Tragedy of bike-riding cabaret activist Mary Cleere Haran

Mary Cleere Haran – promotional photo, no copyright infringement intended

Cabaret is a forum for the classic American pop song — and the death of singer Mary Cleere Haran, hit by a car coming out of a driveway while she was riding her bike in Deerfield Beach, Fla., robs the world of an activist who interpreted, updated and preserved those brilliant, melodious standards.Â The genre and milieu in which she worked isn’t my preferred entertainment, but there’s no denying the centrality in sophisticated contemporary culture of the words and music of Rodgers and Hart and Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Frank Loesser, Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Johnny Mercer and the many others celebrated by Haran, age 58, who wrote and produced shows and contributed significantly to television documentaries about the stars and songs of the U.S. in the mid 20th Century. Though there are performers as devoted to sustaining this legacy of wit and glamor as she, when an artist as deeply into their speciality it taken from the stage in their prime, that specialty is severely wounded, too.

I’m particularly disturbed by Haran’s death because as a bicyclist in Brooklyn I’ve become increasingly aware of the disregard drivers of cars and trucks routinely practice on streets they share with lighter and less powerful conveyances (as well as pedestrians). Even worse is the backlash of officials and some governing bodies to this non-polluting, healthy and economic way of getting around. Haran was reportedly on her bike, returning from having dropped off her resumÃ© at a hotel where she wanted to perform. Deerfield Beach, a South Florida town with a population of approximately 76,000 and about 15 square miles in size, sounds like the kind of community in which biking is an easy way to get around. I can find no details about the accident that left Haran in a coma, but how fast must a car be coming out of a driveway in order to blindside a rider? How careless is the driver who doesn’t see a biker or walker on the street they’re about to enter?

Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz made newly created bike lanes a joke and a target of criticism in his recent annual address. Rather than speak up for bikes as a worthy addition to a hard-pressed overall transportation plan, he belittles them as conveyances that tie up privileged motor vehicle traffic, rendering roads ugly and dangerous. It’s true that bikes can do damage to a person in a collision, but the severity of injuries is typically far less than what happens when a car strikes a living being.

I never heard Mary Cleere Haran sing live, and I never will, which strikes me as sad. There are no videos of her performing on YouTube, though she leaves a legacy of some half-dozen recordings (most recent is The Big Band Sound of WWII, on which she sings with the Eric Felten Orchestra). The mission of cabaret is not to break conventions, push boundaries or, in most cases, to explore what’s new, but rather to conserve culture of the past and enliven the spirit of music that has enduring value in the present; who’s not for that? And my interest in making the riding of bikes safe for everybody — kids and grownups, pedestrians and car drivers alike — is a bigger thing: jazz beyond jazz. So take a moment to think of Mary Cleere Haran. And whatever you’re steering, look all ways.

howardmandel.com
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