Marty Laster

from 2017
Marty was a highly creative person. I helped him with an early version of his web site.
He played really great solos, and had a loose sense of humor.
I spent some time over many years with hime, and have some recordings of the two of us playing traditional blues.

It's still hard to accept this fact, that he has passed away.

At the end of his life he suffered through many health ailments, major ones that forced him to stop playing violin and viola.

His composition skills were terrific, he made several self-produced CDs of his prodigious output: varied styles and musical portraits. Most of which he played all the instruments. His musical standards were high, like mine.

At one point we had a duo titled Strings Are Us. We were bother pretty versatile, and straddled many musical styles, and we picked up a good amount of work as a duo.
We were pretty entertaining, due to the fact that we were both experienced performers. we also loved playing dives and small rooms where we could chat with the audience while we play. Our musical range included blues, classical ,and lots of the songs from the folk scare of the 50s and 60s. We were sort of a cleaned up version of Homer & Jethro. It did not hurt that we had both a passion for many musical influences.

Marty my love for you is still strong.

I miss you more than I can say.



Robert Gellman


In the early days, before I established a positive identity as a disabled person.
Robert was tremendously helpful to me.
He was similarly disabled, and he was also highly intelligent and competent.
He became disabled at a young age, I believe around 30 years old, I believe.

Actually it's hard to imagine what he really experienced. His stroke and resultant hemiparisis was a result of an operation that a doctor recommended.
My stroke was quite dissimilar and I lived until 53 years old before my right sided paralysis. Thus I had a really good run before I had to stop playing guitar.

Robert taught me many ways of coping with my walking difficulties. He once remarked that he went to physical therapy in the early day of his stroke but found it was not very helpful. I had a similar experience. I often had to teach the therapist myself, as opposed to the other way around. What a drag!



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