IT IS GOOD TO LOOK BACK
Posted Febuary 6 2001
Victor Maymudes, age sixty five, the "Village" philosopher who as mentor, manager and friend guided Bob Dylan down the road from obscurity to icon in the early sixties, died peacefully on January 26th 2001 in UCLA Hospital, Santa Monica, California, protected and comforted by the company of his children Aerie, Victoria and Jacob.
Victor was the son of respected liberal left-wing Los Angeles activists, Golda and Abraham Maymudes; growing up the music and rhetoric of humanism, anti-fascism and civil rights was the food on their table. Late-sixties he stepped off the music stage to homestead in Northern New Mexico, his hands turned to chopping wood and carpentry, his heart to loving his family.
1986 until 1996 Victor returned to Dylan's side as a personal manager. The last years of his life were spent traveling and writing his memoirs. The product of that effort, The Joker and the Thief was scheduled for publication by Saint Martins Press in 2002. Above all, Victor appreciated music, a well-turned phrase and a good joint.
"Song is the ultimate repository of human civilization," he maintained, "it's a resting place for one heart and translates the soul of culture for all."
Written by Linda Wylie mother of Victor' s kids Aerie, Victoria and Jacob
A service will be Held for family and friends at Feb 26 2001 at 6-9:00 PM at McCabe's 3101 Pico in Santa Monica Ca.
You can contact Aerie for information at casadevic@netwood.net
If you wish you can add to the memorial book
Posted January 28
Victor passed away last week on Friday January 26.
He had recently signed a book deal and was set to finish writing his "look back" I had seen several of the chapters...they were great.
I enjoyed many, many hours in his company in all corners of the globe and will miss him lots.
I thought it would be cool to have a place where we could share our memories of him and so have added a page to this site
A service is being planned for the end of February.
As a taste of what might have been....
A PREAMBLE In 1935, the Juke Box is invented. Will Rogers dies in a plane crash, Bob Wills records his first record, and Patsy Montana records, "I Wanna Be A Cowboy Sweetheart". I was born that year, along with Loretta Lynn, Elvis Presley, Dennis Hopper and Jerry Lee Lewis. I was given the name Victor Maymudes. While I was growing up Western music and the Singing Cowboys were the order of the day. Tex Ritter moves to Hollywood and the Sons of The Pioneers appear with Bing Crosby in "Rhythm on the Range". By the time I am 3 years old Roy Rogers is number one at the box office and electric guitars have first appeared on the market. The Grand Ole Opry has just made it to TV.
When I am six years old World War II begins. Earl Flynn stars in the "Santa Fe Trail" and Woody Guthrie joins the Almanac Singers, the following year Jerry Garcia and Hendrix are born. Roy Rogers is soon to become "King of the Cowboys, while a near-riot of bobby-soxers in Times Square greeted Frank Sinatra's singing engagement at the Paramount Theater in New York City. Muddy Waters moves to Chicago. The war rages in Europe.
AS YOU READ ALONG THE STORY AND IF YOU WERE THERE... OR IF YOU HAVE A PICTURE OR A BIT OF INFO OR A DESIRE TO COMMUNICATE 1945, the US drops the Atomic bomb on Japan. The war ends and the men come home to the women in waiting. Every woman that could conceive did. I was a few years older than this new generation that would be called the "baby boomers", for every one of us there are 20 little brothers and sisters. 1946, Hank Williams records his first record on Sterling, and "Annie Get Your Gun" opens on Broadway..."There's no business like show business...like no business I know," Annie Oakley sings from the show. Remember we are talking about Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show here.
The remainder of the forties would see technology race at record breaking speeds, in fact the speed of sound was broken, then Bell lab perfects the transistor. Before the chip before LSD, the transistor was the first tablet to turn us on. It made the electronic revolution possible. And the electronic revolution made possible the music revolution. Speaking of revolution, in 1948, Columbia Records introduces the L.P. (Long Play).
The first voice to rise (without need of the transistor) was Allan Ginsberg's. Social unrest was beginning with a huge movement known as the...
BOHEMIAN POETS They were more lost than found. Then came Ginsberg's "HOWL". It cooled the blood, it kept images silhouetted in your mind. It made your hair grow. The beat generation Allan Ginsberg William Borroughs Lawrence Ferlinghetti Gregory Corso Gary Snyder The reading of "Howl", the Trial of "Junkie"
THE FIFTIES BEGIN 1950, WAR IN KOREA BEGINS. Cable TV is introduced. Hank Williams has first big hit with "Love Sick Blues". Every kid in the country now had a $5.00 connection to the mass message through the transistor. I was experiencing the evolution of the electronic age as it regards music and entertainment. Through music the youth could demand social revolution. At the same time a now power in youth marketing was being born.
