And I forgot to mention that Bobby's big benefactor, which he was so fortunate to have, was the late heiress Doris Duke. When he was pursuing his dreams she came through with support (we artists need that, so hard to find most of the time!) He used to have her do a guest appearance in his shows, quietly, anonomously clothed in the background somewhere. It was neat to try to "find" her onstage-sorta like "where's Waldo" or Alfred Hitchcock "cameos."

I know it must have been depressing for him to know that Doris went through such a terrible time at the end of her life with her butler, Bernard Lafferty.

The telepic bio that starred Lauren Bacall several years ago was very well done. Chandi Heffner was a student of Bobby's when Doris "adopted" the grown woman. She also figured into the Duke soap opera. The movie showed Duke's interest in the "East", but mostly "yoga" and did not include the character of Bobby Farrah as I can remember.

To finish up what I just said-

Bobby was a very sweet guy and very enthusiastic about his culture. Again, seeing a man reach the level that "Turhan" did at the time was very inspiring to him. Turhan and Johanna did "authentic" oriental dance and their dancing together was the way that men and women danced together. The man was "masculine." Turhan also played a variety of oriental drums and oud (he was a protege' of the oud master Baba Ajdin Aslan who was also in the group).

Another male interested in dancing (but again, not knowing yet how to go about it) came up from DC about the same time as Bobby (don't remember his name). A female dancer at the Arabian Nights asked the owner Maria Stevens to call "Turhan" and tell him to come into the club with his costume and do his act with Johanna. He did and the next night this other belly dancer and her male friend were up trying to copy them exactly! It didn't work out.

"Oasis" were a big hit as a dance company but weathered a few storms, one being the death of their star singer Lutfi Guneri. All members of the company sang and danced in foreign languages. At that time their was no bickering over things being "Arabic" or "Turkish" or "Greek." Not the categorization of every last thing in our culture as we have today. Everyone one shared essentially the same cuture and ways. (Sadly, the first Oasis disbanded when Johanna and Turhan split up right before going to Indonesia for a folk festival at the request of Sukarno Govt.)

I met Bobby and Eddie on a few different occasions in the 70's. Bobby's group did a great show at Lincoln Center with Trio Bel Canto (Greek), Chick Ganimian, Johnny Berberian (I think) and Jemela Omar and Sabah Nissan.

Bobby was a talented, enthusiastic and nice fellow. We were sorry to hear about his passing.