By Ralph J. Gleason Rolling Stone July 4, 1974 Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was three weeks and four days past his 75th birthday when he died last month in a New York City hospital. He had played his music in almost every part of the world except China and...
By Jerome Holtzman From No Cheering in the Press Box 1973 I never felt that I was a bug-eyed fan as such. I wasn’t one of those who dreamed of being a sportswriter and going around the country traveling with ball players and getting into the games free and, oh, dear...
By Paul Slansky The Village Voice March 1979 On February 4, 1974, Albert Brooks walked on the stage of The Tonight Show for the 22nd time. His past performances had included some of the funniest bits ever seen on the show: an impressionist whose imitation of various...
By Elizabeth Kaye The Village Voice June 1972 A very big sign in red, white and blue reads, “Kennedy.” It is nailed across the front of a building three blocks from another building with another, smaller sign. This second sign is a map marked with numbers, and what I...
By Red Smith The New York Times June 11, 1973 The thing to remember is that the horse that finished last had broken the Kentucky Derby record. If there were no colt named Secretariat, then Sham would have gone into the Belmont Stakes Saturday honored as the finest...
By Elmore Leonard From Unknown Man No. 89 1977 Chapter One A friend of Ryan’s said to him one time, “Yeah, but at least you don’t take any shit from anybody.” Ryan said to his friend, “I don’t know, the way things’ve been going, maybe it’s about time I started taking...
By Red Smith The New York Times October 19, 1977 It had to happen this way. It had been predestined since November 29, 1976, when Reginald Martinez Jackson sat down on a gilded chair in New York’s Americana Hotel and wrote his name on a Yankee contract. That day he...
By Seymour Krim The New York Times November 1973 Both articles are collected in Krim’s You and Me. Part One: Won’t You Come Home, Jimmy Breslin? A friend of mine who works for UPI airmailed Jimmy Breslin’s The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight yesterday (two pesetas...
By John Eskow New Times October 30, 1978 The face is a harbormaster’s face, or a potato farmer’s, or a lobsterman’s: sharp, prominent nose, articulate features, eyes meant for pinpointing danger. At 39, the body is aching but supple. As he enters the sepulchral...
By Mark Jacobson New West August 30, 1976 The zooty mobiles are rolling slow and sweet up the Strip. In front of the Roxy there’s style a block long. Hats, satin, dudes with their names rhinestoned on their eyeglass lenses, jumpsuits emblazoned with the word “coke,”...
By Grover Lewis Rolling Stone 1971 (Collected in Splendor in the Short Grass) There are sixteen seats in the first-class compartment of the Continental 747 flight from L.A. to El Paso, and the tushy blonde stewardess greeting the boarding passengers beams the usual...
By Paul Hemphill Southern Voices Magazine 1970s (Collected in Too Old to Cry) On the Kansas City Star you were forced to learn to write a simple declarative sentence. This is useful to anyone. Newspaper work will not harm a young writer and will help him if he gets...
