On July 4, 2004 on this blog, I asked in a post if anyone out there had a spare copy of Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants. That was a made-for-cable special starring one of the great magicians who was also a great scholar of magic. About fifteen minutes after I posted it, I got a message that said, "Yeah, I have one. Send me your address and I'll mail you a copy." It was from Ricky Jay.
We exchanged a few e-mails and he was nice enough to not only send me the copy but at my request, to autograph it too. I was a big fan of his magic, which was not only superb but very, very smart. So was he, as I learned not only from his appearances on TV but in the few times I ran into him somewhere and we spoke for a while. The last time I saw him was about a year ago at a performance of The Black Version, an improv show that I plug here often. He didn't look well…and now they say he has died "of natural causes" at the age of 72.
He was a very talented guy and he did a lot to advance the art of card magic (and throwing) as well as the history of swindles, cheats and other skillful card handlers. We will not see his like again…but we'll see (we already see) an awful lot of card manipulators who learned from Ricky Jay.