Gloria Stavers!

By Gloria Stavers (16 Magazine Sept. '65)

Gloria Stavers Shot Rock & Roll!

The photography exhibit "Who Shot Rock and Roll" features a "who's who" of rock photographers including James Marshall, Lynn Goldsmith, Annie Liebowitz, Henry Diltz and Gloria Stavers.  Gloria was not only a pop culture tastemaker, trailblazing magazine editor and writer, she also took some of rock's most iconic photos of Jim Morrison, The Beatles, Bob Dylan and many others. Here is her photo of a relatively unknown David Bowie, featured in the exhibit and the book (Who Shot Rock and Roll: A Photographic History, 1955-Present) which it celebrates.

"Who Shot Rock and Roll: A Photographic History, 1955-Present" by Gail Buckland

Crawdaddy on Gloria Stavers (April, 1969)

"Gloria Stavers sits high above Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park, if not the world.  Her gig is editing a fan magazine for teenage girls.  Small potatoes?  Not quite.  For through the mesmeric medium that is Sixteen, Gloria Euphoria is able to open and shut the portals of the Top Twenty as if it were her own private filing cabinet.

It's a matter of arithmetic.  Seventy-five percent of all singles and forty-five percent of all LPs are bought by girls between the ages of twelve and seventeen.  Sixteen Magazine has a paid circulation of one million teenyboppers and four million friends read for free.  And so when EYE Magazine got around to listing the Makers and Breakers, they included Bill Graham as well as Murray the K, but Gloria Stavers was first on the list.  God and Gloria would have it no other way."

- by Michael Horowitz

"Written In Our Hearts" Vegetarian Cookbook

 
Fans, friends and family of Davy Jones have contributed their favorite veggie recipes in the new cookbook "Written In Our Hearts."  I'm excited that three recipes that I contributed in memory of Gloria's friendship with Davy (Morning "Gloria" Muffins, Fave Rave "16" Bean Soup, and "Glorious" Mushroom Bourguignon) are among the many delicious options.   Proceeds from the book will benefit the Davy Jones Equine Memorial Fund.  You can purchase it on amazon or here.

 

 

Jacques Chambrun: Founding Publisher of 16 Magazine

(Article from The New Yorker 7/11/13)  

 

Mavis Gallant’s Double-Dealing Literary Agent

 

Jacques Chambrun was a New York-based literary agent in the nineteen-forties and fifties with a penchant for pinstripe suits and stealing his clients’ money. One of his clients was Mavis Gallant. The diary entries excerpted in this week’s issue of the magazine show Gallant starving and desperate in Spain, selling her clock for breakfast. Her agent hadn’t mentioned that two of her stories—“The Picnic” and “One Morning in June”—would be appearing in The New Yorker.

Gallant wasn’t his only victim. Chambrun embezzled thirty thousand dollars from W. Somerset Maugham by secretly negotiating the world rights to his books. When Ben Hecht ghost-wrote Marilyn Monroe’s memoir, Chambrun sold a scandalous passage to a London tabloid for a thousand pounds with neither Monroe nor Hecht’s permission; Monroe was so unnerved by the article that she rescinded her support for the book and Hecht had to return his five-thousand-dollar advance to Doubleday. (“My Story” was eventually published, twenty years later, but Hecht was not credited until the book’s third printing.)

Chambrun quietly arranged for the books of Grace Metalious (author of “Peyton Place”) to be published in Britain, France, Germany, and Italy and used the money from these deals to cover his debts to Jack Schaefer, another client. Chambrun had used the money from Schaefer’s foreign rights to pay back Maugham, and so on and so on, in a kind of literary pyramid scheme. Chambrun was transparent about his methods, at least to those who inquired. If authors threatened legal action, as many reportedly did, Chambrun offered a stump speech: “If you put me in jail, I can’t earn any money, and I can’t pay you back. If you don’t sue me, I’ll pay you back.” The pitch worked. All of his authors abandoned him, but not as quickly as one might imagine. Money trumped revenge, and some writers, like Hecht, were still grateful to Chambrun for their careers.

According to the New York Public Library’s records, Chambrun’s client list included many established authors, like Zora Neale Hurston, Aldous Huxley, and H. G. Wells, with relatively deep coffers to skim from. But Chambrun stole just as readily from his younger clients, like Gallant. He sold manuscripts and stories behinds his clients’ back and produced contracts allotting him a twenty to thirty per cent commission. (Agents typically take fifteen per cent.) “This man knew I had not two cents to put together,” Gallant said of Chambrun in an interview earlier this year with Radio-Canada. She left Chambrun after her editor at The New Yorker urged her to do so. “I woke up,” Gallant said.

Chambrun was grandiose and very French—a combination that made writers feel like a big deal long before they got to be one. Grace Metalious was seduced by his name alone. “I just picked your name cold out of a book,” she wrote in her first letter of inquiry, according to “Inside Peyton Place,” a biography of Metalious by Emily Toth. Chambrun wore a boutonniere, travelled in a chauffeured car, and maintained an office at 745 Fifth Avenue—across the street from the Plaza Hotel. He could be elegant or oily, depending on whom you asked. Knox Burger, an editor and agent, once described Chambrun as a “feral character” and said he would be perfect “if you were casting an unctuous Levantine villain in a 1950 film noir.” He dyed his hair a deep black and threw Hugh Hefner-style parties in his basement pool. Chambrun claimed relation to the French counts de Chambrun, but rumor had it he was raised in the Bronx. (There’s a record of a Jacques Chambrun born in New York in 1906, but no one is certain that this was even his real name.)

