Redd Foxx. born John Elroy Sanford on Dec. 9, 1922, was as a funny motherfucker. These videos are compiled from his best LP– You Better Wash Your Ass which was
recorded live at the Apollo at the height of his Sanford & Son fame in the early 70’s.
He was raised in St. Louis and later Chicago where he attented DuSable High School where most of Sun Ra’s Arkestra (John Gilmore, Pat Patrick, Marshall Allen) amongst others went.
He never graduated. He hit New York in the late 40’s and got a job washing dishes. The other dishwasher at the joint was Malcom Little, later Malcom X. Redd was known as Chicago Red, Malcom as Detroit Red. As recounted in his autobiography (The Autobiography Of Malcom X, co-written by Alex Haley, I can’t find my copy but it’s easy to find so you don’t need the publishing info) they had some wild times together.
Foxx made his name first on the chitlin’ circuit, recorded dozens of LP’s for the Dootone label in L.A., and became a huge draw in Vegas where stars like Frank Sinatra and Elvis showed up nightly to catch his act and be insulted. He even cut some decent R&B discs, here’s one from Savoy cut in ’48– Let’s Wiggle A Little Woogie, and here’s one from his own Foxx label from the 80’s — Pussy Footin’. Not great but not bad at all, certainly better than anything that’s hit the top ten this century. His sound didn’t change much in forty years. Redd Foxx was the only entertainer invited to Elvis’ wedding. Later Elvis gave him a watch worth $100,00 (in 1968 dollars), it was later sold at auction by the IRS. In the early 70’s Foxx found mainstream fame on TV as Fred G. Sanford in Sanford and Son, a remake of a British show called Steptoe and Son. Fred G. Sanford was the name of his late real life brother. My favorite episode is when Fred and son Lionel (Demond Wilson) find the Blind Mellow Jelly 78’s and donate them to the library, then steal them back when they find a record collector willing to pay $20 a pop for ’em. On Sanford and Son he hired many of his chitlin’ circuit pals like Lawanda Page as Aunt Esther, Whitman Mayo as Grady, Slappy White as Melvin, Leroy “Sloppy” Daniels as Leroy, not to mention Stymie from the Little Rascals (Mathew Beard) who appeared in a couple of episodes as Otis Littlejohn.
Foxx also made a memorable film appearance in Ossie Davis’ Cotton Comes To Harlem which was based on the Chester Himes novel (with the classic evil cop duo Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, all of Himes’ books are worth reading, but the Grave Digger/Coffin Ed series are essential).
I saw Redd Foxx perform several times (and I hate stand up comedy) and he was one of the greatest performers I’ve ever witnessed.
He was brutal on anyone who caught his attention, especially hecklers. The last time I saw him he walked out onstage with a breast shaped pitcher full of some sort of alcohol and quipped– “I got this from Betty Ford”. Then he looked at a guy at a front table (this was at the Desert Inn in Vegas) and said– “Last thing I seen that ugly had a string hangin’ out of it”. Well, it when he said it, it was funny. Anyway, if the three clips above don’t make you laugh, have somebody take your pulse, you’re probably dead.
Addendum: Great interview with Iggy on the subject of Ron Asheton can be heard here.
Very sad, I’m not sure I ever heard Iggy cry before.
Uncategorized
Horace Parlan
(I actually wrote this on Jan. 6th, then Ron Asheton died, which took up three blogs, then the Mickey Baker idea came to me so I shelved it. I’ve since reread it and decided since it’s virtually impossible to find Up & Down I’d might as well post it, so as Bo Diddley’s said– “Here ‘Tis“):
“Shit and death are everywhere...”– Bukowski
Bill Landis, founder of Sleazoid Express died a few days ago, 49 years old, dropped dead of a heart attack. His two books– Sleazoid Express (co-written with Michelle Clifford, Fireside, 2002) and the biography of Kenneth Anger, Anger:The Unauthorized Biography (Harper-Collins, 1995), are excellent bathroom reading (i.e., they’ll make you shit, as Jerry Lewis would say).
