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Waking skies at sunrise
Every sunset too
Seems to be bringing me
Memories of you. . .
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JA's love of popular song has not been sufficiently documented. He adored the Gershwins' "Love Walked In," for example. Back in 1998, on my telephone answering machine I had Sinatra singing the opening of "It All Depends on You." JA left a message: "Hello, Old Blue Eyes."
A year later on the machine I used the opening of "Accentuate the Positive" as sung by the song's lyricist, Johnny Mercer. JA's message: "This is Mr. In-Between."
In a restaurant in Hudson NY with an old-fashioned juke box, circa October 2000, JA sang along with Tex Beneke and the Glenn Mlller band's rendition of "I've Got a Gal in Kalamazoo. . .zoo . . zoo. .zoo." That gal was "a real pipperoo." Another time, we did an impromptu duet of "Blues in the Night": "Hear that lonesome whistle / Blowin' across the trestle Hoowee! / A hoowee ta hoowee, clickety clack / It's echoing back the blues in the night." JA liked the "hoowee" line in articular.
There was one night, I think in 2009, when JA and David Kermani and some others — Jim Cummins and David Schloss, Mark Bibbins and Brian Chambers — came over for dinner. Stacey (who made bouillabaisse) had bought a CD of Charles Trenet,the French songwriter and performer whom my friend Roger Gilbert has described as "the French equivalent of Irving Berlin, except that he could also sing." (Trenet's "La Mer" became Bobby Darin's great "Beyond the Sea.)" A Trenet song, the title of which roughly translates as "don't park your horse in the coatroom," came on, and John got so excited he started dancing in his seat.
I love Larry Rivers's picture of JA typing (circa 1975). He was writing "Pyrography" on a commission. Star Black took the picture on the lower right following a John Ashbery poetry forum I moderated at the New School in February 2011.– DL