The Meaning of an Education
Lifelong Learning and the Blues
by Lindsay C. Mitchell





The following is an excerpt from the thesis of Lindsay Mitchell:


Baldry, Byrnes & Billy

The mid-1980s found me puttering around with a number of ill-fated projects. Then, one day, out of the blue, I met Bill Cowsill (1948-2006). Brother Billy came from a once prominent American show-business family . .

Formed in the spring of 1965 by four brothers from Newport, Rhode Island (Bill, Bob, John, and Barry), the Cowsills were a family singing group specializing in what would later be defined as “bubblegum pop.” Inspired by the Everly Brothers and later the Beatles, their career began in Canton, Ohio, where father and manager Bill Sr. (Bud) Cowsill served as a recruiter for the U.S. Navy.

Signed by MGM records in 1967, the brothers were quickly joined by their siblings Susan and Paul and their mother Barbara to form “America’s First Family of Song.” The newly reconstituted group’s first hit on MGM was 1967’s “The Rain, the Park and Other Things,” with lead vocals by eldest brother Bill. Reaching #2 on Billboard Magazine’s Hot-100 chart, it sold more than three million copies domestically. 1968’s “Indian Lake” was similarly well received, as was their multi-million selling 1969 version of the title song from the musical Hair (also featuring Bill on lead vocals).

Between 1968 and 1973, the Cowsills averaged 200 performances per year. Their many network television appearances included The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, American Bandstand, The Mike Douglas Show, Playboy After Dark,, Kraft Music Hall, and The Johnny Cash Show.

Particularly noted for their ability to sing multiple-part harmonies with remarkable accuracy (in the tradition of other famous sibling ensembles like the Mills Brothers, the Andrews Sisters, the Jackson 5, the Bee Gees, and the Beach Boys) they were one of most popular musical acts in America.

In 1968, Screen Gems approached the family to portray themselves in their own TV sitcom. However, when told that the role of their mother was to be played by actress Shirley Jones - they balked, and the deal fell through. The show went on to be called The Partridge Family, and enjoyed a successful four-year run on ABC Television.

In late 1969, while performing in Las Vegas, Bill was fired from the group by his father (for smoking marijuana). By 1973, with Barbara, Paul, and Susan also having left the group, the “First-Family of Song” had disappeared from America’s pop-culture radar.

Legend has it that, after leaving the Cowsill family band in 1970, Billy kicked around the Los Angeles music scene for a while, carousing with musician pals Warren Zevon and Waddy Wachtel. His wife consequently left, taking infant son Travis. Then, sadly unable to re-brand a career smeared by the dismissive descriptor “bubblegum,” and having effectively burnt all his personal and professional bridges, Bill fled to Austin, Texas, where he cashed in his remaining royalties and bought a bar.

“I drank it dry,” he later confessed.

From there he traveled straight north, all the way up to Canada’s Northwest Territories, where he found winter work riding shotgun on semi-trailer rigs traversing the ice-bridge between Yellowknife and Hay River. With the coming of Spring, and the closing (melting) of the road, he headed south to Edmonton, where he bumped into promoter/publicist Sarah Seigel, an old friend of mine.

“Tell me Sarah,” I once asked. “Is it true that you met Billy when you were driving down the street in Edmonton, saw a pair of cowboy boots sticking out of a snow bank, pulled him free, and drove him to the hospital to treat his frostbitten fingers?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “Actually, I was waiting in line at my bank when this dark-eyed stranger wandered in and crashed right through a plate glass window, cutting himself to ribbons . . . and I drove him to the hospital to get all bandaged up.”

“Close enough.”

After briefly connecting with the Edmonton musical community (which then included eighteen year-old ingenue k.d. lang), Bill wound his way down to Vancouver. My good friend Mitzi Gibbs (sadly deceased) was well known for taking in strays. In fact, we first met back in the late 1960s, in Old Montréal, when she was nursing displaced American folk-singer Jesse Winchester. One morning I dropped by her house in Kitsilano for some coffee and a chat, and saw a pair of cowboy boots conspicuously parked outside her bedroom door.

I’d heard the local buzz about this “Cowsill dude” (new in town, sings up a storm) and intuitively figured it must be him. A few stiff javas later and . . . Bill and I are strumming and singing around the kitchen table, all jacked-up on the music, and resolved to find a gig together somewhere.

Trimbles Restaurant, a floundering West Side eatery operated by expat Irish American raconteur Bill Moran (won from previous owner Demetrios Mitsotakis in a backgammon game), was a perfect spot. The act started out as just the two of us, with Billy singing lead and me providing vocal and guitar accompaniment. But Elmar Spanier soon fell in on upright bass, and together we played mui copacetic.

