New Book About Bob Dylan I Have Been Waiting For For 50 Years From Tapes Made By His Road Manager and Bodyguard Victor Maymudes

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/books/a-dylan-insiders-back-pages.html

 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/books/a-dylan-insiders-back-pages.html

Cut and paste the above link in Yahoo or Google search to read about this forthcoming book due out in September.
This will be the real insiders story told by Victor Maymudes Bob's friend and road manager from the early days.
Search on this blog for more on Victor Maymudes and Bob Dylan.

Here is the book as shown on Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/dp/125005530X/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

And here is my post about Bob Dylan at Mardi Gras in New Orleans in Feb. 1964.

Search blogspot.com tally ho!...search bob dylan mardi gras 1964.

My material was used by Robert Shelton in his bio of Dylan titled NO DIRECTION HOME.
Now I see from reading pages in this book Jacob Maymudes has also used my material about that Mardi Gras in his book. He used my quotes as well. I told him a year ago he could use my material if he would give me credit. But he has put my words in his father's telling of the events of that Mardi Gras.  He ripped me and my words off. And he does not give me credit.
Instead he changed some few things and got many of the facts wrong.

Compare the quotes in this new book with what I wrote back in 2009
.
Plus I have much more detailed information on Bob Dylan at that Mardi Gras. Look at my blog post for the real  true story of what went on at that Mardi Gras 1964.
http://joeb-tallyho.blogspot.com/2009/12/bob-dylan-at-mardi-gras-new-orleans-feb.html

You can also click on the Label Mardi Gras 1964 Bob Dylan in the Label box below to find my posts about that time and place. And click on the Label No Direction Home to read what I and Robert Shelton wrote in his book of that same name. And you will clearly see where Jacob Maymudes stole my words and writings and put them in his book claiming they came from his father's tapes.
I challenge him to provide audio tapes of his father saying those words.

50 Years Since The Beatles First Appeared On The Ed Sullivan Show On Feb. 9th 1964 And 50 Years Also Since Bob Dylan Appeared Incognito At Mardi Gras In New Orleans On Feb. 9th Through The 11th 1964

 

Calendar for February 1964 United States

February
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

The Beatles first appeared On The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday Feb. 9th 1964 in New York City.

 

The Beatles performed Their First USA Concert in Washington D.C. on Feb. 11th 1964.

http://www.pophistorydig.com/?tag=the-beatles-in-washington-dc

Meanwhile on the same date and time way down South in New Orleans:

 

Below is a description of what Bob Dylan was doing on Mardi Gras Day and Night in New Orleans on Feb. 11th, 1964. He was not there to perform. He was just looking around and having a good time like everybody else.  And traveling incognito.

 

Bob Dylan At Mardi Gras New Orleans Feb. 1964

Mardi Gras New Orleans Feb.11th 1964 I was there with Victor Maymudes and Bob Dylan running the streets all day and night until 3am Ash Wednesday. Read all about it on the back of ANOTHER SIDE OF BOB DYLAN. I am Joe B. Stuart the "white southern poet". My last name was slightly mispelled on the album. Either because it was transcribed from a tape or because the lawyers had Columbia change the names slightly to avoid law suits from people who had not given permission for their names to be used. You can read all about this Mardi Gras Day in Robert Shelton's bio of Bob, NO DIRECTION HOME. He describes the day and night fully. I should know because he used my written memories of it that my brother had sent to him. I called my memories LOOKING BACK AT BOBBY D. IN A NOW NEWSREEL.

