Category: obituary

Martin Mull died

The last time I played through my records, I realized that Mull’s comedy had not aged well. I started a note for this blog about it when I heard he had died. Before I finished it I saw a review in the Washington Post that called him a subversive genius. The writer said Mull mocked Wonder Bread middle of the road America as much as anyone. The example was the lyrics to Ukulele Blues.

I woke up this afternoon HOOO/I saw both cars were gone

I woke up this afternoon, lord mommy/I saw both my cars were gone

I felt so low down deep inside/I threw my drink across the lawn.

I remember when James Brown was on Dick Cavett around 1970. As Brown sang one of his hits, Cavett got up and danced. When Brown was done, he asked Cavett what he had been doing. Cavett said I believe it was the Funky Chicken. Brown said no, if anything it was the Funky Honky.

That was funny, and it was clearly poking fun at white people appropriating black culture. Mull, on the other hand, got his laughs by mocking Delta bluesmen.

Kinky Friedman died

If you listened to this guy for 20 minutes without being offended, then you weren’t paying attention. As he said, what do you expect from a guy named Kinky? It was easy to do a parody of Merle Haggard’s redneck anthem Okie from Muskogee, and many people did. Friedman’s version though included sex with animals. The first song of his I heard was The Ballad of Charles Whitman, a mass murderer who shot from the tower at the University of Texas at Austin. Friedman’s obit in the New York Times included a line – ‘the chancellor cried, it’s adolescent/and of course it’s most unpleasant/but I gotta admit that it’s a lovely way to go’—that showed his word choice and rhythm and rhyme were like Tom Lehrer, a witty guy who never gave offense.

I believe he got trapped in the entertaining caricature who inhabited his songs. He wrote crime stories that were really just another way for him to reach people who shared his displeasure with smoking bans, speed limits, and rights for women. He received 13 percent of the votes in a six-candidate primary for governor of Texas. Good for him, but too bad it took him away from singer-songwritering.

Dear Abbie is a sweet song from a guy asking about love. It mentions backyard fireworks on July 4, so I’m including it now.

Aoxomoxoa, Grateful Dead, Warner Bros., 1969

Bill Walton died, as famous now I suppose for being a fan of the Grateful Dead as being a great basketball player. I’ll play my Dead records for a while (man, I don’t know how much more of What’s Become of the Baby I could take).

I have sung Saint Stephen quietly in a church on the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico and in Budapest (aargh! Wrong Saint Stephen. I need to reread the Lives of the Saints). Some stoner Zen: One man gathers what another man spills. The song includes a bucket going to the bottom of the well (without the bottom’s falling out). Dupree’s Diamond Blues is a silly song (though violent and not safe for work) about what a man will do for a woman. I like songs that have conversations with the judge. China Cat Sunflower is a classic; it’s on Live/Dead and Europe ‘72, which I also have. Cosmic Charlie isn’t about me, but it is adjacent. Everything’s movin’ here, but much too slow now—that could be me. Also—the very first word is How you do? The last: go home, your mama’s callin’ you.

Running, Jumping, Standing Still, Spider John Koerner and Willie Murphy, Elektra, 1969

Koerner died May 18. He was 85. An obit said that when people asked him about his helping Bob Dylan and Bonnie Raitt on their way up while remaining obscure himself, he said it just wasn’t in his character to chase after fame.

When Bob Dylan got to Minneapolis in the early ‘60s, he sought out Koerner, an established performer. They played often as a duo. Koerner then worked with Dave Ray and Tony Glover. They put out Blues, Rags, and Hollers. John Lennon said it was one of his favorites.

This record, with Willie Murphy, was well received. Bonnie Raitt recorded one of these songs on her first album in 1971. Elektra wanted Koerner and Murphy to tour and make another album. Murphy said later that when Koerner thought about riding around the country in a van with band members and equipment, he decided to go to Denmark and make movies. When that didn’t pan out, he came back to the U.S. in time to see folk music crater. He performed, updated Blues, Rags, and Hollers, and put out new music from time to time until 2019.

The advice from this record I took to heart: When in danger/when in doubt/run in circles/scream and shout. And don’t let the bastards wear you down/Don’t get hassled to a frazzle.

The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw, the Butterfield Blues Band, Elektra, 1967

I’ve found that Pigboy Crabshaw was a nickname for Elvin Bishop. This was the band’s first record after Mike Bloomfield quit, so I guess that’s the ‘resurrection’ part, but nobody’s saying if it was meant to be as insulting as it sounds to me. Dave Sanborn, an excellent alto sax player, died this week, so I thought it would be a good time to haul this one out. At the time I didn’t care for this LP much, thinking it was a sell-out from the Muddy Waters/Little Walter-style Chicago blues of the first two albums. [Of course, Butterfield had the same problem John Mayall had keeping guitar players in the Bluesbreakers.] This is a blues/Stax-Volt-style R&B/jazz hybrid with some early Parliament funk. Butterfield had the nerve to cover Marvin Gaye on One More Heartache—his singing sounded much better than his first two records. Maybe he was intimidated by Bloomfield. Pity the Fool has nothing to do with Mr. T. Born Under a Bad Sign, Double Trouble, and Drivin’ Wheel are strong covers. Horns started infecting pop music in the mid-60s. Everybody thought it was going to be the next big thing, so a lot of bands tried it. This was successful.

