Peter's music has been heard on hundreds of radio stations and has been on SiriusXM rotation for over a decade. As a multi-award winning artist, Peter's music has also topped Billboard's Classical and Crossover charts.
For Captain Beefheart, a maverick-artist-musician, who was not just a complicated man but highly demanding and by most accounts very difficult to deal with. It was appropriate that Beefheart's Magic Band was to prominently feature a bassist as accomplished, bold and adventurous as Mark Boston, a.k.a Rockette Morton.
Born on July 14, 1949, Mark began life in the small town of Salem, Illinois before his family moved out to Lancaster, California when he was 13. With a bassist and steel player for a father, Mark gained a great appreciation for country and bluegrass along with the R&B and rock’n’roll that was on the rise. Within a year of the Boston clan moving out to Lancaster, Mark befriended a young guitarist by the name of Bill Harkleroad.
At a time when the bass guitar was seen as the dummy’s instrument, Mark left quite an impression on Bill with his talent and equipment, leading to the two joining forces to form BC And The Cavemen. With Mark’s mother sewing some outfits for them, the band developed a decent reputation, and the two would also play in a band with Jeff Cotton and John French known as Blues In A Bottle. And then a local hero came calling. Or perhaps screaming and howling!
In that same Lancaster scene, Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band were making a big splash as a top flight blues rock outfit, with 'Safe As Milk' having made a strong impression and 'Strictly Personal' being a strong record as well. But even with a sound that was speaking to people, one that perhaps would have been a more pragmatic one as far as a career goes, Don Van Vliet just wasn’t meant for conventional norms.
The Captain had all these ideas, ideas far too out for many, including early members. He needed new musicians, younger and more impressionable ones that wouldn’t object to his ideas. Already having John and Jeff in the band, now 'Drumbo' and Antennae Jimmy Semens, he then recruited Bill, dubbed Zoot Horn Rollo. And on bass, he found Mark Boston, who took the name Rockette Morton due to his love of outer space. And the classic Magic Band was born.
Trout Mask Replica (TMR) wasn’t an easy album to make. Yet even with all the bizarre ideas and the difficulty in preparing those ideas into music, Mark was a total champ through it all. The Beefheart sound is one of great dichotomy, and Mark can capture all of it. He’s so tight and precise, and yet there’s this raw grit and dirt. He’s highly intelligent and sophisticated in his playing, and yet there remains this childlike sense of wonder and curiosity.
He takes after all the great traditional American music, yet out into a whole other realm of time and space. The bass traditionally serves the role of grounding the harmony while locking in with the drums to provide a foundation, yet Mark’s playing often serves as another melody line in the music. In a lot of ways, he’s like a third guitarist that just happens to be playing bass.
The TMR on its own is a legacy few can compete with, and yet Mark contributed to more classic records like "Lick My Decals Off, Baby", "The Spotlight Kid", and "Clear Spot". There on Decals, you get the equivalent of Godfather II. With Mother Art Tripp on marimba and drums rather Jeff on guitar, you get an album that captures a great deal of TMR's brilliance while being brilliant in its own unique way.
Then you get to 'The Spotlight Kid', with bass godliness on cuts like “When It Blows Its Stack”, resulting in a bass solo that often opened shows, yet Mark proves himself just as talented on traditional in-the-pocket styles as demonstrated on cuts like “I’m Gonna Booglarize You Baby”. And that thing about bassists being failed guitarists? In the 'Clear Spot', with Mark taking guitar and the rhythm section now being a mini Mothers reunion of Art and Roy Estrada, yet nobody missed a beat. Throughout the record, Bill and Mark’s kinship really shines, their weaving right there with what Bill and Jeff had done, or what was done with Alex St Clair early on.
Of course, dealing with Don was quite a task of its own, so it’s inevitable that Mark and the others would all end up departing by 1974. He and Bill soon formed a group of their own called Mallard. For two albums, the first with Art and having some writing help from John French 'Drumbo', Mallard showed itself a pretty decent blues rock outfit. And giving that it was Mark who finally had a chance to create something that was truly his own rather than helping some achieve their vision, it’s understandably the work that he takes pride in. And over time, he’d end up making a solo record and create some cool artwork of his own, as well as performing with 'Drumbo' in the reformed Magic Band, allowing the music to live and breathe on stage again.
If you’re a Beefheart fan, how can you not love Rockette Morton? Not only a uniquely talented bass player but such a great stage presence full of joy, along with a lovably quirky personality and such a sweet guy. Easily one of my favorites from Magic Band members, you can’t help but smile when thinking about Mark. He’s been through some rough weather, including his health scares, and yet he’s still the same Mark we’ve known and loved all the years.
Happy birthday Mark! Thank you for all you have given us and look forward to more.
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Patrick Moore is a freehand drawing artist and freelance music writer.
