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      Mort Sahl, Whose Biting Commentary Redefined Stand-Up, Dies at 94

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      A self-appointed warrior against hypocrisy, he revolutionized comedy in the 1950s by addressing political and social issues.Mort Sahl, who confronted Eisenhower-era cultural complacency with acid stage monologues, delivering biting social commentary in the guise of a stand-up comedian and thus changing the nature of both stand-up comedy and social commentary, died on Tuesday at his home in Mill Valley, Calif., near San Francisco. He was 94.The death was confirmed by Lucy Mercer, a friend helping to oversee his affairs.Gregarious and contentious — he was once described as “a very likable guy who makes ex-friends easily” — Mr. Sahl had a long, up-and-down career. He faded out of popularity in the mid-1960s, when he devoted his time to ridiculing the Warren Commission report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; then, over the following decades, he occasionally faded back in. But before that he was a star and a cult hero of the intelligentsia.He had regular club dates in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, with audiences full of celebrities. He recorded what the Library of Congress has cited as “the earliest example of modern stand-up comedy on record,” the album “At Sunset.” (Though recorded in 1955, it was not released until 1958, shortly after the release of his official first album, “The Future Lies Ahead.”) By 1960, he had starred in a Broadway revue, written jokes for Kennedy’s presidential campaign, hosted the Academy Awards, appeared on the cover of Time and been cast in two movies (he would later make a handful of others).An inveterate contrarian and a wide-ranging skeptic, Mr. Sahl was a self-appointed warrior against hypocrisy who cast a jaundiced eye on social trends, gender relations and conventional wisdom of all sorts. Conformity infuriated him: In one early routine he declared that Brooks Brothers stores didn’t have mirrors; customers just stood in front of one another to see how they looked. Sanctimony infuriated him: “Liberals are people who do the right things for the wrong reasons so they can feel good for 10 minutes.”“The Future Lies Ahead,” released in 1958, was Mr. Sahl’s first official album, although he had previously recorded what the Library of Congress has cited as “the earliest example of modern stand-up comedy on record.”J.P. Roth CollectionBut more than anything else, it was politicians who were the fuel for his anger. For that reason he was often compared to Will Rogers, whose death in 1935 had left the field of political humor essentially barren, though Mr. Sahl had none of Rogers’s homeyness and detested the comparison.“I never met a man I didn’t like until I met Will Rogers,” he once said, turning the famous Rogers line against him, despite never having met him. He described Rogers as a man who pretended to be “a yokel criticizing the intellectuals who ran the government,” whereas Mr. Sahl himself pretended to be “an intellectual making fun of the yokels running the government.”In December 1953, when Mr. Sahl first took the stage at the hungry i — the hip nightclub in San Francisco that he helped make hip, where he would routinely be introduced as “the next president of the United States” — American comedy was largely defined by an unadventurous joke-book mentality. Bob Hope, Milton Berle and Henny Youngman may have been indisputably funny, but the rimshot gag was the prevailing form, the punch line was king, and mother-in-law insults were legion. It was humor for a self-satisfied postwar society.“Nobody saw Mort Sahl coming,” Gerald Nachman wrote in “Seriously Funny,” his book-length 2003 study of comedy in the 1950s and ’60s. “When he arrived, the revolution had not yet begun. Sahl was the revolution.”Blazing a TrailMr. Sahl was a shock to the comedy system. Other groundbreaking comedians — Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory, Woody Allen, Jonathan Winters, Joan Rivers, George Carlin and Richard Pryor among them — would pour into his wake, seizing on the awareness that audiences were hungry for challenge rather than palliation. And for social commentators who took to the airwaves in the half-century after he began to speak his mind — from Dick Cavett to Don Imus, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Maher and Jon Stewart — Mr. Sahl was their flag bearer as well.(If a younger generation of comedians considered Mr. Sahl an inspiration, he did not return their love. He said in a 2010 interview that he found their comedy “kind of soft” and urged them to “take more chances.”)“He just doesn’t bring to mind any other performer in the history of show business,” Mr. Cavett said after watching Mr. Sahl perform in 2004.In 1973 Mr. Sahl, left, visited the New York radio talk-show host Don Imus, one of many people who considered him an influence, to promote his album “Sing a Song of Watergate.”Don Paulsen/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesFor one thing, he looked different from other comics of the time, eschewing the expected jacket and tie in favor of a more collegiate, informal look in an open-necked shirt and a V-neck sweater. And he peppered his routines with the language of youth and jazz — he was bugged, he dug this or that, he dated a lot of chicks. He took the stage carrying a rolled-up newspaper, a prop that was also a prompt; in Mr. Sahl’s performances, he talked about, anguished over and ranted at the news, spinning it with sardonic digressions, cryptic asides and blistering zingers.