I wrote down my memories in 1967. Victor Maymudes Bob's road manager and body guard and I played some ping pong in The Seven Seas Bar in the French Quarter. That bar is still there I believe. He beat me so I was impressed by that because I was pretty good. Dylan and Victor liked chess and ping pong. Victor ran off some loud mouth people who screeched up in a car on Decatur street yelling at Bob "Do you want to come with us?" And Bob replied, "Victor speaks for me". And Victor said "No". I now think this was Paul Clayton in a car with some other people. Paul Clayton was along on this trip but was not with Victor and Bob during Mardi Gras day and night. He was off doing something else. Since Bob was so little known by the general public in Feb.of 1964 I can't think of anyone else who this could have been except Paul Clayton. I may be wrong on this but no one else knew Bob Dylan from Adam in New Orleans at that time. I later knew someone in DC who knew Clayton. I never met him. But Paul Clayton was an interesting person and is often forgotten. He should be better remembered. I also remember that the writer Pete Karman was along with Bob and Victor and Paul Clayton on this trip. It might have been him that yelled from that car on Decatur Street but I doubt it. I remember Pete in La Casa de los Marinos. I recently heard from Pete. He told me he was sober that day and night after a big night the night before. So I now think it was simply the fact that he was sober that made me think he looked out of place in La Casa and nothing more.

Victor was 5 years older than us at the time. So he must have been 29 years old. A tall good looking guy. He could tell who was OK and who was not just by looking at them. A man of few words. But a really nice guy. I was 23 going on 24 at the time. We were all so young, so good looking and so unwrinkled. Time did a number on us like it does on everyone. But it is nice to look back and remember when we were young and full of piss and vinegar. I never met Victor ever again. Though I thought of him often.

I did meet Dylan again down on the Mall in Washington D.C. in 1986 when he was in town for concerts. We both were down on the Mall to see the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival because the Sun Rhythm Session Band was there. And that night we were all at the Twist and Shout in Bethesda,Maryland to see and hear them play.

Note #1. That Sunday Feb. 9th was the first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show by the Beatles. I remember watching it in a bar on Decatur St on TV that Sunday night and being amazed that people were taking the time to watch this new group from England. That was a merchant seaman's bar named Jewel's Tavern near the corner of Decatur St. and Gov. Nicholls. Two days later I was in that bar with Bob and Victor and I remember playing two songs for Dylan on the jukebox. One was Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash. And the other was MY SON CALLS ANOTHER MAN DADDY by Hank Williams. I said "Listen to that". Not knowing then that Hank Williams was and still is Bob's main man and most favorite singer. The arrival of the Beatles was a big important factor in the evolution of the ever growing and changing of Bob Dylan. He was still playing to small college audiences of 200 people or so in Feb. 1964. On their trip west Bob said they listened to the radio in the car and that the Beatles had 5 of the top ten songs on the Billboard charts. He would have been well aware of that and what it meant for the changing nature of pop music as it meant the end of folk music and the rebirth of rock and roll. Bob brought the poetry and the Beatles brought the electricity along with others. So it would be only natural that Bob would plug in sooner rather than later.

Here is one quote from Bob standing on the corner outside of La Casa de los Marinos on that Mardi Gras afternoon. A girl told him "You sure do have long hair". Bob replied, "Yes I am going to let my hair grow down to the street and write my poems from the tops of these buildings". And so he did. Note#2: I just remembered a few things I want to correct that Robert Shelton changed in his telling of this story. He has since died so they will never be corrected in NO DIRECTION HOME his bio of Bob Dylan. We were all going up Bourbon Street when Bob spied a young man with a guitar singing "Don't Think Twice". We stopped and listened to the young man. Bob told him "You sing that very well". The young fellow looked at Bob and said "You....you..no it couldn't be. You arent Bob Dylan are you?" Dylan replied "No I'm not". We all laughed and took off. Bob has recently commented that often when fans meet a celebrity will ask "Is it really you" as if they cant believe it. I think it was around this time on Bourbon Street that I told him "Listen to this." I then recited a song called CHILDREN FROM BROKEN HOMES. It goes like this: "Seems like married men are sad everywhere I go. They learn late what children from broken homes know. As they lie in bed late at night hearing mama and papa scream shout fuss and fight. Separation, divorce, call it what you will It leaves an emptiness no one woman can fill. Children with shattered faces and cracks in their hearts They need no teachers to tell them the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I'll tell you I know and some of you do too its not the homes but the children that are broken into." Bob said, "Who wrote that? Hank Williams?" No, I said. "I did".

