"I knew him as a record collector, a jazz aficionado,” Tischler said. “The man was just...he was brilliant. I can't believe he's gone."
Before he started writing comic books in the early 1970s , Pekar was already well-known in Northeast Ohio as a jazz critic. And even before his appearances on David Letterman’s show, he was known as being pretty cranky.
Bob Frank of Cleveland’s Blue Lunch remembers being a little scared when he asked Pekar to write the liner notes for the group’s CD “Big Sound Blues.”
“I called him on the phone, I was real nervous, and I said, 'Harvey, this is Bob Frank from Blue Lunch. Would you be interested in doing liner notes for our new CD?' And the first thing out of his mouth was 'How much you gunna pay me?!'” Frank recalled. “I went 'uh..uh..uhh...uhh' and I named a number and he said 'Oh, that’s fine.' I think he just wanted something, you know. But he got very excited about it and he called me a number of times on it. It was kinda touching now to think about it."
Harvey Pekar was born in Cleveland and never left except for a brief stint in the Navy. He worked for 37 years at the Cleveland VA hospital, retiring just two years before the movie based on “American Splendor” came out in 2003.
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Rock Hall announces 2016 presenters, non-performer inductee
