One Whole YEAR, Smoke-free… Dammit, Applaud Me!

Bogie was Coooool & All... But... Please Don't Believe The Hype!



The picture above was taken the last time I ever smoked. I wanted to memorialize The Moment. I wanted to pay homage to Bogart and McQueen (both who died from cancer, btw) and all those very cool cinematic peeps to blew smoke and fury and signified nothing, and yet further served to punctuate their brand of uber mystique.

So… Here’s The Method To My Madness:


Yesterday, December 18th, was not only the natal day of my longest-lasting childhood friend (Happy Burfday, Val!), but it also marked the one year anniversary of my Emancipation from the Nicotine stick.

Yes, applaud me! In fact… BIG-AZZ congrats to me!

Sadly, there were no parties, no NY headlines, no parades, no fireworks, and there was no holiday held in my honor. In the grand scheme of things it wasn’t a banner day that will live in infamy, but it did and does mean something to me, and to those who’ve loved and supported me through my fight.

I have not fallen back, fallen off, slipped back, fell down, went BOOM, fell from some high expectation, and busted my azz on the way down, gotten weak and /or reverted back to type. In fact, I can now state, with just a small bit of determined cockiness that I AM cig-free. This is not some hiatus. This is NOT a drill. I've passed those tests. This is the Real Deal. I no longer crave a morning cigarette, or need a smoke after a full meal. I no longer depend upon a smoke to relieve tension or stress. I no longer need a smoke after sex. I don't smoke anymore when I’m bored, when I could use a physical prop or need something to do with my hands. I no longer feel the need to light up a ‘Port when I’m writing and creating new worlds or trying like hell to finish a cogent thought. I no longer seek that designated spot to light up outside in the summer heat or the crazy cold while communing with my fellow fag igniters. I no longer have to search pockets or ramble thru drawers to hustle up those extra bucks to feed that monkey on my back who refuses to let me be! Gone are those days and nights when I'd be forced to rustle up those extra coins and spare change just to pay that steadily increasing tab on those demon cigs! AND... no longer do I feel compelled to head out in the middle of a freaking blizzard to cop those necessary tits to suck upon as I wait out some hellish winter assault.

Whew! It was mad rough being ME a year ago!

Yes, trust, in the past, I’ve done all those things (and more) until I was indigo-blue in the face! But that was then.... and this is now.

My NOW contains no residual smoky odors, no stuffy coughs, and no stifling air. My NOW is a new and crystal-clear outlook; a brand-new confidence in me and in my ability. The NOW is a celebration of my willpower. The now eschews the thought of lighting up and instead takes a deep breath, goes for a walk, or meditates, or reads a book.


I do not want to come off here as being superior (I’m NOT!) or holier than thou, as some former smokers are apt to do. I am not nor do I ever plan on becoming one of those Cigarette Nazi People! Not a fan. If my friend smokes, I’m not the one to be making speeches, or giving tedious testimony on the evils of the weed. Naw! That cat’s NOT me! I DO, however, have a few rules set into place:

I don’t want anyone smoking IN my crib! Sounds simple, right?

Well, at the moment, I'm currently housing someone (an in-law) who is a moderate-to-heavy smoker. This is a person, who, even AFTER having a scare and then surviving a serious bout with breast cancer… continues to smoke!!! I have already spoken to her about it. I have given her a few medical facts about my heart condition. I had HOPED that by my being so candid, she would, perhaps, if NOT quit, then at the very least STOP SMOKING IN MY CRIB! Second-hand smoke ain’t NO joke! And still I awaken to find my bathroom REEKS of smoke! Not trying to be a hard-ass, and besides, we’ve already ARGUED about this, and how, IF she wants to continue to stay here, she will HAVE to smoke outside or in her car, or a someplace else! And yet, its like that heated convo never even took place! This witch just keeps on smokin' and smoking... and SMOKIN' some mo. I understand the POWER of the habit. I do. I understand it intimately. So, I will give her until the start of the NEW YEAR before I kick her lax, lazy, disrespectful azz to that proverbial curb. Family relationships be DAMNED! After all, this is MY HEALTH and I refuse to allow it or myself to be played. I refuse, after MUCH personal sacrifice, to have it sabotaged by someone else, when I’m trying to do them a favor. Smell me?