Later when we were all standing outside BABY GREENS(a black only bar on Burgundy St.)Dylan was trying to get the black man who ran the place to let us in.Dylan kept saying "Why man Why Not?" The guy told us to go on before the cops came and locked us all up. The black guy said to Dylan, "Son go on home. Somewhere your mother is on her knees praying for you". And Dylan shot back,"I don't have a mother and if I did she wouldn't be praying for me". I remember some guy joining us as we were over on Dauphine St. We tried to go in Cosimo's bar with a black guy but they would not let us in. I was amazed to recognize the bartender as a former Air Force pilot I had known when I was in the Air National Guard two years before. He said, "Joe, don't bring that guy in here". It was after that that we tried to go down to Baby Green's but they would not let us in either. Somewhere along the way on Burgundy St. we had picked up another young man who ran and jumped up on top of a car and walked over it from front to back. Up on the hood, over the top, and down over the trunk as well all yelled "No". I think this was the guy who asked Dylan if he had ever read Jean-Paul Sartre. And Dylan replied that he had. Dylan then asked the guy, "Have you ever read Jean Genet?" The young man answered "Yes". But Dylan shot back at him"Yes. Yes. But have you REALLY read Genet?" There was a good bit of this literary one upmanship going on.

Later as we were walking past Jackson Square I asked Bob when he was going to go in the military. Remember in 1964 there was still a draft and it was something all young men had to think about. He replied, "I tried to join. But they wouldn't take me". I remember that Victor was carrying a gallon jug of red wine. We would all take drinks from this jug. I also remember Bob giving me a look when I took what was most likely a really big slug from this bottle. You can be sure Bob had paid for it. Later in the Greek bars on Decatur St.(The Athenian Room and the Gin Mill) it was getting very late. 3am. We all got a kick out of a drag queen dancing with a drunken sailor from the USS Lexington which was in port during Mardi Gras. The sailor thought he was dancing with a woman. And he would bend her over and give her a big kiss. Well he/she was having a good time too. I had to leave to get back to Mobile because I was supposed to teach school the next day. Obviously that wasnt going to happen. Dylan kept saying to me to come with them to Denver. That he knew poets there. Well, it was tempting but I wasnt going off in a car with a mad poet singer songwriter and a few others guys when I had a good job back in Mobile. Plus we were all very drunk on red wine and I knew that when we all sobered up the next day it would not be so rosy a picture. I dont see how it would have been a good idea. I could see it leading more to me being thrown out in a desert somewhere along the way. So I declined the offer. But there was something I wanted to tell him before I left. I wanted to let him know that I hoped he would not sell out and change the way Elvis had after he went to RCA and was on the Ed Sullivan show and other TV shows. So I said to Dylan," Don't ever go on the Ed Sulllivan show ". His eyes got real big. What I didnt know at the time was that he had already had a chance to go on the Ed Sullivan show and his appearance was cancelled at the last minute because they would not let him sing "Talking John Birch Blues". So he walked off instead of changing the song. Bob Dylan never appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show.

He didnt need it by 1965. He was big and getting bigger. I just watched DONT LOOK BACK AGAIN for the first time since it came out in 1967. Now available on Netflix. The 1965 Dylan is all changed from the 1964 Dylan. Before he was scruffy. Now he is cleaned up wearing jackets and styled hair and looking hip to the max. Interestingly Victor does not appear in this film. He must not have made the trip. Grossman is there as manager and Joan Baez is there but just along for the ride. By 1965 Bob Dylan is a solo act that can sell out The Royal Albert Hall in London. It is very interesting to look back at this film now and see a 24 year old Bob Dylan.

Another memory. I remember at that Mardi Gras in New Orleans in 1964 we were walking along in front of the Monteleone Hotel and Dylan saw two young girls. He asked them if they wanted to go to a party. They said no. He chased them a little way down the street saying come on we are going to a party. They, of course, had no idea who he was because in Feb. 1964 he was still a nobody and an unknown. A year later in London the girls there knew who he was and chased him and stood outside his hotel as can be seen in DONT LOOK BACK yelling for him to come out. One of them has a real nice loud whistle too. Bob Dylan is a gemini. And when sober he is quiet and speaks to no one. But once he started in on the red wine and got drunk he spoke to everyone. He opened up and spoke freely of everything on his mind.


