From Ohio

Eric Carmen was a power-pop, singer-songwriter phenom.  A musical prodigy, at age 13 he attended the Cleveland Institute of Music where he studied violin among other instruments. Seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964, however, shifted his focus. From then on, rock & roll became his passion.
I recently spoke with a friend, Ken Wyban, who grew up with Eric at the Colony House apartments in Lyndhurst, Ohio.
“I was a lifeguard at the rooftop pool in the apartment complex we both lived in. Eric was mature for his age more than I was anyway, and serious about his music. Freddie, his brother, would be at the swimming pool, and I could hear Eric playing. It didn’t seem like practicing, more like just playing. His apartment was about 100 feet away from the pool, on the second floor, like the pool was. I would listen to WIXI 1260 on the radio, and when he played, I would turn the radio off. He played classical and a variety of other music. He was very good, was like a free concert. I felt he was like going places type of good, like the James Gang.
“I heard them [The Raspberries] at the Chesterland Hullaballoo and said to myself these guys should be making records. I was drafted shortly after that and when I returned from Vietnam they were making great records that was ’71! I was in a band called the Men About Town, Eric came to a backyard  party on Brainard Road in Lyndhurst. We knew each other and would say hi around the apartments. Don’t think he knew I was in a band, but before he left the party he came up and gave us a compliment, which made our day, as he was the shit. Told us we sounded good. He was a good person, always treated people well.”
Kicking around the local music scene in the late ’60s, Carmen — along with Wally Bryson, Dave Smalley and Jim Bonfanti — formed Raspberries in 1970. They released their eponymous debut album in 1972. It included the top-5 hit “Go All The Way,” which to this day has one of the most infectious hooks in rock history. The song was featured in filmmaker — and Raspberries’ super fan — Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous. It was also included in the 2014 blockbuster movie Guardians Of The Galaxy. Simply put — a classic.
But as Carmen would sing on his self-titled debut solo album, the Raspberries were, “Caught in a rock-and-roll time warp/Just tryin’ to find a way to get out.” The group amalgamated the best qualities of the Beatles,The Who and The Beach Boys underpinning it with Carmen’s classical training and exquisite song writing, forging the unique power-pop sound, but the record company, Capitol, didn’t  quite know what to do with the band. They were marketed as a teeny bopper band when, in fact, the likes of Bruce Springsteen, John Lennon and Kiss were fans.
In 1975 Carmen went solo and released six albums over the course of his career.
His self-titled, debut solo album included the mega hit “All By Myself,” which in 1976 reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Twenty years later, Celine Dion covered it, and the ballad became an international hit. Eric Carmen, the album, spent eight weeks on the Billboard album chart peaking at 21. Listening to it now, one hears the sound of a young man entering his prime with skill, talent and a maturity well ahead of his 26 years. The sound of which was of a musical genius that surely would have a long and promising career.
But by the mid ’80s, Carmen struggled to fit into the ever-changing musical landscape. His career had a quick surge with his participation on the soundtracks of Footloose (1984) for which he penned “Almost Paradise” — sung by Mike Reno of Loverboy and Ann Wilson of Heart — and the Dirty Dancing (1987) soundtrack performing “Hungry Eyes.” In the early “oughts,” he joined  Ringo Starr’s All-Star Band on keyboards for a tour. Then from 2005-07, the Rasberries reunited for a well-received House of Blues tour. In 2009 the group played the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, and there it ended for the band — where it began — Cleveland, Ohio. 
In March of 2024 Carmen passed away in his sleep at age 74. While a cause of death was not given, one thing is certain, his musical legacy lives on. In September a Rasberries tribute album, Play On, was released featuring Rick Springfield, Lou Gramm, John Waite, The Lemon Twigs, Marshall Crenshaw and others covering 37 Rasberries gems. And 50 years ago, to the month, his first solo album was released — November 1975 — a tribute concert, EC50, was being held in Cleveland at Lakewood Civic Auditorium to commemorate the album’s release and honor Carmen’s musical legacy. Featuring and benefiting the Lakewood High School Orchestra and the Lakewood Project, it includes The Eric Carmen Band along with special guests, conducted by legendary arranger Charles Colello.
Growing up, Eric Carmen was — and will always be — my Ohio hero. If he could make it then maybe I could, too. And this after all, is what From Ohio is about.
Eric Carmen is From Ohio.

Al Bright was an acclaimed artist and renowned educator.  In 1965, he became the first full-time Black facility member at his alma mater - Youngstown State University, where he taught art and established the Africana Studies program. His art work has been exhibited at, or is in the permanent collection of, several venerable museums in addition to many private and corporate collections. Al died in 2019. It was an incident from his childhood that would go on to be told in a NY Times bestseller and then critically acclaimed feature film landing Al in the national conversation and shining  a “bright” light on his life and work.

Al created hundreds of drawings and paintings often “abstracted” from live  jazz music. He fed off the energy of his audience and the musicians who served as his muse . One notable art performance was in 1980 at the Youngstown Playhouse with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, featuring a 21-year-old trumpeter named Wynton Marsalis.

