Celebrity Book Memory Gap

Posted on 9th November 2017
in Celebrity book, celebrity books, celebrity stories, celebrity stories online, celebrity story, Entertainment, entertainment books
by Ben

Chapter ten of my celebrity book Three Stages, The Magazine, The Met and Moodus (1968–1969), was headed with this quotation:

An autobiography usually reveals nothing bad about its writer except his memory.
Franklin P. Jones

This post is a testament to the truth of that statement. And the event that I omitted was one of the most memorable ones of my (and Elizabeth’s) life.

The magazine of the chapter title was New York Scenes, published in 1968 and ’69 and there are many stories about that failed venture in Three Stages. Alas this one is not.

New York Scenes Cover

One of the perks of publishing a magazine is free tickets to theatre, concerts and other events and all one has to do to earn said ticket is to write about the thing.

One of the first concerts we attended for me to review was a great one. April 4th 1968 Elizabeth (then known as Betsy) and I were at Carnegie Hall with Duke Ellington and His Orchestra, the Tougaloo College Choir and the Manhattan Brass Choir. The founder and leader of MBC, Mark Freeh (I’m sad to say recently deceased) was a friend of ours and I loved his band.

After opening remarks by civil rights leader Robert Moses and a prayer the Tougaloo College and the Manhattan Brass Choirs went into a stirring rendition of the old hymn, O God, our Help in Ages Past. As they were performing we, and half the audience, began to notice the local Channel 2 Anchorman, Jim Jensen moving toward the stage followed by a camera crew. Mr Moses met him in the aisle and together they went onto the stage and stopped the song.

Mr. Moses then announced that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had just been shot in Memphis and that the concert would be dedicated to his memory.

I doubt that anyone heard a word he said after “shot”. The wailing and crying in the hall was overwhelming. The mass grief was shockingly palpable.

And then after a few minutes the music restarted. The Music!

The emotion in Carnegie Hall was like one tidal wave after another. The music was like a team of surf boards soaring over the waves and calming them then going for yet another ride. From peak to valley ever moving, stirring, joyful, sad, celebratory and palliative.

Many tears were shed that night, not just in that concert hall but in homes and streets, public and private places – but all places of the heart.

Everyone had to be some place when this tragedy smote the nation and the world. I’m glad to have been one of the few white faces that night in Carnegie Hall.

Because of the publication lead time I was never to write about that night in New York Scenes but in the next issue I did a small piece about the Manhattan Brass Choir.