At first it was just one night a week, then two, then three, and pretty soon there were lineups around the block to catch our strangely compelling little combo. One patron facetiously commented that, whereas our overall performance was technically superlative, the endings to some of our songs sounded like a “trainwreck,” and the name stuck.

The Trimbles gig lasted several months, generating a loyal and enthusiastic following, but things eventually got so rowdy that the neighbours complained to the authorities. So, with a view to keeping the peace, the Trainwreck’s residency was necessarily truncated.

No amount of hyperbole can do Billy Cowsill justice as a singer. Simply put, his was “the Voice of God.”

Speaking in hyperbole is comely in nothing but love.
Francis Bacon (Attr.)

Don’t take my word for it. Internet tributes to the man’s memory abound. For example, in Calgary, Alberta (where Bill died in 2006) a naive but well-meaning community group is seeking to preserve the rental property in which he lived. And, an online petition promoting the Cowsill family as “forefront in the evolution of country rock,” seeks their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Cowsill made everyone he worked with a better singer, a better musician.
Don Freeman (in Brock, 2006)

Billy Cowsill brought a sense of wonder to everyone.
Neil MacGonigall (Ibid.)

The Trainwreck performed together in and around Vancouver for the better part of a decade, guesting with Roy Orbison at Expo 86; with Gene Pitney at the Orpheum; backing up the Shirelles, Del Shannon, and Bo Diddley at the Commodore ballroom; and at countless restaurants, pubs, nightclubs, galleries, theatres, and private functions. Plus, we recorded extensively (the bulk of which remains unreleased).

We were a minimalist outfit: acoustic guitar, “doghouse” bass, and electric guitar. And each of us sang. We weren’t really a blues band, more like a Skiffle or Rockabilly group — but with a shitload of Folk, R&B, Brit-pop, and oldschool C&W thrown in.

Haunted by events and circumstances in his life, Bill had a deep dark side, and often would retreat into impenetrable blackness. But daemons notwithstanding, his level of performance remained remarkably consistent over time.

He was the real deal . . . Guys like that don’t come on trees. He was one of a kind . . . He had this really unique take on music . . . It was a really bizarre thing . . . Very few people have it . . . You had to see him live to really get him . . . He just brought unbelievable emotions to it, incredible pitch, incredible tone. It was like he came from outer space or something. He was like perfect all the time.
John Mackey, 2006296 (in Brock 2006)

I recall one day bemoaning my earlier commercial success with PRiSM, and how playing in a contrived, pop-rock group had served to compromise my status as an honest, working-class bluesician.

“Really?” countered Bill. “Try being a twenty year-old rocker in a bubblegum band with both your baby sister and your mother . . . Now that’s humiliation!”

Bill was a recovering alcoholic, and I never ever once saw him take a drink. His main problem was with pain medication — both prescribed and purloined. Plus he was bipolar — a volatile combination. As mutual pal Jim Byrnes once affectionately observed, Bill’s was “an exquisite blend of mental illness and substance abuse.”

Indeed, the man was truly extraordinary, and knowing him has left an indelible mark, both professionally and personally. Most of all, I found out that magic indeed does exist, and that God’s gift to mankind sometimes comes wrapped in deeply flawed packages.

What is most original in a man’s nature is often that which is most desperate.
Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers) 1966

Sons Ian and Beau were ten and twelve years-old, and daughter Kelly was coming up on eight. The West Point Grey Little League decided to hold a fund-raising dance at nearby Queen Mary Elementary School where all three kids were attending. Naturally, being in the music business, I was asked to arrange the evening’s entertainment. Provided with a decent budget, I rounded up a first-rate cast of local performers. Billy instantly volunteered, as did Jim Byrnes, who brought along his dinner guest John Hammond.

Byrnes is an interesting story. Originally from St. Louis, he emigrated to Canada following a stint with U.S. Forces in Vietnam, ending up on Vancouver Island, near the town of Nanaimo. On 26 February 1973, he was involved in automobile accident, losing both legs to above-the-knee amputation. (Mitchell, 2008)

Jim and I met at Oil Can Harry’s Nightclub later that year, on Halloween, shortly following his initial convalescence. I was playing the upstairs room with the Seeds of Time, and he was doing a sit-down set of solo blues in the main lounge. We hit it off right away, united in our appreciation for blues music, and remain friends today, occasionally even performing together. His soulful authenticity, reflecting the unrelenting struggle to overcome the burden of his physical handicap, reminds me some of Brother Billy. His career success, triumphantly proclaiming the triumph of perseverance over adversity, is an enduring testament to the power of the living blues. (Ibid.)