“I’m for capital punishment,” he declared. “You’ve got to execute people — how else are they going to learn?”In a vitriolic riff on the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s 1959 visit to the United States — Mr. Sahl was virulently anti-Soviet — he spoke of an encounter between Mr. Khrushchev and Adlai Stevenson: “Khrushchev said to Stevenson, ‘If you want to be president, I want to tell you how to seize power,’ and Stevenson admonished him and said to him, ‘You know, that’s not the way we do things in this country,’ but several members of the Democratic advisory council who were present admonished Stevenson to keep quiet and listen to this man!”Over the years he directed a venomous wit against Democrats and Republicans alike, famously supporting Kennedy in his presidential campaign against Richard Nixon and then lampooning him after his election: In choosing Kennedy, he said, the country was “searching for a son figure.”His own political leanings were difficult to track. The left wanted to claim him, especially early in his career, but they couldn’t quite do so. Among other things, he could be crudely sexist and, though he supported civil rights, he was acerbic in confrontation with knee-jerk liberal dogma on the subject. Over the course of his life he kept company with politicians of varying stripes, from Stevenson, Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy to Alexander Haig and Ronald and Nancy Reagan. He said he had voted for Ross Perot; he praised Ron Paul and defended Sarah Palin; he cast a skeptical eye on Barack Obama’s presidency and was as scathing about Hillary Clinton as he was about Donald Trump.“Are there any groups I haven’t offended?” he was wont to ask from the stage. If nothing else he was a pure iconoclast.“If you were the only person left on the planet, I would have to attack you,” he once said. “That’s my job.”The Barbs BeginMorton Lyon Sahl was born in Montreal on May 11, 1927. His father, Harry, ran a tobacco shop, though he had grown up in New York as an aspiring playwright, and by the time Mort was 7, Harry Sahl had moved the family to Los Angeles and found work as a clerk for the Department of Justice. At 15, Mort joined the R.O.T.C. and left high school, lying about his age to join the Army; after two weeks, his mother, Dorothy, got him out.After high school, he enlisted again and served in the Army Air Forces in Alaska, where his anti-authoritarian impulse first flowered. He edited a base newspaper called Poop From the Group, which needled military structure and routine and which earned him, he said, 83 straight days of mess-hall duty.Following his discharge, he attended Compton Junior College and the University of Southern California, earning a degree in city management, and then followed a young woman — Sue Babior, whom he would eventually marry — to Berkeley. Prompted by Ms. Babior, he approached the owner of the hungry i, Enrico Banducci, for a performing gig, though it was mostly a music club. He got a tryout.“I didn’t tell anyone, but I didn’t think he was so great,” Mr. Banducci recalled in “Seriously Funny.” He added: “I really looked at him and said, ‘Poor kid, he looks so skinny.’ I thought for 75 bucks a week he can’t hurt the place.”Mr. Sahl’s early performances stayed away from politics. But within weeks he was commenting on the national scene, and that’s when his audience began to build.He twitted Dwight D. Eisenhower for his dullness. Senator Joseph McCarthy became a favorite target: “Joe McCarthy doesn’t question what you say so much as your right to say it.” Lines from his act began appearing in newspaper columns, and when Herb Caen, the powerful San Francisco Chronicle columnist, gave Mr. Sahl’s act his imprimatur, his popularity took off.He made record albums. He played college concerts. He appeared on television with Steve Allen and Jack Paar.Mr. Sahl in costume for a sketch in the 1962 television special “The Good Years.”United Press InternationalIt was after Kennedy’s victory in the 1960 election that Mr. Sahl’s career first veered off track. He wrote barbed political one-liners for Kennedy the candidate, but when he turned his wit on the president-elect, tweaking him for his youth and for his family’s money and power, liberals who had loved his criticism of conservatism became notably cool.On the occasion of Kennedy’s presidential nomination acceptance speech at the Los Angeles Coliseum, Mr. Sahl remarked slyly to a crowd estimated at 100,000 that Nixon had sent a congratulatory telegram to Joseph P. Kennedy, the president’s father: “You haven’t lost a son, you’ve gained a country.”Whether Mr. Sahl was the victim of Kennedy family wrath or a blackball from liberal Hollywood, as he sometimes claimed, or whether his own thorniness was to blame — he bickered with producers and missed a number of engagements, and he was fired from a starring role in a 1964 Broadway play, Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” — gigs were fewer and farther between in the 1960s. In 1966, his attempt to open his own nightclub in Los Angeles failed when, he said, backers vanished after press previews.