this easy to find. Other
> locations of Blue music online, I found one more video someone has
> posted, audio with their visuals, as well as the David Blue MySpace
> page, that has 4-5 songs on the player there:
>
>
= snip =
Nobody wants you to be associated with their work, Duckery.
Will Dockery
<noem...@here.invalidd> wrote:
> "Will Dockery" wrote in message
>
> news:cddc8$4adcd8e3$d8baf760$13...@KNOLOGY.NET...
>
> > Hello, Cindy & Dennis, glad I could pass along some David Blue music,
> > there were many years where it wasn't even this easy to find. Other
> > locations of Blue music online, I found one more video someone has
> > posted, audio with their visuals, as well as the David Blue MySpace
> > page, that has 4-5 songs on the player there:
>
> = snip =
>
Yet here you are, sniffing away behind me as usual, Orson.
--
"And if it's just a game, then we'll hold hands just the same. So what
(so what), we're bleedin' but we ain't cut... I'll tell you what we
can do: You be me for a while, and I'll be you." -Paul Westerberg
Orson Wells as CitizenCain
news:cddc8$4adcd8e3$d8baf760$13...@KNOLOGY.NET...
> Hello, Cindy & Dennis, glad I could pass along some David Blue music,
> there were many years where it wasn't even this easy to find. Other
> locations of Blue music online, I found one more video someone has
> posted, audio with their visuals, as well as the David Blue MySpace
> page, that has 4-5 songs on the player there:
>
>
= snip =
Nobody wants you to be associated with their work, Duckery.
Will Dockery
there were many years where it wasn't even this easy to find. Other
locations of Blue music online, I found one more video someone has
posted, audio with their visuals, as well as the David Blue MySpace
Interestingly, now I see the entire These 23 Days In September album
is also online:
http://music.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=music.artistalbums&artistid=13994681&albumid=8098464
This is nice, out of all his vinyl LPs one that was always never to be
found in the dusty used-bins back in the early 1990s in my searches,
These 23 Days In September David Blue genre: Pop label: Rhino/Elektra
released: 05/24/05.
Orson Wells as CitizenCain
"Will Dockery" <will.d...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:aefb2be1-03b8-4de2...@31g2000vbf.googlegroups.com...
> Hello, Cindy & Dennis, glad I could pass along some David Blue music,
> there were many years where it wasn't even this easy to find. Other
> locations of Blue music online, I found one more video someone has
> posted, audio with their visuals, as well as the David Blue MySpace
> page, that has 4-5 songs on the player there.
>
> Interestingly, now I see
I doubt it. Your narcissism prevents your observation of most things.
Tif
> > Yes, thanks, Tif. It was pretty much completely "off topic" for the
> > Beatles newsgroup, but I couldn't resist this one... David Blue
> > deserves a showing.
>
> > --
> > "Red Lipped Stranger & other stories" by Will Dockery:http://www.myspace.com/willdockery-Hide quoted text -
>
> > - Show quoted text -
>
> ...and from Nesya:
>
> David Blue was born Stuart David Cohen, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island,
> on February I8th, I94I, the son of a Jewish father and an Irish
> Catholic mother of French Canadian heritage. His parents' wedding had
> been prompted by David's impending arrival. Soon after David was born,
> his father was sent overseas with the Armed Forces and did not return
> until after the war was over, when David was four and a half years
> old. David recalled that his father "came hobbling home on crutches
> and stayed depressed all his life," permanently injured and trapped in
> an unwanted marriage. His mother worked as a hairdresser as well as
> bringing up David and a daughter from one of her two previous
> marriages. David and his older half sister, Suzanne, were close
> friends and allies against the rages and silences of their parents.
>
> As a teenager, David was alienated, overweight, and restless and "had
> the constant feeling that I had to get away," he remembered. His half
> sister, Suzanne, got away. "She ended up busted for prostitution in
> New York City in I963", David said, and when she died in an automobile
> accident a few months later, David was shattered. The gulf between him
> and his parents widened when he discovered that they had kept secret
> from him the existence of his two other half sisters. At seventeen,
> David quit high school, left home, and joined the Navy. He was soon
> thrown out for his "Inability to adjust to a military way of life."
>
> Hitchhiking back east, David discovered Greenwich Village. At last, an
> environment where he did not have to adjust, but could simply hang
> out. He got a job washing dishes in the Gaslight Cafe." Allen Ginsberg
> used to do readings there, Jack Elliot played guitar; I ran into Bob
> (Dylan) in the kitchen." David took acting classes, wrote poetry and
> songs, and began performing in Village clubs. When he began singing
> professionally, at the urging of Dylan and others, he changed his name
> to Blue. "Actually, I got the name from Eric Andersen. We were
> together one day, and I knew there were two other David Cohens in the
> music business, one with Country Joe and The Fish, the other a studio
> cat in LA. We felt that was too many. So Eric said: "You've got such
> blue eyes, you should be David Blue. I decided to do it. I called
> Ramblin' Jack Eliot and Dylan because they had changed their names and
> Dylan thought it was very funny and started singing to me," It's all
> over now, David Blue," said David in an interview.