Some quotes I remember Bob saying: He had asked me what I did and I told him I was teaching high school English in Mobile, Alabama.While we were standing outside Jackson Square on the sidewalk some other people came up and he asked a girl what she did and she said she taught school. Bob replied loudly, "I am surrounded by school teachers!"
He asked me if I would teach his poems and songs to my students and I told him I would. And I did. They must have been the first students in a US high school to have Bob Dylan taught to them. He told me that I was "a brave cat to teach school".


I took all of them to a Mardi Gras party on Madison st. in the French Quarter.On the way there I ran ahead to tell Susan we were coming. Bob took off running after me on Decatur St. and tripped and fell on the corner of Madison and Decatur St. Victor picked him up. We were climbing the stairs 4 flights up to Sue and Tony's apartment. Bob said, "We are all just steps". I thought to myself that is good. We are all steps. My college friend Sue lived there with her husband Tony. Their guests were all wearing suits and evening gowns. We all were in blue jeans and scruffy clothes. But Sue let us in and she and Bob had a discussion.

While they talked the other guests stood back and didnt have a clue who this was or what he was all about. Bob would eat some cheese, drink some wine and rock back and forth almost hitting his head on the coffee table as he talked to Sue. I think he was impressed by how smart she was. The rest of us just listened. More later on this. Since this was an interesting conversation I will add some more of what I remember. Bob started telling us of his trip down South and how they had stopped in Flat Rock, North Carolina to see Carl Sandburg. They got him to come out on the porch of his cabin where Bob and Sandburg talked. This conversation is recounted in Robert Shelton's book NO DIRECTION HOME. Carl Sandburg told Bob, "You certainly are an intense young man". I asked Bob what he thought of Southern writers Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner. Dylan said, "TennesseeWilliams is a sick cat, man". And that he wished he could have met William Faulkner. But he never did because Faulkner had died in July of 1962. In Bob's new book Chronicles he says that he once met Tennessee Williams and that he was a genius and looked like one. Bob also told the often told story of how he was drunk at an awards banquet in NYC for Civil Rights leaders and was to be awarded some award and when he got up to speak he was drunk and mouthed off some words that got him roundly booed. He said something along the line you have you try to understand Lee Harvey Oswald and that all of us have some of that in us. It was stupid drunken talk. And it is worth noting he never repeated any more of these drunken mistakes in public again.

Outside of La Casa de los Marinos on the corner of Decatur Street and Toulouse Street I told him that I had just finished reading Woody Guthrie's BOUND FOR GLORY. Bob said, "I read that 8 years ago". Which means he read it when he was 15 since he was 23 years old at the time. Bob told me he wanted to be a writer. I took that to mean something other than songs. Recently he explained how he finally came to realize that he would not do novels or plays but he would say what he had to say in songs. Now with Chronicles he can stretch out some in his prose. I really wish Victor Maymudes had written his book. And if Victor's book does exist that it finds a publisher soon. What I liked about Victor was he was very friendly and open and not at all closed off guarded. If you asked him a question he would answer it. Right after you met Victor you felt like he was your friend.

Note#3: I saw three guys playing for tips in a bar at this Mardi Gras in 1964. They were unknowns passing a hat. The bar was on the corner of Toulouse Street and Chartres Street in the French Quarter. They were folksingers doing folk songs. 1964 was the year of the folksinger. There were many many young guys walking around carrying guitars at this Mardi Gras. But all these years I have remembered the guy standing on the left because years later in 1968 when Jerry Jeff Walker recorded MR. BOJANGLES (which he wrote) I saw a picture of him on the LP album cover and I thought: He looks just like that guy I saw playing for tips at the Mardi Gras in 1964. Recently I found out that it was in fact Jerry Jeff Walker. I sent him an email and he told me that it was him and that I had a good memory. All these years I have wondered if that was him and now I know that it was. It is nice to know that Jerry Jeff was at that same Mardi Gras in 1964 as was Bob Dylan and Victor. And even nicer to think about the fact that the guy who wrote MR BOJANGLES was at the same Mardi Gras as the guy who wrote MR TAMBOURINE MAN. Both songs were written not long after that Mardi Gras of 1964. joebstewart
Here is Bob Dylan doing Hey Mr. Tambourine Man at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964 just a few months after the Mardi Gras described above.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YvKGqgzN3U

