EXCELSIOR, YOU FATHEAD! 

I’ve been asked where I got all the info for my book, so I list and describe those I can remember and that I think are of interest, with apologies to those I forget. I do this because it interests me to see the large number and variety of sources, and because it just might interest a few others: regarding background on Jean Shepherd and the variety of investigative techniques any author might use for writing any book.

I include various anecdotes related to the main subject, some of which I’ve previously related.

I also find it personally of interest that I seem to have followed my curiosity and persistence into unexpected information. In fact, I attribute much of my knowledge over the years to my habit of descending paths down rabbit holes for unexpected treasures. Sort of like a sleuth in sometimes inexplicably complex quests, who nevertheless always gets his elusive fartsy. Sometimes it’s a mere chain of fortuitous clues.

First, what inspired me to write EYF!  See intro to the book, page 18, in which I write, “…I read his obituary in the New York Times, and I realized that I’d lost an old friend. It was then that I recognized how much he had meant to me—and means now. And how important his art is to American culture.”

THE TITLE

As I began writing, my title, which I thought perfect, was:

Excelsior, You Fathead! The Art of Jean Shepherd.

I had two sweatshirts silkscreened:

Upon receiving the publisher’s directive to interview people

I learned more about Shepherd’s life–

the good, the bad, and the sometimes unpleasant.

Despite my continuing admiration for his genius and importance,

I recognized that his art and life consisted of a

contradiction, a baffling ambiguity.  An enigma.

I changed the book’s title.*

*Plus, I’m sure the publisher appreciated

that this now more accurate title, with its enticing suggestion

of human foibles, might also augment

the book’s sales numbers.

Second, what is the book and how’s it organized? Readers should be aware that the last paragraph of each chapter, referencing that chapter itself, links it to the following. The major “Parts” follow a sequence that my chart might help explain:

INTRODUCTION–a general sense of his essence /FORMATIVE YEARS–a kid, a soldier, early radio years /HERITAGE AND ENDOWMENT–roots & close observation /THE GREAT BURGEONING–NY radio & man of the world /TOOLS IN HAND–sounds & words /ENCOUNTERS & CONTENTIONS–battling his surroundings on and off-air /REFINEMENTS & CONVERSIONS–written word, the end of radio, other media /SUMMING UP–how it all ends and the pendulum swings.

It’s not a biography despite how my publisher characterized it

and most people speak of it–it’s a description and appreciation

of Shepherd’s creative world.

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SOURCES

PERSONAL SOURCES

My memory of listening to Shepherd, starting in the fall of 1956.

I’ve retained a file folder from that time until somewhere in the mid-1960s—this includes newspaper and magazine clippings.

Recordings of his radio broadcasts made by me and those found in other places such as THE BRASS FIGLAGEE (http://shepcast.blogspot.com) in right column, CLICK ON “GIGADIAL”, and other internet sites. (One of the earliest audios of a New York broadcast is that I made on my 7” reel-to-reel tape deck. I made my recordings “…on my maroon plastic Zenith AM/FM radio with the big simulated gold dial.” (See my page 18.)

My original Zenith, now lost nearly a half-century ago,

is commemorated

by this exact model recently bought on ebay.

My parents had bought the original radio because, in high school, I’d been chosen to be one of a four-student class that, for a semester, broadcast live on a New York City education-focused radio station (FM only), and my mother wanted to be able to hear her dear son on the radio. My first recordings of Shepherd, on FM, were made on that radio by placing the microphone of our reel-to-real deck in front of the radio’s loudspeaker–I complained to my father that the recordings’ sound quality were not good. He, able to fix radios from their earliest days, installed two threaded bolts out the back to which a wire with “alligator clips” attached to the recorder’s audio intake.

The early personal recording of mine of a Shep broadcast, is now found on brassfiglagee of 06/016/1957. I still feel it’s the finest introduction to the nature of Shepherd’s world. One can hear it by scrolling to almost the bottom of the audios on the above site and clicking on the date. In EYF! I introduce this opening segment of that show starting  near the bottom of page 144, my transcription starts on page 146 and runs for several pages:

[Opening theme starts, then Shepherd’s slow, even, knowing, irony-tinged voice over the theme.] Yeah, and high on the mountaintop, the giant voice rings out, “Stay tuned.” Oh, oh, what a come on—what a message from the heights of Parnassus. [Shepherd’s voice is quiet and pensive, as though carrying on, ever onward despite the odds.] A tiny figure, tattered and torn, can be seen moving across the barren landscape. A giant load being pushed before him. And a single sign reads enigmatically, “Will travel—anniversaries, weddings, an occasional banquet our specialty. Supermarket openings by job lots. Honest, reliable, sober, industrious, square jawed, week kneed, lily livered. ”Stay tuned, friends. [theme ends.] Yes—Excelsior!