Some background: Horace Parlan, born 1931 in Pittsburgh suffered polio as a child which affected the use of his fingers, but like Django, he did not let this stand in his way and he developed into an excellent pianist in the style known as “hard bop” (jazz critics are great for coming up with silly sub-classifications of music, in fact they invented the idea– remember “anti-jazz” the etymological forerunner of “grindcore”?). Parlan is best known as the pianist in Charles Mingus’ band during it’s heyday: 1957-9. He then moved on to record as a leader for a series of eight excellent Blue Note LP’s (compiled by Mosaic Records for the Complete Horace Parlan on Blue Note box set, now out of print). Parlan later worked with Lou Donaldson for a bit, joined Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s band (1963-66), played with Jackie McClean (seen in the clip above, Parlan is barley visible on the piano). Horace relocated to Sweden in the sixties, later he teamed up with free jazz blower Archie Shepp for a series of duet LP’s, none of which I’ve ever heard. Then, he seems to have disappeared from the jazz world although he is still alive, possibly still in Sweden. I imagine him like a missing character out of A.B. Spellman’s Four Lives In The Be-Bop Business (Pantheon Books, 1966) scraping by in a piano bar somewhere, playing for tips to middle age, square head, drunks who have no idea of his accomplishments.
Which brings us to Up & Down. Parlan’s playing is nothing fancy, he was no Bud Powell, but his simple, rhythmic style had a lot of soul, he was an effective soloist and he as sympathetic an accompanist as can be heard, good thing, since the real stars of Up & Down are not leader Parlan but guitarist Grant Green and Booker Ervin on the tenor sax, the rest of the band on this session are George Tucker on bass and Al Harewood on drums.
The record opens with Booker Ervin’s “The Book’s Beat” an extended jam on which both Green and Ervin’s solos set the bar high, they’re both at the peak of their powers here, and both would go on to become giants in their field. I’m especially fond of Green but that’s another post, another day, when I get back to my specialty: dead guys with sad stories. But any of his early Blue Notes are worth owning, especially the ones with Sonny Clark. “Up And Down” is the only Parlan original on the set while George Tucker contributes “Fugee” and Green is credited with “The Other Part Of Town” (my favorite track, I think he means the part of town you go to to cop dope). The disc is rounded off with a sublime rendition of the linguistic genius Babs Gonzales’ “Lonely One” (try and find a copy of his autobiography: i, paid my dues good Times..no Bread A Story Of Jazz…And Some Of It’s Followers, Shyster Agents, Hustlers, Pimps and Prostitutes Expubidence Pub. Corp, 1967 and those aren’t typos) and closes with Tommy Turrentine’s “Light Blue“.
The only thing more boring than writing about music is reading about it, although it can be fun to read about the characters who make those funny noises we love so much, I (and you) don’t need someone to describe or analyze what you are hearing, you have ears, you can hear without somebody telling you what key or tempo the tune is in. On my copy the liner notes are in Japanese which is fine with me.
The older I get, the better jazz sounds to me. There is something very special about that golden era of Blue Note records (from the early 50’s to the mid 60’s) from the warm clarity of Van Gelder’s New Jersey studio to hep album covers. Blue Note was a class label. Maybe not $200 worth of special, but roll a spliff or pop the cork on some champagne (or whatever you do to unwind) and give old Horace a spin. It defines the word “vibe” in a way mere words never could. This is what great jazz is all about to my slowly deteriorating mind. These are sounds to dream to, pass out to, and Horace Parlan’s Up & Down is a late night, dreamy classic.
