j'ai vu bécaud juste avant sa mort

je devrais dire monsieur bécaud ... à l'olympia, il avait été royal, et sur sa péniche, en juillet 2001, il m'avait reçu comme un prince ... il était assis en lotus à même le sol, un whisky et une cigarette à la main ... ses yeux faisaient des bonds de pierrot ... au bout de vingt minutes de conversation, il m'a demandé: "c'est quoi votre petit nom?" j'ai répondu "louis", et je crois que j'ai rougi ...

sand and sea (hollywood, novembre 1966)

... quand je disais qu'il m'avait reçu comme un prince, je voulais dire que c'était lui qui était un prince ... j'ai eu un sentiment rare d'intimité, de chaleur, de distance, un sentiment étrange que je n'ai éprouvé qu'en face des plus grands: elvis presley, john wayne, robert mitchum, jacques tourneur, raoul walsh, allan dwan ... le sentiment que c'était de grands personnages d'une modestie excessive, et d'une chaleur exceptionnelle ... quand bécaud est mort, à peine quelques mois plus tard, j'ai eu le sentiment de perdre un ami

i remember blake edwards' peter gunn

peter gunn (blake edwards, tv series, 1958) ... i'll never never forget how much it influenced cassavettes' johnny staccato (that started production more than a year later, in 1959) ... blake edwards also produced another black and white tv series, mr lucky ... both programs featured henry mancini's sophisticated musical variations ... four years before that, in 1955, young blake edwards worked on his best friend's richard quine's script, for the great musical, my sister eileen
i'll never forget richard quine, who comitted suicide more than twenty years ago ...
PS. j'ai vu blake edwards tourner à hollywood (c'était un mauvais film, the great race), je suis même certain de l'avoir interviewé ... je ne me souviens de rien .... il était léger et petillant comme le champagne: aussitôt bu, aussitôt envolé ....

i'm thinking about robert frank ...

... i last saw him in paris three or four years ago with my friend brigitte ollier ... he was very sick ... didn't look like he would live much longer ... we hugged him, like americans do, to try and give him energy, at least a little bit of it ...

here's what elliott errwitt says of robert frank:

"quality doesn't mean deep blacks and whatever tonal range ... that's not quality, that's a kind of quality ... the pictures of robert frank might strike someone as being sloppy - the tone range isn't right and things like that - but they're far superior to the pictures of ansel adams with regard to quality, because the quality of ansel Aaams, if i may say so, is essentially the quality of a postcard ... but the quality of robert frank is a quality that has something to do with what he's doing, what his mind is ... it's not balancing out the sky to the sand and so forth ... .... it's got to do with intention."
just wonder how he's doing these days ... i still don't care much about photography these days ... but robert is an artist, a filmmaker, much more than he is a photograph ... i love you brigitte, i love you robert ...

o.v. wright/more soulful than al green?

a little more time/o.v wright, nearly forty years old, no more teeth, approaching death ...a story of love, music, and respect ... for don van vliet, maybe ...

bobby troup/their hearts were full of spring (1958)

their hearts were full of spring/original version of this great bobby troup composition/los angeles, august 1958 (films d'occasion)

it happened once before (with wife julie london)/my funny valentine/misty

hey man, dig this early, rough and pretty violin blues

elder green/charley patton & henry sims (septembre, 1930)/also check son simms four (henry sims & young muddy waters, stovall's plantation, clarksdale, mississippi, 1941/42, )

what did i think when i was 16?

i thought about girls, that's about all ... had drawings of elvis i made myself, pasted on my wall ... loved the everly brothers above all ... around 1972 (i was 28 or 29), some kind of frightening suicidal junkie i had the stupid idea to invite to stay home (i was living with my musician friend patricio villarroel at the time, we ate rice and vegetable one of his girl friends cooked for us) robbed me of everything i had, and what was most important for me at the time were my records ... he stole each and everyone of them, only left the everly brothers cadence 45's cause they had no cover ...only records from that time period i still have ... my father used to like gilbert bécaud a lot, if i remember well ... not me ... in fact, i just tolerated him at the time (along with montand) but deep within, i hated anything that was sung in french ... in fact i had to wait until bashung and rita mitsouko came along, years later, to buy my very first records speaking french ...

je t'appartiens/let it be me/gilbert bécaud (1973)/everly brothers (1964)

i hardly listened to any music for a year after that creep stole my record collection ...i started buying some back (same ones) after a year and a half ... only thing that soothes me, is the idea he would have ALSO stolen the precious signed presley vinyls i had swapped for two or three early ray charles, bd de strasbourg, not far from république, where i would work later for nearly thirty years (first half wasin fact around the sacré coeur/château rouge) in the offices of libération between 1980 and 2007 ...