In fact, go ahead, smell me. I dare ya! You won’t find anything other than a faint whiff of my Dolce & Gabbana cologne, ironically named “The One.”


So, where's the party? The balloons? And can a Brotha get a hug or sum'm up in this piece?

Happy Holidays to You & Yours!


One.

*Breaking Out Those Holiday Classics...

Lately I’ve been trying to snatch, to retrieve and to retain this thing in me; this lost and sleeping Spirit of Christmas. Sometimes, it waxes, wanes and tickles my brain with a sweet memory from the past. Often it comes and goes, and lasts as long as a snowflake on a red-hot griddle.





Last night and early this morning, it snowed. Actually... it was officially just a “dusting”. Kinda wimpy really. Maybe I needed the snow to remind me of those long ago Christmases. Y’know: kid voices singing carols, people smiling and being kinder, the smell of pine trees shining with tinsel. But mostly, it’s the SOUND of gospel and holiday hymns sung by REAL singers. Maaaaaaan, I loved those Christmas songs. Something about them made me feel a part of the world, so warm and necessary. Thus, I’ve been trying to reconnect with those cursory things that bring forth the angels of memory. Yes, the lights across the street beckon and remind me that tis IS the Season to Be Jolly, but I’m running a bit deficient of those fa-la-lala-las.



One of my first poems ever published appeared in Essence Magazine, and it was called “Cobwebs on my Revolution Poster. “ It was metaphor for a time of promise and expectatation that had somehow faded away. Well, lately I’m beginning to realize that there are cobwebs on my childhood.


My upstairs neighbors have been blasting Hip-Hop and R & B classics. To counteract their sonic assault, I broke out one of MY classic gems: my Merry Christmas From Motown album. Yup, it still plays, even though it skips, pops and scratches from a spinning disc of vinyl.



This was the music from my kidhood. See? For me to reconnect with those good feelings, the emotions, the wonder and promise of the season, I desperately needs me some Ave Maria, some O Holy Night.



I can seriously O.D. on some original Temptations crooning Silent Night....


....And some Jackson 5 way back when li'l Michael was a soulful brown-skin child who wore a ‘fro and was so vibrantly ALIVE!



Calling on Smokey Robinson… come in Smokey… ‘cause lawd knows we could all could use some Miracles!


Stevie… Mr. Wonder, could you please summon that Little Drummer Boy to come out and play for me?


Damn it! Drats! I mean, Good Grief! I somehow missed this year’s showing of A Charlie Brown Christmas! The l’il keeid in me was never very big on animation or hyped on pretend, but he still relates to this one & only cartoon from way back when.


Who even realized back then how seriously COOL and quasi-intellectual that music was when The Peanuts gang got down? The man in me still grooves to that classic soundtrack of those fluently jazz-inspired tunes.


Music seems to bring the joy of Christmas back to me… even more than snow or lights or shiny presents under a tree. Music alone can take me over that river and through the woods of materialism and deliver a few of My Favorite Things.


So, I’m trying to reclaim that rightful spirit… the spirit that’s been stolen, kidnapped from me by those vicious gods of greed and avarice. I’m trying to keep it simple... when the world keeps getting so damned complicated around me. It’s a chore and a war of the heart, but I aim to score and win that small, yet important victory.


After all, it’s my duty and my solemn right to snatch myself a little Holiday

!!!
One.


*repost

Satchmo's Grin ...

Recently I received an early Christmas gift and it's one that I'll cherish for many years to come. My boy "Brotha Life" (thanks Lifey!) Blessed me when sent me this gem. It's a large coffee table book filled with black and white classic & candid images of the Jazz greats. The book is called JAZZ IMAGE, The Masters of Jazz Photography (by Lee Tanner). And trust me when I say, the photographers who contributed to this epic book didn't miss too many masters of the idom. To name but a few there's: Basie, Miller, Satchmo, and the king of all Sir Duke... there's Blakey and Dizzy and 'Trane and Bird, there's Miles and Ella, Billie and Sarah, Hamp and Roach, Brubeck and Krupa and Cootie and Nat Cole and mo.

