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.
The Canadian Bazaar TORONTO: You can’t imagine a Sehajdhari in important positions in Sikh institutions today, but once upon a time even the All-India Sikh Students Federation (AISSF) had a sehajdhari as its president in the early 1950s. His name was Harbans Lal who is today known as Bhai Harbans Lal or Dr Harbans Lal. ``Yes, I was the first and only Sehajdhari president of the AISSF,’’ says Dallas-based Dr Harbans Lal, 87, who retired as chairman of department of pharmacology & neuroscience at University of North Texas Health Science Center. Dr Lal is known for organizing global conferences on the Guru Granth and has written for Sikh Review of Kolkata, Journal of Sikh Studies of GNDU and Sikh Sansar started by `Father of fiber optics’ Dr Narinder Singh Kapany in San Francisco. For promoting studies of Sikhism, he was given the highest Sikh honour of Nishan-e-Khalsa in 1999 on the 300th anniversary of the Khalsa. In 1995, GNDU also conferred D. Litt on him. ``I was also given the title of `bhai sahib’ by the AISSF in the 1950s and by the SGPC in 1963,’’ says Dr Harbans Lal who was born in Haripur (Pakistan) in 1931. ``My father was a Hindu and my mother came from the family of Sehajdhari Sikhs. Since my parents had no child, they prayed at the local women’s gurdwara called Guru Istri Satsang Sabha in Haripur. The women granthis advised my parents to pray for a son at Panja Sahib gurdwara. I was born with the blessing of Guru Nanak,’’ he recalls. Interestingly, he credits former Pakistani dictator Ayub Khan for triggering his interest in Sikh student politics. ``Ayub Khan, who was also from Haripur, had formed a Muslim student federation. He would tell us that Hindus will get Hindu India and Muslims will get Pakistan, but Sikhs won’t get anything unless educated Sikhs did something. So we formed a Sikh student federation in Haripur and sent its news to the Liberator newspaper in Lahore, edited by Gopal Singh Dardi. Dadri wrote back to tell us that a Sikh student federation has already been formed in Lahore and asked us to join it.’’ He adds laughing, ``Ayub Khan joined the Lakhsmi Chand Khalsa High School, instead of Islamia School in Haripur. During exams, he would visit gurdwara and the granthi would advise him to recite Mool Mantra before writing his exams.’’ Dr Lal’s family moved to India during the Partition. ``Muslims from nearby villages set three gurdwaras on fire in Haripur. Hindus and Sikhs were just 10 percent of Haripur’s population of 25,000, and I had just finished my high school. We left Haripur in March 1947, hoping to return soon because we thought the Partition would be relatively peaceful.’’ He says his family settled in Deoband (UP) as they feared outbreak of violence in Punjab in 1947. His involvement with the All India Sikh Student Federation began when he joined medical college in Amritsar for his B.Sc in pharmacy after his F.Sc from Ambala. ``When I was doing my B.Sc, I was also busy in AISSF activities. I was elected its president in 1954.’’ During his Amritsar days, he remembers meeting Master Tara Singh who showed him the sword with which he had allegedly tore the Muslim League flag in Lahore in 1946. Dr Lal continued in this role even after he got a job in Mumbai on completion of his B.Sc in pharmacy. ``During my two years of presidentship, the AISSF began publishing the Sikh Students monthly in English to enhance communication with units that were spread in all over India. I edited the magazine with the help of Dr. Santokh Singh and other colleagues,’’ he says. Dr Harbans Lal says he had a grand vision for the AISSF. ``My being in Bombay, there was a very active Bombay Circle, the Khalsa Colege being the primary site of activities. There were active units and circles of AISSF all over India expanding from Calcutta and Bombay to Jammu and Kashmir, and a few units in East Africa. Extending the AISSF to the UK and US was in planning. Primary emphasis was to acquaint Sikh students with their rich heritage and train them in leadership skills as one day they would be replacing the aging Sikh leadership in all spheres.  I remember sending a sword as a token of appreciation to the first President of the new state of Israel.’’ In September 1956, he left for the US to join the University of Kansas for my masters and later do his Ph.D from the University of Chicago. He met my German wife Amrita in Chicago and they married in 1964. ``I had brought the holy Granth with me when he left India. By the 1970s when I had established myself, I started serious work on Sikh studies.’’ His work on Sikh studies continues to this day.
