Yesterday’s New York Times carried the obituary of Daniel Kramer. The man Rolling Stone once called “the photographer most associated with Bob Dylan” died last month, at 91.
The story noted that Kramer shot (among many other photos) the cover for Dylan’s “Bringing It All Back Home” album.
That classic photo has a Westport connection.
Among other items scattered on a table, it shows a record called “The Folk Blues of Eric von Schmidt.”
Von Schmidt — a Staples High School graduate, and son of famed painter/ illustrator Harold von Schmidt — followed a stint in the Army with a Fulbright scholarship to study art in Florence.
But he was also a musician. In 1957 he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and fell in with the coffeehouse scene. He influenced Tom Rush, then Dylan. According to Wikipedia, he and von Schmidt “traded harmonica licks, drank red wine and played croquet.”
Eric von Schmidt, in his folk days.
Dylan gave von Schmidt a shout-out on his first album, for teaching him “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down.”
That relationship may be how von Schmidt’s magazine cover landed on one of the most famous album covers in music history.
The album on the cover of “Bringing It All Back Home.”
Von Schmidt later segued into a career as a full-time artist. He painted enormous, compelling scenes, including the Civil War and Custer’s Last Stand, in the Evergreen Avenue studio where his father once painted.
He died in 2007, after tragically losing his larynx to cancer.
But Eric von Schmidt’s art lives on. His magnificent “Birth of the Blues” — seven works, showing the broad scope of American music, including jazz and folk — hangs in the auditorium foyer of Staples High School.
Every day students and staff pass by, without even noticing the brilliant art.
At every event there, many others walk right by it too.
What a shame.
Waiting in the Staples High School lobby for a Players’ show. The painting is part of “Birth of the Blues” by Eric von Schmidt. (Photo copyright Lynn U. Miller)
When he finished his paintings, Von Schmidt was in talks to donate the works to the Smithsonian Museum.
Instead, he chose his alma mater.
He was bringing it all back home.
Eric von Schmidt, with “Storming the Alamo.” (Photo by George R. Janecek)