“My so-called liberal supporters have all moved in with the establishment,” he said from the stage at one preview. “The same people who like jokes about John Foster Dulles and Goldwater suddenly freeze when they hear satirical humor about Vietnam or the war on poverty.”Sahl the ‘Disturber’Mr. Sahl worked on radio and on local television in Los Angeles, but he didn’t help his cause with what some felt was an obsession with the Kennedy assassination. His performances began to include reading scornfully from the Warren Commission report. And he worked as an unpaid investigator for Jim Garrison, the New Orleans district attorney, who claimed to have uncovered secret evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the assassin, and who accused a New Orleans businessman, Clay Shaw, of conspiring to murder the president. No convincing evidence, secret or otherwise, was produced at Mr. Shaw’s trial, and the jury acquitted him in less than an hour.“I spent years talking with people, Garrison notably, about the Kennedy assassination,” Mr. Sahl wrote in “Heartland,” a score-settling, dyspeptic memoir published in 1976, “and I was said to have hurt my career by being in bad company. I don’t think Gene McCarthy is bad company. I don’t think that Jack Kennedy is bad company. I don’t think that Garrison is bad company.“I learned something, though. The people that I went to Hollywood parties with are not my comrades. The men I was in the trenches with in New Orleans are my comrades.” He concluded, “I think Jack Kennedy cries from the grave for justice.”Mr. Sahl in performance at the Throckmorton Theater in Mill Valley, Calif., in 2014. He continued to perform there regularly until last year.Josh Edelson/ReutersMr. Sahl was married and divorced four times, first to Ms. Babior; then to China Lee, the first Asian American model to be a Playboy centerfold, from whom he was divorced for the second time in 1991; and finally to Kenslea Motter, from whom he was divorced in 2009. Mr. Sahl and his second wife had a son, Mort Jr., who died in 1996 of a drug overdose. No immediate family members survive.Though he never reclaimed his central place in the entertainment firmament, Mr. Sahl was somewhat resurgent in the 1970s, partly because Watergate had reinvigorated the public appetite for derision aimed at politicians. He recorded an album, “Sing a Song of Watergate”; was booked by television hosts like Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin and David Frost; and continued to do college concerts.“I’m not 18 anymore,” he lamented in “Heartland,” “but I’m the angriest man on any campus I visit.”Indeed, Mr. Sahl never lost his fervor for pointing out life’s ironies and the hypocrisies of public figures. In 1987, in the wake of Jackie Mason’s successful one-man show, “The World According to Me!” he reappeared on Broadway in one of his own, “Mort Sahl on Broadway,” and he continued to perform in clubs long after that.In recent years, feisty as ever despite deteriorating health, he had been performing one night a week in Mill Valley, where he had moved after four decades in Beverly Hills. His performances, at the Throckmorton Theater, were also streamed online and continued until the onset of the pandemic.Mr. Sahl with his fellow comedian Robin Williams backstage at the Throckmorton Theater in an undated photo.Reuters“I work as a disturber,” Mr. Sahl said in a Times interview after a 2004 performance, a reminder of lines from other decades and how little he had changed.Even at the height of his fame, in 1960, he was sardonic, bitterly ironic, unsparing.“I’m the intellectual voice of the era,” he said to Time magazine, “which is a good measure of the era.”Alex Traub contributed reporting. More

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      ‘Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over’ Review: A Punk Provocateur Endures

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      Beth B’s documentary tells the story of an iconic underground New York City misfit and her durable career.The musician, writer and spoken-word artist Lydia Lunch is an immediately provocative figure. The name alone, right? Escaping a horrifically abusive home in Rochester, N.Y., at 16, she took one look at the burgeoning 1970s punk rock scene on Manhattan’s Bowery and was determined to both join and upend it.“I had a suitcase and $200,” she recalls in “Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over,” a vigorous documentary directed by Beth B, whose own work as an underground filmmaker began in the same milieu as Lunch’s early efforts. Lunch’s first band was called Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and one of their songs began with Lunch caterwauling, “The leaves are always dead.”Lunch, now 62 — who, when reflecting on her generation, says, “The ’60s failed us” — had other interests, musical and extra-musical. The abundance of her ideas, and her resourcefulness in executing them, enabled a career that’s been a lot more durable than those of many other iconoclasts of her time. Her musings on the condition of womanhood and the failings of conventional feminism are emphatic, to be sure. She asks how women “devolved from Medusa to Madonna” and offers an unusual perspective on the #MeToo movement that finds its rationale in an examination of cycles of abuse.Lunch’s entire aesthetic is centered around trauma: how abusers dispense it, how it is — and how she thinks it ought to be — received, and turned back on the world. This yields any number of anecdotes, including a tale from the musician Jim Sclavunos about how Lunch took his virginity before admitting him into one of her bands.The footage of her on the road with her current band, Retrovirus, shows her mastery of live performance and also highlights her very urban sense of sarcasm; sometimes she suggests no-wave’s answer to Fran Lebowitz.Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never OverNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes. In theaters and on virtual cinemas. More