Repost of Rare Stooges Photo
  left to right: Bill Cheetam, Zeke Zettner, Ron Asheton, Scott Asheton, Iggy Pop
Thanks to anonymous for cleaning up this rare photo of the Stooges. I think we own the only copy that exists, but since it’s framed I had to re-shoot it through the frame to post it, it looks a lot better now. That’s Bill Cheetam on the left, Zeke Zettner second from left, they were roadies who were briefly promoted into the guitar and bass slot for a few months in late 1970, they were replaced by James Williamson and Jimmy Recca before the band dissolved in ’71 (a photo of that line up can be found on the Halloween 2 and Ron Asheton RIP postings). When the Stooges reformed in ’72 to record Raw Power, Ron Asheton was moved to bass. A piano player was added after Raw Power (first Bob Scheff, late of the Prime Movers, then Scott Thurston who went on to play with Tom Petty, Jackson Browne and played guitar on Iggy’s New Values LP).
Ron Asheton 3: Danny Fields on Ron Asheton
If people got paid to be cool Danny Fields would be richer than Bill Gates. Danny Fields is the man who discovered the Stooges, the MC5, Ramones, and much, much, more. This was originally written in response to something that ran in a U.K. newspaper whose writer in his obit of Ron Asheton criticised Ron for collecting Nazi memorabilia (nobody ever bothers Chris Stein of Blondie about his collection….). Also they ran a second piece about Kathy Asheton, Ron’s sister having to have police posted outside Ron’s house to keep the scavengers away, so that is what he is referring to. It ran as a comment on a bulletin board which didn’t accept photos so that’s what he’s writing about in the first paragraph. The photo of Danny and Ron was taken at Max’s Kansas City in 1973 (I have other photos that Danny took that night where you can see Nitebob stage side but can’t seem to find ’em at the moment). Thanks for letting me run this, Danny, you’re a prince.
The footage is from the Goosecreek Rock Fest, 1970, Dave Alexander’s last gig, I added it Sunday, Jan. 11th. I’d have posted it sooner if I’d had known about it (it’s from French Youtube).
I wanted to put in a picture of me and Ron at Max’s Kansas City, in New York, in 1973, but this space won’t allow me to, and so I lost everything I just wrote. He’s wearing an Eisenkreuze First Class, and I had a pack of Marlboros in my pocket. I ask you now which was more cool.
Anyhow, Ron was so sweet, and this stuff is all so tacky.
Yes, the press likes a fight among survivors when people die who were not quite headline-makers during their lifetimes, although Ron himself made headlines indeed in all those who loved rock and roll in its last golden age. He INVENTED the sound of rock and roll as we now know it. People who were appalled in 1968, if they are still alive, now accept the mighty contribution made by Ron Asheton and the Stooges as part of their lives. Some variation of what these guys invented is in just about every tv commercial now on the air; a weird kind of vindication, I know, but it usually takes “the world” a good 30 or 40 years to recognize something revolutionary as something that is acceptable, even quotidien.
We all knew the music these guys made was EXTREMELY advanced for its time; that includes many of my colleagues back in 1968, at Elektra Records, to which I signed the band (after a phone chat with the company’s president, Jac Holzman, about 18 hours after the first time I ever saw them).
Remember that putatively Platonic (literally, first said by Plato) thing that went: When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake? Well, the origin of that opinion is often argued, but the truth of it is not, ever. And the “Psychedelic Stooges” certainly changed the mode of the music; the Ramones, for example, who changed it again later on in the very same evolutionary process, met each other because they were the only guys in the neighborhood who liked the Stooges albums, and so they gathered in Joey’s mother’s art gallery’s basement to listen to it. It was the anthem of outcasts, that music, just as “I Wanna Be Your Dog” became the anthem of the so-called punk (I prefer to think of it as simply modern, the “p” word [punk, not psychedelic, but maybe both] is rather overexposed and simultaneously misunderstood. Modern will do, because the music is STILL ahead of OUR time, not to mention how despised it was 40 years ago. Today, anybody auditioning for a place in a band where a guitarist or bassist is needed, must own his or her take on “Dog.” It was the first song the Sex Pistols learned and played in public, and so on and so on.
By the way, please all be assured that Ron’s fascination with Nazi memorabilia made him a Nazi about as much as seeing yet another version of “Dracula” will make you into a vampire, and do give that canard a rest. I wish y’all could have seen some of those leather trenchcoats he had, you’d be eating your hearts out, whatever your religion or politics–with which Ron’s great taste had nothing, as far as I could tell, to do.
