Ref. Vince Morgan's recent posting [230927 MMDigest]

Dear MMD Readers, you probably saw a recent item submitted by Vince
Morgan about how George Gershwin was inspired to write "Rhapsody in
Blue" while riding in a blue train car and listening to the sound of
the wheels riding on the rails.

I love hearing those little tidbits of history that are usually lost
in time until (or unless) someone notices and repeats the story. It
reminded me of a story from my past so I sent a note to Vince. Here's
a copy of my note for your amusement.

"Thanks so much for your item on MMD this morning. There are so
many interesting stories behind historical events, but we seldom get
to hear the back story. Reminds me of those radio shorts by Paul
Harvey many years ago. I think there was even a book about 'The 
_Rest_ of the Story'.

"Here's another one for you. While I worked at Xerox, over 30 years,
Ago, I attended a conference on display technology in San Francisco.
At lunch I sat next to Lenny Lipton, the fellow who wrote "Puff the
Magic Dragon". We talked about stereo vision and 3D displays for
a while and then he told me the story about writing "Puff".

"He was waiting in Peter Yarrow's home while Peter was getting ready to
go out someplace. So Lenny jotted down a simple poem about childhood
innocence and left it on Yarrow's piano. Yarrow found it later and
wrote music to go with the poem. Nothing about drugs -- just the
opposite: a pretty, little tune that every child knows.

"By the way, Lenny Lipton was a researcher on stereoscopic projection
technology. He died last year."

Vince Morgan sent me back this neat addendum and a footnote about
Hi Babit: "There are so many 'behind the scenes' stories that could
make a great difference in people's lives if they only knew. George
Gershwin's career was crashing and was about to fail. But "Rhapsody
in Blue" changed _everything_ for him."

Vince added, "Hi Babit loved playing 'Puff the Magic Dragon' and
played the tune for QRS. He played it on our [Morgan's] piano for our
Lady Liberty AMICA chapter once. We miss him."

I can't beat that one. The closest I can come is when Robbie played
"Ice Cream, You Scream" on our old player piano.

Regards from western New York,
Craig Smith

 [ Peter Yarrow established the 1960s folk trio of Peter, Paul
 [ and Mary, ref. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter,_Paul_and_Mary 
 [ Lenny Lipton was a classmate with Yarrow at Cornell University, ref.
 [ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/music-news/lenny-lipton-dead-puff-magic-dragon-1235235205/ 
 [ -- Robbie