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From: "Peter McCrae" <>
Subject: [US-OBITS] von SCHMIDT: Eric Von Shmidt 2/2/2007
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2007 03:39:11 -0800


Eric von Schmidt
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 13/02/2007
The Telegraph.co.uk



Eric von Schmidt, who died on February 2 aged 75, was a cult American
folk-singer and painter who discovered Bob Dylan and helped to launch his
recording career.

When von Schmidt answered his door in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one morning
in June 1961, he was greeted by a twitchy, tousle-haired young man in a
Huckleberry Finn cap, with a guitar case strapped across his back. "He
looked," von Schmidt recalled, "like a little spastic gnome."

Although the encounter became a defining moment in both men's lives, only
Dylan would go on to worldwide fame. Von Schmidt had to settle for cult
status as "father of the New England folk revival", or as a man who helped
build the bridge between the 1950s Beat generation and the folkies of the
1960s.

Dylan was still unknown and unrecorded when he sought out von Schmidt, a
bearded Buffalo Bill lookalike who led the folk/blues movement in the coffee
houses of Cambridge. Among von Schmidt's "disciples" at the Club 47 jazz
coffeehouse were Tom Rush and a teenager called Joan Baez.

Von Schmidt, then 30 and a decade older than Dylan, gave the young man a
tour of Cambridge in his Oldsmobile, playing harmonica riffs with one hand
as he drove, while Dylan strummed chords on his guitar.

Back at von Schmidt's home, he and Dylan, by then "high and giggly" on
Chianti and dope, played croquet on the lawn.

Dylan listened intently as von Schmidt went through his repertoire of folk
and blues songs, including one he had written himself, Joshua Gone Barbados,
and a traditional blues called Baby, Let Me Lay It On You. When it came to
picking up songs, von Schmidt recalled, "Dylan was a sponge and a half".

In the spring of 1962 a friend called on von Schmidt's carrying an album
titled simply Bob Dylan. Placing the record on an old turntable, von Schmidt
heard Dylan introduce the song with words that would eventually reverberate
from record players around the world: "I first heard this from, uh, Ric von
Schmidt. He lives in Cambridge. Ric's a blues guitar player. I met him one
day on the green pastures of Harvard University."

Dylan then went on to sing what had now become reincarnated as Baby, Let Me
Follow You Down, changing von Schmidt's title and chorus lyrics in a version
later covered by many artists, including the British group The Animals.

His reference to von Schmidt became part of Dylan legend. It was the first
time most people had heard the singer's spoken voice.

The plug, described by von Schmidt as "better than anything Madison Avenue
could ever have come up with", helped him get a record deal for his first
album, The Folk Blues of Eric von Schmidt, released in 1963. In January of
that year, in the basement of Dobell's record shop in London's Charing Cross
Road, von Schmidt and his half-Irish, dulcimer-strumming friend Richard
Fariña had put together a jammed album eventually released as Dick Fariña
and Eric von Schmidt.

Huddled round the same single microphone plugged into a reel-to-reel tape
recorder was a harmonica player who billed himself on the album sleeve as
Blind Boy Grunt. Only years later was he revealed as Bob Dylan. When Dylan's
electrified album Bringing It All Back Home was released in 1965, he again
acknowledged his debt by showing a copy of von Schmidt's album prominently
on the iconic cover, which featured Dylan stroking a cat in front of a
reclining woman and a fireplace.

Von Schmidt never received any royalties for Baby, Let Me Follow You Down
but made no fuss about it. He was the first to admit that he had heard a
version from a white singer called Geno Foreman who, in turn, had probably
got it from the black bluesman Blind Boy Fuller.

In 1969, however, Dylan again did what he could to repay the favour by
writing the sleeve notes for von Schmidt's album Who Knocked The Brains Out
Of The Sky?

According to Dylan, von Schmidt "could sing the bird off the wire and the
rubber off the tire. He can separate the men from the boys and the note from
the noise. The bridle from the saddle and the cow from the cattle. He can
play the tune of the moon. The why of the sky and the commotion of the
ocean."

Eric von Schmidt was born at Westport, Connecticut, on May 28 1931, the son
of a painter and illustrator. Rather than touring or recording, von Schmidt
spent most of his career drawing album cover sleeves or painting,
concentrating on American history. Among his best-known murals are Here Fell
Custer, now on permanent exhibition in Wichita, Kansas, and The Storming of
the Alamo. He had completed an eight-painting series entitled Giants of the
Blues, depicting his favourite blues legends, and a dramatic depiction
entitled 9/11 shortly before his death.

Eric von Schmidt, who was twice divorced, is survived by two daughters.




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