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      Patrick Sky, ’60s Folk Star and Later a Piper, Dies at 80

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      He was a part of the folk revival emanating from Greenwich Village, mixing melodic songs and satire. Then he became infatuated with the uilleann pipes.Patrick Sky, who established himself as part of the Greenwich Village folk scene of the mid-1960s with smooth guitar-picking and a Southern twang that could be melodic or sassy, then became adept at playing, and making, the notoriously difficult instrument known as the uilleann pipes, died on May 26 in Asheville, N.C. He was 80.His wife, Cathy Larson Sky, said the cause was cancer. He died at a hospice center and lived in Spruce Pine, N.C.Mr. Sky’s best-known song was probably “Many a Mile,” a weary-traveler lament that opened his debut album, titled simply “Patrick Sky,” in 1965. It was covered by others, including Buffy Sainte-Marie, his girlfriend early in his career. He was also skilled at “sardonic, satiric rags and blues,” as The New York Times put it in 1965, and as his career advanced, those elements of his repertoire became more caustic.That aspect of his music culminated in what fRoots magazine called “the most politically incorrect folk album ever,” a 1973 release titled “Songs That Made America Famous.” The track titles — “Vatican Caskets” and “Child Molesting Blues” among them — convey the tenor of the record.“America’s full of prudes, you know,” Mr. Sky told fRoots in 2017. “So I just did a record that’d sort of gouge them in the eye with a stick.”By then, though, Mr. Sky, who was of both Irish and Creek Indian heritage, had turned his attention to the uilleann pipes, perhaps the most difficult instrument to play in the arsenal of Irish music, after meeting the master piper Liam O’Flynn at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in the early 1970s. Mr. Sky learned not only to play the instrument but also to make it, something he did for the rest of his life, helping to revive a faded art. In 2009 he and his wife, a fiddler, made an album, “Down to Us.”One magazine called this 1973 release by Mr. Sky “the most politically incorrect folk album ever.” Patrick Leon Linch Jr. (who legally changed his name in the 1960s) was born on Oct. 2, 1940, in College Park, Ga., outside Atlanta. His father was a munitions worker, and his mother, Theron Rutilla Heard Linch, was a registered nurse.Patrick grew up in Georgia, Louisiana and other parts of the South and was interested in music from an early age. In 1957 he enlisted in the Army, serving in an artillery unit until his discharge the next year.“I began playing at little coffeehouses,” he said in an interview for the book “Folk Music: More Than a Song” (1976), “eventually finding my way to Florida.”There he met Ms. Sainte-Marie, and a few years later, when she went north to New York, he did, too. His Southern sensibilities sometimes made for an amusing fit with the Greenwich Village folkies he began socializing and playing with. His wife said he used to tell about the time the musician Dave Van Ronk and other friends offered to take him out for soul food, a term he didn’t know. At the restaurant, when the collards and fatback, cornbread, fried pork chops and such arrived, his friends asked what he thought.“Back home,” he told them, “this is what we just call ‘food.’”As folk music enjoyed a boom, a music newsletter called Broadside began sponsoring “singing newspapers,” as they were described — concerts at which a string of performers would sing topical songs, often written for the occasion. Mr. Sky played at the first one, at the Village Gate in 1964, to a crowd of 500; Pete Seeger was the master of ceremonies, and the other performers included Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Jack Elliott and Ms. Sainte-Marie.In February 1965, Mr. Sky played a bigger venue, Town Hall, in Midtown. In his review, Robert Shelton of The Times called him “an important new folk-song talent.” Mr. Sky went on to play to 2,400 at Carnegie Hall in December 1966.Mr. Sky performing at the Eagle Tavern in Greenwich Village in 1986. His Southern sensibilities had made for an amusing fit with the Village folkies he played and socialized with in the 1960s.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesHis second album, “A Harvest of Gentle Clang,” had been released that year. Mr. Sky became a regular at folk festivals, clubs and colleges, and two more albums followed before the decade’s end: “Reality Is Bad Enough” in 1968 and “Photographs” the next year.But he began performing less and less, and after “Songs That Made America Famous,” he retired for a time, though he began doing shows again in the 1980s, adding the pipes to his performances.Few people played that instrument at the time. In a segment filmed several years ago for “Around Carolina,” a local cable show, Mr. Sky, who lived in Rhode Island for a while, joked about his unusual obsession.“I used to tell people I was the best piper in all of New England,” he said, “which is true because I was the only piper.”He continued to perform with his wife at pipers’ festivals and other events until 2018, when he was found to have Parkinson’s disease.Mr. Sky earned a bachelor’s degree in poetry at Goddard College in Vermont in 1978 and a master’s degree in folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1993.Two early marriages ended in divorce. He married Cathy Anne Larson in 1981. In addition to his wife, he is survived by their son, Liam Michael Sky; a son from an earlier marriage, Marcus Linch; and three grandchildren. More

