Frank Beacham's Journal

On this day in 1961 — 62 years ago — Bob Dylan first arrived in New York City

On this day in 1961 — 62 years ago — Bob Dylan first arrived in New York City.

Dylan was 19, and drove with friends to New York from Wisconsin. He had two immediate goals: to meet Woody Guthrie and to perform at Greenwich Village coffee houses. He achieved both.

Within a few months, he would not only get a rave review in the New York Times and meet the legendary record man and producer, John Hammond, but would be signed by Hammond to Columbia Records and by the end of the year he’d record his first album, Bob Dylan.

Dylan recorded his first six albums in New York, and the city was his base of operations from 1961 into 1966.

Here, Dylan performs “Talkin’ New York” live at Town Hall on April 12, 1963

Nastassja Kinski is 62 years old today

Nastassja Kinski, 1981

Photo by Richard Avedon

Nastassja Kinski is 62 years old today.

A German actress and former model, Kinski has appeared in more than sixty films in Europe and the United States. Her starring roles include the title character in Tess (1979), and her role in Paris, Texas (1984). It is one of a number of films she made with the German director, Wim Wenders.

Born in Berlin as Nastassja Aglaia Nakszynski, Kinski is the daughter of the German actor Klaus Kinski and his wife, actress Ruth Brigitte Tocki. She is of part Polish descent. Kinski began working as a model as a teenager in Germany.

Actress Lisa Kreuzer of the German New Wave helped get her the role of the dumb Mignon in Wim Wenders film, The Wrong Move. In 1976, while still a teenager, Kinski had her first two major roles. One was in Wolfgang Petersen's feature-film length episode, Reifezeugnis, of the German TV crime series, Tatort.

Next she appeared in the British horror film, To the Devil a Daughter (1976), produced by Hammer Film Productions.

In 1981, Richard Avedon photographed Kinski with a Burmese python coiled around her nude body. The image was marketed as a poster.

From 1992 until 1995, Kinski lived with musician Quincy Jones, though she kept her own apartment on Hilgard Avenue, near UCLA, at the time.

In 1993 they had a daughter, Kenya Julia Miambi Sarah Jones.

Neil Diamond is 82 years old today

Neil Diamond is 82 years old today.

Diamond is a singer-songwriter with a career that began in the 1960s. He has sold over 125 million records worldwide, and is the third most successful adult contemporary artist on the Billboard charts behind Barbra Streisand and Elton John.

His songs have been covered internationally by many performers from various musical genres.

On the Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts, he has had ten #1 singles: "Cracklin' Rosie," "Song Sung Blue," "Longfellow Serenade," "I've Been This Way Before," "If You Know What I Mean," "Desiree," "You Don't Bring Me Flowers," "America," "Yesterday's Songs," "Heartlight" and "I'm A Believer."

On January 22, 2018, Diamond announced that he would immediately retire from live performance due to having been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. His official Neil Diamond website, announced the immediate cancellation of the remainder of his "50 Year Anniversary World Tour."

The cancellation affected tour dates in Australia and New Zealand. In the online statement, the website said the cancellation would allow Diamond to "continue his writing, recording and development of new projects."

Here, Diamond performs “Cracklin’ Rosie” in 1971

Warren Zevon was born 76 years ago today

Warren Zevon was born 76 years ago today.

A rock singer-songwriter and musician, Zevon was known for the dark and somewhat bizarre sense of humor in his lyrics. His work has often been praised by Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Neil Young.

Zevon’s best-known compositions include "Werewolves of London," "Lawyers, Guns and Money," "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" and "Johnny Strikes Up the Band," all of which are featured on his third album, Excitable Boy (1978).

Other well-known songs written by Zevon have been recorded by other artists, including "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" (a Top 40 hit by Linda Ronstadt), "Accidentally Like a Martyr," "Mohammed's Radio," "Carmelita" and "Hasten Down the Wind."

Along with his own compositions, Zevon recorded or performed occasional covers, including Allen Toussaint's “A Certain Girl,” Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and Leonard Cohen's "First We Take Manhattan."

Zevon had a lifelong phobia of doctors and seldom received medical assessment. Shortly before playing at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival in 2002, he started feeling dizzy and developed a chronic cough.

After a period of suffering with pain and shortness of breath, Zevon was encouraged by his dentist to see a physician. He was diagnosed with inoperable peritoneal mesothelioma (a form of cancer associated with exposure to asbestos).

Refusing treatments he believed might incapacitate him, Zevon instead began recording his final album, The Wind, which includes guest appearances by close friends including Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley, Jackson Browne, Timothy B. Schmit, Joe Walsh, David Lindley, Billy Bob Thornton, Emmylou Harris, Tom Petty and Dwight Yoakam.

Zevon died on September 7, 2003 at age 56 at his home in Los Angeles.

The Wind was certified gold in December, 2003.

Here is Zevon in full concert at the Capitol Theatre in 1982

Rosalinda, Iioilo City, Philippines

Photo by Manuel Librodo Jr.

