Hi, and thank you for this reminiscence of Richard and his father Will. I knew them both, but Will only casually. So thank you for filling in details on Will's background and interesst, only some of which I was aware of.
Richard was one of my very best friends from the late '80s, when we met, until 2006 , when he died. To me, he was a musical and literary mentor and, well, a character. Richard's brother, Dennis, put the epitaph on his tombstone: "Musician, Writer, Curmudgeon."
(By the way, I'm not sure you're aware that Ben Freed died quite a few years ago. I don't remember exactly when. His death was a great loss to the local Bluegrass community.)
As a minor correction, the models in the girlie magazines were not half-naked. They were completely naked. The best story of them all, IMO, was that when Richard came home early from a friend's bar mitzvah one day, he found a girly shoot taking place in his bedroom. The shot of the model's naked body making its way up or down the double decker bed Richard shared with Dennis made the cover.
An interest of Richard's that did not come up in your article was his deep knowledge of noir fiction and film. He collected noir paperbacks, which were sold in drug stores and cigar shops next to the girlie magazines. Richard's collection specialty was the cover art. He knew the artists and wrote at least one fanzine article about a favorite. It was Richard who introduced me to Jim Thompson, Lawrence Block and their predecessors.
As a collector (of all sorts of things), Richard knew and had catalogued everything he had — music as well as pulp fiction. When he died, Charles Ardai (founder and editor of the Hard Case Crime line of crime novels), whom I knew professionally, helped Richard's brother, Dennis go through the collection and get good prices for the most valuable ones.
Here's one more note on Richard as an author. When he got interested in Western Swing in the early 1970s, he attended the annual Bob Wills memorial in Turkey, Texas, and interviewed Eldon Shamblin, the pre- and (together with Junior Barnard) post-war guitarist in the Texas Playboys. Richard published an article on the technical aspects of Eldon's guitar style, which was probably the first article of its kind. The article probably had a lot to do with the still ongoing revival of Western Swing. In Richard's manuscript on early jazz guitarists, he has a section on Eldon, where he makes it clear that he considers Eldon to be in "the pantheon", Richard's term.
Thank you again for your reminiscence. I think of Richard very often.
Hi, and thank you for this reminiscence of Richard and his father Will. I knew them both, but Will only casually. So thank you for filling in details on Will's background and interesst, only some of which I was aware of.
Richard was one of my very best friends from the late '80s, when we met, until 2006 , when he died. To me, he was a musical and literary mentor and, well, a character. Richard's brother, Dennis, put the epitaph on his tombstone: "Musician, Writer, Curmudgeon."
(By the way, I'm not sure you're aware that Ben Freed died quite a few years ago. I don't remember exactly when. His death was a great loss to the local Bluegrass community.)
As a minor correction, the models in the girlie magazines were not half-naked. They were completely naked. The best story of them all, IMO, was that when Richard came home early from a friend's bar mitzvah one day, he found a girly shoot taking place in his bedroom. The shot of the model's naked body making its way up or down the double decker bed Richard shared with Dennis made the cover.
An interest of Richard's that did not come up in your article was his deep knowledge of noir fiction and film. He collected noir paperbacks, which were sold in drug stores and cigar shops next to the girlie magazines. Richard's collection specialty was the cover art. He knew the artists and wrote at least one fanzine article about a favorite. It was Richard who introduced me to Jim Thompson, Lawrence Block and their predecessors.
As a collector (of all sorts of things), Richard knew and had catalogued everything he had — music as well as pulp fiction. When he died, Charles Ardai (founder and editor of the Hard Case Crime line of crime novels), whom I knew professionally, helped Richard's brother, Dennis go through the collection and get good prices for the most valuable ones.
Here's one more note on Richard as an author. When he got interested in Western Swing in the early 1970s, he attended the annual Bob Wills memorial in Turkey, Texas, and interviewed Eldon Shamblin, the pre- and (together with Junior Barnard) post-war guitarist in the Texas Playboys. Richard published an article on the technical aspects of Eldon's guitar style, which was probably the first article of its kind. The article probably had a lot to do with the still ongoing revival of Western Swing. In Richard's manuscript on early jazz guitarists, he has a section on Eldon, where he makes it clear that he considers Eldon to be in "the pantheon", Richard's term.
Thank you again for your reminiscence. I think of Richard very often.