And this is Jerry Jeff Walker doing Mr. Bojangles. This is the earliest video I could find. And it sounds very much like the original album version. This was on the Dinah Shore Show. That is Don Meredith the old Dallas Cowboy quarterback from the 1960s doing the introduction.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R69PE4UCyw

And here is a nice version of Mr. Bojangles by Jerry Jeff from 1991.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpELGrF1Fy4&feature=related

Here is some actual home movie footage of that 1964 Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It is the only one from 1964 that I could find on YouTube. Stick with it. It starts out at someone's house and then on a levee and then they go downtown to the Mardi Gras. Pete Fountain is seen in this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYaWMTFgKvQ

Poros, Hydra and Aegina

I made this journey in August of 1964. And Hydra was the place I went swimming
in the Aegean sea.

A Suicide At Notre Dame Cathedral In Paris Kills A 22 Year Old American Girl By Falling On Her October 1964

I remember reading this in the newspaper in October 1964. I had just returned from Paris the month before.
I have never forgotten it.

PARIS, Oct. 2 -- A 22-year-old American woman was killed today outside Notre Dame Cathedral when another woman, in an apparent suicide leap, plunged on her from the north tower of the cathedral.

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50A11F93A5F147A93C1A9178BD95F408685F9

Taking Customers In A Yellow Cab To A Motel Brothel Outside Mobile, Alabama In 1964

This is another story in my adventures as a cab driver in Mobile Alabama in the Fall of 1964.  I drove at night and like all cab drivers I had men who asked me to take them to women. In Mobile at that time(1964)there was a brothel working out of a motel outside the city limits on Highway 90 heading west.
  
And the deal the brothel offered was a good deal for the cab drivers. We were told that the brothel would pay us one third of whatever a customer spent. So we got not only the cab fare but also one third of what the customer spent. Back in 1964 prices were much different from now. The going rate was ten dollars which in todays money would be about 100 dollars.
  
This No Tell Motel had 2 or three very nice young women from Birmingham working there. They also had a very friendly madam.
 So one Friday night I got a call to pick up a fare and when I found him he was a eager young red headed fellow about 18 to 20 years old who told me to take him to the aforementioned brothel. He had just gotten paid from his job and wanted some action right away.
    I drove him out to the Motel. It was my first time at the place. In fact he may have shown me how to get there.  Not knowing how the place operated I parked in front. We went inside.
The madam got him a girl and then told me to move my cab around back. It was an old heavy Checker Yellow Cab and she didn't want it seen from the nearby highway 90.
I went out to move it. My foot slipped off the brake and it rolled down a hill into a ditch and got stuck there. I went back inside and called to cab company to send their tow truck out to pull it out. I gave them the address. The dispatcher said, "You are where?" He knew where I was all right.
   Meanwhile the young man had finished and when he came out I told him we would have to wait. He said if that is the case he would go with another girl while we waited. He did this one more time while we waited. That amounted to 30.00 of which I would get ten.
Meanwhile an old time cab driver had shown up and told me he thought I stuck the cab on purpose. He said, "I know what you are up to".
   Finally I drove the young man back to Mobile. I got paid the cab fare and the other money as well.
That is known as beginner's luck.