His most impactful canvas however, may very well have been “a day in the life of” - when Al was about 10. His little league team had just won the championship. Al was eager to celebrate at the swim party the coach had arranged at a pool on Youngstown’s Southside. As the team filed-in Al, being the only Black boy on the team, was stopped at the entrance by the pool’s manager and told he couldn’t come in. For a good part of that hot summer afternoon Al watched his teammates dive, splash and swim from the opposite side of a chain-link fence. Finally the coach pleaded with the pool’s manager who acquiesced, as long as Al agreed to stay on a floating dingy and “not touch the water,” less the pool have to be drained and cleaned.

This raw and painful experience was originally recounted in his best friend, former NY Times editor Mel Watkins‘ book, “Dancing With Strangers”.  Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabelle Wilkerson picked up the story and included it in Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Caste, with Al’s story, was then adapted into the recently released feature film "Origin," directed by Golden Globe and Academy Award nominated Ava DuVernay. As Wilkerson’s character says in the movie, “a part of Al Bright died that day”. And in a gut-wrenching scene, she tells a hurt young Al, “you’re going to be alright."

All right  - and how! Thanks to his fortitude, eternal sense of optimism and divine inspiration, his work is justly presented in Greatness Revealed: The Art of African Americans from the Butler Collection at the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown (through March 17th, 2024)

On behalf of those whom he taught mentored and inspired, it is with immense honor and privilege I let you know Al Bright was From Ohio!

On October 12, 1922 Youngstown, Ohio welcomed its newest citizen,  Irving Lev.  Born to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, he came of age during the Great Depression and went on to serve his country flying combat missions in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Two of those  missions were at Normandy on D Day.

After returning home from the war,  Irv attended the University of California at Berkeley, obtaining a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. It was while in California that Irv reconnected with Alice Raful, also from Youngstown, who was living in the San Francisco area. They courted through over 230 love letters which Irv still has!

They celebrated 71 years of marriage before her passing in 2016.

When the economy starting booming in the early 1950’s  Irv was asked by his father to join his home construction business.  Irv and Alice returned to Youngstown and Louis Lev & Son was established. Irv grew the business into a larger track housing development company building over 600 homes in the Youngstown area .

After retiring in 1987 at age 65, Irv headed a local resettlement agency for Russian Jews and some others who were finally permitted to emigrate from the Soviet Union. For those refugees Irv and his group found apartments, permanent homes, furniture and jobs giving them a new beginning the USA. He helped settle 500 Russian immigrants, many of them with skilled professions such as doctors, engineers and musicians.

An avid bridge player, golfer, and fisherman who occasionally busks on the street with his musician son Frank, Irv Lev is one on the last remaining  survivors of  “The Greatest Generation” and honored to say he's from Ohio!

Memorial Day Weekend — and the first sound and sighting of the iconic neighborhood ice cream truck surly declare summers arrival. But did you know the latter is owed to Youngstown?! This episodes’ guest, Linda Barton did with the result being the founding of Sweet Memories Vintage Tees and Candy. 

The year, before it’s 100th anniversary, Barton, a former direct sports marketer, reached out to Good Humor and proposed to sell a novelty line of tees to commentate the occasion. Turns out in 1920, Good Humor was founded in Youngstown by Harry Burt. The candy purveyor was the fist to put ice cream on a stick and sell it directly to delirious and (if they couldn’t round up or beg for enough change) panic stricken kids, by truck.

In February 2020 with five dollars of every sale benefiting Akron’s Children’s Hospital the line along with complimentary Good Humor bars was launched in the hospital’s lobby. Sweet Memories Vintage was off and running!

Barton has since  gone on to work with other iconic Ohio brands - Dum Dums , Isley’s, Packard and Klondike. This past February she opened a retail store in Girard featuring hard to find nostalgic candies and pops along with her developing lines of tees.

The Sweet Vintage  promo card reads : Small -Town Woman-Owned Business Founded in- and may I add- From (Youngstown)  Ohio!

Former line cook Emily Fedner started her Food Lovers Diary Instagram while a student at Ohio State. It has since blossomed to over 135 thousand followers and catapulted her to the forefront of foodie influencers, while landing lucrative sponsors and partnerships. She’s the co-proprietor of the pop-up ‘Petite Pasta’ operating out of the vaunted ‘Raffetto’s’ in NYC’s  West Village. The podcast,  Friends of Anthony Bourdain, debuted last month with Fedner co-hosting. As well as an homage to the food world’s biggest icon, it’s a way of keeping his legacy alive, through talking to those that knew and worked with him.

Speaking of co-hosts…ascending celebrity chef, restauranteur and host of Netflix’s Cook At All Cost, Jordan Andino, steps in to help me move past my Midwest meat-and-potatoes sensibility and navigate a discerning conservation about the ultimate unifier - food!

Bon appetit! Emily Fedner is From Ohio.

American folk heroes are not of their own choosing. Just ask Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini.  As a former World Boxing Association champion, film producer and a native son of Youngstown, Ohio, Mancini shrugs, “I just happen to be that guy.”

