BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Music | Blues star Long John Baldry dies
Damn. One of the few legends of rock and roll I’ve actually seen perform live, and he’s gone and left us.
“Long” John Baldry enjoyed some popularity in the U.S. because one particular song got airplay in the late 70’s and early 80’s on college and album-oriented rock FM stations. I first heard him on the Eugene AOR station, KZEL. Yeah, in the mid 70’s and early 80’s, so sue me, I’m caught in fit of boomerstalgia. Anyway, in those days, ‘ZEL was a wild-eyed ex-hippie of a station, with a brawny sense of its own hip badness and an incredibily eclectic collection of discs to play, and with an equally eclectic collection of disc jockeys with which to play them. They played Baldry just often enough to make his music familiar, just infrequently enough that it didn’t become tiresome – after all, it was just the one, truly great song.
Many of the KZEL people have scattered to the four winds – Peyton Mays is selling stuff at MSN, another guy (who I may have listened to “back in the day,” but the name isn’t ringing a bell is running a pretty damn good Internet radio site called Really Music Radio, and another alumna, Nancy Walton, is getting set to help start up a liberrrl radio station in Missoula, MT (and one of their affiliates will be broadcasting AAR, too).
Okay, that’s all very pleasant, but what about Baldry? I saw him perform in a small club in Seattle, some time in the early 90’s. As far as I can remember, I went alone, or with one girlfriend, but I don’t remember anything other than venturing tentatively into a very small but intense mosh pit. Baldry looked bemused, because moshing was relatively new phenomenon. I got bashed around, got tired of being crashed into by people a little less than half my age, and settled back to watch the show in earnest. I think maybe that was when he had teamed up with Kathi McDonald, I seem to remember something about “Seattle Women In Rhythm and Blues” from about then (see Wikipedia entry).
The only other thing I remember, before he launched into “Don’t Try to Lay No Boogie-Woogie (on the King of Rock and Roll) was that Rod Stewart, a former bandmate of his, was playing that night in Seattle.
Baldry expressed the hope that his old pal might drop by. From web evidence, this would be July 28, 1993. As the night wore on, it looked like Rod would be a no-show, as he had an arena full of people to entertain or some damn thing. No matter; Baldry grinned, shrugged, and lit into his one well-known song that the whole room was waiting to hear (he had a very able back-up band). It was great. Later on, of course, I think there was an encore. I left, bruised but happy. A good time was had by all except for the one guy in the mosh pit that got a little rough and was “escorted” out.
Finally found a decent mp3 online… now it’s on the iPod. Maybe someday I’ll figure out this whole iPod/blog thingy, or not. But I’ve got it, and I’m happy.
Fare you well, Long John Baldry. Play on.