How I Was Chased By A Mad Farmer With A Pitchfork In Le Sentier Switzerland In The Summer Of 1964

Two photos above are of Le Sentier Switzerland

The Train Station Le Sentier Switzerland

In the summer of 1964 I went to Europe for the summer. Someone had sent me an ad he had found on a bulletin board at Vanderbilt University where he was a graduate student. It was an offer of a summer job in Europe and a charter flight over at the beginning of the summer and a flight back in early September. I was working teaching school and had enough money to pay the fee in installments. So when June came I was all set to go.  After going to the World's Fair in NYC I boarded a Saturn Airways(propeller powered)flight to London along with a plane load of American college age students who were headed to Europe for their summer jobs. The deal was we would fly to London and have a day or two there and then take the boat train to Paris where we would have a day or so and be given our job assignments.

    There were some nice people on this flight. I met a girl from Bates College. She told me one of her fellow students at Bates College was Robert McNamara's daughter. And that the girl was driven to tears by her father's demands at the dinner table and would get up and run out of the room.

   In London I spent the evening with a smart young freshman from Harvard. He and I drank so much we overslept in the hotel(The Mitre)and woke up to find all the other students gone. But we hustled to Victoria Station on our own to catch up. The other students were already gone so we took a later boat train.

  Oddly while at the Victoria Station I heard someone call my name. It was Rob Johnson. He was a language teacher at a University in Illinois and he was traveling with his wife.  We had gone to the same college and he was a friend of the guy from Vanderbilt who had sent me the ad. It was an odd co-incidence.
We chatted while we waited for our trains.

      In Paris we found our group and got our job assignments. I was going to work on a farm in Switzerland in a little town called Le Sentier not too far from Lausanne.

    Also in Paris that summer was a college friend of mine staying at the Hotel La Louisiane. I saw her briefly before leaving for Switzerland.  She friendly with all the jazz musicians and artists staying at the Hotel La Louisiane.

When I got to the train station I checked my baggage at a  place marked Baggage. I did not speak or understand French well enough to know that the bags would be staying there and not put on the trains I was going on.

       I took the train from Paris to Geneva. While waiting for the connecting train there I went to the American Library  and read Hemingway's story Big Two Hearted River.

      The train went from Geneva to Lausanne and then on to Vallorbe. Another connection took me on a small train to Le Pont and finally Le Sentier. I got off and discovered my bags were not there. It was all my fault.   I made a report. The lady taking the report said "Do you speak French?" A little bit I said in French. "Well speak it then", she said.  She put the wheels in motion to recover my bags. It would take several days.
    In the meantime I found the farm I was to work on. The peasant family put me up in a room over the barn.
The idea was we would bring in the hay crop by pitching hay from dawn to dusk every day.. For this I would get room and board and be paid one dollar a day.

   After doing this for several days I went back up to Vallorbe and got back my suitcases. Now I was ready to leave. The family had been nice to me and I decided to leave them a note rather than just slipping out at night.

   I ended up being cornered by the farmer in his house. He had a  large pitchfork in his hands. He had decided I wasn't going to leave. He wasn't hearing of it. He chased me around a table waving the pitchfork at me. We went round and round the table. Finally I found an opening and made it out the door and went off running down the road and street to the train station. He followed waving the pitchfork and shouting at me. I made it to the train staion. There the lady train master hid me until the train arrived to get me out of Le Sentier. She was friendly and played some nice classical music for me.

It occurred to me some years later that he may have paid someone for my services. But I still had to go. I wasn't going to waste the summer pitching hay for a dollar a day.  I had things to do and places to go.  I had to get cracking and see as much of Europe as I could in three months.

I went back to Paris. That was what I had in mind for the summer anyway not wasting my time on a farm.
   I went back to the Hotel La Lousiane. And I have other posts on this blog about my stay in Paris in 1964.

In due time I went up to Brussels where the guy who ran the overseas jobs was located. I found him and he got me another job writing letters in English for Madame Collete Stasse.
 She was the head of the L'Association Belgo- Americain.
  Her husband owned an ran Europe's largest sporting newspaper Le Sport.

   She gave me free tickets to the 24 hours of Francochamps sports car race in Francochamps. Also she gave me some tickets to see the play As I Lay Dying which came to Brussels that summer with the Dallas Theater Center Group.
Here is something on the Dallas Theater Center and its founder that mentions the play.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Baker_(teacher)



  Madame Stasse would get a pedicure while she dictated letters to me in English. I would write them down and type them up for her.