I suddenly feel like I'm lost in my own selfish bliss. Awwwww... whatchu know about the Jazz language?


Anyway... best thing is that most of these photos are rare collector's items, and the faces of these people, these creative legends, they tell such real and vivid, lively and sad and mad compelling stories. For instance, there's a shot of Billie Holiday in the studio recording the classic "Strange Fruit." There's Ella singing scat on 52nd Street. There's Bird nodding off inside a mellow mood while holding his sax.
Each picture, each nuance speaks its own quiet poem. I'm sure this book will inspire riffs of crazy poetry from me.

I'm sharing one here. It was written (or maybe it was channeled) in about 10 minutes after staring at a photo of a smiling Louis Armstrong:

Satchmo's Grin

(A Poem To Old Skool Mindsets)

Tuxedo-clad, and glossy
As his horn…
I am diggin on that
Wide-ass grin of
A young
Louis Armstrong. I see that Genius
String of pearls strung across a mask
Of blackness as it unfurls… and
This mad hep
Jazz cat just
Makes you happy, doesn't he?

But was he really
That damn happy? Could anyone
Black in 1920s America
Possibly be that damn
Happy?

There are notes, some notes
That sing us, slowly… notes
That cry
So sharp
And so high, they define us
In our deepest quietude…

In his rendition of
St Louis Blues
I hear his pain
I feel his scream
I smell the Delta's
Summer steam…

Maybe he dreamed
Not in visions
But in sound…
Maybe that sweet
Racket of his
Horn warmed and
Transformed him.


Maybe. Maybe.
Maybe all that jazz and
Frequent weed-smoking
Tickled his ass into
Some semblance of
Makeshift Negro
Happiness.



Forget back door entrances
And exits thru the kitchens.
Forget fancy establishments
Where he's less than a
3rd class citizen!
Forget Jim Crow abuses… black
Bodies strung from nooses
Seen from the eyes of a
Boy with a coronet
Who can digest
And manifest
The definition of
The Blues…


But on stage
Satchmo blows
Satchmo smiles
Satchmo knows…
The secret to Negro joy…

Yet when someone
Outside his skin, screams,

"Play that Jazz, boy!"




Still, Satchmo grins…
His smile
Wider than The Nile.
His pomaded hair
Aglow, in slicked-back style…
His eyes, his eyes
Squinting back
Light and sweat or
Something resembling
Tears…
And tasting of
Regret.

There are notes, some notes
Which sing us slowly…
Notes that cry
That strut and fret
So sharp
And so high, they define us
In our deepest quietude…

I listen to the sound of
Louie Armstrong's
Smile… and I HEAR
The St. Louis
Blues.








One.


© 2011 by L.M.Ross moaningmanblues

In Honor of World AIDS Day: When Friends Die Young

When Friends Die Young (For James & Jr. & Kim & Cliff & Jet & Cunning & Rosemarie &
Frankie & Richard & Deborah & Every Tear That Falls Down On The Neighborhood Now)

A part of you never
Understands. Your tears fall,
Hard, as violent rainstorms from
The heavens.
You swear at God!
You curse the fates! You barter
In bitter degrees. And you ache. You never stop
This aching. And you wonder why
You’re left behind
To grow older, while
Your friends
Expire into skeletons
Before their time.




When Young Women Die
A part of you never really understands.
You think of babies, never born, and
Of newborns dying,
Of sick babies,
Never forming their lips
In a kiss against
A mother’s cheek.



You swear at God! You curse
This fuckin’ disease! You barter
For survival, in degrees… You make deals with
Your libido, your lust, your loneliness. And
You may exist, for years, without the succulence of
The human
Touch.

When Young Men Die
A part of you grows angry…
Your heart beats faster than
A speeding locomotive,
Your screams pitch
Louder than a subway’s thunder.
You try to remember:
The sounds of a friend’s laughter.
The autumn’s brilliant colors,
The way children smile and
Play with each other when
They think no one’s watching.


But you are watching them…
Watching these shiny kneed little boys
And little cornrowed chocolate girls…
As they grow, evolve, get older,
And life unfurls for them.
You keep watching, like a sentinel,
Or some quietly sobbing god… remembering
When their loved ones were such
A vital part of our
Living.





