David Blue (February 18, 1941 – December 2, 1982) was an American folk music singer-songwriter and actor.
Stuart David Cohen was born in Pawtucket, a town just north of Providence, Rhode Island, the son of a Jewish father and Irish Roman Catholic French Canadian descent mother. David quit high school at age 17, left home, and joined the Navy, but was soon thrown out for his "Inability to adjust to a military way of life," so he moved to Greenwich Village in 1964.
He was quickly recognized as an important new voice by both the old guard and the new and was taken into the inner circle of the era’s most important singer-songwriters including Tom Paxton, Dave Van Ronk, Eric Andersen and Bob Dylan.
Within months, he made his recording debut on the now-legendary Broadside Singers compilation alongside Dylan, Paxton, Andersen and Pat Sky among others. Because he shared his name with two other nationally known musicians (guitarist/keyboardist David Cohen of San Francisco’s Country Joe & The Fish as well as the “other” David Cohen, a well-known Los Angeles session guitarist), Eric and Bob urged him to adopt the stage name “David Blue” after his deep, blue eyes to avoid confusion.
His self-titled 1966 Elektra album is considered one of the greatest recording debuts in the history of folk music and its success propelled him into a decade-long career as a major label recording artist which yielded another six critically acclaimed albums. The track “Outlaw Man” from his 1973 Asylum Records release Nice Baby and the Angel provided labelmates the Eagles with a song which was not only integral to the storyline of their second album, Desperado, but also provided them with a major hit when it was released as a single.
In 1976, Bob Dylan hit the road to promote his latest album, Desire, which was released to much critical acclaim and became one of the best-selling records of his career. David was invited to participate in the tour which gathered together musicians, artists, writers and actors with whom Dylan had been associated in the first 15 years of his career including Joan Baez, Bobby Neuwirth, Allen Ginsberg, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Ronee Blakely and Roger McGuinn.
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The company was dubbed “The Rolling Thunder Revue” and Dylan filmed the proceedings simultaneously documenting the music and creating fictional scenes involving the participants which would eventually see limited theatrical release as the four-hour movie Renaldo & Clara. David appeared in the film as himself which led to a side-career as an actor with appearances in three more feature length movie projects including, The American Friend (1977), directed by Wim Wenders, The Ordeal of Patty Hearst (a 1979 TV movie) and Human Highway (1982) by Neil Young. Human Highway premiered in 1983 after Blue's death. Blue also performed onstage in Stephen Poliakoff's play American Days at Manhattan Theatre Club in New York City, in December 1980, directed by Jacques Levy.
Blue had battled weight issues since childhood, and struck many as unduly conscious of his looks. When Blue was in California, a close friend Leslie Morris recalled, he was always on one diet or another: “He’d lose weight and put it back on, and it was always a big deal and rough for him. He had real image issues.” In New York again, his renewed focus on acting made it doubly important that he be as healthy as possible even though he was a chain smoker and he began exercising more regularly.
On December 1st, 1982, Blue and his wife moved into an apartment of their own, on Prince Street. The next morning, after he’d spent one night in their new home, Blue donned his light-blue jogging suit, said goodbye to his wife, and went out for a run and never returned. He died of a heart attack at the age of 41, while jogging during his second lap in Washington Square Park in New York City.
At his funeral, friends and family gathered at the Gramercy Park Memorial Chapel in New York to pay their respects at an open-casket viewing. When the undertaker had asked his devastated and supportive wife, Nesya, if she wanted to include any of her husband’s belongings alongside him, she immediately thought of a Casio watch she’d bought for him. He’d loved that watch, especially the rudimentary video games he could play on it, and she had it placed in the casket.
As Nesya and others sat in the chapel, the quiet was shattered by a loud, piercing beep-beep-beep. “I said, ‘What’s that?’’’ recalls David’s friend, author Marc Eliot. “Scared the shit out of me.” Even more unsettling, the sound was coming from inside the casket. Apparently, no one had checked the settings on Blue’s watch, and the alarm went off on schedule.
Although he never achieved major stardom, he was recognized by Leonard Cohen during his eulogy as a “songwriters songwriter” stating that, “David Blue was the peer of any singer in this country.” In 2018, David Blue was inducted into the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame.
(Edited from Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame Archive, Rolling Stone, Wikipedia & AllMusic)