Nevertheless, that sound it is the preferred vehicle for tv commercials (meaning that all songs should really be under thirty seconds long, but we needn’t go into my quirkier opinions at this point..
Whatever, I am so proud of that band, of knowing those guys, of giving them a leg up (as if someone else would not have the next week or month), of being able to hug them all lo these many years later (one would prefer NOT to show pictures of THAT) but I can post the one where we were all younger and cuter if someone tells me how.) And so proud of that music; it will always be great. I thought Bach must have sounded like that to listeners in the 18th century, but let me outta here.
This squalid quibbling about loading his guitars and Nazi medals into a truck is so beneath everything that matters. I’m sure Ron would have preferred a puzzling and clever murder, something like Colonel Mustard in the Library; though I’m not implying that he would have welcomed being murdered, or of finding the Colonel and sending him to the gallows. Still, I’m sure he would have preferred something like THAT to something like THIS. He had you know, besides the grace and talent of an angel, a super sense of humor. His loss is so sad, for art and for humanity. May he astonish the angels as he astonished us.
What a beautiful guy.
Peace and/or butchery, whatever,
Danny Fields
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/world_news_america/7814498.stm
Mickey "Guitar" Baker
If you asked me, and I know you didn’t, but if you did, I’d say Mickey “Guitar” Baker is the greatest guitarist in rock’n’roll history. Bob Quine agreed with me. If you listen to all the tunes that accompany this bloogage you too may agree with me. In an attempt to ward off the tendency for this blog to become a mere death watch, Mickey Baker is still alive and will stay that way for at least a few more days, and hopefully a few more decades. Let’s get the background out of the way so that we may get to the good stuff in what the guy on TV calls some sort of “context”.
Our, or at least my hero, comes into this life as McHouston Baker, born in Louisville, Kentucky on Oct. 15, 1925. He was arrested for stealing clothing at age eleven and was incarcerated in the Ridgewood Orphanage for three years where he attempted to learn to play trumpet. Upon release he worked his way north, arriving in New York City in 1945 where he took up the profession of pimping, however a beating at the hands of rival players sent him into a career detour of the equally sleazy profession of musician. Since he couldn’t afford a trumpet he bought a guitar from a local pawnshop and took lessons for a year or so eventually landing a job in a group the Incomparables led by pianist Billy Valentine. Their music has been described at various times as mambo, calypso, be-bop, and according to Baker “some weird shit”. The Incomparables worked their way west and somewhere in or near San Francisco, Baker had a revelation. He witnessed Pee Wee Crayton, a popular rhythm and blues guitarist who was driving the women wild in a packed club. The response to Crayton’s music included babes in tight dresses showering him with bank notes while he played the guitar behind his head T-Bone Walker style. The Incomparables were getting no such response, in fact the audiences barely paid attention to their music, but Baker’s revelation– if that guy could do it, so can I, sent Baker into a totally new direction musically. He would no longer attempt to play jazz, mambo, calypso, or any weird shit. The money was in primitive, raw, blues influenced sounds, the wilder the better. And so it came to be– Baker would invent a guitar style with the accent on wildness.
By the mid 1950’s Baker, a fast learner, was playing sessions all over the New York area. One of the best was for the Savoy label out in Newark where he and King Curtis (who would be another session regular) appeared on a series of instrumental sides by piano pounder Sam Price such as Bar-B-Q Sauce and Chicken Out. Sammy told me he thought Mickey was a “big mouth”. He also started cutting discs under his own name, “Guitar” (with quotes) was now his middle name. It’s hard to figure out the exact order of release but in the years 1955-6 MGM issued Spinnin’ Rock Boogie while Rainbow put out several singles including Shake Walkin’, Greasy Spoon, and Bandstand Stomp. There was also some sides released on the b-side of other discs, like Night Crawlin’ on RCA’s Groove subsidiary, the flipside of a Big John Greer record (Come Back Maybellene on which Baker gives his violent edge to the Chuck Berry riff). RCA’s R&B subsidiaryy Groove recorded him under the name of Big Red McHouston on I’m Tired
in 1956 as well as using him on many of their sessions.