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OTHER SOURCES

www.flicklives.com the encyclopedic website on all things Shep maintained by Jim Clavin.

Jim Sadur’s “Jean Shepherd Fan Page” (http://www.keyflux.com/shep/) and Bob Kaye’s “The Jean Shepherd Page” (http://www.bobkaye.com/Shep.html) both have considerable Shepherd material, but are not comprehensive, nor are they continuously updated as is Jim Clavin’s site.

Max Schmid, radio broadcaster, who frequently played Shepherd audios and now still promotes him and sells audios and videos—www.sheptapes.com

Jeff Bouchamp used to send—for free, just for the asking!—CDs with hundreds of Shepherd broadcasts. He and the service have disappeared (at least as far as Shep-fans are aware.)

Radio stations and other facilities have presented tributes to Shepherd, both before my writing of EYF! and afterword. www.flicklives.com remains a comprehensive, constantly updated source of these.

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AMONG THE PEOPLE ENCOUNTERED

TOO LATE TO BE SUFFICIENTLY DISCUSSED IN THE BOOK

ANDY KAUFMAN. I’ve read several books about the humorist/performance artist. Two of them mention that he was, as a kid, a big enthusiast of Jean Shepherd, but I couldn’t interview him for my book because he’d died in 1984. I quote him in my Accolades: “I don’t think any sense of humor is funny. Rarely. Jean Shepherd is funny.”

In my adventures through the world of Kaufman, I’ve come upon his Carnegie Hall performance (April, 1979), after which he invited the audience out for milk and cookies, bussing them to an eatery.

In my adventures through the world of Shep, I’m aware that Shep, after a performance of his theater-piece, “Look Charlie” (December, 1958, when Andy would have been not quite 10 years old, though he probably attended Shep’s “Look Charlie”), Shepherd had invited the audience to accompany him for coffee across the street at a deli. Inspired, and maybe in tribute to Shepherd, (or maybe he forgot where he got the idea, or maybe it was an example of coincidental inspiration–to suggest some benign rational), Andy shoulda given him a verbal footnote.

JERRY SEINFELD commented on his Season Six DVD set of his sitcom, “[He} really formed my entire comedic sensibility. I learned how to do comedy from Jean Shepherd.” Friends alerted me to this quote in 2004, after my book had been completed and awaited publication. Seinfeld later–1/23/12) appeared for an hour giving tribute to Shepherd at The Paley Center for Media.

LEIGH BROWN. Leigh and Shepherd both died before I began writing my book. On the www.flicklives.com guestbook, I noted a commentary by a woman saying she had been Leigh’s best friend and would like to correspond with someone interested. I responded! Soon after, she offered to send me all her typed and signed letters from Leigh—I found that Leigh had an obsession with Jean’s persona and determined to steal him from his wife, Lois Nettleton. Leigh described her successful plan in detail!

LOIS NETTLETON. While working on the book I’d read an interview with her in a magazine in which she said she refused to talk about her divorce from Shepherd, so I assumed that it would be futile trying to contact her—besides, how could little Eugene make contact with a movie actress?! After the book was published, a contact let me know that his wife was a friend of Lois’s and he had interviewed her. He sent me the audio, which showed that she no longer resisted talking about Shep. I got from my contact, her Hollywood address, and, giving it my best shot, I sent her an autographed copy of my book. She responded–A few days later I received a call from the Coast—from her! She was so appreciative of my having written the book about Jean, whom she considered a genius who should be more widely recognized as such.

 She soon sent me an extended, hand-written letter. She invited me to meet her in her New York apartment she’s shared with Shep. But she died before this could happen. Her executor and friend, who invited me to meet him in her apartment, gave me the dozens of small, hand-written notes she’d made about specific parts of my book. As he and I sat in her kitchen, he served me instant coffee, noting, “You’re drinking Lois’s coffee.” Directly behind me on the wall hung a framed, signed drawing by Shepherd.

Soon after Lois’s death, a wealth of Jean’s collectables that she had preserved in a closet, appeared on ebay and I acquired some of them. Including among his ink drawings, one of his elusive sketches–of a traffic light done on a paper Schraffts napkin and his drawing of an antique car done on a paper roll. Which led me, in my quirky investigations, to write and have published, an article on Shep in The American Bugatti quarterly, and interactions with Bugatti aficionados at their annual fest at Sardi’s.