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      Sally Grossman, Immortalized on a Dylan Album Cover, Dies at 81

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySally Grossman, Immortalized on a Dylan Album Cover, Dies at 81She picked out a red outfit and struck a relaxed pose on the cover of “Bringing It All Back Home,” leaving much for fans to guess about.Bob Dylan wanted his manager’s wife, Sally Grossman, to appear on the cover of his 1965 album taken at her home in Woodstock, N.Y. March 15, 2021, 6:53 p.m. ETOne of Bob Dylan’s most important early albums, “Bringing It All Back Home” from 1965, has the kind of cover that can strain eyes and fuel speculation. It is a photograph of Mr. Dylan, in a black jacket, sitting in a room full of bric-a-brac that may or may not mean something, staring into the camera as a woman in a red outfit lounges in the background.“Fans became so fixated on deciphering it,” the music journalist Neil McCormick wrote in The Daily Telegraph of London last year, “that a rumor took hold that the woman was Dylan in drag, representing the feminine side of his psyche.”She wasn’t. She was Sally Grossman, the wife of Mr. Dylan’s manager at the time, Albert Grossman.“The photo was shot in Albert Grossman’s house,” the man who took it, Daniel Kramer, told The Guardian in 2016. “The room was the original kitchen of this house that’s a couple hundred years old.”“Bob contributed to the picture the magazines he was reading and albums he was listening to,” Mr. Kramer added, a reference to the bric-a-brac. “Bob wanted Sally to be in the photo because, well, look at her! She chose the red outfit.”Ms. Grossman died on Thursday at her home in the Bearsville section of Woodstock, N.Y., not far from the house where the photograph was taken. She had long been a fixture in Woodstock, operating a recording studio, a theater and other businesses there after her husband died of a heart attack at 59 in 1986. She was 81.Her niece, Anna Buehler, confirmed her death and said the cause had not been determined.Ms. Grossman in an undated photo, taken in the same room, against the same fireplace, in which the 1965 album cover photo was shot. She and her husband ran recording studios and restaurants in Woodstock, and after his death she created the Bearsville Theater there. Credit…Deborah Feingold/Corbis via Getty ImagesSally Ann Buehler was born on Aug. 22, 1939, in Manhattan to Coleman and Ann (Kauth) Buehler. Her mother was executive director of the Boys Club (now the Variety Boys and Girls Club) of Queens; her father was an actuary.Ms. Grossman studied at Adelphi University on Long Island and Hunter College in Manhattan, but she was more drawn to the arts scene percolating in Greenwich Village.“I figured that what was happening on the street was a lot more interesting than studying 17th-century English literature,” she told Musician magazine in 1987, “so I dropped out of Hunter and began working as a waitress. I worked at the Cafe Wha?, and then the Bitter End, all over.”Along the way she met Mr. Grossman, who was making his name managing folk music acts that played at those types of venues, including Peter, Paul and Mary, whom he helped bring together.“The office was constantly packed with people,” Ms. Grossman recalled in the 1987 interview. “Peter, Paul and Mary, of course, but also Ian and Sylvia, Richie Havens, Gordon Lightfoot, other musicians, artists, poets.”The couple, who married in 1964, settled in Woodstock, where Mr. Grossman had acquired properties and which Mr. Dylan had also discovered about the same time, settling there with his family as well.In due course came the photo shoot for the album cover.“I made 10 exposures,” Mr. Kramer told The Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2014. One image, with Mr. Dylan holding a cat, was a keeper. “That was the only time all three subjects were looking at the lens,” Mr. Kramer said.The photo, staged by Mr. Kramer with Mr. Dylan’s input, was an early example of what became a mini-trend of loading covers up with imagery that seemed to invite scrutiny for insights into the music. The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (1967) might be the best-known example.The album itself was a breakthrough for Mr. Dylan, marking his transition from acoustic to electric. Its tracks included “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Maggie’s Farm.”Ms. Grossman and her husband established recording studios and restaurants in Bearsville, and after his death Ms. Grossman renovated a barn to create the Bearsville Theater, bringing to life a vision of her husband’s. It hosted numerous concerts over the years. She sold the businesses in the mid-2000s.Ms. Grossman is survived by a brother, Barry Buehler.Though she knew many American musicians, Ms. Grossman had a special place in her heart for an order of religious singers from Bengal known as the Bauls, whom she encountered in the 1960s. She created a digital archive of Baul music. Deborah Baker, author of “A Blue Hand: The Beats in India” (2008), wrote about Ms. Grossman and her connection to the Bauls in a 2011 essay in the magazine the Caravan.“Despite all the famous musicians and bands who once passed through her life,” Ms. Baker wrote, “she found it was the Bauls she missed the most from those years.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘One Night in Miami’ Review: After the Big Fight, a War of Words

