Artist, jazz musician, Beat literary inspiration: Bill Heine has known a parade of bohemian figures, taken part in a panorama of artistic scenes. Born William Mossman in 1929, the son of the host of a popular radio show, Bill grew up in Pennsylvania until his parents' divorce. His mother's remarriage, around the start of the Second World War, to Paul Heine, who has been described by Bill as a good father but "the consummate Prussian colonel", took the family to Scott Field (later Scott Air Force Base) in Illinois. (Bill still signs some of his work "Mossman" or "BTM" in tribute to his birth name.) As a boy, Bill entertained himself in the disused military aircraft and was inspired to learn to play drums and boogie-woogie through attending concerts put on by Count Basie and others for the soldiers. After the war and a stint in military school, he attended high school in Pennsylvania, where his art teacher took her class on influential field trips to New York City.

Bill received a scholarship to attend the Institute of Contemporary Arts, in Washington, D.C., a very small and progressive art college, now defunct. As strange luck would have it, his roommate was Eustace Mullins, a student bon vivant who would soon become a controversial author (Secrets of the Federal Reserve) and right wing merchant of conspiracies. Bill was introduced by Mullins to his mentor, Ezra Pound, then confined to St. Elizabeth's Hospital in D.C. as a result of his pro-Fascist wartime activities in Italy, and to the poet e. e. cummings.

While in D.C., Bill also met Dylan Thomas and Kenneth Noland (who was a student teacher at the Institute), toured as piano player in a Horton Foote play with Libby Holman, and roomed, for a time, with the beautiful but troubled artist and poet Sheri Martinelli. Martinelli herself represents an impressive cultural crossroads, having already been friend/muse to Anatole Broyard, Anais Nin, William Gaddis, and (again) Ezra Pound. (Later, in San Francisco, she too was to become involved with the Beats.)

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photo Anne Loretto 2006

website by Bernardo Disegno 2006