Byrnes and Billy notwithstanding, the real star of the show that evening was legendary English bluesman “Long John” Baldry (1941-2005), who’d been living in Vancouver since the late 1980s. Blessed with a deep, rich voice, John stood a towering 6’ 7” tall. Inspired as a teenager by African American bluesmaster Big Bill Broonzy, and by John Lomax’s early field-trip recordings of the legendary Leadbelly, he was one of the first British vocalists to sing blues music.

John Baldry’s seminal 1962 LP recording R&B at London’s Marquee Club (with Alexis Korner’s band Blues Incorporated) is widely regarded as the very first British blues recording. Eric Clapton has said that he was inspired to become a blues musician after seeing Baldry perform live. (Schumacher, 1998) Brit-Rock luminaries Mick Jagger, Jack Bruce, Charlie Watts, Brian Jones, Keith Richard, and Elton John were each at various times in his employ. And the Rolling Stones’ first major London concert (at the Marquee) was in support of Baldry. (Stewart, 1970; Baldry, 2004; Oldham, 2003, 2005; Meyers, 2007)

In 1963, Baldry joined the Cyril Davies R&B All-Stars with guitarist Jimmy Page (later of Led Zeppelin), and Nicky Hopkins on piano. Restyled as Long John Baldry and his Hoochie Coochie Men (following Davies’ untimely death in 1964), the group’s traditional R&B revue styled lineup featured a young Rod Stewart, who was recruited on the spot when Baldry heard him busking a Muddy Waters song at a London railway station. Next, with the addition of organist Brian Auger and singer Julie Driscol, came Steam Packet. 1966 found Baldry fronting Bluesology, an R&B revue featuring young Reginald Dwight (aka: Elton John) on keyboards. (Ibid.)

His 1967 recording of “When the Heartaches Begin”301soared to #1 in the U.K. charts. A syrupy commercial-pop ballad in the mode of an Englebert Humperdink or Matt Munro, it yielded a weekly BBC television variety program and broad nationwide popularity. But his loyal blues fans were less than impressed, and accused him of selling out.

“It was the hit that ruined my career” he bemoaned in conversation some years later. (Baldry, 2004) Emigrating to America in 1978, where “Heartaches” had received scant airplay, and where his reputation as a legitimate bluesman consequently remained unsullied by mainstream pop success, he lived at various times in New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto. Finally settling in Vancouver, British Columbia (his home for the next 25 years) he continued to record and tour extensively, in North America, the U.K., Scandinavia, and Europe. John William “Long John” Baldry died 21 June 2005, in Vancouver General Hospital, following a four-month battle with a severe chest infection (contracted while on tour in the U.K.). His cremated remains were later returned to London. (Meyers, 2007)

John and I met at one of his legendary birthday parties, held annually at his expansive Kitsilano penthouse. When it was discovered that we’d both lived in the same North London neighbourhood (near Canon’s Park, in Whitchurch Lane) and had been assigned to Downer Grammar School (though roughly a decade apart), we were off and running — our well-lubricated vocal duet later that evening bringing down the house.

Rule Britannia! Rule the fucking waves!
Britons never ever shall be fucking slaves!

We became firm friends, but only occasionally performed together (his regular guitar man Tony Robertson being more than capable). In addition to collaborating with Jim Byrnes and Billy Cowsill on the 1991 Little League dance, we produced a show for the Vancouver Sea Festival on the old Expo 86 site, a benefit for ex- Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan’s disabled sailing foundation, and a gala fundraiser for department store heiress Jacqui Cohen’s Face the World Foundation beside Brit-pop legend Sir Tom Jones (a terrific bluesman in his own right).

John and I were dining out one evening at a local Brit-style pub (he loved his English roast beef and Yorkshire pudding), and started talking about dear old Willie Dixon, whom he’d known since the American Folk Blues Festival tours of Europe in the early 1960s.

“Did you go to his funeral?” I inquired. “Who was there? What was it like?”

“Goodness no!” he gasped, his face turning white. “I couldn’t possibly have.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t you know?!” he exclaimed, as if in pain. “Haven’t you heard?!”

“Heard what?”

“Well,” he said, trying to compose himself, “I was visiting Willie at his home in California. His wife Marie had made tea and laid out some lovely pastries, and he and I were having a wonderful time chatting about the good old days in London. Then, it was time to go, and we were saying goodbye at his front door, and HE HAD A HEART ATTACK AND COLLAPSED DEAD IN MY ARMS!!”

“Yikes!” I said. “That’s terrible. But you shouldn’t beat yourself up. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m just getting over it now.”






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