THE PICTURES BEHIND BOB DYLAN'S PAINTINGS

The other day I tweeted “I'm expecting Scott Warmuth to tell us on whose photographs Bob Dylan has based his New Orleans Series paintings." I wasn't joking, and of course he and others already have  come up with some of the pictures behind Dylan's. He tells me it was Tara-Jane Hulligan Zuk, a Liverpool-based Dylan fan, who spotted this Leonard Freed photo of a boy and a blind man used by Dylan:

Dylan, of course, hadn't sat around in a New Orleans courtyard for hours painting the scene in front of him either. Indeed:

Scott Warmuth found that old postcard image back on January 20 (2013) when the Dylan paintings were first glimpsed online. He tells me that Anneke Derksen, a Dylan fan from Antwerp, found other postcards, including this:

Something like same argument might apply as over the Asia Series. The fact that Dylan's paintings are of other people's scenes may or may not make all this smell funny  -  other artists have followed much the same method  -  but it does seem sad. Here is someone whose generous creativity changed the times with a highly personal, hands-on plunge into the maelstrom of America, and who is now making millions of dollars essentially by copying other people's work. How much more you could admire that courtyard painting if Bob Dylan had  sat there for hours to achieve it.

The publicity for the New Orleans Series doesn't quite make the same spurious claim as with the Asia Series, that Dylan painted from life itself:

The 71-year-old star, whose works already hang in various European art galleries, came to inaugurate the exhibition himself earlier this week. “Each work is a fragment of a bigger story and each image is halfway between dream and memory," said a spokesperson for Milan City Hall, which is organising the show. It said the paintings were based on photographic images and had “a strange atmosphere of suspense" with their stories of love and violence. [from Art Daily]

Yet while it states very clearly that the paintings are based on photographs, and the rest of the wording can't be pinned on Dylan himself, there is a specious sort of semi-claim here, isn't there? “Halfway between dream and memory?" Whose?

BOB DYLAN & HIS NEW ORLEANS PAINTINGS IN MILAN

Bob Dylan visits his art exhibition (of the New Orleans Series of paintings) in Milan, with an absolutely thrilled mayor of the city. And the museum curator shows us the paintings:

FATS DOMINO AND INGRID BERGMAN

Thirty-five years ago (1977) I came in from the cold of freelance writing out in the provincial hills and took a job as Head of Press for United Records in London W1. Generally speaking it didn't make me happy, but now and then I was able to meet people I admired, including, sometimes, the rightly famous. One of these was the great Fats Domino. Back then the end of his run of hit singles was already fifteen years in the past, and the 1950s, his heyday, seemed at least as far away to me then as it does now.

This is my hastily written diary account:

“Monday. To a hotel somewhere round Grosvenor Square [it was the Churchill] to babysit an interview with Fats Domino by Mick Farren, who was with the NME photographer Chalkie Davis. I'd been given one hour during Domino's visit for allocating interviews, so had decided to give it exclusively to NME. But when we got  there we found that the incompetent Irish promoter, Pat Malynn, had failed to make any of the promised arrangements, and though I spoke to Fats on the phone (I SPOKE TO FATS DOMINO ON THE TELEPHONE TODAY!) he knew nothing of any interview and couldn't do it. So had to give Mick Farren & friend an indifferent lunch and try again tomorrow.

“Tuesday. This time it worked. Met Fats Domino! He was disappointingly short of massive and wore a sort of crimplene yellow suit. But he chatted happily to Mick Farren, Chalkie Davis took some photographs and I kept interrupting the interview because I knew a great deal more about his recordings than did Farren. He told me afterwards I had an encyclopaedic knowledge of Fats  -  which was a grand way of apologising for his own."

Later in the year the pleasure of meeting one of the truly greats  -  one of the very shapers of rock'n'roll  -  was almost topped by meeting Ingrid Bergman. United Artists, a subsidiary of the film company, had issued as a single the recording by pianist/singer Dooley Wilson of ‘As Time Goes By', taken from the soundtrack of the magnificent film Casablanca  - a recording on which the voice of Ingrid Bergman can be heard (not quite saying “Play it again, Sam", a common misquotation, but “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By'."). The 1977 single of this 1942 recording sold so well in the UK that it earned a Silver Disc. Dooley Wilson had died in 1953 and Humphrey Bogart in 1957, but twenty years after that Bergman was not only still alive (she was only 62) but happened to be in London, and I was asked to phone her at her hotel to see if she might like to accept the Silver Disc for this bizarrely retro hit. She didn't want to bother, so I didn't manage to meet her, but as my diary reports:

“Thursday. I talked on the phone to a real star today. None of yer rock rubbish  -  a positive legend: I TALKED TO INGRID BERGMAN & INGRID BERGMAN TALKED TO ME! She gave a great peel of laughter and I could hardly speak."

Ingrid Bergman died in her sleep five years later, at the end of her 67th birthday. Fats Domino, now 84, survived Hurrican Katrina in his hometown of New Orleans, and is still with us.

____

HAPPY 75th BIRTHDAY CLARENCE FROGMAN HENRY (March 19, 2012)

In my teenage years, the singer-pianist Clarence Frogman Henry was always around, making delightful concert appearances  -  I saw him at Liverpool Empire on the same bill as Bobby Vee and a 16-year-old Tony Orlando  -  and the wonderful records ‘But I Do’, ‘You Always Hurt The One You Love’, ‘Ain’t Got No Home’, ‘Lonely Street’, ‘Standing In The Need of Love’ and the great, great double-sided flop ‘A Little Too Much’ c/w ‘I Wish I Could Say The Same’.

Clearly he came from the same place, geographically and musically, as Fats Domino, and actually beat Fats for pizzazz on ‘You Always Hoit The One You Love’ (Fats’ version has the great man’s vocals and piano drowned in a high tide of muddy strings). Yet Clarence Frogman’s records always had their own sound, fusing the liveliest brass section you could wish for with the most plaintive, expressive vocals.

He was born in New Orleans on March 19, 1937. He's still going.

[Clarence Frogman Henry: ‘Ain’t Got No Home’, New Orleans, Sep 1956; Argo 5259, Chicago, 1956. ‘But I Do’ c/w ‘Just My Baby And Me’, NO, c.Aug 1960; Argo 5378 (Pye International 7N 25078, London), 1961. ‘You Always Hurt The One You Love’, NO, c.Mar 1961; Argo 5388 (Pye Intnl 7N 25089), 1961. ‘Lonely Street’ c/w ‘Why Can’t You’, NO, c.Mar 1961; Argo 5395 (Pye Intnl 7N 25108), 1961. ‘On Bended Knees’ c/w ‘Standing In The Need Of Love’ (a secular re-write of gospel song ‘Standing In The Need Of Prayer’), Memphis, c.Jul 1961; Argo 5401 (Pye Intnl 7N 25115), 1961. ‘A Little Too Much’ c/w ‘I Wish I Could Say The Same’, Memphis, c.Jul 1961; Argo 5408, (Pye Intnl 7N 25123), 1962. Excepting ‘On Bended Knees’ and ‘I Wish I Could Say The Same’, all these are on the CD The Best Of Clarence Frogman Henry, MCA 19226, London, 1993 (unissued USA). Beware cheap re-recordings on cheap re-releases.]