Sam Steinberg painted the “Friends” cover, Part 1.

Part 1 (of 4) [Part 2, Part 3, Part 4]
The original Sam Steinberg painting for Friends 

“Hey mistah, I got paintings here! Or maybe you want a Hoishey bar.”

Anyone who was on the Columbia University campus between 1967 and 1982 would hear Sam Steinberg touting his wares every weekday (thanks to Flo Grant for quoting Craig Bunch’s Folk Art article). Sam was a street peddler turned “outsider”, urban artist, and he was adopted by generations of Columbia students who bought up to 20 paintings each week from this man with a genuine vision. And, he only “exhibited” (aka “sold”) his work exclusively on the Columbia campus.

So, since leader Marc Cohen (aka Marc Copland) had been a Columbia student, and we were recording his first solo album at Columbia’s radio station, it seemed appropriate to use one of Sam’s paintings for the cover.

Oblivion was perennially broke and we’d never “commissioned” a cover before but Tom and I thought in this case it was justified. But how to price it? Sam was selling his work for $2.50 a piece (!) and it would be wrong to just pick one up and appropriate it. So, one winter day I approached Sam and offered him $10, plus something he really needed in life. “Shoes. I need a new pair of shoes.” We walked across Broadway into a shoe store and I shelled out my last $40 for a new pair of perfectly fitted, ankle high, warm shoes.

Sam seemed so happy in his new shoes. Imagine my surprise when a couple of weeks later he was back to his old pair (too large, with newspaper tucked in to make the fit). “They were too slippery on the ice.”

(More in Parts 2, 3, 4)