Easy Slider

The Dead Pool continues with the death of Willy DeVille. He would have turned 60 years old on August 27. He would have, if death, in the form of pancreatic cancer, hadn't knocked on his door twenty days sooner.

Willy DeVille will not get the bombastic coverage that another music artist did about a month ago. DeVille never flew very high on the pop music radar screen, due some to his own choice, I'm thinking. I'm sure he rests in peace knowing that there won't be a lot of hoopla about his passing. For the relatively few music fans that knew of his contributions and appreciated his honest and excellent work, his death means there will be one less artist to pass on the legacy of roots music.

Here, from Wikipedia, are some quotes from people who knew and worked with Willy DeVille.

The arranger, producer and songwriter, Jack Nitzsche, said that DeVille was the best singer he had ever worked with.

The music critic, Robert Palmer,in The New York Times, wrote about him in 1980, "Mr. DeVille is a magnetic performer, but his macho stage presence camouflages an acute musical intelligence; his songs and arrangements are rich in ethnic rhythms and blues echoes, the most disparate stylistic references, yet they flow seamlessly and hang together solidly. He embodies (New York's) tangle of cultural contradictions while making music that's both idiomatic, in the broadest sense, and utterly original."

Doc Pomus, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member with whom he penned several songs, wrote about him, "DeVille knows the truth of a city street and the courage in a ghetto love song. And the harsh reality in his voice and phrasing is yesterday, today, and tomorrow—timeless in the same way that loneliness, no money, and troubles find each other and never quit for a minute."

Critic Mark Keresman wrote in the liner notes for the LP "Coups de Grace" about Willy DeVille, "In some respects, DeVille is the rock & roll counterpart to Sinatra—both can rock, both stared down personal demons, both are capable of rousing memories sweet and sad, and both can navigate the mean streets with panache before winding up on Lonely Avenue at daybreak."

To me, Willy DeVille was the kind of artist that every time I heard a song of his, I reacted to it, always favorably. DeVille, to my mind, epitomized New York City more than his more popular peers like the New York Dolls, Television and Talking Heads. While Lou Reed certainly touched on the oeuvre on the LP "New York", no one, to my mind, had the myriad of influences that NYC has on music so ingrained in his sound. Whether he was the Latin lover in "Spanish Stroll", the outright rocker in "Soul Twist", the sad friend of the "Mixed Up, Shook Up Girl", or the R&B crooner of "When You're Away From Me", DeVille captured exactly the proper nuance to make it sound authentic without being derivative. DeVille could have been as easily accepted on the AM radio as he is on the modern sound system.

Unfortunately, for me and for DeVille, he was never an artist that I had to "own". Like the musical genres he championed, his music was there for the pleasure of listening. I can only hope that his contribution to the movie, "Princess Bride", "Storybook Love", his most successful and popular performance, kept him comfortable.

"You left behind your family and money
All in town know your family's name
Look at me it's plain to see
My pockets are empty
But brighter than gold
in my heart burns a flame.

from "Angels Never Lie" on the LP "Loup Garou"

Which is as good a place as any to start in understanding how versatile and singular a performer this man was. There have been few that could create the almost cinematic landscape in the aural atmospheres he could. I can only hope that in his passing, some new fans will discover Willy DeVille, and he will continue to deliver the goods as he has for the last four decades. As Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the man who gave us "The Little Prince" said, "He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man."

For Willy, I hope it's true.