One.




© 2011 by L.M.Ross moaningmanblues

For These Things, I Am THANKFUL

I am Thankful to be free… finally free of the slavery enforced upon me by that old rabid dog called nicotine; free from the habit that constricted my life-force and made a mockery of... my health.

I am Thankful for the trials and tribulations because they have made me live my life more intentionally... deepening my sense of purpose while granting me a roadmap to karmic destiny and spiritual wealth.

I am Thankful that, my enemies, few as they may be, have revealed themselves, and thus allowed me and others to see their true face.

I am Thankful to not be in possession of a mean or vengeful spirit, thankful that there is such a thing as showing one’s “True Colors” and for being able to see this in all its beauty or to recognize its ugliness.

I am Thankful Dr. Alexander Del Vecchio exists, and that his impeccable timing, his surgical skills and his goodwill contributed greatly in extending the course of my life.

I am Thankful for technology and for the genius invention of the pacemaker.

I am Thankful for my mother’s strength; and I do marvel at the fact of how her spine and her arms and her back have grown stronger in these times of uncertainty.

I am Thankful to those who had the foresight to have told me “No!” or who said I “Wasn’t Ready” when time has proven that they truly knew better than I.


I am Thankful that people like Whitman and Picasso, Langston and Jimmy, Ingrid and Sidney, Nina and Cicely, Miles and Stevie, Richard and Amiri, Maya and Marlon, and Nick and Phoebe existed and will always exist to teach and inspire the masses.

I am Thankful for those who are so much, smarter, deeper, wiser than I and who continue to show me new Life Lessons.


I am thankful for my Doctors, my Lawyers, my Nurses, my Angels, and my personal Dream Team who have remained so steadfastly by my side.


I am Thankful for the caring of Carolyn, and the charm and company of Jan Yves, and the sunshiny rays Sunni, the good deeds and musical gifts of Derrek and Lucas, the continual loveliness of Lori, and the wonders of Wynn. I just THANK them for being IN my Life.

I am Thankful for the slow yet gradual return of my Right Mind, Right Voice and my Right Instincts... which were once dulled by illness and stymied by anesthesia.


I am Thankful that my blood still races with the pace of a Gushing God!


I am Thankful for breathing, thankful for every breath, so much so, that I shall never take the miracle of simply breathing for granted ever again.



Snatch JOY and a turkey leg!







One.

Today’s Musical Selection Will Be

Do you ever howl sometimes in a loud, yet quiet note?
Do strange fingers ever reach out and
Stroke some sleeping
Ache, lodged within
Your Soul?

Does a tear ever make a clearly distinct noise
As it crawls… before falling
In a singular ping of
A triangle's
Jangle?

If the written word were a strain of music,
Arranged to echo the sound of your
Essence, what tune would it
Assume? What instrument,
What timbre would suit
The voice of your
Deepest
Mood?

Would you strum your strings softly
Or bleat your horn, loudly?
Would you swiftly strike
Every key upon your
Piano, like a
Virtuoso,
Angrily?

If the spoken words were music, what
Sound would you affect? The vibrato
Of a cello? The rhymic pounding of
Drum? Perhaps a bass
With its resounding
Fret?

If your emotions were a symphony,
Would they thunder in dissonance,
Vibrate with sound and righteous
Fury… Or stew and brew
Like Miles Davis'
Mute?

Me? I am muting today, deep in my own
Blue instrumental jam. I am a hobo's
Trumpet… Awaiting the lips of
A muse to stroke me sweetly,
And blow upon my
Chrome.

I am a solo sound with no direction… lyrics
In search of introspection. I am
A wild note, cast to
A mercurial wind.
A distant quake
From a faraway
Gong.

Perhaps… this is my most authentic
Resonance … the genuine tone
Trapped within the solitary riffs
Of my lone blown
Lin-song.




One.




© 2011 by L.M.Ross moaningmanblues



And on a sadder musical note:





Rest In Peace Heavy D...You always brought a sense of fun & a party vibe to the Hip-hop game. You will be seriously missed.

Moanman-out.

