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Los Angeles Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
L.A. jazz legend Bobby Bradford lost his Altadena home to wildfire. At 91, music is ‘all I have left'
Fifty years ago, L.A. free-jazz titan Bobby Bradford moved into a rambling, verdant house in Altadena. The cornet and trumpet virtuoso, who performed in Ornette Coleman's band and taught jazz history at Pomona College and Pasadena City College for decades, chose the neighborhood partly because it was bustling with artists. He finally had enough bedrooms for his young family to thrive in a bucolic corner of the city with deep Black roots. In January, Bradford's house burned down in the Eaton fire, alongside thousands of others in his cherished Altadena. At 91, he never imagined starting his life over again in tiny rented apartments, with decades of memories in cinders. Despite it all, he's still playing music. (He said that while he did not receive grants from major organizations such as MusiCares or Sweet Relief, a GoFundMe and others efforts by fellow musicians helped him replace his cherished horn.) At the Hammer Museum on Thursday, he'll revisit 'Stealin' Home,' a 2019 suite of original compositions inspired by his lifelong hero — the baseball legend and Dodgers' color-line-breaker Jackie Robinson, a man who knew about persevering through sudden, unrelenting adversity. 'That's all I have left,' Bradford said, pulling his horn out of its case to practice for the afternoon. 'I'm [91] years old. I don't have years to wait around to rebuild.' For now, Bradford lives a small back house on a quiet Pasadena residential street. It's his and his wife's fifth temporary residence since the Eaton fire, and they've done their best to make it a home. Bradford hung up vintage posters from old European jazz festivals and corralled enough equipment together to peaceably write music in the garage. Still, he misses his home in Altadena — both the physical neighborhood where he'd run into friends at the post office and the dream of Altadena, where working artists and multigenerational families could live next to nature at the edge of Los Angeles. 'We knew who all the musicians were. Even if we didn't spent much time all together, it did feel like one big community,' Bradford said. 'We knew players for the L.A. Phil, painters, dancers.' These days, there's a weariness in his eyes and gait, understandable after such a profound disruption in the twilight of his life. He's grateful that smaller local institutions have stepped up to provide places for him to practice his craft, even as insurance companies dragged him through a morass. 'The company said they won't insure me again because because I filed a claim on my house,' he said, bewildered. 'How is that my fault?' But he draws resilience from his recent music, which evokes the gigantic accomplishments and withering abuse Robinson faced as the first Black player in Major League Baseball. As a child in 1947, Bradford remembers listening to the moment Robinson took the field, and while he has always admired the feat, his understanding of Robinson has evolved with age. 'It was such a revelation to me as a kid, but later I was more interested in who the person was that would agree to be the sacrificial lamb,' Bradford said. 'How do you turn that into flesh-and-blood music? I began to think about him being called up, with a kind of call-and-response in the music.' The challenge Bradford gave himself — evoking Robinson's grace on the field and fears off it — caps a long career of adapting his art form to reflect and challenge the culture around him. With Coleman's band in the '50s and '60s, and on his own formidable catalog as a bandleader, he helped pioneer free jazz, a style that subverted the studied cool of bebop with blasts of atonality and mercurial song structures. He played on Coleman's 1972 LP 'Science Fiction,' alongside Indian vocalist Asha Puthli. 'Ornette played with so much raw feeling,' Bradford said. 'He showed me how the same note could be completely different if you played it in a different chord. I had to learn that to play his songs.' His longstanding collaboration with clarinetist John Carter set the template for post-bop in L.A., charged with possibility but lyrical and yearning. He's equally proud of his decades in academia, introducing young students to centuries of the Black American music that culminated in jazz, and the new ways of being that emerged from it. At both Pomona College and Pasadena City College (where Robinson attended and honed his athletic prowess), Bradford helped his students inhabit the double consciousness required of Black artists to survive, invent and advance their art forms in America — from slavery's field songs to Southern sacred music, to Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan and into the wilds of modernity. 'You always had that one kid who thinks he knows more about this than I do,' he said with a laugh. 'But then you make him understand that to get to this new Black identity, you have to understand what Louis Armstrong had to overcome, how he had to perform in certain ways in front of white people, so he could create this music.' He's been rehearsing with a mix of older and younger local musicians at Healing Force of the Universe, a beloved Pasadena record store and venue that reminds him of the makeshift jazz club he owned near Pasadena's Ice House in the '70s. Places like that are on edge in L.A. these days. Local clubs such as ETA and the Blue Whale (where Bradford recorded a live album in 2018) have closed or faced hard times postpandemic. Others, like the new Blue Note in Hollywood, have big aspirations. He's hopeful L.A. jazz — ever an improvisational art form — will survive and thrive even after the loss of a neighborhood like Altadena displaced so many artists. 