[Dixielandjazz] "The Cat"

[Bill Horton]

Some of you, I'm sure, remember "The Cat" cartoons by Gene Deitsch in the
old Record Changer magazine.  Friend Gene just emailed me about his recent
trip to the US (from his home in Prague) and enclosed an attachment about a
new book of his old cartoons just out.

If you aren't familiar with his cartoons you might as well delete now, but
if you are a fan, I've copied the attachment below.

Bill Horton
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

YOU ARE INVITED:

           WHAT: AN EVENING WITH GENE DEITCH
           WHERE: BERKELEY's COMIC RELIEF
           WHEN: FROM 7 to 8 P.M., FRIDAY, MAY 16th

We want to thank you for your support of Fantagraphics through the years by
inviting you to a very special event. FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS and COMIC RELIEF
are pleased to present a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: the chance to meet
and mingle with the Academy Award-winning animator and cartoonist GENE
DEITCH, author of THE CAT ON A HOT THIN GROOVE (and father to fellow
cartoonist KIM DEITCH!).

This is the only public appearance that Deitch, 79, will be making to
promote
THE CAT ON A HOT THIN GROOVE. The cartoonist, who has lived in Prague
for over 30 years, will be returning home to Eastern Europe that weekend,
making
this an extremely rare opportunity to meet a living legend.

On the long road to becoming an Oscar-winning animation director,
Gene Deitch became an intense jazz fan. At the age of 21 in 1945, he
discovered The
Record Changer magazine, a jazz collector's magazine filled with fanatical,
scholarly,
and purist essays about jazz as well as listings of hard-to-find jazz
albums.
Deitch created a cartoon feature for Record Changer titled "The Cat," which
quickly became
a fixture at the magazine. He also started drawing the covers, which graced
almost
every issue from 1945 to 1951 along with "The Cat." Deitch's stylistically
virtuoso
images exquisitely embodied the essence of jazz and became a visual paean to
the joy of
collecting and appreciating jazz.

Fantagraphics Books is proud to collect all of Deitch's Record Changer
covers
and "Cat" cartoons in one coffee-table, landscape-format art book,
reproducing his
covers in the same gorgeous colors in which they first appeared as well
as the black-and-white Cat cartoons and a commentary by Deitch - who later
went
on to become an award-wining animator as the Creative Director of
CBS/Terrytoons,
where he created Tom Terrific and Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog for The
Captain Kangaroo
Show, as well as many other animated features.
This event is not being advertised or promoted to the media, although it is
open to anyone,
so feel free to forward to interested parties. But we are intending it to be
an intimate evening
for fans and friends of Mr. Deitch's, and you are receiving this invitation
because you are
either a valued friend, colleague or supporter of Fantagraphics and/or Mr.
Deitch's.

Thanks,
Eric Reynolds
Official Shill, Fantagraphics Books              THE CAT ON A HOT THIN
GROOVE .
By Gene Deitch
                                    $39.95 . 200 pp. . Full-Color .