The Folknik newsletter of the San Francisco Folk Music Club came out today. Here's the club's obituary for Jerry:


Jerry Praver (1939-2018)
by Deborah Sandler

We have lost one of our best. Singer-songwriter extraordinaire, town crier, and folk club stalwart Jerry Praver died on April 30, 2018 of cancer, just shy of his 79th birthday and 58th wedding anniversary.
Because folk singing and songwriting came so naturally to Jerry, we assume he did that all his life, but he had a scientific past – including working at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he processed pictures from the Mars landing.
Jerry and Bev met when Jerry was 13 and Bev was 11. They married right after Jerry graduated from college, and moved west. They joined the Riverside Folk Song Society where they were influenced to become folksingers. Jerry and Bev started playing in schools in
1981, and went fulltime in 1987, having booked 50 schools in 5 months.
Jerry wrote 35 songs and 17 parodies with Bev. Their partnership was legendary, and their love for each other shone brightly in each song. Their voices blended together seamlessly. Their parody workshops made us laugh so hard our smile muscles hurt. Jerry’s first song was written in 1977 during a walk in Cleveland. The muse grabbed him and he ran into a drugstore for pencil and paper. The muse’s call could be abrupt, once causing him to suddenly pull off the highway to write, too busy with the song to tell Bev why he had stopped. They made three recordings: Old Songs for the Young at Heart, Are We There Yet? and Going Places, and published a songbook:
Signs of the Times. Numerous videos of Jerry and Bev can
be found on YouTube, including their song “Velcro”.
Redmond O’Colonies convinced Bev and Jerry to become town criers. They became San Luis Obispo County’s official Town Criers in 2000, and delighted Camp Harmony with their schtick. In 2015, Jerry took second place honors in a worldwide Town Crier competition in New Zealand.
Jerry is survived by his loving wife and partner Bev, and daughters Linda and Debbie. Bev requests that any memorial donations be made to the Camp Harmony Campership Fund.
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Editor’s note: Bob Reid created a wonderful video in memoriam for Jerry, and it is posted on YouTube. The audio is “Sing With Me”, written by Jerry for Bev, after 50 years of singing together, and recorded by Vicki Solomon at Camp Harmony. A slide show of Bev & Jerry photos accompanies the song. Search for “Jerry Praver” on YouTube.