Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 02:47:30 -0400
From: Ted White <tedwhite at compusnet.com>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: On Google and WSFA policy
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

Elspeth Kovar wrote:

> Ted White wrote:
>
> > . . . In addition to a hit on my own, Dr Progresso, site, I found that a
> > column I'd written for CRY OF THE NAMELESS in the early '60s had been
> > posted on the fanac.org site.  It was all about my brief career as Jim
> > Warren's Right Hand Man -- an episode of my life about which I had
> > forgotten much over the years.  So I was pleased to find and reread the
> > piece.  I'm glad it's on the web.  It's probably a good idea to do this
> > periodically, just to keep tabs on what's Out There....
>
> I hadn't read that one when rummaging happily through fanac.org, looking
> up names of people that I know.  But that's because I'd seen the list of
> citations next to your name and decided to come back to it later, when I
> had the time to settle down for an hour or so and read them all at once.
>
> Riot reporter?  Sounds more than a bit interesting.  Would you mind
> telling more?

It started with the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival.  I drove up with my first
wife, Sylvia (who took photos, two of which can be seen at
http://www.holeintheweb.com/drp/jazzgallery.htm ) and a couple of other people
from METRONOME magazine.  Despite editor Bill Coss standing at my side,
vouching for me, I was not allowed admission into the Newport Festival, for
reasons now obscure to me.  So Sylvia and I drove down to the Cliff Walk
Manor, where a rump festival was being held.  To quote from the caption of the
first photo, "Ornette Coleman": "This was taken at the Rebel Jazz Festival at
Cliff Walk Manor, in Newport, Rhode Island on the weekend of July 4th, 1960.
This “rump” festival was thrown by Mingus, Coleman, Max Roach and the Jazz
Artists Guild while the main Newport Jazz Festival went on a mile away.  That
festival was disrupted by a riot; the tear gas drifted down to where we were,
but did not stop the music.  Here Coleman can be seen soloing on his white
plastic alto sax, with bassist Charlie Haden in the lower left corner."

>From Newport we drove up to Boston that night, staying with our friends Jean
and Andy Young and Larry Stark at their place in Cambridge.  I called Harlan
Ellison, who was staying in our apartment in NYC, to tell him what had
happened.  He immediately said I could sell the story to ROGUE.   I did.  My
editor there was Frank Robinson, and he was unquestionably the best editor
I've ever had.  Harlan had written the opening line of the piece ("It was a
syncopated Sodom and Gomorra...") and I'd followed with a pretty pedestrian
piece.  But Frank bought it and essentially rewrote it into the piece it
*should* have been.  (Later, when I told him he was responsible for its
subsequent success -- and it was ROGUE's hottest article of the year -- he
insisted, "all the words were yours, Ted."  He just put them in better order.)

Soon my "Riot at Newport" was being shown to prospective ROGUE authors (and
this was when Bill Hamling was publishing it and trying to make it as good as
PLAYBOY) as the model for them to follow.  And I got a telegram asking me to
look into the 1961 Washington Square Folksinger's "Riot" (it was really a
*police* riot).  I wrote "Balladeers & Billyclubs," which was published pretty
much exactly as I wrote it (which shows that I'd learned from what Frank had
done with my earlier piece) and is one of my best pieces of journalism.  I
interviewed most of the participants in the event, primarily Izzy Young, who
owned the Folklore Center in the Village.

So I'd gotten the rep as a "riot reporter."  But those were the only two I
actually reported.

--Ted White