Django Reinhardt, pioneering French virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer, was born 113 years ago today

Django Reinhardt, pioneering French virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer, was born 113 years ago today.

Reinhardt is often regarded as one of the greatest guitar players of all time and regarded as the first important European jazz musician who made major contributions to the development of the idiom.

Reinhardt invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique (sometimes called “hot jazz” guitar) that has since become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture. With violinist Stéphane Grappelli, he co-founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France, described by critic Thom Jurek as "one of the most original bands in the history of recorded jazz."

Reinhardt's most popular compositions have become jazz standards, including "Minor Swing," "Daphne," "Belleville," "Djangology," "Swing '42" and "Nuages."

While walking from the Avon railway station after playing in a Paris club in 1953, he collapsed outside his house from a brain hemorrhage. It was a Saturday and it took a full day for a doctor to arrive. Reinhardt was declared dead on arrival at the hospital in Fontainebleau at the age of 43.

For about a decade after Reinhardt's death, interest in his musical style was minimal. In the fifties, bebop superseded swing in jazz, rock and roll took off and electric instruments became dominant in popular music.

Since the mid-sixties, there has been a revival of interest in Reinhardt's music. Acoustic music was revived with the folk movement.

Several of Reinhardt's near-contemporaries, such as Paul "Tchan Tchou" Vidal, recorded for the first time in the sixties and seventies.

Here, Reinhardt performs with Stephane Grappelli in Jattendrai Swing, 1939

Jonatha Brooke is 59 years old today

Jonatha Brooke in concert at SubCulture in New York City, January 19, 2015

Photo by Frank Beacham

Jonatha Brooke is 59 years old today.

A folk rock singer-songwriter and guitarist from Massachusetts, Brooke’s music merges elements of folk, rock and pop, often with poignant lyrics and complex harmonies. She has been a performer, writer and artist since the late 1980s, and her songs have been used in television shows and movies.

Brooke and fellow Bostonian Jennifer Kimball began playing music together in the 1980s after having met at Amherst College. They performed regularly during their college years. Their folk songs were marked by "witty wordplay and sumptuous pop harmonies," according to one music critic.

Brooke was sometimes grouped with emerging 1990s talents such as the Indigo Girls, Sheryl Crow, Shawn Colvin and Mary Chapin Carpenter. She continued to write and perform although there was a brief hiatus in which she focused on ballet.

In 1989, the duo played the coffeehouse folk circuit and radio as The Story and were described as an example of the "folk-rock singer-songwriter aesthetic." That year they created a demo called Over Oceans. They were signed to the independent label Green Linnet which, in 1991, issued the duo's debut full-length album Grace in Gravity.

Later, Elektra Records signed The Story and re-issued their debut. Their second album, The Angel in the House, was released in 1993, highlighting their intricate and sometimes dissonant harmonies. One music critic described their approach as "levity" between heavy songs about "God, church, death, female oppression, self-suppression, mothers and daughters."

In 1994, Brooke pursued a solo career. Her first solo effort, Plumb (1995), won mixed reviews, but the followup, 10 Cent Wings, was received more favorably and earned critical commentary such as "sly phrases and lush pop arrangements that made The Story so enjoyable."

Soon, with changes in the music business, she was dropped by MCA. While in her early 30s without backing from a major label, she became known as an industrious "cutting-edge world of do-it-yourself" marketer by using the internet creatively to reach out to fans.

She recorded "Jonatha Brooke Live" (1999) on her own label Bad Dog Records. At first she sold via the internet. She packaged and mailed about 2,500 copies and autographed each one for a personal touch.

In February, 2008, Brooke recorded The Works, which was her seventh solo release. This effort was inspired by the music of late folk legend Woody Guthrie. Brooke was invited by Guthrie's daughter, Nora, to sift through the private archives and hunt through Guthrie's unreleased material for possible adaptations.

Brooke said she was "smitten" with Guthrie's work and going through it was like "going to church." She liked his poetic love songs like "My Sweet and Bitter Bowl" and spiritual deeper tunes like "My Battle" and loved Guthrie's "full spectrum of craziness" as she described his writings.

Brooke's The Works featured talented musicians including keyboard player Joe Sample, bassist Christian McBride, drummer Steve Gadd and pedal steel guitarist Greg Leisz.

In 2014, Brooke performed in a musical play she wrote called “My Mother Has 4 Noses” in New York City. The play was described as an “end-of-life love story.”

In October 2016, she released the album Midnight. Hallelujah. Recorded at Sweetwater Studios in Fort Wayne, IN, and mixed by Bob Clearmountain, the collection features a broader mix of instruments than her previous two albums. Brooke supported the release of the album with tour dates across the United States.

Here, Brooke performs “Linger” in 2001 on David Letterman’s show

Ernie Kovacs was born 104 years ago today

Ernie Kovacs was born 104 years ago today.

A comedian, actor and writer, Kovacs' uninhibited, often ad-libbed, and visually experimental comedic style came to influence numerous television comedy programs for years after his death in an automobile accident.

