The New Cue #553 December 5: Felix Kessler
“Peace is what we say when we say goodbye…”
Good morning,
I feel the need to explain why Niall has been doing all the New Cue work over the last few weeks, and offer an apology for my absence.
On November 16, my father Felix died. Since then, I’ve been unable to listen to music. He was 92, so it wasn’t a surprise, but it was a shock.
Felix and Ted Kessler, on their first date.
I spent the last week or so in New York, in Manhattan, his home for many years, first the West Village, where in the early 1960s he met my mother by chance at the bar in the long-closed Chumley’s pub. A few years later, I was conceived and born nearby on Leroy Street, before they moved to London when I was still an infant. Dad returned to Greenwich Village, to Bleecker Street, from Europe in the mid-80s, staying there until moving permanently to Florida with his second wife Jair after a bout of Covid hospitalised and nearly killed him early in the pandemic.
Ted outside the apartment on Leroy Street where he lived as a baby.
He was buried near his parents deep into Long Island last Sunday. We thought that in the fog of his recent dementia he’d misremembered their resting place as, having each poured dust on his coffin, we wandered through the huge graveyard in search of his folks’ headstone in the freezing rain – but he was right, there they were, Joseph and Gertrude Kessler, a few hundred yards from their son Felix, three of the quartet who’d arrived in New York by boat in February 1939, refugees from Austria, their apartment and bookbinding business confiscated by invading Nazis, with nothing but grim disaster otherwise in store for the Kesslers of Vienna post-Anschluss. The remaining member of the quartet, Dad’s younger sister Eva, gave my arm a squeeze as we found their final destination. “There’s no one alive now who’s known me all my life,” she said.
Afterwards, we returned to Greenwich Village for a memorial at Parcelle on MacDougal Street, the night filled with tales of Felix Kessler the father, friend, lover, kind-hearted colleague, a fiendish poker shark nicknamed ‘Cuffs’, as well as an expert editor and reporter. It was a surprise to learn how many illustrious journalists were keen to line up to proclaim him their newsroom hero both in Europe and New York, the guy who’d informed their own paths in journalism. We toasted him appropriately and ate finger foods, all the while acknowledging that, ironically, he’d have delivered the best speech himself, but he was sadly unavailable. Then, after a dinner with my brothers nearby, I struck out a little tipsily towards my hotel downtown near the site of the World Trade Centre.
Walking along 6th Avenue, I suddenly felt the urge to listen to music for the first time in a fortnight. Something had shifted. So I put my headphones in and scrolled through to the 25 4 25 playlist I’d started just before Dad died to run alongside others commissioned for our December editions of The New Cue.
As I wandered along the unusually peaceful post-Thanksgiving streets, the music rushed through me as if adrenaline. The walk took 35 minutes, but the playlist was 90 minutes long. I was enjoying it so much that I pressed pause on Cass McCombs’ Peace (“peace is what we say when we say goodbye…”), squeezed the elevator button for floor 28, entered my room, flung open the curtains and lay on the floor against the bed gazing upon the high-rise twinkle of New York as I listened to the rest of the playlist.
I commend it to the house.
We’ll run some more of these 25 4 25 playlists over the coming weeks, but it occurs to me that some of our subscribers may like to contribute their own playlist too. If so, please do send your playlist to thenewcue1@gmail.com before December 12. The rules are simple: 25 tracks from anything new released in 2025, and only one track may be included from any given release. I made mine in order of when I first heard each song - other than Eddie Chacon’s Let You Go, as it sounded best last. Don’t forget to tell us your name and location.
I’m not sure what we have for you on Monday. Niall has manfully done all the heavy lifting while I’ve been away, but I may have dropped Monday’s ball. Let’s see. If not, we’ll be back on track next Friday and forever more.
Thanks for indulging me,
Ted