'I remember someone coming into our club in the '70s and saying he hated the music we were playing. I asked him what he didn't like about it, and he said, 'Well, everything.' I told him, 'Maybe this isn't the place for you then,'' Bradford laughed. 'You can't live in Los Angeles without that spirit. There are always going to be new places to play.' He's worried about the country, though, as many once-settled questions about who belongs in America are called into doubt under the current president. January's wildfires proved to him, very intimately, that the most fixed points in one's life and community are vulnerable. Even Jackie Robinson, whose feats seemed an indisputable point of pride for all Americans, had his military career temporarily scrubbed from government websites in a recent purge against allegedly 'woke' history. 'I thought we had rowed ourselves across the River Jordan,' Bradford said, shaking his head. 'But now we're back on the other side again. We thought we had arrived.' Who knows how many years of performing Bradford has left. But as the sound of his melancholy horn arced through a sweltering Pasadena afternoon, one couldn't help but be grateful to still have him here playing, even after losing everything. 'You know, in his first game, in three times at bat, Jackie Robinson didn't get a hit,' he said. 'Folks said, 'Oh, it's so sad. We told you he couldn't play on a professional level.' But when you dig into it, you discover that he didn't get a hit at the game, but he laid down a sacrifice to score the winning run.'
Newsweek
11-08-2025
- Politics
- Newsweek
Gavin Newsom's Odds of Beating AOC for Nomination in 2028
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. California Governor Gavin Newsom is slightly more likely than New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028. According to online betting website Polymarket, a platform where users can place "yes" or "no" bets on the likelihood of world events, Newsom is leading the progressive firebrand by 4 percentage points in a hypothetical matchup that also includes other high-profile Democratic figures. Neither candidate has formally announced a presidential run but both have sparked speculation that they may run as they boosted their social media presence and attended rallies across America. California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks at Pasadena City College, Monday, July 7, 2025, in Pasadena, Calif. California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks at Pasadena City College, Monday, July 7, 2025, in Pasadena, Calif. David Crane/The Orange County Register via AP, File/ Los Angeles Time Out Why It Matters While the next presidential election is over three years away, Democrats have appeared divided been in the wake of then-Vice President Kamala Harris' loss to Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Some blamed her loss on alienating moderate voters while others said she was not progressive enough. Whoever emerges as the next party leader will shape the Democratic narrative for change and hold a lot of responsibility for the party's electoral success. What To Know Newsom, who has consistently been mentioned among the leading candidates in most polls of the 2028 primary, has a 19 percent chance of winning. He has not announced his candidacy, nor has he ruled it out. In June 2025, he told The Wall Street Journal: "I'm not thinking about running, but it's a path that I could see unfold." This is 4 percentage points more than AOC, who has a 15 percent chance of becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. In April, she was asked about whether she might run for president by a Fox News Digital reporter on Capitol Hill. She did not answer either way and merely joked: "Because of my Instagram posts?" Ocasio-Cortez had posted what some considered to be a campaign-style video on social media in April. It showed clips of a recent tour she did with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Pressed further, she said: "Look, it's a video. Frankly, what people should be most concerned about is the fact that Republicans are trying to cut Medicaid right now and people's health care. It's a danger and that's really what my central focus is." "To me, this moment is not about campaigns or elections or about politics. It's about making sure people are protected," she continued. "And we've got people that are getting locked up for exercising their First Amendment rights, we're getting 2-year-olds getting deported into cells in Honduras, we're getting people about to get kicked off of Medicaid. That, to me, is the most important thing." Meanwhile, other political figures are also being mooted for 2028. These include Pete Buttigieg, who was transportation secretary under then President Joe Biden, who has a 12 percent chance of winning the ticket, and Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, who is trailing with a 6 percent chance of success. What People Are Saying Political science professor at Columbia University Robert Y. Shapiro previously told Newsweek: "The Democratic primary polling is much too early and all we are seeing is name recognition for past presidential candidates and ones in the news lately in a visible way." What Happens Next Most candidates do not announce presidential runs until after the midterm elections. Several other Democrats might throw their hat into the ring for the primary including Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego.
