Danny Fitzgerald was a street musician, living and performing mostly between
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
and
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
. He led
The Lost Wandering Blues and Jazz Band, most famous for its associations with young
Madeleine Peyroux
Madeleine Peyroux (born April 18, 1974) is an American jazz singer and songwriter who began her career as a teenager on the streets of Paris. She sang vintage jazz and blues songs before finding mainstream success in 2004 when her album ''Carele ...
, who joined the band as a runaway teenager, and
Joan Osborne
Joan Elizabeth Osborne (born July 8, 1962) is an American singer, songwriter, and interpreter of music, having recorded and performed in various popular American musical genres including rock, pop, soul, R&B, blues, and country. She is best kn ...
.
Early life
Danny Fitzgerald was born in
Kingston, NY
Kingston is a city in and the county seat of Ulster County, New York, United States. It is north of New York City and south of Albany. The city's metropolitan area is grouped with the New York metropolitan area around Manhattan by the United ...
in 1933. He was a member of the US Army and stationed in Germany in the 1950s, which began his alternation between traveling around
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
and traveling around the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. He was associated with the
beatnik
Beatniks were members of a social movement in the 1950s that subscribed to an anti-materialistic lifestyle.
History
In 1948, Jack Kerouac introduced the phrase "Beat Generation", generalizing from his social circle to characterize the undergr ...
scene in
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
. His writing was included in
Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book
''Steal This Book'' is a book written by Abbie Hoffman. Written in 1970 and published in 1971, the book exemplified the counterculture of the sixties. The book sold more than a quarter of a million copies between April and November 1971. The numb ...
. Around the same time
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
regularly slept on his floor.
Later life
Fitzgerald always maintained a migratory lifestyle. When in
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
, he could often be found at
Starbucks
Starbucks Corporation is an American multinational chain of coffeehouses and roastery reserves headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It is the world's largest coffeehouse chain.
As of November 2021, the company had 33,833 stores in 80 c ...
on
Astor Place
Astor Place is a one-block street in NoHo/ East Village, in the lower part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It runs from Broadway in the west (just below East 8th Street) to Lafayette Street. The street encompasses two plazas at th ...
in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
.
In
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
, he was often on or around his houseboat in
Nice
Nice ( , ; Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative c ...
, France.
Earlier in his life, he was friends with a street poet named
Big Brown Big Brown may refer to:
* Big Brown (horse), an American thoroughbred racehorse
* Big brown bat, an North American bat
* Big Brown, a nickname for the delivery company United Parcel Service
* Big Brown Box, an Australian online retailer
*Big Brown ...
, who
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
called "the best he ever heard." His memories were recalled for a 2015
WNYC
WNYC is the trademark and a set of call letters shared by WNYC (AM) and WNYC-FM, a pair of nonprofit, noncommercial, public radio stations located in New York City. WNYC is owned by New York Public Radio (NYPR), a nonprofit organization that di ...
investigation by
Jill Lepore
Jill Lepore is an American historian and journalist. She is the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at ''The New Yorker'', where she has contributed since 2005. She writes about American ...
into what happened to Big Brown.
He made a lot of music, but recorded little. He had "little patience for the machinations of the music business." His preference was to have "fun and music. Not just music, fun and music." His third and last album was released in December, 2013, with tracks alternating between recorded songs and excerpts of his stories, extracted from interviews he did with long-time collaborator,
Joe Flood.
He died on February 6, 2017, in
Kingston, NY
Kingston is a city in and the county seat of Ulster County, New York, United States. It is north of New York City and south of Albany. The city's metropolitan area is grouped with the New York metropolitan area around Manhattan by the United ...
. He was 83.
Film appearances
He and his band appeared in
Henry Jaglom
Henry David Jaglom (born January 26, 1938) is an English-born American actor, film director and playwright.
Life and career
Jaglom was born to a Jewish family in London, England, the son of Marie (née Stadthagen) and Simon M. Jaglom, who wor ...
's 1983 film ''
Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?'' with
Karen Black
Karen Blanche Black (née Ziegler; July 1, 1939 – August 8, 2013) was an American actress, screenwriter, singer, and songwriter. She rose to prominence for her work in various studio and independent films in the 1970s, frequently portrayi ...
and a young
Larry David
Lawrence Gene David (born July 2, 1947) is an American comedian, writer, actor, and television producer. He and Jerry Seinfeld created the television sitcom ''Seinfeld'', on which David was head writer and executive producer for the first seve ...
. He was the subject of two documentaries, Jazbo Gross'
''Busker'', (2010) which was nominated for a Danish DOX award, and ''Working for the'' ''Good Life'', for French Television. In the latter, he said the only people who could really live the lives they wanted were millionaires and buskers.
Discography
With Lost Wandering
* ''Having ourselves a Time''
* ''Spreading Rhythm Around''
* ''The Best Of''
* In Holland
* Danny Fitzgerald and the Lost Wandering Blues and Jazz Band, 2013
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fitzgerald, Danny
1933 births
2017 deaths