Friday, March 20, 2015

Samuel Charters, music...

...scholar, died at age 85. From his obit in the Times:

Mr. Charters was also drawn to the psychedelic music emerging in the San Francisco area in the mid-’60s. He produced the first four albums by Country Joe & the Fish, including the satirical “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag,” one of the best-known protest songs of the Vietnam War era.

And which contains the chilling line:

Be the first one on your block to have your boy come home in a box.*

The obit also mentions Mr. Charters's wife, Ann, and I wondered, Where have I heard that name? Oh, yeah (my emphasis):

In addition, Mr. Charters wrote two books with his wife, an expert on the literature of the Beat Generation as well as a pianist and photographer: a biography of the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and “Brother Souls: John Clellon Holmes, Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation.”

* McDonald, by the way, wasn't just some long-haired hippie. At the age of 17, he enlisted in the United States Navy for three years and was stationed in Japan.

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