Boston Globe
18-04-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
10,000 pages of records about Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 assassination are released, on Trump's order
The files included pictures of handwritten notes by Sirhan. Advertisement 'RFK must be disposed of like his brother was,' read the writing on the outside of an empty envelope, referring to Kennedy's older brother, President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. The return address was from the district director of the Internal Revenue Service in Los Angeles. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Sirhan also filled a page of a Pasadena City College notebook with variations of 'R.F.K must die,' and 'R.F.K must be killed.' In a note dated May 18, 1968, he wrote: 'My determination to eliminate R.F.K. is becoming more of an unshakable obsession.' In another of the documents, the assassin said he advocated for 'the overthrow of the current president.' Democrat Lyndon Johnson was in the White House at the time of Robert F. Kennedy's death. 'I have no absolute plans yet, but soon will compose them,' wrote Sirhan, who pledged support for communist Russia and China. Advertisement The files also included notes from interviews with people who knew Sirhan from a wide variety of contexts, such as classmates, neighbors, and coworkers. While some described him as 'a friendly, kind, and generous person,' others depicted a brooding and 'impressionable' young man who felt strongly about his political convictions and briefly believed in mysticism. According to the files, Sirhan told his garbage collector that he planned to kill Kennedy shortly after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The sanitation worker, a Black man, said he planned to vote for Kennedy because he would help Black people. 'Well, I don't agree. I am planning on shooting the son of a bitch,' Sirhan replied, the man told investigators. FBI documents describe interviews with a group of tourists who had heard rumors about Kennedy being shot weeks before his death. Several people who visited Israel in May 1968 said a tour guide told them Kennedy had been shot. One person said he heard that an attempt on Kennedy's life had been made in Milwaukee. Another heard that he was shot in Nebraska. The National Archives and Records Administration posted 229 files containing the pages to its public website. The release comes a month after unredacted files related to the assassination of President Kennedy were disclosed. Those documents gave curious readers more details about Cold War-era covert US operations in other nations, but did not initially lend credence to long-circulating conspiracy theories about who killed JFK. Trump, a Republican, has championed in the name of transparency the release of documents related to high-profile assassinations and investigations. But he hasalso been deeply suspicious for years of the government's intelligence agencies. His administration's release of once-hidden files opens the door for more public scrutiny of the operations and conclusions of institutions such as the CIA and the FBI. Advertisement Trump signed an executive order in January calling for the release of government documents related to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and King, who were killed within two months of each other. Lawyers for Kennedy's killer have said for decades that he is unlikely to reoffend or pose a danger to society, and in 2021, a parole board deemed Sirhan suitable for release. But Governor Gavin Newson rejected the decision in 2022, keeping him in state prison. In 2023, a different panel denied him release, saying he still lacks insight into what caused him to shoot Kennedy. Kennedy remains an icon for liberals, who see him as a champion for human rights and who also was committed to fighting poverty and racial and economic injustice. They often regard his assassination as the last in a series of major tragedies that put the US and its politics on a darker, more conservative path. He was a sometimes divisive figure during his lifetime. Some critics thought he came late to opposing the Vietnam War, and launched his campaign for president in 1968 only after the Democratic primary in New Hampshire exposed President Johnson's political weakness. While Kennedy's campaign inspired hope among some Democrats, he still trailed Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey for the party's presidential nomination after winning the California primary. Kennedy's older brother appointed him US attorney general, and he remained a close aide to him until JFK's assassination in Dallas. In 1964, he won a US Senate seat from New York and was seen as the heir to the family's political legacy. Advertisement One of his sons, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now serves as health and human services secretary. He commended Trump and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, for their 'courage' and 'dogged efforts' to release the files. 'Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government,' the health secretary said in a statement.