Baker knew instinctively just what to add to a record, whether it was the genius one note solo on the Coasters’ I’m A Hog For You (Atco) or the crazed five thousand note fills on Louis Jordan’s 1955 remake of Caladonia (Mercury/Wing) he left his personal stamp on each disc. He can be heard blazin’ away on discs as diverse as Wilbert Harrison’s Florida Special (Savoy) former Coaster Young Jessie’s Hit Git & Split (Modern, heard here in an alternate take), Roy Gaines’ Right Now Baby (Groove), Square Walton’s Bad Hangover and Pepper Headed Woman (RCA), Eddie Riff’s My Baby’s Gone Away (Dover), even with rockabilly bus driver Joe Clay on You Look That Good To Me (Vik), doo wop greaseballs the Continentals’ Don’t Do It Baby (Jay Dee) and folk bluesman Brownie McGhee’s Anna Lee (Savoy, another “Maybellene” cop). A complete session discography for Mickey Baker could fill up a medium size phone directory.
It was around this time that Baker, who also gave guitar lessons to make ends meet, decided to team up musically with one of his students, the sultry Sylvia Vanderpool soon to be Sylvia Robinson when she married record biz gangster Joe Robinson (Joe would end up owning labels like All Platinum, Sugar Hill and buy the Chess catalog for a mere 3 million in the late 70’s, less than half of what the Chess brothers sold it for earlier in that decade) assuring that Mickey would get no pussy out of the deal.
Mickey and Sylvia hated each other, but commercially they were a winning team. After a few flops recorded for the Brooklyn based Rainbow label they were signed to RCA’s Groove imprint. Mickey & Sylvia’s first disc on Groove was a wild, upbeat, two guitar and washboard rocker– No Good Lover and their second, adapted from Bo Diddley and Billy Stewart’s Billy’s Blues (see the Bo Diddley posting below to hear it), Love Is Strange became a smash hit. Again, the version here is an alternate take, you can here the original hit on aforementioned Bo posting. Their next disc- Dearest (with Bo playing rhythm guitar, again it’s listed below) was issued on Vik as was their excellent LP– New Sounds Of Mickey & Sylvia and several EPs. That LP featured an incredible instrumental called Shake It Up. Doc Pomus was at the session when Shake It Up was recorded and told me Mickey was in a particularly foul mood that day. Eventually Mickey & Sylvia’s records grew softer and stopped selling, Mickey attempted to replace Sylvia with somebody named Kitty, recording for Atlantic a version of St. Louis Blues that failed to sell.
Atlantic also issued a Mickey Baker solo LP, titled, appropriately enough The Wildest Guitar.
On said disc Mickey shows the influence of Les Paul (try to get a stereo copy to hear the full effect), albeit, a twisted Les Paul, as he works his unique magic on standards like the Third Man Theme, Old Devil Moon and Milk Train. While not the wild rock’n’roll of his early 45’s, it’s a great album none the less, and rare too, since nobody bought it.
That mattered little as the live work with Sylvia was lucrative and he was now New York’s most in demand rock’n’roll session guitarist. Another steady source of income came with series of instructional guitar booklets he wrote and published such as the one pictured above. These became his main source of income. I have learned all nine chords in the above book and they work if you put ’em in the right order (three at a time is all you need). They’re the only guitar books I’ve ever read that make any sense at all when it comes to playing rock’n’roll.
By the early sixties it’s was over for Mickey Baker and not just in rock’n’roll but in America itself.
He moved to Paris in 1962 and has since rarely returned to the States. Since relocating he has cut records with Champion Jack Dupree and returned to what he’d always badly wanted to do— play jazz.