The Leigh and Lois material I encountered after the book

was published showed how much more important they’d both been

in the life and work of Jean Shepherd—if only I’d known in time

to describe in the book how crucial

these two women had been!

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INTERVIEWS

My publisher said he’d publish, but wanted me to fill in some background about the creative New York scene when Shepherd first arrived in the late 1950s, and said that I should interview people involved with Shepherd’s creative life. I studied up a bit on the artsy New York scene in the 1950-1960’s and wove that into the first main chapter of Shepherd in New York—I feel that this sets the scene well, and I appreciated the suggestion.

I’m not sure how I began my attempts to interview people. My interview with one of the early Village Voice people led me to other founders and early columnists through their providing contact information.

When I interviewed Herb Squire, Shep’s friend and favorite engineer, he suggested that I also interview his wife, Laurie, who had played several important roles and, for a year, had been his producer.

*

Someone gave me contact info for Helen Gee, founder and manager of “The Limelight” where he had given Saturday night live performances for several years. I interviewed her in her Village apartment on my 65th birthday. She noted that,though Shepherd had wanted to broadcast from her Limelight, she’d wanted to preserve it just for the coffee house and its important photo gallery—only after she sold it did Shepherd begin broadcasting there. She gave me good material to use, but couldn’t find her stash of Shepherd ink sketches.

A few years after, upon her death, her executor told me they’d tossed out Shep’s sketches on napkins and other of Shep’s serendipitous sketching materials. Fortunately, he’d kept Shepherd’s elaborate sketch of the Limelight’s interior.

*

One day, reading a magazine article about U. S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins, I saw it mentioned that above his writing desk he had a photo of Jean Shepherd (which he described in the article as looking rather sad). I realized that the image was from the New York Times review of I, Libertine, and that it was indeed Shepherd, but was the in-joke, gimmicky photo of him posing as the non-existent author of the book.

Seizing on the newly encountered knowledge that Collins must be a Shep-enthusiast, I found two locations where he might be contacted and wrote to both. He replied and I interviewed him for half an hour by phone. Among quotes from the interview printed in EYF!:

I had to get my Shepherd fix. He actually made you feel that you weren’t alone….I think he had the best influence on my sensibility. And I think it helped me kind of pursue that sense of being different, being an individual.

*

As Shepherd had many times mentioned Norman Mailer on his show (almost always in a disparaging way), but imagining that contacting Mailer’s publisher, or writing to his Brooklyn address would have gotten lost in the unanswered mail pile, when I found that there was a small art-based group in Provincetown where he spent summers, I wrote to the manager of that group asking that he pass along my list of questions to Mailer. He did and Mailer responded with small comments on my questionnaire. I managed to incorporate in the book, my take on his disappointing responses. I’m pleased that he also wrote me a short note:

At a book store where Mailer gave a talk about his new book, when I got to his table for him to sign my copy of the book, I said, “Thank you very much for your response to my questions for my biography of Jean Shepherd.” He looked up and replied, “Make sure you tell the full story.”

*

I contacted Playboy’s permissions officer who told me it would cost me $500 to use the image I wanted. (Author’s pay for book-illustration costs.) I said I couldn’t afford it. He got back to me and said that if money was the only problem, I could use the image for free—that satisfied my concerns.

I said, oh, by the way, Hugh Hefner had published nearly two-dozen of Shepherd’s stories and articles, but I hadn’t been able to make contact with him for an interview. He arranged for a phone talk. I interviewed Hugh Hefner for 20 minutes. The photo used in Playboy was cropped to 3 images—when I received the photo, it included 5 images—I used all five. (Probably the world’s only place to see the complete composite image.)

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A Few Other Shep Fans I’ve Encountered

Lord Buckley humorist, Bruce Conner artist,, Dee Snider “Twisted Sister” frontman, Tom Lipscomb editor/publisher, Bruce Mahler actor–rabbi on “Seinfeld,” Keith Olbermann commentator, Penn Jillette humorist, R. L. Stine “Goosebumps” author,  David Suskind TV commentator, Tom Wolfe novelist.

(It’s my firm belief that most of those involved in the arts who were in and around New York City from 1956-4/1977 were Jean Shepherd listeners. Just think of all those creators who were influenced by him!)

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My artsy questing had been aided by the serendipitous.

If only fortuitous serendipity could happen on demand.

(It’s so nice to see serendipit-ish words

three times in three contiguous sentences.)