I met a couple of other American students who showed up in Brussels. One girl who had been sent to a bar near the Black Forest in Germany quit because there was a German Army base nearby and she said the soldiers refused to believe she was not a prostitute. She was going back to Oklahoma.

   Another guy showed up with a broken collar bone. He had fallen off his bicycle. He kept me awake at night in the student hostel screaming in pain. He kept demanding I take him to the hospital so I got up and took him to the hospital.

I answered an ad to teach English to a Belgian boy while I went with them on a camping trip. But the way it turned out I was to pay for all my own food.  Again I saw that it was a waste of time before we left Brussels I asked them to stop the car and I jumped out.

Later I left for Italy. I took an overnight train and woke up and looked out the window and we were in the middle of the Alps.  I went on to Florence and then on to Rome and eventually to Greece.
It was so hot in Greece in August I had to retreat to the room where I was staying with a friendly Turk who rented out rooms in his house. One afternoon I read in an English language newspaper that Marlene Dietrich would be performing at the Edinburgh Festival of arts and music. Since it said in the paper that the temp. in Edinburgh was in the low 70's I decided to leave the 100 plus degree heat of Athens.

 I came back through Yugoslavia on a train with nothing to eat but anisette cookies for two days. This train took 48 hours to go from Athens to Munich Germany. We went through Zagreb which was still communist at that time. There was only one English speaking person besides myself on the train. He was a Hungarian American art student heading for Budapest. He is the person who shared his cookies with me. He made a big point of showing me a German family who had a big basket of food and telling me "Watch they will never offer us anything". And they never did.

    I got back to Brussels and headed for London and on to Edinburgh. But that is another story. I have other posts on my blog about that summer of 1964 in Europe. Click on the label 1964 below.
 
I need to add that in June of 2007 my wife and I took an overnight train from Rome to Paris. We had just finished a 3 week tour of Italy and Sicily.
   We had a sleeping compartment on the train. In the middle of the night we slowed down and finally stopped. I looked out the window. I saw a sign that said Le Sentier. I was back in Le Sentier after 43 years.

Grand Prix de Saint Cloud Paris France July 5,1964, Baron Rothschild's Horses

Click and double click if necessary on all these pictures to enlarge them.



On July 5th 1964 when I was 24 years old I went with a friend to the horse races at Saint-Cloud just outside of Paris,France. I wore my white Palm Beach suit. We were well dressed but the Rothschilds out dressed us in their morning gray tuxes and high hats. We saw them in the paddock before their horses raced. We did pick one winner in the second race by the name of Big Boy. As the horses went around the track the announcer called out his name and in French sounded like "Beeg Buoy".

Here is the program from that day that I have saved all these years. It was a Sunday and everyone was well dressed. My friend remarked that the jockeys looked just like a painting by Raoul Dufy. The Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud in 1964 was won by a horse named Relko. He was not owned by Guy de Rothschild. Baron Rothschild had a famous horse named Exbury that had won the race in 1963.

Here is some information on The Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Prix_de_Saint-Cloud
This is a link to a Flickr page with some pictures of Saint-Cloud.
http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=saint-+cloud+race+&m=text
Here is something about Guy de Rothschild.
http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/racing-post-london-england-the/mi_7999/is_2007_June_15/horse-racing-de-rothschild-owner/ai_n38525676/
And more on Guy de Rothschild.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_de_Rothschild
And for the full story of The Rothschilds here it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family
Paintings at the top of this page are by Raoul Dufy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raoul_Dufy

Hotel La Louisiane 60 Rue de Seine Paris France Summer of 1964 Buttercup Powell And More

Click on the above photos to enlarge them.