Many iconic and diverse shows have been influenced by Kovacs, such as Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Saturday Night Live, The Uncle Floyd Show, Captain Kangaroo, Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and TV hosts such as David Letterman, Conan O'Brien and Craig Ferguson.

Chevy Chase acknowledged Kovacs' influence and thanked him during his acceptance speech for his Emmy award for Saturday Night Live. Chase appeared in the 1982 documentary, Ernie Kovacs: Television's Original Genius, speaking again of the impact Kovacs had on his work.

On or off screen, Kovacs could be counted on for the unexpected, from having marmosets as pets to wrestling a jaguar on his live Philadelphia television show.

When working at WABC (AM) as a morning-drive radio personality and doing a mid-morning television show for NBC, Kovacs disliked eating breakfast alone while his wife was sleeping in after her Broadway performances. His solution was to hire a taxi driver to come into their apartment with his own key and whose job was to make breakfast for them both, then take him to the WABC studios.

While Kovacs and his wife, Edie Adams, received Emmy nominations for best performances in a comedy series in 1957, his talent was not formally recognized until after his death.

The 1962 Emmy for outstanding electronic camera work and the Directors' Guild award came a short time after his fatal accident. A quarter century later, he was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame.

Kovacs was more than another wide-eyed, self-ingratiating clown. He was television's first significant video artist. He was its first surrealist — its most daring and imaginative writer. And he was television's first and possibly only auteur. He caused his audience to look at the world in a new way.

Kovacs died in an auto accident on January 13, 1962 at age 42 in Los Angeles.

Here, Kovacs joins Bobby Lauher to do “Whom Dunnit,” a satire about 50s-era panel quiz shows

On this day in 1957 — 66 years ago — the Wham-O toy company rolled out the first batch of their aerodynamic plastic discs — now known to millions of fans all over the world as Frisbees

On this day in 1957 — 66 years ago — the Wham-O toy company rolled out the first batch of their aerodynamic plastic discs — now known to millions of fans all over the world as Frisbees.

The story of the Frisbee began in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where William Frisbie opened the Frisbie Pie Company in 1871. Students from nearby universities would throw the empty pie tins to each other, yelling “Frisbie!” as they let go.

In 1948, Walter Frederick Morrison and his partner, Warren Franscioni, invented a plastic version of the disc called the “Flying Saucer” that could fly further and more accurately than the tin pie plates.

After splitting with Franscioni, Morrison made an improved model in 1955 and sold it to the new toy company Wham-O as the “Pluto Platter” — an attempt to cash in on the public craze over space and Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).

In 1958, a year after the toy’s first release, Wham-O — the company behind such top-sellers as the Hula-Hoop, the Super Ball and the Water Wiggle — changed its name to the Frisbee disc, misspelling the name of the historic pie company.

A company designer, Ed Headrick, patented the design for the modern Frisbee in December, 1967, adding a band of raised ridges on the disc’s surface — called the Rings — to stabilize flight. By aggressively marketing Frisbee-playing as a new sport, Wham-O sold over 100 million of its famous toys by 1977.

In 1967, high school students in Maplewood, New Jersey, invented Ultimate Frisbee, a cross between football, soccer and basketball. In the 1970s, Headrick himself invented Frisbee Golf, in which discs are tossed into metal baskets. There are now hundreds of courses in the U.S., with millions of devotees.

There is also Freestyle Frisbee, with choreographed routines set to music and multiple discs in play, and various Frisbee competitions for both humans and dogs — the best natural Frisbee players.

Today, at least 60 manufacturers produce the flying discs — generally made out of plastic and measuring roughly 8 to 10 inches in diameter with a curved lip.

The official Frisbee is owned by Mattel Toy Manufacturers, who bought the toy from Wham-O in 1994.

Jeanne Moreau was born 95 years old today

Jeanne Moreau was born 95 years old today.

A French actress, singer, screenwriter and director, Moreau was the recipient of a César Award for Best Actress, a BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress and a Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award for individual performances, and several lifetime awards.

Moreau made her theatrical debut in 1947, and established herself as one of the leading actresses of the Comédie-Française. She began playing small roles in films in 1949 and eventually achieved prominence as the star of Lift to the Scaffold (UK)/Elevator to the Gallows (USA) (1958), directed by Louis Malle and Jules et Jim (1962), directed by François Truffaut.

Moreau was married to Jean-Louis Richard (1949–1964) and then to American film director, William Friedkin (1977–1979). Director Tony Richardson left his wife, Vanessa Redgrave, for her in 1967 but they never married.

She has also had affairs with directors Louis Malle and François Truffaut, fashion designer Pierre Cardin, jazz trumpeter Miles Davis and Theodoros Roubanis, the Greek actor/playboy.

Most prolific during the 1960s, Moreau continued to appear in films until her death. She was a close friend of Sharon Stone, who presented a 1998 American Academy of Motion Pictures life tribute to Moreau. Orson Welles called her "the greatest actress in the world."

Moreau died on July 31, 2017.