Dennis Thompson, drummer for the MC5, dies at 75

Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact, is how Bruce Springsteen put it. It’s still sad in this case because Thompson was the last original member of the band. He played loud. The story was that the band couldn’t afford a microphone for the drums, and since the two guitar players had their amps at 10, Thompson hit the drums as hard as he could. He started playing the drums when he was 4. He dropped out of Wayne State where he was studying engineering when that would have been a draft deferment and a good shot at steady job. Thompson said, I chose fun. I wasn’t doing math at 4 years old, right? I was playing drums.

Wayne Kramer, a guitar player, died in February, and John Sinclair, the manager, died in April, so the stories about how the band was notorious and groundbreaking more than commercially successful have made the rounds. My favorite is that when Detroit’s biggest store didn’t carry the MC5’s record because it used profane lyrics, Sinclair took out a big newspaper ad using profane language directed at Hudson’s. When my cousin Moose was asked to leave a bar because he was drunk, he dropped his trousers on the way out. It was a perfect gesture in the moment, but at a price.

Duane Eddy, 86, died

He was the master of twang instrumentals in the 1950s and early ‘60s, with hits such as Rebel Rouser and 40 Miles of Bad Road. He was a self-taught guitar player who didn’t read music, yet he was so successful at what he did that I’ll bet he is among the most frequently-included artists in compilations from the ‘50s. Shangri-Las, Shirelles, Kingsmen, maybe the Righteous Brothers, and Eddy. One of these is not like the others—that twang evokes Eisenhower’s second term very powerfully.

I found out from his obit that Eddy was married to Jessi Colter from 1962 to 1968. He must have been much better looking than his photos. On my Waylon Jennings album ‘I’ve Always Been Crazy,’ Eddy produced the four-song medley of Buddy Holly hits. Jennings played with Holly (and was married to Jessi Colter from 1969 till his death in 2002).  Everything touches if you read enough of the small print.

Mike Pinder, last of the original Moody Blues, dies at 82

He was their keyboard/Mellotron player. It was an innovative instrument, kind of sampler and kind of synth that gave the Blues their lush orchestral sound in Days of Future Past. Pinder also recited the poem in Nights in White Satin. (Me, I thought that was an outtake from Spinal Tap.) Some stories from the innertubes: Their management company took their early earnings and ran to the hills. The band had a hit in France in 1965 with a version of Bye, Bye Bird, a Sonny Boy Williamson tune. There’s a clip from French TV that’s pretty good.

John Sinclair, 82, died

That’s evidence that smoking marijuana every day for over 60 years doesn’t kill you. I’m disappointed that there’s only spotty coverage of his death in the mainstream media I follow (looking at you, New York Times). Any outfit that reported Wayne Kramer’s death two months ago should have as big a splash for Sinclair. He managed the MC5 for a while, after all. He had a vision of a society based on rock and roll, dope, and sex in the streets. He called for a communal, classless, anti-imperialist, anti-sexist, anti-racist culture of liberation. (He gave up on politics when he realized that middle-class kids only wanted the marijuana.) He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the late ‘60s for giving two joints to an undercover cop (the way I remember it, she had pestered him for it). Michigan changed the law so that possession of a small amount of dope was a misdemeanor with a one-year max. He was released a few days later. He was later arrested for conspiring to blow up a CIA office. He beat that charge because Nixon’s Department of Justice had ignored the Constitution as it collected the evidence. He is the godfather of decriminalized dope. Barefoot Jerry is on YouTube doing Tokin’ Ticket, but I can’t bring myself to link to such a lame song. Better you should play some MC5 loud.

Melanie, Mary Weiss (of the Shangri-Las) died

Melanie Safka [I bet she went by her first name because she got tired of hearing ‘that rhymes with Kafka’] played at Woodstock. Her song about that, Lay Down (Candles in the Rain), was a FM radio hit in 1970, a great time to do a song about Woodstock. Her biggest hit was sort of a novelty song, Brand New Key. Her version of Ruby Tuesday was on FM radio as well. Her Wiki page said she left Buddah over artistic control and founded her own record label, putting out records on her own schedule. She played at the memorial concert for Phil Ochs in 1976.

I never knew that the four members of the Shangri-Las were Weiss, her sister, plus twin friends. They had memorable hits—among them Remember (Walking in the Sand), Give Him a Great Big Kiss, I Can Never Go Home Again, and Leader of the Pack. They had a lot of teen despair (well beyond angst). My mother, the English teacher, hated the spoken intro to Give Him a Great Big Kiss-‘you best believe I’m in love L-U-V’—as if high school kids would forget how to spell from Top 40 radio. There is a great finger snap followed by a hand clap in Remember, plus the sea gulls calling. There was a motorcycle revving followed by a crash in Leader of the Pack.