Died On This Date (September 11, 2009) Jim Carroll / Proto Punk Great; Wrote “The Basketball Diaries”

Jim Carroll
August 1, 1950 – September 11, 2009

Jim Carroll was a poet, author, purse snatcher, glue sniffer, male prostitute, heroin addict, post-punk rocker, and one of the greatest basketball players New York City has ever known.  His troublesome early life was documented in his own memoirs, written between the ages of 12 and 16.   They were  later anthologized in best-selling The Basketball Diaries, which was the inspiration of a somewhat fictionalized film of the same name, starring Leonard DiCaprio as Carroll. He published his first book of poetry at the age of 17 and within a few years he was working for Andy Warhol writing script dialog, and later, co- managing his theater.   At one point while still a teenager, Carroll became the youngest person ever nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.  He formed the Jim Carroll Band in 1978 with the help of Patti Smith, and soon released Catholic Boy.  It’s “People Who Died” was an instant underground hit and is considered a staple of the New York punk scene of the era.  The songs eulogizes his real life childhood friends, the “characters” from The Basketball Diaries. Carroll recorded several more albums of music and spoken word over the next few decades, but in recent years he was mostly writing poetry and fiction.  Jim Carroll suffered a fatal heart attack on September 11, 2009.

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