Lux Interior (Eric Lee Purkiser) died today (Feb. 4th, 2009) at 4:30 AM in a hospital in Glendale, California of a heart ailment. Lux was one of the first people I met when I moved to New York City in 1977 and although I never knew him well I feel as though I learned a lot from just watching and listening to him. There is no facet of popular culture that hasn’t been influenced by the Cramps and although they never got their due in terms of record sales, they changed thousands, maybe millions of lives. He was truly the last of a breed. R.I.P. The above photo was taken by Stephanie Chernokowski in the fall of 1977.
I wouldn’t get too bummed out just yet, there’s a good chance he will rise from the dead sometime soon.
Month: February 2009
Dynamic Duos II: God’s Army – Johnny & Luther Htoo
It was January 25, 2000 that the above photo appeared on the front page of the New York Times.
It’s a chilling photograph. Child soldiers (there are an estimated 1,000,000 children under the age of fifteen serving as soldiers around the world at any given moment), age 12, they looked closer to eight or nine. Twins, Johnny and Luther Htoo, one angelic (Johnny on the left), the other impish with the sides of his head shaved and smoking a cheroot (Luther on the right). They were from what used to be Burma, now Myanmar, members of an ethnic, tribal minority– the Karen (pronounced Kur-IN) who have been at war with the ultra-oppressive Burmese army since 1949. Their home was the isolated mountain region in the mid-east of the country near the Thai border. Their names in Karen are Ehkalumu (Johnny) and Ehkalutaw (Luther) which mean The Patriot Who Will Never Die and the Honest Patriot. Their parents obviously knew their spawn where born to a purpose. They were born in a tiny, farming village called Pe Cha in November, 1987. Since natural gas had been struck in the area and a pipeline was being built to ship the gas through Thailand with the help of U.S. and British corporate money, the Burmese leaders in Rangoon had decided the easiest and most profitable solution was to ethnically cleanse the area of the Karen, slaughtering entire villages, and racking up the usual depressing list of human rights abuses as documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and even the U.S. State Department: rape, torture, forced relocation, slavery– as in using Karen as forced labor to work on the pipeline or as porters for the army. The Karen have always fought back, their fight led by the Karen National Union (KSU) whose leaders are mostly in exile in Thailand, and had been losing (there are at least 100,00 Karen refugees on the Thai border) until the Htoo twins took over as guerrilla leaders, rising quickly to the rank of generals in their rag tag band known as The Soldiers Of God’s Holy Mountain AKA God’s Army. The Karen are fundamentalist Christians having been converted by American missionaries from Salem, Massachusetts in the early 19th Century. Their beliefs include a vegan diet, no swearing or pre-martial sex, and much quoting of scripture. Many Karen believe that the KSU leaders have been corrupted by living the high life in exile while they fought it out in the jungle against the better armed and more numerous Burmese military. After a raid on their village in which the Burmese killed and raped with impudence, Johnny and Luther, at the time aged nine, approached their local KSU commander and asked for seven guns. That night they led a counter attack on the village and defeated an entire battalion of soldiers. Along with their cousin, a black tongued dwarf named Thoo Pleh they began leading raids from their mountain encampments.
There are dozens of eye witness accounts of what is said to be their supernatural powers (including the eye witness testimony of an American born Nun, one sister Mary who has worked among the Karen for decades). They are said to be the reincarnation of 15th Century Karen warriors and as such are bullet proof. They are crack shots who never miss their target. They are able to appear and disappear at will.
When not at war they acted like normal children, albeit chain smoking children. They played hide and seek, tag and of course War.
The Htoo twins showed up on the radar of the Western media through a very bad tactical error.
Hooking up with a radical, pro-democracy student group several members of God’s Army joined the students in the October, 1999, seizure of the Burmese embassy in Bangkok. The siege ended without a shot fired, the Thai army provided a helicopter for the radicals escape and the hostages were freed. Their next action did not end so well. In January of 2000, the same group seized a hospital in Ratchaburi, Thailand in an attempt to draw attention to the cause. This time the Thai army, fed up and disgusted that the Karen would seize a hospital full of innocent bystanders (hospitals are considered sacrosanct even in guerrilla warfare) they attacked, leaving a score of students and their God’s Army attachment dead. This hardened the Thai hearts against the Karen cause considerably, but it did make worldwide headlines, where the above photo of the pre-pubescent generals appeared on the cover of newspapers all over the U.S. , Europe and Asia.