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storycritic’s pick‘One Night in Miami’ Review: After the Big Fight, a War of WordsA 1964 meeting of Malcolm X, Cassius Clay, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown is the subject of Regina King’s riveting directorial debut.A moment in time: A scene from Regina King’s “One Night in Miami.” Kingsley Ben-Adir, left, as Malcolm X, taking a photo of Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) and Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.).Credit…Patti Perret/Amazon StudiosJan. 14, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETOne Night in MiamiNYT Critic’s PickDirected by Regina KingDramaR1h 54mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.On Feb. 25, 1964, at the Convention Hall in Miami Beach, Fla., Cassius Clay — not yet known as Muhammad Ali — defeated Sonny Liston to become the heavyweight champion of the world. That’s hardly a spoiler, and the fight isn’t the main event in “One Night in Miami,” Regina King’s debut feature as a director. The movie is about what happens after the final bell, when Clay and three men who witnessed the fight gather for a low-key after-party that turns into an impromptu seminar on fame, political action and the obligations of Black celebrities in a time of crisis.The host is Malcolm X, played by Kingsley Ben-Adir less as a confident, charismatic orator than as a smart, anxious man facing a crisis of his own. We’re reminded in a few early scenes of the rift opening up between Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad, his mentor and the leader of the Nation of Islam. Frustrated by Muhammad’s autocratic dogmatism and appalled at his sexual predations, Malcolm sees Clay (Eli Goree), who is gravitating toward Islam, as “the ace up my sleeve” — a prominent ally who will help him break away from the Nation.[embedded content]Joining the boxer and the minister in a modest suite at the Hampton House motel are the Cleveland Browns running back Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) and the singer Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.). Each is at the peak of his career, and also at something of a crossroads. Brown, increasingly fed up with the ways Black athletes are exploited and commodified, has his eye on Hollywood. Cooke’s most recent effort to attract a white audience — a gig at the Copacabana in New York — was met with a chilly reception.Malcolm tries to push Cooke in another direction, arguing that the job of successful Black artists isn’t to court white approval but to use their fame and talent to advance the cause of their own people. The dramatic nerve center of the film, adapted by Kemp Powers from his own play, is the quarrel between Malcolm and Cooke, who have known each other for a long time and whose intimacy is laced with rivalry and resentment. It’s a complex and subtle debate that implicates Clay and Brown, and that reverberates forward in history and the later actions of all four.Cooke, who drives a red sports car, smokes cigarettes and carries a flask in his jacket, stands in obvious temperamental contrast to Malcolm, who is both the straight arrow and the nerd of the group, offering them vanilla ice cream and showing off his new Rolleiflex camera. Among the pleasures of “One Night in Miami” is how it allows us to imagine we’re glimpsing the private selves of highly public figures, exploring aspects of their personalities that their familiar personas were partly constructed to obscure.This is also, I think, an important argument of Powers’s script: History isn’t made by icons, but by human beings. Fame, which provides each of them with opportunities and temptations, comes with a cost. The fine print of racism is always part of the contract. What Cooke, Brown and Clay share is a desire for freedom — a determination to find independence from the businesses and institutions that seek to control them and profit from their talents.Malcolm, who faces different constraints, urges them to connect their own freedom with something larger, an imperative that each of the others, in his own way, acknowledges. Malcolm’s manner can be didactic, but “One Night in Miami” is anything but. Instead of a group biopic or a ready-made costume drama, it’s an intellectual thriller, crackling with the energy of ideas and emotions as they happen. Who wouldn’t want to be in that room? And there we are.What we witness may not be exactly what happened. I don’t know if Malcolm X really traveled with a copy of “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” in his luggage so that he could make a point about protest music by dropping the needle on “Blowin’ in the Wind.” There are aspects of the characters’ lives that are noted in passing but not really explored — notably Cooke’s and Brown’s treatment of women. Malcolm’s wife, Betty Shabazz (Joaquina Kalukango), appears in a few scenes, as does Barbara Cooke (Nicolette Robinson), but they are marginal to a story that is preoccupied with manhood. Still, there is enough authenticity and coherence in the writing and the performances to make the film a credible representation of its moment, and King’s direction makes it more