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
VANCOUVER: When you land here at the end of the world, Punjabi signs greet you at the airport: Ji Aayan Nu. If you speak only Punjabi, there are Punjabi-speaking airport staff to guide you.
It is not uncommon to see street and market names in Punjabi in Vancouver and surrounding cities of Surrey, Richmond, Delta and Abbotsford.
Go to government offices, banks, city hall, hospitals or any public service place, and you invariably see a Punjabi signboard, saying: Asi Punjabi Bolde Haan (We speak Punjabi).
Welcome to Punjab away from Punjab.
As per the 2011 Canadian census, Punjabi is the third largest spoken language after English and French. In fact, Surrey – which has a population of about 500,000 – has the largest concentration of Punjabi-speaking people outside Punjab.
“The 2016 census will show even more Punjabi-speaking people in Canada,’’ says Balwant Sanghera, president of the Punjabi Language Education Association based on Richmond on the outskirts of Vancouver.
Sanghera adds, “There are three Punjabs – Indian Punjab, Pakistani Punjab and NRI Punjab. We are the NRI Punjab, and we are doing more than the two other Punjabs to promote the Punjabi language. In the NRI Punjab – which is spread in Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and the US – we Punjabis in British Columbia are in the forefront of promoting Punjabi.’’
Forget the high and elementary schools which offer Punjabi classes. Even all the universities here – the University of British Columbia, the University of the Fraser Valley , Kwantlen Polytechnic University and Simon Fraser University offer Punjabi courses.
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Punjabi writers at the Punjabi Book Mela in Surrey.[/caption]
Indeed, the roots of the Punjabi language run deep in Vancouver because it was here that the first Punjabi immigrants settled in the 1890s. It was here that the first Punjabi classes started in 1908 at Vancouver’s first Khalsa Diwan Society gurdwara. It was here that Canada’s first Punjabi newspaper – Swadesh Sewak – came out in 1910.
“Because of our joint family system, three generations of our people have stayed under roof. The elders, who could speak only Punjabi, forced their grandkids to learn this language. That’s how Punjabi got perpetuated and new generations know Punjabi so well,’’ says folklore writer and actor Gurcharan Talewalia who came to Canada in 1970.
According to Talewalia, almost all activities of the Punjabi community are woven around their mother tongue and traditions. “There are seven to eight literary associations here. There are many bhangra groups and Punjabi music academies. Then there many Punjabi radio stations… the turban tying competition, kabbadi tournaments, etc.Punjabi has benefited from these actitivies.’’
As the community has grown and its language flourished, Punjabi has the become the preferred language of employment. “Police, banks, businesses want to reach out to the fast growing Punjabi community, so they prefer to employ Punjabi-speaking people,’’ says Sanghera.
Surrey-based author-poet Mohan Gill, who founded the Kendriya Punjabi Lekak Sabha in 1986 and who is known for satire, says most of the budding Punjabi writers in Punjab who went abroad landed in Canada. “It is these immigrant writers and authors and poets who have boosted the Punjabi language in Canada. When I came here in 1977, I used to be published in India. Like me, there were others who were published in India. But in our initial struggle for survival here, we had to forget about our passion for our mother tongue. Once we established ourselves financially, we all re-started literary activities. We have over 100 published Punjabi authors here in the Vancouver area.’’
Novelist Jarnail Singh Sekha cites two other reasons in favour of the Punjabi language in Canada. “Apart from all the above reasons, I think continuing immigration from Punjab is also a major factor. It has kept replenishing the number of Punjabi speakers.’’ (This article appeared in the Times of India on June 27)
READ ALSO: How Punjabi became the third most spoken language in Canada