And he does, that is, play jazz badly. The greatest rock’n’roll guitar player in the world is one of the worst jazz guitar players in France. He released a few medicore discs before dropping from sight completely. He was last seen in New York City after the movie Dirty Dancing (1987) had made Love Is Strange a minor hit again, evidently he quietly slipped in and out of the country in a few days time. There’s a rumor that he left the States after a row over his part of the copyright of Love Is Strange (which he shared with Bo Diddley although one Ethyl Smith is credited on the label) with a mobster, whom, since he’s still alive I’ll refer to only as “the Big Guy”. It could even be true, who knows at this point? Only Mickey and the Big Guy, and neither of them are talking.
For those who still buy CD’s Rev-O-La has issued an excellent 31 song career retrospective called Mickey Baker In The 50’s: Hit, Git & Split while the German Bear Family label has a double CD representing the almost complete works of Mickey & Sylvia– Love Is Strange and a set of his early solo discs with some Mickey & Sylvia outtakes thrown in entitled Rock With A Sock. There are worse ways to blow your money than this.
Last spring I was in Paris, just wandering around and every cafe I saw I’d scan the heads looking for a light skinned black man with reddish hair, knowing that somewhere in that city, Mickey Baker, middle name “Guitar”, failed pimp, failed jazzman and the greatest rock’n’roll guitarist of them all, is living out his final years. I’ll bet he’s got some stories to tell…..
Addendum To Today’s Post
Auteur Ray Dennis Steckler passed away yesterday. He directed and produced such cinematic classics as Wild Guitar (1962), The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed Up Zombies (1964), Rat Fink and Boo Boo (1966), amongst other great films, his last was Summer Of Fun in 1997, he was also the cinematographer on Tim Carey’s The World’s Greatest Sinner (1962), possibly the greatest movie ever made.
Addendum #2: To see what James Williamson, who played guitar on the Stooges’ Raw Power and Metallic K.O. and produced Iggy’s New Values and Kill City has been up to scroll down to the third entry on this page. Thanks to former Stooges’ soundman, Nitebob for pointing this one out.
Ron Asheton 2
As details emerge over the tragic death of the Stooges’ Ron Asheton I thought I’d post these pictures, taken by my wife Gillian McCain around 1994 at Ron’s house in Ann Arbor. That’s probably the chair he died in. Notice the hand grenade on the table behind him. I’m not sure what type of gun that is.
Since his passing his sister Kathy has had police posted outside the house (which is the house all three Ashetons grew up in, Ron, brother Scott aka Rock Action (here’s an unissued Stooges tune circa ’74 that bears his name); the Stooges drummer and sister Kathy). Evidently people have been attempting to remove his guitars, including his personal roadie (who was probably just trying to move them to a safe place, but who knows?). Anyway,I thought some of you would like these pix while I work on the next couple of blog subjects, I got a bit behind this week after being sick and then throwing my back out. Check back for something really special in a day or so.
Ron Asheton RIP
It’s Tues. Morning, Jan. 6th, 10 AM NYC time. I just got word from my friend Michelle in Michigan that the great Ron Asheton passed away. Age 60. I’m in total shock. I’m re posting my Oct. Stooges posting because it’s got some rare photos and rare tunes. One thing I mixed up back in Oct. In the bottom photo it’s Bill Cheetam on the far left, Zeke Zettner second from left. Give a listen to the two takes of Jr. Kimbrough’s You Better Run posted below. Pull out the Funhouse box. He changed the world with three chords and a Maltese cross. R.I.P.
Ron’s last TV appearance (MTV) is here: http://www.mtv.com/videos/news/329919/late-stooges-guitarist-ron-ashetons-last-interview-with-mtv.jhtml
Halloween marks the forty first anniversary of the first Stooges show. As unlikely as it would have sounded at the time of their first show, they’re still out there and despite a 29 year sabbatical, still the best rock’n’roll band on the road.