The God Voice: For Coltrane, Dem Blues-Playas & Myself

Maybe
God
Sounds like
Satchmo
On a good day or
A bad night,
With a slight cold
In a wheezy
Scratch-throated
Cry of
The Blues.

Yeah...
Maybe Jazz
And Blues be
The Music of
A Woozy God, High
And addicted to this
Possibility in us,
And yet
Hip
To this slick
Grog of
Disappointment.

Maybe that
God Voice Cries
From the feet
And the spine
And the lungs
And the lips
And the heart
Of Slaves...
And maybe now
The players must cling
To horns like
Old Negroes
Clung tight to Spirituals
Or lapsed Catholics
Do to prayers and
Crucifixes.

Maybe the
God Voice
Is in our music, yo.

But, on a good day
In a bad way
Some sanctified players
Still come out to play...
And they reach down
Deep beneath

The lost years
The lost faith
The lost pride
The lost grooves
The lost eyes
The bad trips
The counterfeits
The heroin scabs
And infected chicks
To find magic
In that
Sweet and Mystic Riff.

And That God Voice
Kicks in
So deep,
So painful,
So real,
So necessary that
It clears the tears
From the blare
Of the
Horn...

And it makes
Its God Noise
So Real and
So strong...
So authentic
So calm
That it makes you
Believe in
Magic
Again.

Yeah...
Just maybe Jazz
And Blues be
The music of
A Woozy God,
So High,
So addicted to this
Possibility of
Us...
And yet,
Hip
To this slick grog
Of disappointment.



One.

When Acts of Love Become Verbs

Yesterday, I became an eyewitness to love. Actually what I saw were little acts of love, and these are among the best and purest examples of love there can ever be. I mean the kind of love that becomes a soft and gentle verb. The actions shifting before my eyes were small, and yet beautiful, so mad beautiful almost to the point of making me want to weep.

Lately, many things seem to touch me in a sweet spot and will literally bring tears to my eyes… even in a public setting. It’s become very embarrassing.





But I digress...

Picture it: I’m in my doctor’s office, waiting, like the rest, for someone there to respect the appointment time I’d rushed from my home like a madman to keep... but somehow the medical profession doesn’t seem to respect or really acknowledge. So, I’m waiting as people slowly filter by, while others sit like I sit, pretending to be engrossed in the shiny magazines sprinkled about on surrounding tables (most of which are at least 3 to 4 months out of date).

Anyway, each time the door would open, we’d shift, redirect our eyes to whoever entered the room. They would steal our gaze temporarily before we’d head back to our shiny magazines. But my eyes refused to shift back to reading. Instead they remained fixed on the elderly couple who had just walked into this space. This was the kind of couple you just know has been married since time was a child. They are old, but still young inside their love. I could intuit this by the slow and gingerly way the husband treated his wife as he made room for her (and her walker) to make it safely inside. I could tell this because it was more than just polite concern... it was an act of love, something he had no doubt been displaying for the last 50, 60 or 70 years for this woman. I suddenly wished I could have seen their wedding portrait. I wanted to see their youthful faces, the features that first attracted them to each other. I wanted to feel their love in a visual, visceral way and to appreciate its history in another time and place.

Anyway, I sat there pretending not to stare and watched them live inside that love they shared. The wife needed help getting around, and instead of letting her rise, he went to the table and asked which magazines she wanted to see. It was such a gentle thing, a small thing... but it too was an act of love.

This man, I could tell, was not in the best of health either. His gait was slow, his posture, a bit stooped, his feet not so surefooted, but he was still able to move, to walk, to get around on his own. I imagined there had been times when he was the weaker one, health-wise, and it was she who did all those small, gentle but loving things for him. Together they truly were the physical ideal of that marriage vow:

“In sickness and in health… until death do us part.”

I suddenly thought about their deaths: which one of them would go first into that bright and shining light, and just how long it might take the heartsick other to join their partner? I gathered it would not take very long at all. People who truly, deeply, madly love each other tend not to survive for very long without their counterpart, that other twin heart, that other loving soul living, breathing and witnessing life right beside them.

Isn't that romantic? Isn't that the biggest verb of all?