And the fighting continued, with the now weakened Karen more often than not at the losing end. In 2001 Johnny and Luther, after years on the run and hiding out in the mountains, out of ammo and close to starvation crossed the border into Thailand and gave themselves up to the Thai army. Then Prime Minister– Chuan Leekpai was on hand to receive their surrender, shaking Johnny’s hand in a photo op reminiscent of the end of Clockwork Orange. The twins were kept in a refugee camp where they eventually both married and fathered children (Luther married his English teacher). But life in a refugee camp is oppressive and dull, they were not permitted to work, keep arms, train as soldiers, or even farm. In 2006 Johnny left the camp, recrossing the border into Myanmar and gave himself up to the Burmese Army. His current whereabouts are unknown. Luther remains in the Thai refugee camp and has taken up the guitar to pass the time. I keep a photo of Johnny and Luther over my desk where it continues to haunt me. Video footage can be found here.
Dynamic Duos I: Don & Dewey
Don & Dewey (Don “Sugarcane” Harris and Dewey Terry) were, and still are, the greatest duo in the whole history of rock’n’roll. They never had a chart hit but they originated at least half dozen standards, many of which charted for acts as diverse as the Premiers, Dale & Grace, Donnie & Marie Osmond, the Olympics, the Searchers, the Righteous Brothers and Neil Young. Of course, that’s not what makes them great. What makes ’em great, is that they were great– Mormon incest fantasies be damned.
The story begins in Pasadena, California which is where they came from. At John Muir High School they sang with a doo wop group called the Squires. The Squires cut a couple of singles for Kicks and Vita records and called it quits. That was in 1955. Our subjects could not be satisfied with mere harmony. Both were multi-instrumentalists, Dewey played guitar, piano and bass while Don mastered guitar, bass and violin. They both sang and together their sound took off like a rocket ship. In 1956 Don & Dewey hooked up with a guy named John Criner (later to become the manager of the Olympics) who recorded two singles with them, both issued in January 1957. Nobody seems to know which disc was issued first but one, released on Spot was a Little Richard styled rocker– Miss Sue b/w My Heart Is Aching which would hint at glories to come. The other 45 Fiddlin’ The Blues b/w Slummin’ was on the Shade label and both tunes are instrumentals, showcasing Don Harris’ bluesy electric violin, a talent that wouldn’t be fully exploited until after Don & Dewey’s break-up, but one that kept him in work for decades.
By the time these records hit the streets Don & Dewey who had been gigging around the L.A. area, were spotted by Specialty Records’ Art Rupe and he cut their first session on January, 29, 1957. Rupe’s thinking was sound, if one Little Richard sold a million records, two Little Richards should sell two million–at least. Their first Specialty single was perhaps the most auspicious debut in the history of history….aw, hell–just listen to it– Jungle Hop b/w A Little Love. A stripped down affair, Dewey played piano, Don guitar, they were accompanied by the monstrous Earl Palmer on drums and a bass player nobody remembers. They both screamed their lungs out. Despite a growing following around L.A. the disc was just too raw for the radio and while it sold well locally it never charted. Seven more sessions followed in the next two years. Rupe would fill out their sound bringing in ace session men Plas Johnson on sax, the severely under rated Rene Hall on guitar, Ted Brinson on bass, and eventually (in March of ’58) turning over production duties to future Scientologist, Congressman and spazz skier Sonny Bono.
Their next single was probably their best seller– I”m Leavin’ It Up To You b/w Jelly Bean got airplay in L.A. but the rest of the country wouldn’t hear the tune until it became a hit for Dale & Grace in 1963 and then again for Donnie & Marie in 1973. Still, Rupe believed in them as belied by the fact that he kept recording and issuing records, some of the highlights– Farmer John (later a hit for Chicano garage rockers the Premiers), the frantic Justine (and it’s equally wild flipside Bim Bam), Big Boy Pete (a hit for the Olympics), the stop time instrumental Jump Awhile (issued on the Specialty subsidiary Fidelity), the you gotta hear it to believe it Kill Me (also released on Fidelity) on which Dewey Terry’s guitar solo comes close to matching his idol, Specialty label mate Guitar Slim. Some of the material that Rupe didn’t release was better than some of what was, like their sublime rendition of Joe Liggins’ Pink Champagne, the only time Rupe let Don Harris take his fiddle out of its case, and the rockin’ Mammer-Jammer, the most un-folk like disc to ever mention a hootenanny. The later two saw light of day when Specialty finally got around to putting out a Don & Dewey LP– Rockin’ Til Midnight, Rollin’ Til Dawn in 1970. It’s one of the greatest LP’s of all time. What Rupe did issue was often trite, like the Sonny Bono tune Koko Joe, although their delivery overcomes the material.
