The Omarosa aria, a project for Puccini

A musician I know, Jacob Garchik, tweeted last week that composers are starting to work on White House operas, “purely because of the melodic possibilities of setting the name ‘Omarosa.’ ”

Just after that, Noah Griffin, who writes and performs a song parody every Wednesday morning on Rick Wynn’s show on KSVY-Sonoma Radio, emailed his newest work, to the tune of Nat King Cole’s “Mona Lisa.” Sing along now:

“Omarosa, Omarosa, Omarosa/ You’re so like a lady with such caustic guile./ Since you’ve gone we’re lacking West Wing pigmentosa/ Searching high and low/ It’s fruitless honey chile./ Did you take us/ Write a book/ Then run for cover/ Or is that your way you planned it from the start?/ Many schemes are laid bare at your doorstep/ They’re denied there/ Classified there?/ Though you’re scorned, are you real Omarosa/ Or just the mole you played right from the very start?/ Omarosa, Omarosa.”

And just after that, Ben Bayol suggested, to the tune of “Oklahoma”: “Oooo-marosa, telling tales and making Trump insane/ She’s a tell-all gal/ Used to be his pal/ But now she’s turned into a pain ...”

The day Aretha Franklin died, songwriter/record producer/drummer and all-round music man Narada Michael Walden, who lives in Marin, talked about their friendship and professional relationship. “We were best of friends,” he said. “I did her first biggest seller, and I went touring with her the last two years of her life.” Walden produced four Franklin albums, and said he’d just written 20 new songs for her, and would be doing music for her funeral in Detroit.

The two met in 1984, when he says that hearing her inspired him to write “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?,” which became the title of a 1985 album he produced. She recorded that album, said Walden, just after her father had died. It was her first time back in the studio after the death. “When I got there, it was quite tender. I remember massaging her shoulder.”

To hear Franklin singing his songs was “like an institution blessing my work,” said Walden, “blessing my life.

“I was little when she was hot. I was coming up. So to have a chance to work with her when she was at her peak power ...” Walden co-wrote “Freeway of Love” with Jeffrey Cohen. That recording, on which he played drums, too, “just blew it all wide open,” he said.

Typically, Walden would record all the music here, at Automatt studios on Folsom Street, “then go out to Detroit for her to do the singing. She wouldn’t fly.” She told him she tried to get over her fear of flying, going on airplanes while they were on the ground, walking down runways, “but even that didn’t help . ... Flying scared the living daylights out of her.”

Walden said that while “she was a diva — because she was a genius — she was very down to earth. My job was to make a hit, and she wanted a hit, so we worked together on that. That’s the beautiful thing about music.” When he first met her, he was awestruck, but then “I said ‘Wow,’ we were on the same team. And that was the basis of our friendship and our trust.”

The last time he saw her was in November 2017, at Elton John’s AIDS benefit at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, where she sang “Nessun Dorma.” “Sting was there, and he cried,” said Walden.

P.S.: A big yellow school bus was being driven around the Mission on Thursday night with Franklin music blasting from loudspeakers. And Steve Indig, whose Retro Reverb dance party is Friday, Aug. 24, at 111 Minna St., says this installment will pay tribute to the Queen of Soul.

At the recent funeral for Gus Konstin, longtime owner of John’s Grill, Willie Brown admitted to the crowd that years ago when he began going to the Grill regularly, Konstin never charged him for meals. But, reports John Konstin, who runs the place nowadays, Gus always told Brown “to tip the servers because that’s how he made it in this country.”

“Before he died,” said John, “he reminded me to be sure I tipped the staff at his celebration of life at the Grill, which 400 guests enjoyed. He never met a Democratic candidate running for office or a charity that he turned down.”

“I’m interested in people. I just don’t like dealing with them.” Woman to man, overheard at C’era Una Volta in Alameda by Skip Hutchison