R.I.P. Nick Ashford
Nick Ashford, who with Valerie Simpson, his songwriting partner and later wife, wrote some of Motown’s biggest hits, like “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough“ and “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing,” and later recorded their own hits and toured as a duo, died Monday at a hospital in New York City. He was 70 and lived in Manhattan.
Mr. Ashford had throat cancer and was undergoing treatment, but the cause of his death was not immediately known. His death was announced by Liz Rosenberg, a friend who is a longtime music publicist.
nyt
Packing Her Things
And I could nearly stand it—the stained blouses;
the nubs of drying lipsticks with their botched nose jobs;
the undershirts; the bras; the slips; the books.
I packed them away, like a dutiful child.
I did it dry-eyed, thinking, I could spend a day like this
in hell, and then at the back of the closet
I found her cache of gift bags—pretty foil bags;
tiny starred ones; slick big bags with cabbage roses—
the way we both squirrel them away. I never knew,
the way I cried when I saw her paintings for the first time,
or her secret collection of beaded purses.
Which part of the soul is handed down? Which part is its own?
Then I sank down on the bed and howled.
I wept like an orphaned child.
Liz Rosenberg
