David Blue: "So Easy She Goes By" (video)
Will Dockery
"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
zimmy
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
Will Dockery
> On Oct 18, 11:18 pm, 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
> 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.
<snipped for brevity>
> willdockery hy -will --- thanks for the info on 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=--YWenqVs-A
"...I like the lineup on this lp featuring Glenn Frey, Dave Mason,
Graham Nash, and Jennifer Warren, David Blue (February 18, 1941—
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..."
Tif
Beautiful!
The song too.
Thanks for passing it through, Will.
Will Dockery
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.
Tif
True, he is deserving. Too bad he ain't around anymore.
Will Dockery
"And, there but for fortune may go... you or I." -Phil Ochs
Yes.
--
"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
Will Dockery
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:
http://music.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=music.artistalbums&artistid=13994681&albumid=8098464
BLACKPOOLJIMMY
>
> 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.
>
> --
>
> - 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
purity, his appetite such honesty, and he stretched his arms 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 integrity
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
established a defiant style to revive those soiled archetypes.
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
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 forged out of his distress," continued
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
timing became immaculate and we 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." Leonard's eulogy
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 Rock
and 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.
Will Dockery
> > 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.
>
> > --
>
> 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.
Good write-up, Jimmy... there's more info and a few more songs at the
MySoace page:
BLACKPOOLJIMMY
> On Oct 22, 4:06�pm, BLACKPOOLJIMMY <Chippandf...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > > 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.
>
> > > --
>
> - Show quoted text -
Thanks Will. Sad story indeed.
Phil Ochs comes to mind.
John Lennon and Phil Ochs (we can bring it back to Beatles):
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.
>
> > --
>
> 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
> > Beatles newsgroup, but I couldn't resist this one... David Blue
> > deserves a showing.
>
> > --
>
> 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.
Oh no!!! He was so young!
>He was 41 years old.
Luria and Nachman died even younger.
who?
> On Oct 22, 4:06 pm, BLACKPOOLJIMMY <Chippandf...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > > 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.
>
> > > --
I couldn't get any songs to play. I'll try again.
Jeff
Will Dockery
> On Oct 22, 8:13 pm, Will Dockery <will.dock...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 22, 4:06 pm, BLACKPOOLJIMMY <Chippandf...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > > > 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.
>
> > > > --
>
> > - Show quoted text -
>
> Thanks Will. Sad story indeed.
> Phil Ochs comes to mind.
Phil's story is almost the saddest of them all, in some ways.
> John Lennon and Phil Ochs (we can bring it back to Beatles):
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BHp6f92QUc
Yes, thanks for finding that, Jimmy.