Mancini became a hero at a time when Youngstown needed one most. Let’s go back to the late 1970s. On Sept. 19, 1977, a date that lives in Northeast Ohio infamy, 5,000 steelworkers lost their jobs on "Black Monday,” after Youngstown Sheet and Tube closed its doors — forever. Two years later, as the area’s economy continued to reel, Mancini fought his first professional boxing match. He was 18. He won.

With several more closings and 45,000 job losses over the next three years, Boom Boom provided hope. He kept winning fights and climbing the world rankings. Then, he realized his dream and kept a promise he made to his father — a former pro boxer who’s ambitions were dashed by a WWII injury — Mancini won the world title. On May 8th, 1982, Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini defeated Arturo Frias in a first round knockout to become the WBA lightweight champion. It’s a title he would hold until 1984. In doing so, he symbolized his hometown’s resolve to take the punches life had to offer and keep punching back. By the time he retired in 1992, Mancini had become an indelible symbol of Youngstown’s moxie.

But the Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini story doesn’t end with boxing. In 2014, after three decades acting and producing on the West Coast,  he returned to Youngstown with a new promise — to establish the city as a film production destination.  And why not? Youngstown is, after all, where the Warner Brothers got their start and Mancini had already made two films in town — the documentary "Youngstown Still Standing,"  featuring friend and "Modern Family" star Ed O’Neill (another Youngstown native) and the biopic about his own life “The Good Son."

Now he has a new title — producer.  His company Champion Pictures is currently in pre-production on a feature set to start principal photography this fall.  Mickey Rourke is slated to star and Craig Singer, from 2021’s "6:45," is onboard to direct.

While the roar of blast furnaces is a thing of the past, if Mancini’s new dream is realized,  Youngstown‘s new sound  will be,  “… and action!”

Actor and producer Lili Reinhart (Chemical Hearts and CW’s Riverdale) leads off From Cleveland For Cleveland, a six-part monthly conversation series (July - December) bringing Hollywood talent back to their Ohio roots. The 101- year-old Capitol Theatre on Cleveland’s West side will serve as a fitting venue for this interactive live event, with a portion of the proceeds going to benefit the Greater Cleveland Film Commission.

Other guests include Academy Award nominee Paul Raci (Sound of Metal), screenwriter and director, Mark Waters (Mr. Poppers Penguins and Mean Girls) with his wife, Ohio State and Six Feet Under alumni, actor Dina Spybey-Waters,

Parma’s own Alan Ruck (HBO’s Succession) the venerable Tom Hanks — who got his start in Ohio — and the multi-faceted, Golden Globe-nominated Clevelander Monica Potter (Parenthood) will also take part in the series.

Appearing remotely via the Capitol’s deluxe movie screen, each will share their connection to the Buckeye, career experiences and offer advice, as well as take questions from audience members.

The creators and hosts of the series are this episodes’ guests. They are casting director Angela Boehm, who just wrapped LeBron James’ bio pic Shooting Stars, 1st Team Studio co-owner and instructor, Lauren Nichols and Lakewood native, actor and philanthropist, Holly Fulger. 

All three live in and hail From Ohio!

April 15, 2022 marks the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking through Major League Baseball’s color barrier. Weeks later — less celebrated, but perhaps as transformative — a young, soft-spoken Larry Doby became the first Black American League player, as he joined the Cleveland Indians.  Unlike Robinson, Doby had no minor league easing-in season. In the Negro leagues one day — suited up for Cleveland the next. It was a lonely and harsh entry but one that would forever change the game of baseball.
Joining Doby the following summer was Negro League superstar pitcher and fan favorite, the crafty and mercurial Satchel Page. They, along with the All American entrepreneurial pitching phenom Bob Feller and innovative, passionate and indefatigable owner Bill Veeck, became Cleveland’s interracial “Fab Four” in a time of prejudice and segregation. 
Set against a booming and bustling industrial Cleveland, Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series that Changed Baseball is the tale of how the unlikely confluence of these four narratives formed a once-in-a-lifetime alchemy that uprooted the traditions of the Major Leagues and moved it into the modern day, while delivering the one and only World Series pennant for Indians in 1948.
I am honored to say the story of "Our Team" is from Ohio and am privileged to welcome its author Luke Epplin.

This episode’s guest is a multi-platinum selling Grammy and Emmy nominated recording artist, who says he never had a plan for his life. Instead, following his ear and heart lead him to a successful three-decade career performing, promoting and preserving the Great American Song Book: An evolving roster of classic American music, primarily from the early 20th century. Broadway classics, Hollywood themes and popular songs, written by icons like Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Duke Ellington and George and Ira Gershwin.
His career is a “pledge of allegiance” to preserving the genre as well as it's memorabilia and artifacts. His Great American Songbook Foundation provides a forum for youth to lean and perform, helping to insure the genre’s legacy .
His newly released album, ‘Gershwin Country’ is a Nashville take on some of the Gershwin brother’s classics, featuring duets with Dolly Parton, Rosanne Cash, Lyle Lovett and Ronnie Milsap and many others .
I’m proud to say Michael Feinstein is From Ohio!