In 1956, when he had no clients left, Chambrun started 16, a celebrity magazine for teen-age girls with cover stories like “Barbara Hearn: Elvis’ Girl Friend Tells Why She Makes Up as She Does.” He and a partner wrote most of the magazine’s stories under the pseudonym Georgia Winters. In 1958, Chambrun yielded control of the magazine to Gloria Stavers and slipped away. He died in 1976, according to Toth. Gallant heard that he was killed in a car crash, along with his two dogs. Gallant’s checks were recovered, but all the possessions she sold to survive those dry months in Spain—her grandmother’s ring, her typewriter—were not. “I never forgave him for that,” she said.

GeeGee Recommends!! (May '69)

 

"GeeGee recommended LPs this month include:  Chambers Brothers' A New Time A New Day on Columbia; Donovan's Greatest Hits on Epic; Bunky & Jakes' L.A.M.F. on Mercury (back-up musicians on this great LP include Buzz Linhart on vibes and Felix Pappalardi -- producer of Cream -- on bass); Mandrake Memorials' Medium on Poppy Records; Dr. John's Babylon, Iron Butterfly's Ball, The Best Of The Buffalo Springfield, Cream/Goodbye and Bee Gees' Odessa -- all on Atco; Blood, Sweat & Tears, The Electric Flag, Al Kooper/I Stand Alone and The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield And Al Kooper -- all on Columbia; The Good Rats on Kapp; Cartoone, Albert King/King Of The Blues Guitar, Aretha Franklin/Soul '69, Magic Lanterns' Shame Shame and The Best Of Sam & Dave -- all on Atlantic; Andy Kim's Rainbow Ride on Steed; Staple Singers' Soul Folk In Action on Stax; Ten Years After's Stonehenge on London; Johnnie Taylor's Take Care Of Your Homework on Stax - and the fabulous Beach Boys' 20/20 on Capitol ... Pick LPs of the month are the Beatles' Yellow Submarine on Apple, Joan Baez' Any Day Now on Vanguard, Rascals' Freedom Suite on Atlantic, Swingle Singers Back To Bach on Phillips --- and the one and only Buzz Linhart's Buzzy, also on Phillips ... Other record news of the month: Hair's Jon Kramer signed with Epic and is working on his first single.  He's also doing the theme music for Midnight Cowboy; Now a trio (George Cameron, Steve Martin and Tommy Finn stayed with the group), the Left Banke's newest Smash records LP is The Left Banke Too.  Welcome back, guys."

 

The Dave Clark Five documentary to premiere on PBS on April 8th

Fans of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame group, and of the British Invasion years, are eagerly anticipating tomorrow night's premiere of "The Dave Clark Five and Beyond - Glad All Over."  The documentary is presented by PBS as part of its prestigious "Great Performances" series, and was written, produced and directed by Dave Clark at the urging of some famous fans including Tom Hanks, Bruce Springsteen, and Steve Van Zandt.  Included will be footage from some of their record-breaking 18 performances on the Ed Sullivan show (unseen for decades,) plus commentary by an all star cast of musicians who were influenced by the group.  The Dave Clark Five sold more than 100 million records and had 15 consecutive Top 20 U.S. singles.

In addition to their unique sound that captured our attention, the Tottenham lads were great looking, well dressed, and fun!  In other words, tailor made for success in the pages of 16 Magazine!  

 

Phil Everly (1939 - 2014)

The music world is mourning the loss of Rock and Roll and Country Hall of Famer Phil Everly.  As The Everly Brothers, Phil and his brother Don were one of the most influential groups in music history, bridging popular music of the 50s and 60s and inspiring the close harmony vocal style of The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Bee Gees, The Byrds, The Hollies, Simon & Garfunkel, and generations that followed.  From their first million-selling smash hit "Bye Bye Love" in 1957, the Everly Brothers went on to record more than a dozen Top 10 singles, and nearly three dozen Top 100 hits. The handsome pair were featured often in 16 Magazine alongside Elvis Presley and Ricky Nelson, and Gloria Stavers was a big fan of their music along with the rest of the world.

 

16 Magazine February '63

Gloria Stavers with The Everly Brothers 

 

16 Magazine February 1960

 

GeeGee Recommends! (March '68)

"GeeGee recommended LPs this month include DONOVAN's beautiful double LP The Gift From A Flower To A Garden on Epic; the CREAM's Disraeli Gears on Atco (the Cream will no longer be cutting single records -- only LPs); RICHIE HAVENS Something Else on Verve; The Lewis & Clarke Expedition on Colgems; BOBBY VINTON's Please Love Me Forever on Epic; MITCH RYDER's What Now My Love on Dyno Voice; VAN DYKE PARKS Song Cycle on Warner Bros.; and the ROLLING STONES' weird and beautiful Their Satanic Majesties Request (if you think that three-dimension cover is a gas -- couldja find the "hidden" BEATLE pix? -- wait'll you see the multi-colored centerfold montage inside!)

 

Gloria Stavers and the Greenwich Village Folk Scene

Last Sunday, the Coen Brothers and T Bone Burnett organized a tribute to folk music at Town Hall in NYC, with legacy and contemporary artists from both folk and rock coming together to celebrate the Greenwich Village folk music scene of the 1960s (The Coen's new film "Inside Llewyn Davis" explores its early days.)  Reviews of the concert reminded me of how much Gloria loved and wrote about all the folk artists that she saw perform in clubs like The Bitter End, The Gaslight, Cafe Wha and The Village Gate.  Some of her favorites that made it into the pages of 16 Magazine were Bob Dylan (he was even on the cover in April '66!), Judy Henske, Tom Rush, Joan Baez, Eric Andersen (she introduced Eric on Ed Hurst's "Aquarama" Philadelphia variety show when she co-hosted,) Odetta, Richard and Mimi Farina, Judy Collins, and ...