Sitting there letting it all wash over me, I was almost jealous of that love; envious that I may never grow so old as to see my late 80s, or have someone to truly love me through it for all those years. I was filled with all these crazy notions of how wonderful it must be to have someone loving me that way, so hard and full and yet so gentle, and for such a long time. I wanted to cry for them and to weep for myself, and yet I somehow managed to keep my stone man-face in order.

It was a good thing too, because suddenly a nurse was calling my name to enter the examination room.



Suddenly all the attention shifted to me, and my sick and lonesome ass.

The thing is: I just could not get that elderly couple out of my mind.

I wonder, no matter what illness brought them to that place, if they realized how LUCKY, and how Blessed they were.



Love is a beautiful thing. But love is the most beautiful of all each and every time it becomes a verb.

One.

Reflections On Life (Or Me "Just Vampin' To Be Handsome")

Lately I have been thinking about the reality of dying. Not that I’m actively embracing it, or wrapping it around me like a cape full of heavenly stars and constellations, so please, don’t get it twisted. No, my thoughts are more centered upon the intensity of the journey and then soul-searching my way through it. So many people I’ve known and loved and expected to be around for the long haul have already departed this life. It makes me very, very reflective. Why am I still here? Why, when some of them never lived to see age 30, or 40?

I’ve always been accused of being a ‘deep thinker' so this is probably just an extension of my own curious nature… But I wonder about things and about people and this deeply finite life we’re all living.

I wonder about those who are so obviously living it too fast, too frivolously or too foul as if they’ve already made up their minds that this, this right HERE is it. This is all there is to life and there is and will be NO afterlife, no place of consequence or judgment for the way they’ve conducted themselves while here. I think of all the hurt, the madness, the destruction and broken hearts left in their wake, and I almost feel sorry for them-- those spirit-breakers. I’ve the strangest feeling that, like Stevie sang at Michael Jackson’s funeral:

“They Won’t Go Where I Go.”


Oh. And speaking of music… another thing… and this is kinda crazy so it must be symbolic of something: Lately, for no good reason, I will flashback on a song that I haven’t heard or sang or even thought about since I was a kid and that song will haunt me slowly for hours.


Mental exercise here: Think back to a song you learned in school, or first heard as a kid. Listen to it, right now, in your mind. When you HEAR it, is it still in that kid’s voice... that high-pitched, gender-free noise of your youth? I wonder what’s up with that?

Maybe it’s the sound of our own lives being reviewed, being refreshed, being rehashed, being reflected upon. And that always MEANS something.

These days I’m feeling kinda Blessed because I realize I didn’t have to still be here, still writing, still fighting, still loving in this mad way I tend to love. It’s all a Gift.

Life is a GIFT people. Please don’t be in such a hurry to trade yours in for something better. Don’t waste your time whining and bitching about it when it doesn’t quite fit you the way you think it should. It’s still a GIFT, damn it! So be grateful and gracious about it, or you just might mess around and piss God off!

*A tear falls to my lap.*

Damn! What a wimp! I didn’t even see or feel that one coming.


But much like life, I’m sure it must mean something.




Snatch JOY, y'all!

One.

Lin

Paying Props To A Gifted Wordsmith: Nick Ashford

When a poet dies, I get this sad and romantic notion that the pages they'd written upon have left their grasp and are flying on the wind.

Yesterday, Nick Ashford passed at age 69. He had been undergoing radiation for throat cancer. Today I find myself reflecting, not only upon the over four-decades worth of wonderful and memorable music he made with his wife Valerie Simpson, but I’m marveling at what a fine writer he was. It was he who wrote the words to their hits. It was his sensitive spirit that gave lyrical birth to such classic hit s as s, "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing," along with "You're All I Need To Get By," "Remember Me," "Somebody Told A Lie," “It Seems To Hang On,” “No One Gets The Prize," and “Solid (As a Rock)”.

There were dozens upon dozens of songs composed By Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson. Some were great, some were unknown, but still gems in their own right.


