"Something Wicked This Way Comes" was not Ray Bradbury's only foray
into a musical subject. In his novel, "Death is a Lonely Business"
(Knopf, 1985), he models a character on Brun Campbell, who had been
a student of Scott Joplin's in Sedalia in the late 1890s.
In later years, Campbell became a barber in Venice, California.
The character is "Cal", who gives the worst haircuts in California
and who has a piano in his shop on which he plays "The Maple Leaf Rag".
Bradbury knew Campbell, and may even have had Campbell haircuts.
Ed Berlin
|