#sam charters

Every April, I think about Richard Manuel, born on April 3, 1943, in Stratford, Ontario. I still remember where I was in March 1986, when I heard that he had taken his own life — the magazine art department of The Observer newspaper. I remember feeling unmoored for days, which seems too much of a reaction for someone I hadn’t met or known personally, but The Band had been such an important…

I woke up at 5am on the day we were to go to Uppsala to meet Annie, who was going to read some of Sam’s poetry at an evening performance at the English Bookshop, during Uppsala’s yearly Culture Night. Annie had asked me to say something about collaborating with Sam on a book of poems and photographs that we had published near the end of his life.

I awoke with thoughts going around my head of what…

Five Things Extra: Sam Charters

I woke up at 5am on the day we were to go to Uppsala to meet Annie, who was going to read some of Sam’s poetry at an evening performance at the English Bookshop, during Uppsala’s yearly Culture Night. Annie had asked me to say something about collaborating with Sam on a book of poems and photographs that we had published near the end of his life.

 I awoke with thoughts going around my head of…

Fresh Air Remembers Blues And Jazz Historian Samuel Charters

Charters helped ignite the blues revival of the '50s and '60s. He made field recordings of forgotten and previously undiscovered performers. He also wrote two books. He died Wednesday; he was 85.

Here’s what Charters said when he and Terry spoke in ‘87 about searching for bluesman Lightnin’ Hopkins:

“I was sitting in my car at a street corner and a car pulled up beside me and a man rolled down the window and said, ‘Are you looking for me?’ And I said, ‘You Lightnin’?’ And he said, ‘That’s right.’ So I rented a guitar for him, got a bottle of gin. We went back to the little shabby room where he was living and we made his first LP.” 

More Jazz and The Beat Generation - Sam Charters on Jack Kerouac's Jazz