I had met jack in 1952. ENTER RAMBLIN' JACK ELLIOT Ramblin' Jack is a true American original, "The Last Brooklyn Cowboy". Jack has since the early 50s personified the footloose, carefree, hitchhiking, singing for your supper troubadour. He is Woody Guthrie's spiritual heir and an early inspiration to two generations of fledgling folkies. In the early 50s, Jack heard his first Woody Guthrie recording, and like that first trip to the rodeo, it changed his life. he arranged a visit to Guthrie's home in Howard Beach, New York, and as Woody's wife has since joked, he came and stayed 2 years. I had met Jack when I was 17, he had driven Woody Guthrie across the country in a sports car when we met. WOODY GUTHRIE
In 1953, Hank Williams dies in the back seat of his car, Atomic Subs are launched, first plane lands at the North Pole. During these times Elvis is performing on the "Louisiana Hayride" radio show and appears at the "Grand Ole Opry". He was being called the "King of Western Bop". In 1954, Elvis records "Blue Moon of Kentucky" for Sun Records, top song on Hit Parade is "Three Coins In a Fountain", Jackie Gleaseon and Frank Sinatra are on top of the entertainment world...change is blowin' in the wind.
It is 1955, Herb Cohen and I opened the Unicorn on Sunset Blvd. and set the stage for the coffee house era. The Unicorn was the first coffee house in Los Angeles, we had live music and poetry. People would read and play chess. It was a place where rebellion had a pl grow. We had the first paperback store and live music store in the Unicorn, it was the early days of paperback books. I'm 20 years old and I get introduced to marajauana.
1957, Jack Kerowac releases ON THE ROAD. In 1958, the Kingston Trio's recording of "Tom Dooley" won the first Country Music Grammy. Elvis is drafted in the army and Explorer 1, first U.S. satellite is launched. The integrated circuit was invented. Chuck Berry is hot and the Everly Brothers' "Bird Dog" is popular.
Feb. 3, 1959..."Bye bye Miss American Pie. Drove my chevy to the levy, but the levy was dry"...
Buddy Holly dies in plane crash with Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. Payola scandal rocks the Nation and Castro assumes power in Cuba. Folk music is getting popular. Hugh Romney used to come to the Unicorn read poetry with a congo player, and give us the news about the New York scene. He was begining to tell me about this guy that I sould be aware of named Bob Dylan. He and Jack said that I needed to come back to New York to meet this kid. Ramblin' Jack was also telling me about Bob, because he knew I was doing management sort of things in the biz.Later that year I flew to New York. Ramblin' Jack was already in New York, so he picked me up at the airport. We went to the Gaslight Cafe on MacDougle Street, where everyone hung out. When we came in Bob Dylan was in the back room where the performers hung out. He had been typing on an old typewriter in the back room. He was a two-finger typer. He was writing a new song. This one would be about a hard rain that was going to fall. Ramblin' Jack introduces us.
At the Gaslight Cafe Dave Van Ronk was a big part of the New York folk scene. Dave was the MC and on the bill many nights was Hugh Romney, comic Bill Cosby, Ramblin' Jack and others. After the shows and during closing, Bob would ask to play. He would come on and blow our minds. Then we would go to the Figerio drink coffee and play chess till dawn. Folk music was becoming very big in those days. It was the strongest voice of a Nation which had been shut up for so long. If you had something to say, you got to say it in a folk song--it seemed the only way to express rebellion.
Maybe it was not sleeping all night and walking into the morning sun, or maybe not, I don't know. In those days everything seemed so bright, and colorful, and intense. Everything seemed, well...so bright and intense that you couldn't say if you were high or not. All I know is that Mott Street never looked so intense and colorful and bright. I am in one of those up all night energy levels of saying good-bye because I am going to Mexico. In the last six months since we met we had been together every day. Mushrooms, Pyote pot chess and coffee were the order of the day.
The pawn shops, dime stores and Jewish stores, the smell of kosher food and the white smoke of the Chinese laundries, the yellow flash of the passing taxies, the jellybeans glowing in the simi-gloom of than afternoon. Reality took another dimension. It was then that I had the vision. Right there on Mott Street, among second hand clothes shops and dirty little markets. Among poor Jewish immigrants--like my parents, and the Dylan's grandparents had been. All of a sudden, I knew that Dylan would make it big. He would become everything that he dreamed he would be--and more.
A few weeks after the vision on Mott Street, I was laying in the sand of remote Yalapa watching the sunset with Tom Law, who later becomes tour manager for Peter, Paul and Mary and Joan Baez. He is looking at the sunset, I am laying with my face in the sand.
A stranger comes up and asks Tom if he knows a "Victor something?" Tom says, "Maybe, why?" He says he was asked by someone in Puerto Vallarta, that knew he was coming here, to tell Victor a guy named Bob Dylan wants him to come to New York.. I thought it wild that this word even got to me, in that we were in this remote area where there was no electricity, phones and it took a boat to get to the place we were at.
Days later I go into Purto Valarta and call Albert Grossman. The only phone that they had was a short wave radio phone. Grossman said there would be a ticket for me at the airport. I left Mexico and flew back to Los Angeles where I stayed with Jim Dixon, who was on the verge of creating the Byrds. When my plane landed in L.A., I heard that Jack Kennedy was shot. A few days later, I was in New York and I met Bob to put the puzzle together and build his first tour and get him ready to go into the studio.
to be continued...
FLASHBACKS AND FAST FORWARDS IT IS GOOD TO LOOK BACK
will look at how jazz and poetry first fused. How this new form or art influenced folk music...how folk became rock and how rock helped to set the USA (and the western world) free. Furthermore: how the beats turned Bob Dylan on, and how Bob turned the Beatles on, before the Beatles changed the entire world. These are some of the pivotal questions that Victor Maymudes will answer in this book about music, revolution, politics and the fight for liberty of expression in the last four decades.
www.sierrabravo.co.uk