The Guardian
18-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
US releases thousands of files related to Robert F Kennedy assassination
About 10,000 pages of records related to the 1968 assassination of Robert F Kennedy, including handwritten notes by the assassin, who said the US senator and Democratic presidential candidate 'must be disposed of' and acknowledged an obsession with killing him. The release continued the disclosure of national secrets ordered by Donald Trump after he began his second presidency in January. It comes a month after unredacted files related to the 1963 assassination of president John F Kennedy were disclosed. The earlier documents gave curious readers more details about cold- war era covert US operations in other nations but did not initially lend credence to long-circulating conspiracy theories about who killed JFK, RFK's brother. Robert Kennedy was fatally shot on 5 June 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, moments after giving a speech celebrating his victory in California's presidential primary. His assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving life in prison. The files included pictures of handwritten notes by Sirhan. 'RFK must be disposed of like his brother was,' read the writing on the outside of an empty envelope with the return address from the district director of the Internal Revenue Service in Los Angeles. Sirhan also filled a page of a Pasadena City College notebook with variations of 'RFK must die' and 'RFK must be killed.' In a note dated 18 May 1968, he wrote: 'My determination to eliminate RFK is becoming more of an unshakable obsession.' In another of the newly released documents, the assassin said he advocated for 'the overthrow of the current president'. The Democrat Lyndon Johnson was in the White House at the time of RFK's death. 'I have no absolute plans yet, but soon will compose them,' wrote Sirhan, who pledged support for communist Russia and China. The newly released files also included notes from interviews with people who knew Sirhan from a wide variety of contexts, such as classmates, neighbors and coworkers. While some described him as 'a friendly, kind and generous person', others depicted a brooding and 'impressionable' young man who felt strongly about his political convictions and briefly believed in mysticism. According to the files, Sirhan told his garbage collector that he planned to kill Kennedy shortly after Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated on 4 April 1968. The co-worker, a Black man, said he planned to vote for Kennedy because he would help Black people. 'Well, I don't agree,' Sirhan replied, the man told investigators. 'I am planning on shooting the son of a bitch'. FBI documents describe interviews with a group of tourists who had heard rumors about Kennedy being shot weeks before his death. Several people who visited Israel in May 1968 said a tour guide told them Kennedy had been shot. One person said he heard that an attempt on Kennedy's life had been made in Milwaukee. Another heard that he was shot in Nebraska. The National Archives and Records Administration posted 229 files containing the pages to its public website. Many files related to the assassination had been previously released – but others had not been digitized and sat for decades in federal government storage facilities. Trump, a Republican, has championed in the name of transparency the release of documents related to high-profile assassinations and investigations. But he's also been deeply suspicious for years of the government's intelligence agencies. His administration's release of once-hidden files opens the door for additional public scrutiny and questions about the operations and conclusions of institutions such as the CIA and the FBI. Trump signed an executive order in January calling for the release of government documents related to the assassinations of Robert F Kennedy and King after their killings within two months of each other. Lawyers for Kennedy's killer have said for decades that he is unlikely to reoffend or pose a danger to society. And in 2021, a parole board deemed Sirhan suitable for release. But California governor Gavin Newson rejected the decision in 2022, keeping him in state prison. In 2023 , a different panel denied him release, saying he still lacks insight into what caused him to shoot Kennedy. The late senator's son Robert F Kennedy Jr, who now serves as Trump's health and human services secretary, commended the president and his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, for what he called their 'courage' and 'dogged efforts' to release the files. 'Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government,' Kennedy Jr said in a statement.
