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Drooling on the Pillow

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Three Kings 

There was apparently a pop-culture rapture recently as the three obituaries in the New York Sun this morning told the stories of James Aparo, a comic book artist who updated Batman in the '70s, Al Aronowitz, a rock 'n roll writer who famously put Bob Dylan and the Beatles in the same room, and Gary Belkin, one of the seemingly endless group of 1950s comedy writers who came out of The Bronx and cut their teeth at the Sid Ceaser funny factory.

Mr. Belkin's New York Time's obit relates how he was responsible for many, if not most of the poems accredited to Mohammed Ali during his prime.

In 1962, Columbia Records hired Mr. Belkin to work on an
album of poems said to be written by Ali. Mr. Belkin was
listed as producer but said several times that he had
actually written many of the poems, which were intended
to be part of the buildup to the fight with Sonny Liston
in 1964.

On the record, Ali told listeners to expect "a total eclipse of
Sonny" and wrote, "Here I predict Mr. Liston's total
dismemberment, I'll hit him so hard he'll wonder where
October and November went."

I'd love to hear his version of The Aristocrats.
Posted by: Sluggo / 9:58 AM
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