CURATION
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from this page:
by Title Holder
Network Node
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Name:
Frank Beacham
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City/Place:
New York City
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Country:
United States
Life
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Bio:
FRANK BEACHAM is a New York City-based independent writer, director and producer who works in print, radio, television, film and theatre.
A former staff reporter for United Press International, the Miami Herald, Gannett Newspapers and Post-Newsweek, Beacham’s articles and stories have appeared in dozens of magazines and newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and Village Voice. Two stories from his non-fiction book, "Whitewash: A Southern Journey through Music, Mayhem and Murder," are being developed into feature films.
"Maverick," his play (written with George Demas) was produced off-Broadway in 2019. It was the story of his work with Orson Welles.
Beacham co-wrote the Harvey Brooks memoir "View from the Bottom," and has written three non-fiction books on video for the American Society of Cinematographers. He is a contributor to "Toward the Meeting of the Waters," an anthology on the civil rights movement published by the University of South Carolina Press.
Beacham has conceived and written projects for companies that include Warner Music Group, NBC, Sony, Panasonic, Mindport Communications, Snell & Wilcox, Authentium, Next Level Communications, Ameritech, Pixelmetrix, AMG Media and General Instrument.
Beacham was executive producer of Tim Robbins’ Touchstone feature film, "Cradle Will Rock," which was released nationally in 1999 and is currently available on home video.
Beacham wrote and directed the American Public Radio drama, "The Orangeburg Massacre," starring David Carradine, Blair Underwood and James Whitmore. It won the 1991 Gold Medal for Best History and the Silver Medal for Best Social Issues programs in international radio competition among 26 nations at the New York Festivals.
Beacham produced, with the late Richard Wilson, the six-hour retrospective, "Theatre of the Imagination: Radio Stories by Orson Welles & the Mercury Theatre" and wrote, directed and produced the documentary, "The Mercury Company Remembers" with Leonard Maltin. Previously, he has written for "Riverwalk: Live From the Landing," a weekly jazz broadcast from American Public Radio.
During the 1970s and 80s, Beacham was owner of Television Matrix, a film/TV production company that developed and produced a wide range of programming for broadcast, cable, syndication and home video markets. The company also supplied video news crews and freelance news reporting teams to the networks and other broadcasters.
Beacham’s clients included ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, BBC, NHK, Canadian Broadcasting and many individual television stations. He provided all west coast production and post-production services for "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," "The Start of Something Big" with Steve Allen and the Emmy award-winning "Mr. Previn Comes to Town." His company also provided southeast production services for NBC’s "TODAY" show and Paramount’s "Entertainment Tonight."
In 1985, he teamed with Orson Welles over a six-month period to develop a one-man television special. "Orson Welles Solo" was canceled after Mr. Welles died on the day production was set to begin. Beacham’s other credits include "A Tribute to John Huston," hosted by Jack Nicholson and Richard Brooks; "Ronald Neame on the Director;" "Hollywood Chronicles: The Great Movie Clowns," hosted by Jackie Cooper; "Private Lives, Public People," and "A Day in the Life of Hawaii," directed by Gordon Parks.
As a writer/reporter, Beacham was a member of a joint investigative reporting team for New York Times/Post-Newsweek/Miami Herald that spent one year investigating U.S. Sen. Edward Gurney (R-Florida). Gurney was indicted and left office. At UPI, he was assigned to cover the civil rights movement in Mississippi in early 1970s. He was a documentary cameraman at 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. He provided multi-station radio coverage of flights of Apollo 11 and 13 from the Kennedy Space Center.
In 1977, Beacham provided television coverage of the Begin-Sadat peace talks in Egypt and President Carter’s 1978 trip to France for ABC News. He worked for CBS News in Nicaragua during 1979 when Sandinista guerrillas overthrew President Anastasio Somoza. He covered the exile of Shah of Iran in Panama for NBC News. He also provided television coverage of President Reagan’s 1982 European trip to 25 television stations (working in five countries in ten days).
Frank Beacham has a B.A. in Journalism, 1969, from the University of South Carolina. He did post graduate studies at UCLA, the University of Southern California, and the American Film Institute.
Contact Information
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Email:
[email protected]
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Telephone:
212-873-9349
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Address:
141 West 73rd St. #7S
New York, NY 10023
My Writing
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Publications:
WHITEWASH: A Southern Journey through Music, Mayhem & Murder
Lost stories from the Modern South
Discover the hip young black and white dancers that defied segregation after World War II and gave birth to Carolina “beach music” and the shag. Visit Charlie’s Place, the defiant interracial nightclub in Myrtle Beach where jazz met race music, and gutsy clubgoers risked their lives to take the dance floor. Witness the Ku Klux Klan’s violent attempt in 1950 to stop the rise of the “forbidden” music that would soon become known as rhythm & blues.
Revisit the Orangeburg Massacre and find out why, after more than half a century, an aggressive effort continues to distort the role of former Gov. Robert McNair and his police forces in the 1968 killing of three black college students in Orangeburg, South Carolina.
Join the author’s surprising journey to his South Carolina hometown of Honea Path when he discovers that his own grandfather organized a group of gunmen that killed seven men and wounded 30 others at the local cotton mill in 1934.
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
Wolfram Mathematics
From Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, the unprecedented integration of the creative economy. Creators planet-wide positioned within reach of each other and the entire world by means of technology + small-world theory (see Wolfram above). Bahia was final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place on earth throughout all of human history. It was refuge for Sephardim fleeing the Inquisition. It is Indigenous both apart and subsumed into a sociocultural matrix which is all of these: a small-world matrix. Neural structures for human memory are small-world. This technological matrix is small-world...
In small worlds great things are possible.
Alicia Svigals
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"I'm truly thankful ... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)"
—Nduduzo Makhathini (JOHANNESBURG): piano, Blue Note recording artist
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
Dear friends & colleagues,
Having arrived in Salvador 13 years earlier, I opened a record shop in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for Bahian musicians, many of them magisterial but unknown.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Bahians and other Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix (people who have passed are not removed), then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).
But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Recent access to this matrix and Bahia are from these places (a single marker can denote multiple accesses).
Across the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
For a complete list of everybody inside, tap TOTAL below:
TOTAL
Nduduzo Makhathini
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Matt Garrison
RÁDIO MATRIX