https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y-eUCC-jcjoTCQAY1IpftV5LaUENS42R/view?usp=sharing

I met Ian Whitcomb at a Break-Fast after Yom Kippur in my first year in LA. The party was in one of those fabulous houses just off the PCH on Santa Monica Beach, near the Marion Davies place, a hundred yards from the Briny Blue Pacific — and I think the house’s name was “Briny Blue.” I was there because my roommate Tamara’s dad had gone to medical school in Los Angeles, and a whole crowd of his LA friends from the early 70s had gathered for the occasion, and we were invited to tag along to see the drop-dead house.

Mr. Whitcomb was one of the guests. When introduced at the bagel table, I was fascinated to hear that he played ragtime, and even had a weekend radio show showcasing Tin Pan Alley recordings. I was impressed, and became a regular listener, but I never until now stopped to think about how remarkable his career was. Everybody I knew back East loved all those old songs, and I thought that it was a good sign that LA — which had an undeserved reputation as a bit of a cow-town in the 1980s — had somebody playing the Old Favorites regularly, both in his numerous live orchestras, and weekly on-air. Meeting him made me feel sophisticated, like I had met someone whose work I needed to get up on and follow, because he knew shit from shinola. And he did, and I did, easy since he was a marketing dynamo, putting out innumerable collections of sheet music, also dance band recordings, palm-court orchestra recordings, novelty song recordings, as well as appearing on the stand at many local festivals and events. All this, plus a sense of humor, and great heart too, without any appreciable performing talent whatsoever.

Driving home from the party, I said how much I enjoyed chatting with that extremely shy and unassuming musicologist fellow. My roommate Tamara, her red hair flapping in the PCH breeze, said “You’d never guess, but that cute geek began his career as a British Invasion rock-star one-hit-wonder.” “Wow,” I responded, “what happened to his career?” “Nothing,” Tamara replied. “He didn’t want to be a pop idol. He wanted to be a cute geek.”

https://laist.com/2020/04/27/ian-whitcomb-dies-78-obituary.php