In the summer of 1964 I stayed at the Hotel La Louisiane 60 Rue de Seine in Paris.
This was a small hotel with a large history. It was a favorite of artists and writers and jazz musicians going back to the 1940s. Miles Davis and Bud Powell and Chet Baker and many other jazz greats stayed there from time to time.
I met Bud Powell's childhood friend(Buttercup) and her little son in a cafe on the corner of Rue de Seine and Rue Buci and talked with them awhile.
Below is a link to a good story in Ebony magazine about Buttercup Powell and her son.
http://books.google.com/books?id=JeEDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=buttercup+powell&source=bl&ots=w7PFJ3pE_5&sig=XTvMDVOqc6KJGNwmZU8-s4RblYo&hl=en&ei=TUV6TZ-BIcq-0QHy4JzQAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q=buttercup%20powell&f=false
In Paris that summer there was a killer known as "The Slasher" killing people in the suburbs of Paris. Buttercup's little boy Johnny asked me if I was the slasher. I told him no. Bud Powell was in an instituiton outside of Paris in the summer of 1964. The movie Round Midnight covers some of this time period.
Here is some information about Bud Powell and Buttercup Powell.
http://www.robertfulford.com/powell.html
What I remember of the Hotel La Louisiane from that summer is that the hotel was full of jazz musicians and artists. The man who owned and ran the place was a patron of the arts. The hotel was cheap and in a great neighborhood. Rue de Seine was still a bit of old Paris. I remember the butcher shop directly across from the hotel on Rue de Seine had full sized skinned hogs heads hanging on the wall facing the hotel.
I met the painter Walasse Ting at the hotel also that summer. Here is the wikipedia entry on Walasse Ting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walasse_Ting

Here is some information about the history of the hotel. Scroll down on this link to read the colorful history of the hotel.
http://www.hotel-lalouisiane.com/eng/history.html
Here is a good photo and history of the hotel on Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/18561434@N07/2905091385/
Here is the tripadvisor link for the way the hotel is now. Some good reviews some not so good. It is no longer cheap that's for sure. But then nothing is Paris is cheap anymore. But the link below provides some good photos inside the hotel.
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g187147-d634777-Reviews-Hotel_La_Louisiane-Paris_Ile_de_France.html

Classical Music for a Snowy Day Richter and Rostropovich

Rostropovich - Richter Beethoven. Cello Sonatas 1/13
I saw this duo in Edinburgh Scotland in late August 1964 at the Edinburgh Festival. Richter began coughing and on several occasions got up and left the stage. I think he did that at least three or more times.


I had seen Marlene Deitrich perform at the Festival a day or so before. She wowed the crowd with all her favorites. The one I liked best was "See What The Boys In The Back Room Will Have".
From "Destry Rides Again" (1939) Starring Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart. "See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have"Text by Frank LoesserMusic by Friedrich Hollaender (as Ferderick Hollaender)Sung by Marlene Dietrich


At intermission of the Richter and Rostropovich concert I went in the foyer of the hall to smoke a cigarette and there Marlene Dietrich was standing a few feet away talking to Burt Bachrach. It is one of the few times in my life I was rendered speechless. All I could do was stare at her and she stared back at me. What could a young 24 year old like me possibly say to Marlene Deitrich?

Cologne Cathedral from the Cafe Reinhardt

This is a YouTube video of the Cologne Cathedral as seen from the Cafe Reinhardt. It is somewhat long(around 7 minutes)but contains bells ringing the whole time. This cathedral is over 700 years old.
I sat in this cafe in the summer of 1964. It was late in the evening. The cathedral was brightly lit. There was almost no one else around. I had it almost all to myself. Sitting for a long time drinking coffee or drinking wine(I don't remember which). But I do remember how beautiful the cathedral was. I have never forgotten that evening and I have often thought of that cafe and how well it is located to view the cathedral.
I was really pleased to find this video which shows the Cafe Reinhardt and the view from there. There are plenty of other videos of the cathedral on YouTube but none show this cafe. There are also hundreds of good photographs on Flickr of the cathedral taken inside and out.
Check on the video over on the right on youtube of historical film of the restoration of the cathedral after it was bombed in WW2. Click and double click on the video to go to Youtube and find the other videos of the Cologne Cathedral in Munich,Germany.