Johnny Otis part two: Black Comedy LP covers
These are some of my favorite album covers. They are all issued on the Laff label in the 1960’s, and all are recorded live in night clubs and feature the Johnny Otis Show as the backing band. Honestly, the covers are the best part. Pardon the crummy reproductions, the LP covers are too big for my scanner so I had to photograph them using existing light. Since I don’t have a great camera, the flash would cause a ugly glare on the reproduced image or else get kinda fuzzy. You still can see them and I assume you get the idea. Or you don’t. I hope you agree with me that as “art” they are infinitely more interesting than anything such big buck art frauds like Julien “I’m fat but I’m hairy” Schnabel, Damien Hirst or Jeff Koons have ever produced. Listening wise they don’t hold up as well as their covers, here’s the best track, Skillet & Leroy’s The Republicans 23rd Psalm/The Boss.
These LP covers were all designed by Howard Goldstein with photography by Bud Fraker.
Unfortunately, one of the best covers– Skillet & Leroy’s The Okra Eaters I no longer own as Lester Bangs borrowed it from me back in ’81 then promptly dropped dead two days later*. John Morthland who was the executor of Lester’s estate refused to give it back to me when I asked for it, along with a book he borrowed: Persecuted Prophets by Karen W. Carden and Robert W. Pelton (A.S. Barnes, 1976) about Kentucky snake-handling religious cults. The book I’ve replaced, the LP eludes me still, 27 years later (partially due to my refusal to pay more than $10 for a copy). I don’t know if Mr. Goldstein or Mr. Fraker are still alive but their work together deserve a retrospective at Moma (Museum Of Modern Art) or at least the Whitney.
Art, politics, religion, music, medicine, literature, history, let’s face it, they are all just branches of Show Biz. And American Show Biz was invented by P.T. Barnum. Need I say more?
* I think it’s funny there’s someone out there bragging about “having Lester Bangs’ copy of Metal Machine Music” and evidently paying big bucks for it. Lester owned over one hundred copies of MMM at the time of his death, including two copies I sold him when I ran into him on Astor Place where I was hawking promos a week before his death.
Evidently someone is selling them for highly inflated prices as “Lester’s personal copy”.
I’ll bet all together he went through 2-300 copies (he was also always giving them away to folks who missed it the first time around in ’75). A copy of MMM that wasn’t owned by Lester is probably rarer than one that was.
Freddie Hubbard and Ann Savage: Dead and Dead
Jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard died from a heart attack on Sunday, Dec. 29th. He spent many years with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, appeared on such free jazz milestones as Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz (Atlantic), John Coltrane’s Ascension (Impulse) and Africa Brass (Impulse), and Eric Dolphy’s Out To Lunch (Blue Note) as well as many discs by Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Oliver Neslon, and dozens of fine Blue Note LP’s. Miles Davis hated him, especially in the 1970’s when he waxed many commercially successful, mainstream lite jazz albums . In the early 90’s he blew out his lips and his playing never quite recovered.
My favorite thing is this little spoken word tantrum, recorded onstage with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in Germany, 1963. And I quote….”Fuck you White Mother Fuckers, Kiss my black ass”! You can enjoy it here. Thanks to Eddie Gordetsky for providing the digital version, I only had it on cassette and none of my cassette decks work anymore.
Ann Savage will always be best remembered as the screechy voiced succubus Vera in Edgar G. Ulmer’s uber-noir Detour (1945) in which she stars along with the hapless Tom Neal (“life can point the finger at you or me….for no reason at all”) whose life would later echo his character in that classic flick. Ann Savage was born Feb. 21, 1921 in Columbia, S.C. and made numerous memorable film appearances, many playing opposite Neal. She made a brief comeback in the 1986 movie Fire With Fire, which I’ve never seen. She died on Dec. 29th after a series of strokes, and I don’t mean swimming.
Robert Ward: Another Dead Guy….
Another great one gone, Robert Ward died Christmas day, he had been sick for years, been through two strokes and finally his kidneys rotted out. He left his family, including 68 grand children destitute. If you’d like to help them you can bundle up some money, gold or diamonds and send them to his wife at: