When the news broke a few weeks ago that the wife of Kenny Burrell, one of the foremost jazz guitarists of the postwar era, had started a GoFundMe campaign to help cover his medical expenses, contributions poured in. That made me proud. Not that I ever doubted it, but those who love jazz clearly care no less deeply about the hard-working men and women who devote their lives to playing and singing it, many of whom find themselves struggling in old age to make ends meet.
Now comes word that Dave Frishberg, another great jazzman, has fallen on similarly hard times, and that friends have set up a GoFundMe campaign on his behalf. Frishberg is, of course, the octogenarian pianist and singer-songwriter whose catalogue includes such deliciously idiosyncratic tunes as “I’m Hip,” “Peel Me a Grape,” “Blizzard of Lies,” “The Difficult Season,” “Sweet Kentucky Ham,” “Heart’s Desire,” “Our Love Rolls On,” “I Was Ready,” “Slappin’ the Cakes on Me,” “My Attorney Bernie,” “Van Lingle Mungo,” “Eastwood Lane,” “I Want to Be a Sideman,” and the most beautiful and piercingly nostalgic of all his songs, “Do You Miss New York?”
In a better-regulated world, he’d be living comfortably off his royalties. Instead, he’s feeling the pinch—hard. According to his GoFundMe page:
Over the last few years, you may have noticed that your old pal, jazz legend Dave Frishberg, hasn’t graced the stages near you, nor tickled your ear drums and funny bones with new music. That’s because he’s suffered a series of setbacks to his health—some minor, some not-so-minor—that have kept him off the road and out of the studio, and steered him more or less into retirement.
We know; if only you’d been aware that Dave had retired, you would have given him a gold watch and a nice cake, right? Well, now you can give him an even better gift.
As it happens, coming along with Dave’s health setbacks are expensive new medical realities. And though the spirit is more than willing, there’s only so much the wallet can do. In other words, those royalties from his work are nice, but they can’t cover everything.
Your donations will help provide long-term health care to keep Dave comfortable at home.
I pulled out my wallet as soon as I heard the word. I urge you with all my heart to go here and do the same. Please help a true artist live out his days in the dignity he deserves.
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Dave Frishberg sings and plays “My Attorney Bernie” on The Tonight Show in 1983:
Faith Prince sings Frishberg’s “Sweet Kentucky Ham”:
Blossom Dearie performs “I’m Hip,” by Frishberg and Bob Dorough:
Diana Krall performs Frishberg’s “Peel Me a Grape”:
Rosemary Clooney sings Frishberg’s “Do You Miss New York?”:
The last time I hiked up any part of a mountain was in the summer of 2007, a year and a half after I fell victim to a case of congestive heart failure that nearly did away with me. That impromptu expedition to the top of Clingmans Dome was one of the happiest days of my life, and the memory of how it felt to look out on the Great Smoky Mountains from 6,643 feet above sea level was still so strong and vivid that I didn’t think twice about heading up the trail that leads to the summit of Mount Ashland. Had I paused to reflect on what I was about to do, I might well have changed my mind….
“Other people’s troubles is mostly what folks read the paper for, and I reckon it’s twice the pleasure to them when it’s trouble of a man they know themselves.”
Russell Oberlin, the great American countertenor, sings Purcell’s “Music for a while” in an undated CBC telecast from the Sixties, accompanied by Douglas Williams on harpsichord. The spoken introduction is in untitled French, but the performance is in English:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
In today’s drama column, I review a Massachusetts production, Shakespeare & Company’s revival of Kenneth Lonergan’s The Waverly Gallery. Here’s an excerpt.
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The belated coming of Kenneth Lonergan to Broadway is one of the best things to happen to theater in America in the past decade. For even though Mr. Lonergan is the finest American playwright of his generation, his work has never been as widely known—or frequently staged—as it should be. As a result, the revivals of “This Is Our Youth” (1996), “Lobby Hero” (2002) and “The Waverly Gallery” (1999) that came to Broadway in 2014, 2018 and last fall have brought him to the attention of theatergoers who were hitherto unfamiliar with his subtle, richly wrought studies of messy lives and moral choices. That said, it’s also true that Mr. Lonergan’s plays were all originally written for performance in off-Broadway theaters, and while they can be effectively mounted in larger houses, as Lila Neugebauer proved with “The Waverly Gallery,” they work best when seen in more intimate spaces.
Witness Shakespeare & Company’s exceptional new revival of “The Waverly Gallery,” which is being performed in that company’s 200-seat Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre in a production staged by Tina Packer, the company’s founder, and starring Annette Miller in the role that won Elaine May a well-deserved Tony two weeks ago. Like Ms. May, Ms. Miller is an octogenarian at the peak of her powers…
Edward Elgar and the London Symphony Orchestra perform Elgar’s “Land of Hope and Glory” in a 1931 Pathé newsreel segment filmed at HMV’s newly opened Abbey Road recording studios:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
