A look at some recent passings, after-the-jump ….
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A brief look at some in the entertainment field who have left us in recent weeks (and some with comparatively little fanfare).
One is the English harpist Sheila Bromberg who has died at the age of ninety-two:
→ She played harp in the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the BBC Concert Orchestra, among other ensembles. She also performed in the orchestral pit of the musical Phantom of the Opera during its long London run.
→ During the 1960s and ‘70s, she was a member of the BBC’s Top of the Pops orchestra, backing some of the world’s biggest stars on Britain’s most popular music show of the time
→ She played on two James Bond films — Dr. No (1962) and Goldfinger (1964)
→ Her cousin is the US musician David Bromberg
Yet she is most celebrated for playing on the Beatles song She’s Leaving Home— the first female musician to appear on a Beatles recording — and had no idea what she was going to be asked to play when she arrived at the EMI studio.
The other day (in this space) I noted the death (at age ninety-five) of the music festival impresario George Wein— the owner of the Boston jazz club Storyville… who went on to found the Newport Jazz Festival, the Newport Folk Festival (that featured Odetta, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan when he ‘went electric’), the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival …. and help pioneer popular music festivals.
Duke Ellington often replied (when asked where he was born), “I was born in Newport, Rhode Island in 1956” — where his band had a triumphal performance (as I profiled before at this link).
“George Wein defined what a music festival could be with the Newport Jazz Festival, Newport Folk Festival, and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival,” L.L. Cool J. said in 2015 when presenting Wein with a Grammy Honorary Trustee Award. “More than anyone, George set the stage for what great festivals today look like; festivals like Coachella, Bonnaroo … he made this possible…”
In his own way, George Wein played a role in the civil rights movement. He explained that Newport circa 1954 had wealthy socialites (not known for racial progressivism), had been part of the slave trade in its past and due to the presence of a naval base (with many on base used to Jim Crow) helped contribute to an unofficial yet real practice of segregation. In its initial year of 1954, while the audience was fully integrated, many black performers had to be housed in private homes. Yet within a few years, the festival had changed this — with 1981 seeing the election of the first African-American mayor of any city/town in New England.
He had felt the sting of anti-Semitism and his family was concerned when he married a black woman (who pre-deceased him after forty-six years of marriage). When he first visited New Orleans in 1962, he did not want to bring Joyce (Jim Crow laws and intermarriage being illegal). Eight years later, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival began: and today, there is a building named after the couple.
Lastly, it was in August that saw the death of Jerry Harkness— one of the players on the NCAA championship basketball team of 1963 from Loyola of Chicago. Three years later, the team from Texas Western won the championship that was featured in the film Glory Road — the game that led to the end of segregation in college basketball in the near future.
Yet as I noted in an essay in this space: there were two earlier integrated teams that served as an on-ramp to Glory Road — and Jerry Harkness was part of that in 1963. The most famous game was not their championship game against Cincinnati — but rather, a preliminary match against Mississippi State, in what became known as the Game of Change.
Mississippi State had been a powerhouse in their Southeastern Conference in the late 50’s and early 60’s .. yet were unable to participate in post-season play against integrated teams, due to the Jim Crow practices of its state government. And thus second-place Kentucky often went in their place: they were an all-white team too, yet faced no prohibitions against playing against integrated teams.
In my original essay (which you can read at this link) the school and players were fed-up with this practice by 1963 — the school's president Dean Colvard had accepted the NCAA tournament bid knowing that he could lose his job — yet via subterfuge managed to sneak away (to the campus of Michigan State University) to play against Loyola of Chicago.
Flashbulbs popped as Jerry Harkness shook hands with Mississippi State’s Joe Dan Gold before the tipoff — and after losing and returning home to Mississippi, the team members were greeted not with scorn, but cheers. Forty-eight years later when Joe Dan Gold died, Jerry Harkness attended his funeral in Kentucky (“He would have done the same, for me”) — and when he first approached his casket: wept when he saw a large blown-up photo of that famous handshake … placed on an easel right next to it.
Jerry Harkness went on to play in the ABA the first year it was founded, and in addition to a business career after basketball: worked with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the early 1970’s and served as executive director of the Indianapolis chapter of 100 Black Men, a national organization dedicated to mentoring young African American males.
Just this past March: he went to see his alma mater’s men’s basketball team win its first two games in this year’s NCAA tournament … where he met-up with today’s team chaplain: Sister Jean Schmidt (who has just turned age one hundred and two). She played basketball in her native San Francisco and was supportive of civil rights actions by her students as a school administrator in the early 1960’s.
Jerry Harkness died in August at the age of eighty-one. He said he had not planned to play such a role in the civil rights movement, but fate intervened:
“We kind of came together, sports and the movement”.
To these three — and many other deserving names — this send-off by Fred Neil.
Now, on to Top Comments:
From Angela Marx:
In the diary by tonyahkyrelating how her daughter suffered from domestic violence— I'm sending in this comment (by Pogoatty) because it IS the best comment ever on the subject of how to get thru the end of an abusive relationship. Everyone knows someone who is or has been in one of these damaging situations, and everyone can benefit from reading the comment.
From Youffraita:
In the diary by Blue Tuesday about the gerrymandering planned by the Ohio GOP legislature that even the Republican governor objects to — anastasia p has a very informative comment about the state of Ohio politics.
From tampaedski:
In the diary by annielli about the right-wing Daily Wire podcast host Jeremy Boreing claiming that rock & roll was destroyed by none other than ... Barack Obama — Marksb hits it out of the park with this comment worthy of inclusion.
And from Ed Tracey, your faithful correspondent this evening ........
In the front-page story about the Newsmax host who freaked-out over a veteran who …. didn’t exactly follow-the-script — this comment made by LiberalsLoveAmerica.
Next - enjoy jotter's wonderful (and now eternal) *PictureQuilt™* below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment featuring that photo.
TOP PHOTOSSeptember 15th, 2021
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And lastly: yesterday's Top Mojo - mega-mojo to the intrepid mik ...... who rescued this feature from oblivion:
3) Go get ‘em, Sen. Whitehouse! … by canadiangal +18311) Dan Quayle is a heroe. … by polecat +11811) Oh no! It’s a landslide of the elites! by Olds88 +11816) Time for some changes in CA - by AKALib +10218) Say their names: … by nomandates +10321) Let’s be clear. … by David Pax +9523) A repudiation we all needed — by AKALib +9428) Charles “Brainwrap” by Denise Oliver Velez +8428) lol!!! I repeat LOL!!! … by buffan +84