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
YUBA CITY: Back in the 1980s when every Indian professional going to the US settled in big cities, Indian American doctor Jasbir Kang made a different choice.
Dr Jasbir Kang, who came from Patiala to the US in 1986, decided to settle in the small but famous Yuba City which is known for producing the world’s biggest peach farmer Didar Singh Bains.
``I came to the US after finishing my MBBS from the Patiala Medical College and my marriage to my wife who is from the Bay (San Francisco) area. After doing my three-year residency in Chicago, I decided to settle in Yuba City,’’ says Dr Kang who was to go on to make a name for himself as a Sikh community leader.
``I could have taken a job in any bigger city. But a clinic in the Yuba City area was desperately looking for a physician. So I came here just to explore the opportunity. I did some temporary work here and soon doctor inside me felt that patients here were in desperate need of physicians. I also liked the similarity of Yuba City with Punjab and gradually started feeling at home here,’’ recalls Dr Kang who currently serves as Medical Director of Hospitalist Program at the local Rideout Memorial Hospital.
Coming from a highly educated family of Patiala, the young doctor felt that Yuba City’s Punjabi community was restricted to itself even though they had been living in the area for decades.
``At the time, all our social and religious activities were limited to our homes and our gurdwaras. So I, along with some others, thought that we need to reach out to society at large,’’ says Dr Kang.
Over the next two decades, even as he set about building his medical career in small-town America, the young Patiala doctor, along with like-minded people, decided to change the profile of the Punjabi community of America’s famous Punjab-da-pind called Yuba City.
``So in 1993, we set up the Punjabi American Heritage Society, and our aim was to raise awareness among the Americans about our identity and culture and who we are. We started a Teachers’ Appreciation Evening where we invited white teachers to understand our religion, culture and values. This worked wonders. Teachers were now able to better connect with Sikh students in classroom. Then we started our first Punjabi program on the local cable channel,’’ says Dr Kang.
In 1994, they made presentations to the Yuba City Unified School District to start Punjabi as a subject in schools. ``They were nice and accepted our demand. Punjabi was introduced in schools in 1994,'' says the Indian American doctor.
And in 1995, Dr Kang and his friends started the Punjabi-American Festival which has become a roaring success over the years.
Today, Yuba City is famous for two biggest Punjabi events - its Nagar Kirtan to mark Gurugadi Divas ( installation of the holy Granth as the living guru) in November and its Punjabi-American Mela or festival - in North America.
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Dr Jasbir Kang at KVIE Studios with a copy of the documentary SIKHS IN AMERICA which won an Emmy award. The Punjabi community of Yuba City helped KVIE to produce the documentary.[/caption]
``The festival has grown into a big annual event attracting thousands of people, including whites, from far and wide’’ says Dr Kang.
After 9/11, the good doctor and his Punjabi American Heritage Society helped New York-based Vina Sarkar produce the documentary `Mistaken Identity’ in 2002 to raise awareness about Sikhs.
Later, they helped produce another documentary `Sikhs in America’ which went on to win an Emmy in 2009.
For his tireless work to promote intra-faith understanding, Dr Kang has been given the Unsung Hero award by America’s PBS network.
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Dr Kang posing with his family after winning the Unsung Hero Award for community service.[/caption]
Indeed, the initiatives taken by this Patiala doctor 20 years ago have borne fruit now as the 15,000-strong Punjabi community of Yuba City (which has a population of about 65,000) has become an integral part of the American mainstream.
``Now Punjabis and whites do bhangra together at our festivals,’’ laughs Dr Jasbir Kang.
And to honour its Punjabi population, the local Community Memorial Museum of Sutter County opened a multimedia permanent exhibit on the Sikhs called `Becoming American’ last year.
``The exhibit is the story of Punjabis in America and their hardships since their arrival in California in the early twentieth century. It tells the story of our contribution to America. It tells that we are an American story,” says the Indian American doctor.
Indeed, when Yuba City's Punjabi community held a candlelight vigil in August for the six victims of the Winconsin Sikh Temple shooting, all communities joined them in expressing solidarity with them. (Courtesy the Times of India where this article appeared on March 4)
