It's Halloween 1976, and eminent session bassist Leland Sklar is throwing a fancy dress party at his Los Angeles home for fellow musicians and record industry types, including producer Peter Asher and drummer Russ Kunkel, who would later appear in This Is Spinal Tap.
However there's one lone guest loitering in the background, whom no-one seems to know, everyone thinking he's someone else's friend - a svelte black man in a zoot suit with matching chapeau, meticulous afro, wide moustache and big, dark shades.
While everyone has brought wives and partners, this pimp-like character has slunk in unaccompanied without introducing himself, and appears content to observe proceedings quietly from the corner after helping himself to the buffet.
Rock photographer Henry Diltz, more used to shooting the likes of Hendrix and Zappa, inadvertently captures the besuited wallflower on film, while snapping his own gypsy-costumed wife. The gatecrasher looks startled in the light of his flash.
Not long afterwards the host, Sklar - still oblivious to this guest's identity despite asking around - finally approaches and asks if he's at the right party.
Continues here...
The only black man at the party...
The only black man at the party...
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
- Econoline
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Re: The only black man at the party...
From later in the article:
Ummm... Maybe they actually were *NOT* insulted? (Just a guess.)
Nah, that couldn't be it. If circumstance brings you an occasion where you have a chance to be insulted, then you have an obligation to be insulted. Them's the rules, nowadays...
"One wonders how Joni could be friends with legends like [Herbie] Hancock and Mingus, and no-one told her what she was doing was insulting."
Ummm... Maybe they actually were *NOT* insulted? (Just a guess.)
Nah, that couldn't be it. If circumstance brings you an occasion where you have a chance to be insulted, then you have an obligation to be insulted. Them's the rules, nowadays...

People who are wrong are just as sure they're right as people who are right. The only difference is, they're wrong.
— God @The Tweet of God
— God @The Tweet of God
Re: The only black man at the party...
[/size]Econoline wrote:
Ummm... Maybe they actually were *NOT* insulted? (Just a guess.)
[/quote]
It's not their job to be insulted, it's the job of white hand-wringing-middle-class-guilt-mongers to be insulted...
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”