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.
By Gurmukh Singh LOS ANGELES: Rising from the small town of Garhdiwala near Hoshiarpur, Indian American doctor Harvinder Sahota of Los Angeles has gone on to become one of the foremost cardiologists in the world. An alumnus of Patiala Medical College, the 70-year-old cardiologist invented the world-famous Perfusion Balloon in the mid-1980s and performed north India’s first angioplasty at the PGI in Chandigarh in 1990. “On January 16, 1990, my team performed north India’s first angioplasty in an hour. It was a big news with my picture on the front pages of many papers. Dr Wahi, who was the PGI director at that time, had invited me to start their angioplasty programme,’’ recalls Sahota who has just been honoured by the American Heart Association for his contribution to cardiology. With a wink, he recalls hilarious moments involving his seven-member team when they landed in India on January 15, 1990, to perform the first angioplasty at PGI. “When we were travelling from Delhi to Chandigarh, our women team members – Anna Hall and Denise – asked the driver to stop so that they could use the washroom. But there were no washroom. The driver stopped the vehicle in the middle of nowhere at the dead of night. We had a great laugh, but our women members understood the reality.’’ Explaining the perfusion balloon, the Indian American doctor says it is pushed into the blocked heart artery and then inflated by pumping water with a syringe. As the balloon inflates, the artery opens. “Getting its patent in 1985 was the greatest moment in my life,’’ beams Sahota who runs his clinic in Bellflower in southern California’s Orange County. The busy cardiologist puts the success of Indian doctors in the US down to their hard work. “Plus, Indian doctors are getting opportunities because local doctors are not available. Since the mid-90s, Americans are getting out of medicine. They are advising there children not to get into this profession. So mostly Indian and other foreign doctors are filling the positions.’‘ According to him , the medical profession in the US has changed radically. “It is reported that a doctor earns about 27 dollars per hour and amount is going down. In addition, the rules and regulations are very stressful for physicians. Under such difficult conditions, Indian doctors have done reasonably well.’’ Fondly remembering his days at Patiala Medical College, he says laughing, “Actually, I wanted to become an actor. When I was in school in Ferozepur (where my father was employed in the railways), I used to have wild fantasies about Madhubala and Vyjantimala. So after finishing school, I was about to board the Punjab Mail to Bombay, but a friend who was to accompany me didn’t not show up at the railway station. So I ended up at Patiala Medical College in 1959. “It was the first time I was in a co-educational institution. So I was very shy of girls. In the second year, I was elected president, and most girls supported me.There were candle-light celebrations on the roof of our hostel.’’ And Dr Sahota adds quickly, “Phool and Capital were my favourite theatres. When the film Mughal-e- Azam was released, I went nuts and saw it 14 times. I remembered all its dialogue and used to recite it loudly in the hostel corridors. Students used to call me Mughal-e-Azam.’’ Asked whether he has any plans to pay back his motherland, this Indian American doctor says, “Yeah, in addition to starting the first angioplasty programme in north India, I tried to open manufacturing plants for angioplasty catheters in the early 1990s, but it didn’t work. Then in the mid-1990s, I opened the Sahota Heart Center in Chandigarh in collaboration with American and Russian doctors. But the doctor, who was supposed to run it, frequently changed his mind. But these plans are still open.’’ READ ALSO: Jasbir Kang: Dr Bond of Yuba City
