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.
Agencies NEW DELHI: Who owns the Taj Mahal? There are many claimants - Sunny Muslims, Shia Muslims, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the the Archaeological Survey of India. Currently maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India, India’s foremost tourist icon is visited by over seven million people each year and generates revenue of over 200 million Indian rupees. The Sunni Waqf Board of Uttar Pradesh is currently fighting a court battle with the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to wrest control of the monument. The court battle that started in 2005 is now in India’s Supreme Court. The Sunny Waqf Board says the monument was endowed to it by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan who built the Taj Mahal in memory of his wife Mumtaz in 1648. Moreover, the Sunni Waqf Board argues, that since the Taj Mahal is a Muslim mausoleum, it should be handed over to Muslims. But the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which filed a petition in 2010 to challenge the Sunni Waqf Board’s claim, wants it to produce evidence that Emperor Shah Jahan declared the Taj Mahal a waqf property. The word wakf means an endowment of land or property by a Muslim for a religious, educational or charitable cause. The Indian Supreme Court on Tuesday - April 10 - gave the Sunni Wakf Board a week’s time to produce documents signed by Emperor Shah Jahan to prove its claim to the monument. When Sunni Waqf Board lawyer VV Giri argued that Shah Jahan had signed a wakfnama to hand over the Taj to the Sunny Muslims, the apex court asked him, “Then you show us the original deed executed by Shah Jahan. Show us the signature.’’ Chief Justice Dipak Misra wondered, ``How did he (Shah Jahan) sign the wakfnama? He was in jail and used to view the monument while in custody.’’ When he fell ill and a battle for succession among four his sons ensued, Shah Jahan was jailed in Agra Fort in 1658 by his son and successor Aurangzeb. He died in jail in 1666. Appearing for the Archaeological Survey of India, advocate ADN Rao argued that there was no waqfnama signed by Shah Jahan and that the Taj Mahal belonged to the government of India. Rao said, “Under the 1858 proclamation, the properties taken over from the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, by the British vested with the Queen. By the 1948 act, the buildings were taken over by the Indian government.’’ Apart from the Sunny Waqf Board of Uttar Pradesh, the Shia Muslims also want the monument to be handed over to them because Mumtaz in whose memory Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal was a Shia. Shia leader Syed Faiyyaz Haidar has laid a claim to the monument, saying that ``the Taj Mahal's architecture highlights its Shia connection.’’ Vishva Hindu Parishad leaders say the Taj Mahal is built on an ancient Hindu Shiva temple complex called Tejo Mahalaya. These Hindu leaders argue that they have documents to prove that Mughal emperor Shah Jahan had bought a part of the temple complex from Raja Jai Singh to build the Taj Mahal.
