Elliot Gino Cahn

Elliot Gino Cahn

Elliot Gino Cahn
Screen grab

Elliot Gino Cahn was a founding member of Sha Na Na and played rhythm guitar for them from 1969–1973. That obviously included the Woodstock Music and Art Fair performance just before Jimi Hendrix closed the festival.

And while his performance career ended after that 1973 departure, he went back to school and eventually became a lawyer, he did not leave music completely, just the stage.

Elliot Gino Cahn

Esquire

In 1977 he received his Bachelor of Arts/Political Science. In 1981, his JD, Law as well as a Masters of Arts from University of California, Berkeley.

He opened his own law office in 1985 and his path since then, as mentioned above, has often included music as well as film.

For example from January 1995 to January 1997 he served as co-president and CEO of (510) Records, a joint venture label with the Universal Music Group.

During that same time and after, he managed numerous acts included Green Day.

Elliot Gino Cahn

Sha Na Na

It is difficult, I suppose, for someone who performed at such a famous event to remain anonymous. I also suppose for someone who performed at such a famous event that the occasional recognition is welcome.

From a 2009 Fandom blog entry: Back in June, I was surprised to see a request from Elliot “Gino” Cahn…. He asked if anyone had any access to a copy of a television special entitled “Good Vibrations from London” which starred the Beach Boys and Sha-Na-Na, among others. While I don’t have a copy in my archives, I felt that this was a golden opportunity. I figured if I could do me a favor, he would do me a favor and autograph my poster. I replied to his e-mail, privately, and told him where he might be able to find a copy. I also asked him if he would sign my poster for me. Elliot Cahn is interesting man. After he left Sha-Na-Na, he moved to the Bay Area and went back to school at the University of California at Berkely where he studied law. Eventually he married his love of music and his love of the law to be an attorney for such groups as Primus, The Offspring, and Rancid to name a few. He also served as Green Day’s first manager until they broke big with the “Dookie” album. I sent out my poster to him and he very quickly signed it and returned it to me. 

And an occasional reunion can happen, too. 2010 at Hofstra University. His comments, “ This is a delight; I left in 1973. The last two times I sang in public were at memorial services for friends of mine who died.

Elliot Gino Cahn

Advise

Nowadays, his firm is Cahn & Saltzman, LLP and under their name it reads, “We Know Music & Entertainment Law.”

They go on to say, “And we’ll have your legal and management needs handled and your backs covered all the time, all the way.

Don’t spend precious time worrying about things–spend it making and creating what you’re good at!

Elliot Cahn speaks to a group about copyright and music:

Elliot Gino Cahn

Tenor Dave Garrett

Tenor Dave Garrett

Dave Garrett is not David Garrett (born David Bongartz, 1981 Sept 4 in Aachen, Germany),  a classical violinist and recording artist, though a Last FM link  for Sha Na Na article suggests that.

Woodstock Dave

This Dave Garrett was a vocalist with Sha Na Na and performed with them at Woodstock.

At the time, Rolling Stone magazine said that he was from Brooklyn and the “…first tenor…majoring in electrical engineering, due to a masochistic philosophy.” 

Tenor Dave Garrett

Bendix Mouldings

He also, according to his bio at the Sha Na Na dot com site, “owned Bendix Mouldings for 35 years and has recently retired splitting his time between New York and Florida.

Dave was with the band from its inception in 1969 and only through 1970.

On June 3, 2016 eleven of the dozen Woodstock performers were part of the Columbia University Alumni weekend celebration. Member Frederick “Dennis” Greene had died  in 2015.

A George Leonard site article described Dave Garrett as “…a mountainous figure with a pure tenor.”

Here he is doing “Little Darlin’.”

Tenor Dave Garrett

Earth Sound

Tenor Dave Garrett

A Revolvy site article states that Garrett, “ran Earth Sound Research, a Long Island-based musical instrument amplifier company, during the 1970s.” The Farmingdale company closed in the early ’80s.  It may have closed because of  its use of very similar design to Peavey amps.

Tenor Dave Garrett

2016 gig

Hofstra University celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2016 and Sha Na Na was there as part of that celebration.  The San Diego Tribune has a picture of members rehearsing for that gig

More?

