I went to a big shin-dig at the Wynn casino tonight.  It is day six of the 2009 edition of World Of Concrete, and my sponsor had a thank you dinner for their dealers.  Wonderful feast, open bar, good cheer.  The band was one which has played these events many times over the years.  A couple of horns, drums, guitar, keyboards and a pair of vivacious female singers.  One of them looked strikingly like Dolly Martin (nee Read) widow of the late Dick Martin (think Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in) and star of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls(BVD), the fantastic 1970 Russ Meyer film.

Dolly has a very distinctive face, and this gal had that same smile, crescent-moon eyes and high cheekbones (along with slatherings of mascara).

Dolly Read

Seeing her made me think of the lovely Theresa Duncan, who turned me onto the Carrie Nations and BVD a couple of years back, while we were discussing a particularly brazen act of suicide which I was trying to write about; or, more accurately was trying to get Theresa to write about, having given up on it myself.  She compared the suicide in my historical record with the attempted suicide of the band’s manager in BVD and that prompted me to rent and watch the film.  I became an instant fan of Russ Meyer.

Sixty days later Theresa committed suicide, a week later her lover, Jeremy Blake, followed her.

So, a lovely young woman singing made me sad tonight, through a series of connections completely beyond her control.  So ends day 6.