Bernard Lansky, one half of the Lansky Brothers, the clothiers who dressed Elvis starting in the 1950s through his death in 1977, has died. Lansky helped define postwar cool for generations of black and white musicians, up to and including the present day. It is a quintessentially American story. Like Nudie Cohn, the Lanskies were Eastern European Jews who started small in the clothing business, did well, and eventually rendered their services to some of the buggest names in film and music. Besides the King, The Lansky client list included Carl Perkins, ZZ Top, the Jonas Brothers, Johnny Cash, Duke Ellington, B.B. King, Kiss, Dr. John, and Count Basie to name a few. It was Bernard Lansky who dressed Elvis for his Louisiana Hayride and Ed Sullivan appearances, and Lansky who selected the white suit and blue shirt in which Presley was buried. The Lanskies opened their original Beale Street shop in 1946 selling World War 2 surplus items. A version still exists today. Sad to know that one more person connected to the Elvis story is gone.

The Cold War presidents in Hyde Park, November 1962

Laura Delano, Nelson Rockefeller, Adlai Stevenson, Ralph Bunche, and Robert Wagner attend the Hyde Park funeral, November 1962

Eleanor Roosevelt died fifty years ago today. Among other achievements in her long and productive life she served at First Lady longer than any person in American history. Each of the last two years the Hayfoot and I have taken the train north of the city to Hyde Park. We skipped this year because the Park Service is undertaking major renovations and we thought we would wait until next summer. Next summer if it’s not too hot we may hike some of the grounds. What struck me about Eleanor after visiting Val-Kill was how modern she was, and I mean that in every way. Grover Cleveland was in the White House when she was born; when the Great War started she was nearing her thirtieth birthday. After the White House years she l still lived another seventeen years, writing, speaking, traveling the world, and always aware of events. The output of books, letters, and newspaper columns is inconceivable. I would write more but I don’t have to, this excerpt from an upcoming dual biography puts things into perspective.

(images/NARA)

I did not learn until yesterday that Richard Current died on October 26. He reached the century mark, passing on three weeks to the day after his 100th birthday, but a person’s death is always surprising. Current was part of the intellectual tradition just prior to and after the Second World War that debunked many of the myths we believe about Abraham Lincoln. At the same time he admired the 16th president a great deal. Anyone who takes on the bloviating Gore Vidal (for his terrible historical novel Lincoln) deserves a gold star. Lincoln’s Loyalists is one of the more important monographs in my understanding of the war; I had always known there were Southern dissenters against secession, but I did not know the scope and extent until reading his book. I see my copy on the shelf in front of me right now.

Not only did LL change how I think about the war, but how I spoke about it as well. Before reading Current I might have said “The South” did this or “The North” did that. “The South,” however, did not secede or fight the Civil War any more than “The North” fought to preserve it. Today when writing or discussing the war I speak of “The Confederacy,” or “the Union Army,” or “Southern Unionists,” etc. etc. It’s not a pedantic observation. Words matter. Subtlety and complexity are important if we are to understand truly. This is just one of the lessons reading Richard Current gave me.