JERRY LEWIS 
Budd Granoff produced Milan’s album, I Am What I Am and also wrote the liner notes. He is best known for his work with Chuck Barris in creating legendary game shows like The Gong Show and The Newlywed Game – not to mention the creation of the first television syndication company to distribute these shows to independent TV stations. Along the way, he put on what has been described as the very first telethon, a marathon 1951 television broadcast to raise money for a cardiac hospital that also happened to showcase two of his clients at the time, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Of course, Jerry Lewis would become the most visible presence in the telethon world over the ensuing six decades. (July 2012) * * * Al Kooper is a New Yorker – he was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Queens. Early on, as part of a songwriting team in New York, he wrote “This Diamond Ring”, which was a 1965 hit for Gary Lewis and the Playboys (he is Jerry Lewis’s son). (September 2012) * * * One of the best songs on the Thomas Anderson album Moon Going Down – it was selected as a “Choice Cut” by Village Voice rock scribe Robert Christgau – is “Jerry’s Kids”. The reference is not to Jerry Lewis’s telethon children, but to the “Deadhead” followers of Jerry Garcia’s band the Grateful Dead. (November 2012) |