By 1959 Don & Dewey had packed it in with Specialty. They recorded a few singles for Rush and then joined Little Richard’s band when he returned from touring the U.K. where he had played with both the Beatles and the Stones. In 1964, Richard led them right back to Rupe’s doorstep where they backed Little Richard on his final, glorious Specialty single– Bama Lama Loo b/w Annie’s Back, Rupe’s attempt to re-introduce Little Richard to America by replacing his saxophone heavy sound with wild electric guitars. It failed to sell but remains one of Little Richard’s greatest discs. At the same session Don & Dewey waxed their fairwell to Specialty, a killer rocker called Get Your Hat which turned out to be their prophetic swansong. Soundwise, it could have been recorded eight years earlier, but it was out of step with the Beatlemania that ruled radio that year. Nothing good lasts for very long and by 1965 Don & Dewey split up. Don “Sugarcane” Harris cut a few solo singles for Johnny Otis’ Dig label and would eventually join the Mothers Of Invention (where he can be heard soloing on Willie The Pimp), play in a hippie group called Pure Food and Drug Act and finally land a deal with Epic where he cut a couple of LP’s. He also appears on sides by Harvey Mandel, John Mayall, Johnny Otis, and a punk band led by Mayall’s son called Tupelo Chain Sex. Dewey Terry cut a blues album called Chief for the Tumbleweed label in 1972.
They reformed a few times in the 1990’s, appearing mostly at Festivals in Europe, and when Don Harris (real name Bowman) passed away in 1999, Dewey did a few shows with a replacement Don. Dewey Terry himself bought the farm in 2003. The complete Don & Dewey on Specialty/Fidelity is available in the U.S. on Specialty (now owned by Saul Zaentz’s Fantasy Records) and in the U.K. on Ace (available here). It has nine un-issued tracks (but not the Spot and Shade singles). A complete discography can be found here.
James Williamson 1966 and 1972
Found these lovely photos the Stooges’ guitarist James “the Skull” Williamson. The top photo is the Chosen Few, that’s James, bottom right with the Fender Jaguar, Scott Richardson is on the top left holding his nose. He would marry Robert Mitchum’s daughter. Ronnie Asheton told me he got to go to Mitchum’s ranch and hang out on several occasions. Mitchum cooked up a big pot of chili and shared his home grown herb with him. Ron Asheton played bass briefly in the Chosen Few (that’s where he met Williamson). Scott Richardson went on to form the Scott Richardson Case aka SRC which eventually became Blue Sceptor. Richardson later worked as a screenwriter on Hearts Of Fire a film that starred Bob Dylan with a cameo by Ian Dury.
The bottom pic is circa 1972, taken in a cemetery in London somewhere during the recording of Raw Power. I’ve never been one to argue Ron Asheton vs. James Williamson or Funhouse vs. Raw Power. I love them both, they’re very different records. Just because you love champagne doesn’t mean you have to stop drinking red wine. I agree with Lenny Kaye, the best possible scenario would have been if they recorded Raw Power a year earlier with both Ron Asheton and James Williamson playing guitars, too bad Elektra dropped them. Woulda, shoulda, coulda…as Jim Dickinson says, the best performances don’t get recorded, the best recordings don’t get released, and the best releases don’t sell. Or something like that. As I’ve previously voiced, the best mix of Search & Destroy (and Penetration) is the 45, available from Sundazed. For a look at James Williamson today go here and scroll down. There’s an excellent interview with his eminence in the new issue of The Fretboard Journal (#12, Winter 2008….yes, they misprinted the date on the cover, it just came out). Not new, but probably the best interview Williamson’s ever given can be found here . And when you’re done with that click around, the I-94 site has tons of incredible interviews with Bob Quine, Greg Shaw, Ron Asheton, and dozens of others. A small label in London is releasing a live Stooges disc recorded in ’71 with the Williamson/Asheton double guitar line up this spring. More info as it appears. BTW, a reminder, if you missed the Funhouse Sessions box set you can get it here (scroll down).