Los Angeles Times
18-04-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
10,000 pages of records about Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 assassination released on Trump's order
WASHINGTON — About 10,000 pages of records related to the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were released Friday, including handwritten notes by the gunman, who said the Democratic presidential candidate 'must be disposed of' and acknowledged an obsession with killing him. The release continued the disclosure of national secrets ordered by President Trump. Kennedy was fatally shot on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles moments after giving a speech celebrating his victory in California's presidential primary. His assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving life in prison. The files included pictures of handwritten notes by Sirhan. 'RFK must be disposed of like his brother was,' read the writing on the outside of an empty envelope with the return address from the district director of the Internal Revenue Service in Los Angeles. Kennedy's brother was John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States who was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. Sirhan also filled a page of a Pasadena City College notebook with variations of 'R.F.K. must die' and 'R.F.K. must be killed.' In a note dated May 18, 1968, he wrote: 'My determination to eliminate R.F.K. is becoming more of an unshakable obsession.' In another of the newly released documents, the assassin said he advocated for 'the overthrow of the current president.' Democrat Lyndon Johnson was in the White House at the time of RFK's death. 'I have no absolute plans yet, but soon will compose them,' wrote Sirhan, who pledged support for communist Russia and China. The newly released files also included notes from interviews with people who knew Sirhan from a wide variety of contexts, such as classmates, neighbors and co-workers. While some described him as 'a friendly, kind and generous person,' others depicted a brooding and 'impressionable' young man who felt strongly about his political convictions and briefly believed in mysticism. According to the files, Sirhan told his garbage collector that he planned to kill Kennedy shortly after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The co-worker, a Black man, said he planned to vote for Kennedy because he would help Black people. 'Well, I don't agree. I am planning on shooting the son of a bitch,' Sirhan replied, the man told investigators. FBI documents describe interviews with a group of tourists who had heard rumors about Kennedy being shot weeks before his death. Several people who visited Israel in May 1968 said a tour guide told them Kennedy had been shot. One person said he heard that an attempt on Kennedy's life had been made in Milwaukee. Another heard that he was shot in Nebraska. The National Archives and Records Administration posted 229 files containing the pages to its public website. Many files related to the assassination had been previously released, but others had not been digitized and sat for decades in federal government storage facilities. The release comes a month after unredacted files related to the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy were disclosed. Those documents gave curious readers more details about Cold War-era covert U.S. operations in other nations, but did not initially lend credence to long-circulating conspiracy theories about who killed JFK. Trump, a Republican, has championed in the name of transparency the release of documents related to high-profile assassinations and investigations. But he's also been deeply suspicious for years of the government's intelligence agencies. His administration's release of once-hidden files opens the door for additional public scrutiny and questions about the operations and conclusions of institutions such as the CIA and the FBI. Trump signed an executive order in January calling for the release of government documents related to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and King, who were killed within two months of each other. Lawyers for Kennedy's killer have said for decades that he is unlikely to reoffend or pose a danger to society, and in 2021, a parole board deemed Sirhan suitable for release. But California Gov. Gavin Newson rejected the decision in 2022, keeping him in state prison. In 2023, a different panel denied him release, saying he still lacks insight into what caused him to shoot Kennedy. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a son of the New York senator who now serves as Health and Human Services secretary, commended Trump and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, for their 'courage' and 'dogged efforts' to release the files. 'Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government,' the Health secretary said in a statement. Funk and Panjwani write for the Associated Press. Funk reported from Omaha. AP writers Eric Tucker in Washington, Juan Lozano in Houston, John Hanna in Topeka, Kan., and Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Ala., contributed to this report.