>
> Blue quickly became part of the inner circle of artists and writers
> fomenting the social and music revolution of the sixties. In his book
> on Bob Dylan, Anthony Scaduto wrote "The Dylan Village group was a
> tight little circle: Victor Maimudes as bodyguard; Phil Ochs, Eric
> Andersen, Dave Van Ronk and Tom Paxton as sort of anvils off which he
> could flash his verbal pyrotechnics; Bob Neuwirth and David Blue
> straddling both roles. Few others could break into their scene ... Of
> the singers and writers on the scene at this time, David Blue appears
> to have been closest to Dylan..." "He needed a friend," Blue said. "So
> he started including me in his scene and I got tight with him.
>
> In an interview published in the British newspaper Zigzag, David said,
> "Dylan just happened to be there. Maybe he was the sy'bol of the time,
> or the spearhead, but we were friends, and at one point he encouraged
> me. "That"s a great song you wrote- here's a typewriter, take this,
> and let's go up to the woods." And that got me more interest in
> songwriting." As Dylan's fame grew, "I didn't feel it was Dylan and
> me, two guys going places. It was him, and I'd go out and get a cab if
> he needed a cab. Not like a lackey, but just that he couldn't go out
> and get a cab. But it was an equal exchange," Scaduto quoted.
>
> By 1966, Blue released an album of his own songs, his work reflecting
> his close bond with Dylan. He then moved towards a more "aggressive
> and personalized style," fronting a band, The American Patrol, which
> "anticipated the rock avant-garde in its blend of high powered
> electric music and theatrical presentation." His next album, These 23
> Days in September, was "one of the first, and finest "deescalation"
> records of I968, the arrangements smooth and ... consistent with the
> romantic tone" of the songs. With another record deal underway, David
> and his girlfriend Sara Morris, moved to Los Angeles. Theirs was a
> volatile relationship; after many breakups, Sara finally left David
> and went to live in San Francisco. He followed her there and tried, in
> vain, to persuade her to return. Me (I970) and Stories (I972) were two
> albums which reflected this period. Stories, a record full of "lost
> love's longing" and "eloquent and haunting power", was chosen by
> several reviewers as one of the best records of I972.
>
> In David's next album, Nice Baby and the Angel, he continued to
> unsparingly reveal himself through his work. This Graham Nash produced
> record was described as "impressive in every aspect, of devastating
> honesty," and "artistry...singular and very moving."
>
> Despite the esteem of his colleagues and the loyal enthusiasm of his
> fans, Blue never became a major "star." He was perhaps best known as
> an "eminence grise," an influence upon and close friend to some of the
> artists whose public fame eclipsed his own. Leonard Cohen, in his
> eulogy to David, stated "David Blue was the peer of any singer in this
> country, and he knew it, and he coveted their audiences and their
> power, he claimed them as his rightful due. And when he could not have
> them, his disappointment became so dazzling, his greed assumed such
> that we were all able to recognize ourselves, and we fell in love with
> him. And as we grew older, as something in the public realm corrupted
> of his failure, became for those who knew him, increasingly appealing,
> and he moved swiftly, with effortless intimacy, into the private life
> of anyone who recognized him, and our private lives became for him the
> theaters that no one would book for him, and he sang for us in hotel
> rooms and kitchens, and he became that poet and that gambler, and he
>
> David was an actor, as well as a musician, perhaps best known for his
> role in Renaldo and Clara, Dylan's I976 film of The Rolling Thunder
> Review. As an actor, Blue had great timing, presence, and naturalness.
> He had several roles in noted films and plays, including The American
> Friend, directed by Wim Wenders, Human Highway, by Neil Young, and
> Studs Lonnigan by Tommy Flannery. His last work as a film actor was in
> Uncertain Futures directed by Nesya Blue.
>
> David and Nesya met when David was invited to star in a stage
> production in Montreal, Nesya's native city. "And finally, toward the
> end of his short and graceful life, he had the grace to recognize the
> woman to whom he had always been singing, and he courted and married
> lightly, she made manifest for all to plainly see the qualities of
> Leonard.
>
> David and Nesya married and moved to New York City. Back in Greenwich
> Village after nearly a decade in California. David continued to write
> prose, poetry and music: "in the last few years, something happened to
> his voice and his guitar, something very deep and sweet entered, his
> the finest, one of the few men singing in America and I was happy then
> continued.
>
> In 1982, Blue danced and sang in a Broadway production. He appeared in
> the soap opera All My Children and starred in American Days at the
> Manhattan Theatre Club. Active in the music scene, he encouraged
> younger musicians, played gigs, and prepared material for a new album.
> In one of his songs from this period, a ballad called Children of Rockand Roll, David wrote: "Time has taken its toll on the children of
>
> rock and roll. But 1 survived to tell the tale. Others are dead or
> still in jail." On the 2nd of December, 1982, David Blue died of a
> sudden and massive heart attack while jogging around Washington Square
> Park. He was 41 years old.
There is something heartening about letting the eyes scan a piece of
good writing which clothes nicely a soul having a human experience.
41 years old is young.
Thanks .... is it BlackpoolJimmy?
Melia
Oh no!!! He was so young!
>He was 41 years old.
Luria and Nachman died even younger.