Ganga Singh Dhillon was my friend from his student days in India where we both were activists for the All India Sikh Students Federation (AISSF)
By Harbans Lal DALLAS: Sardar Ganga Singh, popularly known as Ganga Singh Dhillon, left for his timeless journey, as we call it in Sikh tradition, on September 23, 2014, at the age of 86. The cause was injuries resulting from an accidental fall followed by medical complications over a period of several weeks. Although I had known Ganga Singh Dhillon from his student days in India, where he was an activist for the All India Sikh Students Federation (AISSF), our more active collegiality began in the US. He immigrated to Washington DC a few years after I did. Ganga Singh’s birthplace was only eight miles from the birthplace of Guru Nanak, Sri Nanakana Sahib, now in Pakistan. He finished his school in Guru Nanak Khalsa High School at Nanakana Sahib before joining Sikh National College at Lahore. His father, Sardar Kahan singh, was martyred near Sri Nanakana Sahib. Ganga Singh’s life was turbulent but full of Chardi Kala (infinite optimism) and full of vigor for what he wanted to accomplish. I remember him continuously pestering me to include the issue of Sikh shrines in Pakistan in my presidential address at the Annual Conference of AISSF, which I did with deep passion. The partition of India played havoc with the destiny of the brave Sikh people when the future of Sikh historical places and the footprints of our Gurus in Pakistan were mischievously overlooked in the confused and haphazardly managed exchange of populations. They were erroneously lumped with rest of the problems of the Partition. We were told publicly that the arrangements between two governments were only provisional and the matter of the Sikh holy places would be resolved to our satisfaction. But Ganga Singh was not going to trust these promises. I would not forget the wintry day in 1974 when I was driving Ganga Singh from Washington DC to New York where both of us were scheduled to speak at the Richmond Hill Gurdwara on the formation of Sri Nankana Sahib Foundation. The idea was to have free access to our shrines in Pakistan for visits and for the maintenance of the property. It began to drizzle, and the traffic slowed down. We had all the time to spend in the car chalking out programs of the Foundation to secure free access to the historical gurdwaras left in Pakistan. Sardar Ganga Singh followed the plans and gathered a delegation of 25 prominent Sikhs from India like Sardar Joginder Singh Mann. Chief Justice Harbans Singh, Jathedar Man Singh Hambo, and others from abroad including our own Dr. Tarlochan Singh Nahal of the US. They all supported the idea and Ganga Singh officially launched the Sri Nankana Sahib Foundation at the very site of Guru Nanak’s birthplace in Sri Nanakana Sahib on November 11, 1975. Sardar Ganga Singh, through his political connections discovered only in 1998 that the home ministers of India and Pakistan, Gobind Vallabhai Pant and Sikander Mirza, signed an agreement in 1955, which declared Sikhism’s birthplace, the Janam Asthaan, and other gurdwaras in Pakistan as the evacuee property. Our eyes did not believe the smell of the 1955 arrangement, which designated the birthplace of Guru Nanak at Nanakana, and birthplace of Sikhism at Kartarpur, as evacuee properties. It just did not make sense to us. It again goes to the credit of Ganga Singh Dhillon along with the leadership of the Foundation to point out to the Pakistani leaders that, as long as any Sikh lived anywhere in the world, Guru Nanak’s place of birth could not be considered an evacuee property as Mecca and Medina could not be evacuee properties as long as any Muslim was alive. Guru and the prophets do not vacate their abodes with political ups and downs anywhere in the world. These efforts resulted in the historical declaration on the formation of the Pakistan Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (PGPC) by the President of Pakistan in April 1999. The President announced his action as a Vaisakhi gift to the brave Sikhs. Immediately after the formation of PGPC, Sardar Ganga Singh asked me to contact the Foundation supporters to come up with plans to launch efforts to similarly identify and restore sanctity of the historical Sikh shrines in Bangladesh, Burma, China, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and other countries. During our struggle to secure free visits and rights to manage our shrines in Pakistan, we also learnt that the Muslim public needed to learn more about the actual history of the Sikh-Muslim relationship so that the Sikhs could form a cordial basis of their interaction with them. Such relations were crucial especially with regards to the keeping up of their shrines in different countries. Without an understanding between the two communities, the desirable sanctity of the Sikh shrines in Pakistan and in Middle East could not be maintained. Thus, Ganga Singh Dhillon marched ahead to form the Lahore Conference on Sikh-Muslim Understanding. Towards this goal, a joint statement was made at the All-Pakistan Ulemas Conference. Then the Foundation honored the Islamic scholars and artists at several public functions to promote networking with them. The man I wish to remember today was vigorous, wise, full of burning desire to promote Sikhs’ national identity, and to preserve Sikh heritage. It will be difficult to fill the void he created by his departure. The community will miss him for a long time to come. (A noted Sikh scholar, Dr Harbans Lal lives in Dallas, Texas. He can be contacted at [email protected]) READ NEXT: Dr Harbans Lal only sehajdhari Sikh to serve as AISSF president