If anyone has anything more about Dave, please comment. He deserves more than a few links that all seem to end with that he is in business in New York City.

Methinks there’s more.

Tenor Dave Garrett

Black Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux

Black Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux

January 2, 1884 – March 25, 1951

Oscar Micheaux, the son of former slaves, was born in Illinois and grew up in Kansas . When he was 17 he became a porter on the railway, but within a few years left the railroad and homesteaded in South Dakota.

Black Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux

Homesteader to Author

He wrote about his farm life and  self-published The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer in  1913.  In 1915 he lost the farm.

In 1917 he again self-published a book, The Homesteader.  After a film deal fell through for the story, Micheaux decided to expand his publishing company. It became Micheaux Film and Book Company in 1919.

Black Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux

Author and Filmmaker

The Homesteader film was the first film made by an African-American. It starred Evelyn Preer.

Unlike the white-controlled film industry which portrayed blacks with stereotypes, Micheaux’s films had black characters in mysteries, gangster films and westerns. His films were written, directed, produced and portrayed by predominately all black cast and crew.

In 1924 he introduced the movie-going world to Paul Robeson in the film, Body and Soul.

Black Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux

Real characters

Given the times, his accomplishments in publishing and film are extraordinary, including being the first African-American to produce a film to be shown in “white” movie theaters. In his motion pictures, he moved away from the “Negro” stereotypes being portrayed in film at the time. Additionally, in his film Within Our Gates, Micheaux attacked the racism depicted in D.W. Griffith’s film, The Birth of a Nation.

The Producers Guild of America called him “The most prolific black – if not most prolific independent – filmmaker in American cinema.”

Black Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux

Filmography

1919

* The Homesteader
* Within Our Gates

1920

* The Brute
* Symbol of the Unconquered

1922

* Gunaslaus Mystery
* Deceit
* The Dungeon
* The Virgin of the Seminole
* Son of Satan

1923

* Jasper Landry’s Will

1924

* Body and Soul

1926

* The Spider’s Web

1927

* Millionaire

1928

* When Men Betray
* Easy Street

1929

* Wages of Sin

1930

* Darktown Revue

 

1931

* The Exile

1932

* Veiled Aristocrat
* Black Magic
* Ten Minutes to Live

1933

* The Girl From Chicago
* Ten Minutes to Kill

1934

* Harlem After Midnight

1935

* Lem Hawkin’s Confession

1936

* Temptation
* Underworld

1937

* God’s Stepchildren

1938

* Swing

1939

* Birthright
* Lying Lips

1940

* The Notorious Elinor Lee

1948

* Betrayal

Black Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux

Biography

Black Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux

In 2008, Patrick McGilligan published Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only: The Life of America’s First Black Filmmaker.  McGilligan refers to Micheaux as, “…the Jackie Robinson of American film … a Muhammad Ali decades before his time” who “deserves to be considered in the same breath as the sainted D. W. Griffith.”

In his review of the book, Phillip Lopate is critical of McGilligan’s high praise for Micheaux’s work.  He wrote, “…we do a disservice to the achievements of truly superb black auteurs, like Charles Burnett, Spike Lee and Ousmane Sembène, by pretending Micheaux was a great filmmaker. The man had his own validity, as a pathfinder and as the creator of an intriguing, curious body of work, which reveals much about America’s past social and racial contradictions, and its melodramatic conventions.”

Black Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux

Within Our Gates

Here is his “Within Our Gates” from 1919. It is the earliest known surviving feature film directed by an African American. The Library of Congress preserved it in 1993 from a single print found in Spain.

The story line is that a man abandons his fiance, an educated black woman.  She dedicates herself to helping a near bankrupt school for impoverished negro youths.

Within Our Gates was created in response to The Birth of a Nation which depicted southern whites in need of the Ku Klux Klan to protect them from blood thirsty blacks.

Micheaux showed the reality of racism, where a black man could be lynched for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Black Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux

Death

Micheaux died in Charlotte, North Carolina while on a business trip. His body was returned to Great Bend, Kansas, where he was interred in the Great Bend cemetery with other members of his family.

Black Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux