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.
___________________
Patrick Moore is a freehand drawing artist and freelance music writer.
Web Desk TORONTO: Prof Hiroshi Yamashita from Tohuku University in Japan must have been an Indian in his previous birth. Very few Indian scholars can match him in his knowledge of Indian civilization, culture and Hinduism. A Ph.D in Indian philosophy, Hinduism and Tamil literature from the University of Madras where he studied from 1981 to 1987, he is fluent in Tamil, Sanskrit, Tibetan and Pali. To boot, he has translated the dialogue of many Tamil films into Japanese and introduced Tamil cinema in Japan when he took the Rajnikanth starrer Muthu to his native country in 1998. “That film was popular in my country and the Japanese love Tamil cinema,’’ says Prof Yamashita who was recently in Toronto to pursue his work on the Tamil diaspora. Speaking to newseastwest.com, he explained how he got fascinated by eastern cultures (India) very early in his student life, how he learnt ancient languages and how he has become one of the top foreign experts on India’s civilization and the influence of India on the world. Q: What fascinated you about India that it became your lifelong subject? A: I was very interested in original Indian civilization, philosophy and culture very early in my student life. The way to know original India is Sanskrit. So I learnt Sanskrit as well Pali and Tibetan. At college, I studied Indian philosophy and Buddhism and finished my MA on these subjects from Tohuku University before coming to India. Q: Why did you choose the University of Madras to study Indian culture and civilization? A: I knew Sanskrit is the vehicle of Indo-Aryan culture. So if you are well versed in Sanskrit, you can understand Indo-Aryan culture or the Vedic culture which is limited to north India. But to understand south India, I needed to know Tamil – which is the oldest of all south Indian languages. So I went to Madras University. In fact, to understand the older phases of south Indian culture, I needed a thorough knowledge of Tamil. You must know that Dravidian culture played a major role in the emergence of devotional Hinduism or Bhakti in India. Bhakti first emerged in south India in the seventh-century Tamil Nadu. From the south, it spread to north India. So in that sense, Tamil is a very important language. In fact, even the language of the Indus Valley scripts is considered to be Dravidian as per computer analyses, though the scriptures are yet to be deciphered. Q: How did religion (Hinduism) become part of your research of Indian civilization and culture? A: As I said, I was interested in the development of Indian civilization and culture – which obviously includes Hinduism. I am a scholar of Tamil culture in my study of Indian civilization. Since Hinduism spread to many parts of the world, many countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam represent the older phase of expansion of Hinduism. So I have learnt Thai and Indonesian languages to access sources of study in these languages. And then there is the growth of the Indian diaspora in the western world in recent decades – which represents the modern phase of expansion of Hinduism abroad. So I have studied German and French to access foreign sources on the growth of Hinduism overseas. Q: Why is the Indian diaspora your area of interest? A: Well, I am a student of the growth of Indian civilization from ancient times to today. Since Hinduism has grown so much overseas in recent decades, I am fascinated by its story. As I am a scholar of Tamil culture, my thrust is also on the Tamil diaspora, particularly from Sri Lanka. In order to study the Tamils overseas, I have been to Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Germany – and now Canada. Q: So what are your conclusions about the Tamil diaspora in Canada and elsewhere? A: As part of my study, I interact with the Tamil people wherever I go. Here in Toronto, I visited temples and interacted with priests and worshippers. The Tamils have adjusted very well in the new environment. In fact, the Tamils have globalized the Hindu priest because they don’t have a priestly class and depend on priests from their native lands (Sri Lanka or even India). The Tamils in Canada have much more devotee presence in temples than other countries because of their large concentration here. But countries such as Germany have a very small Tamil diaspora, so their younger generation is not going to temples. Q: So you are focussing only on Tamils of Sri Lankan origin in Toronto. A: Yes, I realized the importance of Sri Lankan Tamils in globalizing Hinduism. They have spread out into many countries in recent decades, thus taking Hinduism with them in a big way. In fact, they have played much bigger role than other Hindu groups in globalizing Hinduism. That’s why I came to Canada to study the Tamil diaspora. They have fascinated me.