My personal favorite was not considered a hit. It rarely received radio play, or the kind of kudos much of Nick and Val’s tunes regularly amassed. It was a song about a loner’s spirit. This was apparently who Nick Ashford was, according to his wife. He liked his alone time, and it allowed him to get in touch with the muse he needed to create. I could relate to this and thus, the song “Stay Free” seemed to speak directly to me. He and he and Valerie recorded it back in the late 70s, and I will conclude this entry with the lyrics from that brilliant piece of musical poetry.



Together Ashford and Simpson, in addition to their musical careers as writers and later performers also owned several restaurant/clubs, including the 20/20 on W. 20th St. and the Sugar Bar on W. 72nd St in NYC.

They were a DJ team for several years on WRKS (98.7 FM), playing the kind of music they wrote and sang.

Ashford, a tall imposing man whose signature hair was long, was known as a gentle presence in the music business.

Nickolas Ashford was born in South Carolina and grew up in Michigan. He moved to New York in the early 1960s with $57 in his pocket, hoping to make it in show business. He was attending Harlem's White Rock Baptist Church when he met Valerie Simpson, a New Yorker who sang in the choir and also had musical ambitions.

They recorded together briefly and unsuccessfully in 1964 as "Valerie and Nick," but had more success with writing songs - which at first, said Ashford, they sold for $75 apiece.

Their first big hit was Ray Charles's "Let's Go Get Stoned," which hit the top 10 on the R&B charts in 1966, and soon after they signed to Motown.

Besides songwriting, they also produced most of Diana Ross's first three solo albums and worked with artists that included Teddy Pendergrass, Gladys Knight, Smokey Robinson and Chaka Khan.

Ashford did a few solo projects, including some unsuccessful singles and the very successful production of the 1968 Supremes/Temptations collaboration "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me."

Still, he and Simpson remained a team, and they got married in 1974. They had two daughters.

They had disco-era hits with "Send It" and "Street Corner" and wrote "I'm Every Woman," which Whitney Houston sang in "The Bodyguard."

Simpson, who did most of the composing while Ashford wrote most of the lyrics, later said it was "like pulling teeth" to get him to write "I'm Every Woman," but that it was worth the effort.

Ashford later had a few acting roles, including The Rev. Oates in "New Jack City."

His and Simpson's songs have been sampled in recent years by artists like 50 Cent. They received a writing credit for Amy Winehouse's 2007 "Tears Dry On Their Own" because so much of the melody was lifted from "Ain't No Mountain High Enough."

Ashford is survived by his wife and their two daughters.

The wonderful thing about music is that it never dies. Long after the writers, the singers and the players have been called home, we and the generations behind us will still be warmed by the gifts their music leaves behind.

Behold, One of Nick Ashford’s gifts to the world…



Stay Free:

You like to watch the clouds drifting
'Cause you feel some kind of kindred
Won't tell nobody what you're into
Spend lots of time dreaming
All through the day
When love looks in your eyes you turn away

You like to stay free
That's what you told me
That's all in life you ever want to be
You like to stay free
Standing in my face you said to me
No one would ever fill the space
Stay free
Stay free

You like to sit high on a hill
Count the daisies in the field
It's your own way of playing solitaire
You won't answer no question
Or say where you've been
The last thing you think you need is a friend

You like to stay free
That's what you told me
That's all in life you ever wanna be
You like to stay free
Such a pretty face
There ought to be somebody there to fill the space
Stay free
Stay free
Stay free
Stay free

Independent
Ha, ha, ha, ha
Independent
Ha, ha, ha, ha

Independent
Ha, ha, ha, ha
Independent
Ha, ha, ha, ha

You must be some special kind of breed
I could tell from the life that you need
If that's to be your destiny
Gotta feel it, you gonna be lo-o-o-o-o-o-onely
You gonna be lo-o-o-o-o-o-onely
If you stay free, stay free, stay free

That's what you told me
That's all in life you ever want to be
If you stay free
Standing in my face you said to me
No one would ever fill the space

Stay free, stay free

Independent
Ha, ha, ha, ha
Independent
Ha, ha, ha, ha

Independent
Ha, ha, ha, ha
Independent
Ha, ha, ha, ha

You like to stay free
That's what you told me
You like to stay free, (free, free)
Don't want
Don't want nobody
You like to stay free



~Lyrics by Nicholas Ashford