A live jam recorded on the Johnnie Otis Show, radio station KPPC, Pasadena.

Not what you would expect.

The infamous and fabulous Zoot Horn Rollo, aka Bill Harkleroad, continues on his musical life journey living, I’m told,up in Eugene Oregon, and giving guitar lessons, along with occaisonal recordings.

I may well be wrong,but I think this piece this one comes off Bill’s hard to find Lp from 2000: ” We Saw A Bozo Under the Sea”, or maybe from the Magic Band reunion efforts from about that same period.

“Bozo Under the Sea” seems somehow, obliquely, a surfing reference, or maybe it’s a Firesign homage.

Or maybe, it’s just Don’s Secret.

well, this is here just.. because.

it could be a great 30 minutes or so of your life.. time remarkably well spent.

thank you Don!

and for everybody else, surf on,
and grow fins.

The magic of Ben Gazzara as an actor, among many things, was his patience in delivery. Not a showy scene-chewer who dominates the space of the frame, he plays his roles like a seasoned jazz musician, where responsiveness and generosity allows room for a structure to build, upon which each player in the tune/scene can contribute their own idiosyncrasies.

This reciprocal type of acting is most observable from Gazzara within his roles in the Cassavetes films he contributed to; as the free-spirited Harry in Husbands, the emotionally stifled strip-club owner Cosmo in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and as Manny, the patient, if bull-headed theater director in Opening Night.

With Bookie in particular though, Gazzara deftly plays this character of Cosmo. A man so lost in his constant blending of reality and theatricality, so lacking the capacity to tell the difference between staged effects and life, all that remains left is the facade; his mask has become his face. When Cosmo speaks in this scene above, he’s as much (if not more so) trying to convince himself of his own rhetoric than he is his other employees.

The only moment of clarity we get is a brief and startling admission, when he says, “I’m only happy when I’m angry, when I’m sad, when I can play the fool… when I can be what people want me to be, rather than be myself.”

It’s a subtly terrifying performance that only Gazzara could have given this good.

R.I.P.

Timeless wisdom from Uncle Bill.

Applicable for both young, and older.

The place, Huntington Beach.

It’s year #3 of Santorum’s second term as President.

Gingrich runs the DOD, and Homeland Security.
Romney is at Treasury, and the Dept. of Education has been abolished.
(And a few other Department’s that I can’t remember).

The US is at war with damn near everybody.
Remarkably, despite the “exceptionalism” doctrine, some are actually fighting back.

The Corporate tax rate is zero, war commodities are hot,and legions of small children have been empowered to clean schools, factories, and secure mansions inside heavily fortified,gated communities.
Good for their morale.

Still, no worries, plenty of time to surf..

“hey, dude.. nice cut back!”.

I’m a bit late to the game for this round, and I’ll concede defeat on musical grounds (and perhaps start a new battle?) by turning to my most favoritist of contemporary comedy pairings… the two Ls… Larry and Leon. For me at least, when these two share a scene the laughs per second roll off at a very high rate.

Two totally different blokes background-wise, but their mutual attempts at speaking eachothers language makes for some good humor. No matter their cultural differences, on a fundamental level these guys get eacth other.

Days of future past.

Stoked!

It doesn’t get more bad ass than this.

1964, somewhere in whiter than white England, and keeping up with the scary Howlin’ Wolf is the amazing Hubert Sumlin on lead guitar and Willie Dixon, both of them integral to the Wolf’s take no prisoner, distinctive sound.

(Probably a good night at the bar after the show)..

Somewhere a young Don Van Vliet was taking notes and dreaming of the blues.

And a few British players were thinking..yeah, I can do that too.

Jerome Green was a mainstay of the Chess Records label from the mid-’50s onward — best known for playing maracas on the recordings of Bo Diddley, he also played on the records of Chuck Berry, Billy Boy Arnold, Billy Stewart, and Willie Dixon, among others. Green was, according to some sources, a tuba player who preferred jazz, but when he and Bo Diddley ended up in their first group — the Langley Avenue Jive Cats — at the start of the 1950s, he switched to percussion. He didn’t want the hassle of moving a drum kit to their performances, however, and so chose the maracas as his instrument, and he developed a mean and distinctive sound with them. His work with Bo Diddley included a shared vocal appearance on the latter’s biggest-selling pop single, “Say Man,” as well as performances as a member of Bo’s touring band. He was sufficiently well-known to earn a place in the narrative of the Animals single “The Story of Bo Diddley.” Jerome Green’s work with Bo Diddley ended in 1964 when Greenmarried and decided to get off the road. He passed away sometime during or around 1973. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Jerome Green’s biography:
The year 1999 marked the 40th anniversary of the release of Bo Diddley’s chart hits “Say Man” and “Say Man, Back Again”, (arguably the first ever rap hit singles, hitting the charts a full 20 years ahead of The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” hit of 1979/1980), both of which heavily featured the voice of the much-loved and fondly-remembered musician Jerome Green, for so long an integral part of the Bo Diddley group sound from around 1950, when he joined The Langley Avenue Jive Cats, up until the end of 1964, when he married and quit the group.

The look and the sound of his double pair of maracas playing was to have a profound influence upon the young Mick Jagger (Rolling Stones), Paul Jones (Manfred Mann), Phil May (Pretty Things), Van Morrison (Them) and numerous other British groups in the early 1960s.

Born around 1934, Jerome was a jazz-loving tuba player who lived in Chicago in the apartment below Bo Diddley’s 2nd wife Ethel “Tootsie” Smith. Recruited initially to pass the hat around whilst The Jive Cats played on street corners, he was soon taught to play the maracas by a Bo Diddley who was keen to fuel the rhythms of his group, but unwilling to have to carry a complete set of drums around the streets of Chicago.

His recording career with BO DIDDLEY lasted for almost a decade, from March 1955 until November 1964, and included the following memorable vocal contributions:

“Jerome’s Greatest Hits”:
Bring It To Jerome (July 1955)
Down Home Special (October 1956)
Say Man (January 1958)
Bo Meets The Monster (September 1958)
I Love You So (Spring 1959)
Say Man, Back Again (September 1959)
Signifying Blues (January 1960)
Bo’s Vacation (February 1961)
Not Guilty (February 1961)
Background To A Music (June 1961)
Give Me A Break (Man) (January 1962)

Jerome’s TV Appearances:
Toast of The Town (The Ed Sullivan Show) (CBS, November 1955)
Scene at 6.30 (Granada, UK, September 1963)
Thank Your Lucky Stars (ABC, UK, September 1963)

Jerome Green is believed to have died in New York, around 1973. In 2002, the popular Pittsburgh, PA-based rock & roll group The Hi-Frequencies paid their own lasting tribute to him when they wrote and recorded a track titled “Jerome Green”.

Below is “Say Man”. Pretty much thee best of their interplay, I think.

Amongst other “men behind men” combos to come, I would say that the Chuck D and Flavor Flav duo  is a nod or in the park.