than that.An actress of singular poise and intensity — see “Watchmen,” “If Beale Street Could Talk” and, going back a little further, “Poetic Justice” — she demonstrates those traits behind the camera as well. There are a few boxing and musical scenes, but most of the action in “One Night in Miami” is talk. King’s attention to it as nimble and unpredictable as the dialogue itself, and creates an atmosphere of restlessness and spontaneity, that nervous, exhilarating feeling that this night could go anywhere.Clay, the youngest of the four, is the one who most vividly embodies that sense of possibility. Goree captures the familiar rasp and melody of the voice, and also the champion’s wit and exuberance. There haven’t been many people who could match his giddy, unapologetic delight in being himself, and Clay can look a bit callow next to Cooke and Brown, who have logged more years and paid more dues in the world of celebrity. But Goree shows that Clay, as playful as he could be, was also serious and brave, qualities that would come to the fore a few years later when he risked his career and his freedom to oppose the Vietnam War.The seeds of that action and others, this movie suggests, were planted that night. The shadows of a complicated, tragic future hover over the motel furniture. Within a year of that night, Sam Cooke and Malcolm X would both be killed, one in a Los Angeles motel, the other in a Harlem ballroom. (Only Malcolm’s death is mentioned in the film). The later chapters in Muhammad Ali’s life, and in Brown’s, are part of the crazy, contentious record of our time.And “One Night in Miami,” at first glance, might be taken as a minor anecdote plucked from that larger narrative. It doesn’t make grand statements about race, politics, sports or music. It’s just a bunch of guys talking — bantering, blustering, dropping their defenses and opening their hearts. But the substance of their talk is fascinating, and their arguments echo powerfully in the present. This is one of the most exciting movies I’ve seen in quite some time.One Night in Miami.Rated R. Smoking and Swearing. Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes. Watch on Amazon.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Leslie West, ‘Mississippi Queen’ Rocker, Is Dead at 75

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyLeslie West, ‘Mississippi Queen’ Rocker, Is Dead at 75He rose to fame with Mountain, which Rolling Stone called a “louder version of Cream” — a band Mr. West idolized. One of the group’s first gigs was Woodstock.Leslie West with his band West, Bruce and Laing at the Rainbow in London in 1973. “I wanted to have the greatest, biggest tone,” he said of his guitar playing, “and I wanted vibrato like somebody who plays violin in a hundred-piece orchestra.”Credit…Fin Costello/RedfernsDec. 23, 2020Leslie West, whose meaty guitar riffs and snarling lead lines powered the hit band Mountain through “Mississippi Queen” and other rock anthems of the 1970s, died on Wednesday in Palm Coast, Fla. He was 75.The cause was cardiac arrest, said a spokesman, Steve Karas.Mr. West had battled various health problems over the years. In the early 2000s he had bladder cancer. In 2001 he had his lower right leg amputated because of complications of diabetes.Mr. West, who struggled with his weight for most of his life, used his ample size to his advantage onstage. In an era ruled by rail-thin rock stars, his physique stood out. His guitar tone matched it in girth: It was uncommonly thick, with a vibrato that could shake with earthquake force.“I didn’t play fast — I only used the first and the third finger on the fingering hand,” Mr. West told the website Best Classic Bands in 2011. “So I worked on my tone all the time. I wanted to have the greatest, biggest tone, and I wanted vibrato like somebody who plays violin in a hundred-piece orchestra.”His singing style mirrored his guitar playing, marked by barking declarations that at their most stentorian could pin a listener to the wall. The weight of Mr. West’s sound has been cited as an early example of heavy metal, though Mountain offered a striking contrast to its more forceful songs with other numbers that displayed the prettier vocals and more elegant melodies of the band’s bassist, co-lead singer and producer, Felix Pappalardi.When Mountain first appeared, Rolling Stone called the band “a louder version of Cream,” a comparison underscored by Mr. Pappalardi’s role as the producer of many of that British band’s best-known recordings.One song he produced for the first solo album by Cream’s bassist and singer, Jack Bruce, “Theme for an Imaginary Western,” became far better known in the version cut by Mountain for its debut album, “Climbing!,” released in 1970. “I idolized Cream,” Mr. West told Guitar World magazine in 1987, “and here was a chance to play with one of the best musicians in rock ‘n roll and one of the best writers, too,” referring to Mr. Pappalardi.Mr. West with the drummer Corky Laing, with whom he worked in the bands Mountain and West, Bruce, and Laing, at a festival in Vienna, Va., in 2007.Credit…Stephen J. Boitano/LightRocket, via Getty ImagesDeepening the bond between the two bands, Mr. Bruce joined Mr. West and Mountain’s drummer, Corky Laing, to form the power trio West, Bruce and Laing after Mr. Pappalardi left Mountain in 1972. That amalgam reached No. 26 on the Billboard chart with their debut album, “Why Dontcha.” But Mountain sold better, earning two gold albums, “Climbing!” and its follow-up, “Nantucket Sleighride,” which each broke Billboard’s Top 20 in the early ’70s.Leslie West was born Leslie Weinstein on Oct. 22, 1945, in New York City to Bill and Rita Weinstein. His mother was a hair model, his father the vice president of a rug shampoo company. He grew up in the suburbs.When Leslie was 8, his mother bought him his first instrument, a ukulele, but he became entranced with the guitar after seeing Elvis Presley play one on television. He bought his first guitar with the money given to him for his bar mitzvah.After his parents divorced, he changed his name to West, and upon graduating high school he decided to go directly into the music business. “I went to N.Y.U. — New York Unemployment,” he jokingly told The News-Times of Danbury, Conn., in 2005.His professional career began in a band he formed in the mid-1960s with his brother Larry, who played bass. The band, the Vagrants, was a blue-eyed soul group inspired by a hit act from Long Island, the Rascals. The two bands played the same local clubs, as did Billy Joel’s early group, the Hassles.Improbably, Vanguard Records, better known for folk, jazz and classical artists, signed the Vagrants. Their first single, “I Can’t Make a Friend,” a garage rocker, became a minor hit in 1966. Mr. Pappalardi, who produced some of the Vagrants’ songs, helped them obtain a new contract with Atco Records, a subsidiary of Atlantic, for which they cut a cover of Otis Redding’s “Respect” that earned East Coast airplay in 1967.But Mr. West yearned to record something heavier, so he left to make a solo album in 1969 whose title, “Mountain,” was a reference to his imposing size. Produced by Mr. Pappalardi, it featured many songs co-written by the two, including “Long Red,” which, in a live version backed by the drummer N.D. Smart, featured a drum break that inspired one of the most popular samples in hip-hop history, heard on more than 700 recordings, including ones by Public Enemy, Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar.By the time “Mountain” appeared, Mr. West had persuaded Mr. Pappalardi to form a band with him named for the album. “I said, ‘There’s never been a fat and a skinny guy onstage,’” Mr. West told Guitar World. “‘We can’t miss.’”Mr. West with his first band, the Vagrants, at the Village Theater in Manhattan in 1967. The drummer is Roger Mansour.Credit…Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesOne of Mountain’s first gigs was at the Woodstock festival, a booking the band received because it shared an agent with Jimi Hendrix. The band’s debut album was released the next spring, with Steve Knight, who came aboard for the Woodstock performance, on keyboards, and Mr. Laing on drums.The addition of Mr. Knight’s surging organ added warmth to the band’s sound and differentiated Mountain from Cream’s power-trio format. The album’s lead track, “Mississippi Queen,” had what became one of the most famous cowbell intros in rock, though it was originally used by Mr. Pappalardi simply as a way to count the band into the song. The song reached No. 21 on the Billboard singles chart and became an FM radio staple.The final studio album by the original Mountain, “Flowers of Evil,” was released in late 1971. One side had material, recorded in the studio, fashioned around an anti-drug theme; the other side had music recorded live at the Fillmore East.The next year the group split, a result of various band members’ drug abuse and Mr. Pappalardi’s decision to quit touring. While he continued to work as a producer, Mr. West, Mr. Bruce and Mr. Laing recorded two studio albums and a live set before Mr. Bruce bowed out in 1973. That same year, Mr. West and Mr. Pappalardi reformed Mountain with a new drummer and keyboardist for a double live album, “Twin Peaks,” and a studio album, “Avalanche,” both issued in 1974. But months later, the group imploded.In 1983, Mr. Pappalardi was fatally shot by his wife, Gail Collins, who had co-written songs for Mountain and designed their famous album covers.Mr. West continued to record and perform, billed either under his own name or as leader of Mountain, sometimes with Mr. Laing. He collaborated on albums with star guitarists like Joe Bonamassa and Peter Frampton and recorded with top metal singers like Ian Gillan of Deep Purple and Ozzy Osbourne.His last album with Mountain, “Masters of War,” released in 2007, featured covers of Bob Dylan songs. In 2009, he toured with a band billed as West, Bruce Jr. and Laing, with Mr. Bruce’s son, Malcolm, on bass. (Jack Bruce died in 2014.) He appeared with Mountain at an all-star concert for the 40th anniversary of Woodstock in 2009. His most recent solo release, “Soundcheck,” reached No. 2 on Billboard’s blues chart in 2015.Mr. West in performance at the Jammy Awards at the Theater at Madison Square Garden in 2008. He continued to record and perform, billed either under his own name or as leader of Mountain, well into the 21st century.Credit…Jason DeCrow/Associated PressMr. West is survived by his brother and his wife, Jenni Maurer, whom he married onstage after his Woodstock performance in 2009.Throughout his career, Mr. West remained committed to his uniquely punchy guitar style.“I’m not a great guitarist, technically,” he told Guitar World in 1987. “But you know why people remember me? If you take a hundred players and put them in a room, 98 or 99 of ’em are gonna sound the same.“The one who plays different,” he said, “that’s the one you’re going to remember.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More