[Harp-L] Jeff Carp
Bill Rossoll
part on All Aboard which is on the Fathers and Sons album (Muddy
Waters). I have the LP around here somewhere but I'll be darned if I can
find it.
Anybody know?
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David Hoerl
Subject: [Harp-L] Jeff Carp
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I can't remember if I read or heard that Jeff Carp played the chromatic
part on All Aboard which is on the Fathers and Sons album (Muddy
Waters). I have the LP around here somewhere but I'll be darned if I can
find it.
Anybody know?
Answer: Yes he did. I was taught by Norman Dayron at New College of California. (In Sausalito at the time)
Dayron was the producer of Fathers and Sons. I took a bunch of classes from him including Ethnomusicology and Recording Arts. He told us that Carp died in an accident at sea. He used to rave about Carp's playing, and said that had he lived, he would be the best harp player out there. (This was around 1974). -Dave Hoerl
Rob Paparozzi
.....and I have him on some cool old Bluesway Vinyl with Earl Hooker's band
....good player!! Nice that he got some mention here on Harp-l
to...............
Jesse Sinaiko
I would like to respond to the post below by John Schulman, who I remember
from my high school days.
I was talking about this incident with a friend the other day - for the
first time in many years, and he mentioned this list.
I am a resident and native of Hyde Park in Chicago.
I knew Jeff Carp pretty well, although he was quite a bit older than me - I
was in high school and he was a U of C student.
All of the related story below is true. I certainly wasn't there, but knew
the guy who owned the boat. Basically, what John has related below is the
story I heard in after the incident.
All the other stuff in the post below is also fact, including Howlin Wolf's
heart attack. Carp's band was called Home Juice. It was Sam Lay and later
Paul Morris on drums, Paul Asbell on guitar, and I don't remember who the
bass guy was offhand. It was an excellent band, in the tradition of the
Butterfield Band.
Jr. and Buddy used to gig at U of C regularly, as did Shaky Horton, Otis
Rush, Magic Sam, Johnny Littlejohn, and others. And I was also at the Cream
set in the Spring of 1968. The guy running the U of C's booking operation
was named Peter Ratner, now deceased. he had a knack for getting really big
groups into Mandel hall, a small venue - I don't know how he did it.
Anyhow, I can more or less confirm the story as told below, second-hand,
from someone who was also on the boat.
Butterfield went to U of C Lab School - I thin he still holds some track and
field records there - and I went to the local public HS, Kenwood.
Jesse Sinaiko - Chicago, IL
Hi, I'm new to the list, which I just discovered in looking for info on Jeff
Carp. I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, in Hyde Park. Paul Butterfield
lived there, having attended my high school before me. He might not have
readily admitted graduating from the U. of Chicago's University High School.
I looked up his yearbook quote, which stated, "I think I am better than
those who are trying to reform me." I was listening to old Butterfield this
evening, and got to thinking about Jeff Carp. I assumed he also lived in
Hyde Park, possibly as a U of C student. I heard him with his band at U of C
dances. I remember he was cool, and had soul. Many years later I renewed a
friendship with an upper echelon professional jazz guitarist, also from Hyde
Park. He told me a slightly different story than on the list. A Hyde Park
friend had told him everyone on the boat was under the influence of the
aforementioned hallucinogenic substance when the boat began taking on water,
in the Gulf of Mexico. Apparently Jeff and his wife both swam to shore
separately, without Jeff knowing she had safely made it.
When he did not see her, he bravely swam back out to find her, and was
killed by sharks. What a way to go.
That possible tragedy having been voiced, I remember U of C events where I
also heard Sam Lay, Johnny Shines, Otis Rush, BB King, Buddy Guy, Jr. Wells,
Muddy Waters, Cream, Butterfield, and the (Corky) Segal-Schwall Band. While
waiting to hear Howlin' Wolf play at the gymnasium, we were informed he had
a heart attack on the way to the gig (but survived). It was a pretty cool
place in which to have grown up, when one could attend these events as a
teen. I never made it to the clubs on 47th St., however. It was this
exposure that inspired me to play bass and attend Berklee College of Music
in 1972 (after bumming around for two years- much to my father's
displeasure!)
Regards,
John
Mick Zaklan
Carp film). Nobody would love to straighten this out and get to the
truth more than myself. So far we've got Sam Lay, Dick Shurman, Scott Dirks
and Mick Zaklan with one version and John Schulman and Jesse Sinaiko with
another. If John and Jesse have an eyewitness; it would be great if they
could name the guy and get some more details out of him. In the interest of
clearing up a long-standing mystery.
Again, why is this of any importance? Because Jeff Carp was a highly
intelligent, highly skilled and motivated harpist who; in my opinion, was
poised to be the next big harpist out of Chicago before his untimely death.
Following in the footsteps of Butterfield and Musselwhite. He wasn't the
kind of guy who was going to stop learning about the instrument and coast on
a few hot riffs. Just my opinion, but I kind of see him as the Dennis
Gruenling of his day.
If nothing else, though, this thread shows what a wonderful resource
harp-l is.
Mick Zaklan
Mick Zaklan
Very interesting post on Jeff Carp. Wanted to thank you for the details,
great stuff.
I'll rehash it for you. A year or two after Jeff disappeared off the
scene, I wound up sitting next to Sam Lay backstage at the old Alice's
Revisited club up on Chicago's northside. I asked him about Jeff. He told
me a wild story about a boating accident. Said someone had gone berserk on
LSD on the boat and started swinging a knife. Jeff got cornered and jumped
overboard. According to Sam, the body was never recovered. I remember Sam
telling me that the parents were devastated and I got the impression that
Sam had been in contact with them. I knew Sam had played and recorded with
Jeff, so I kind of accepted this explanation.
Back on 7/5/06, I posted something about an early blues fest in Chicago's
Grant Park in which I recalled Jeff doing triple duty with the bands of Earl
Hooker, Sam Lay, and Otis Spann. I remember the guy knocked me out,
especially on the Hooker set, and I went looking for his stuff at Bob
Koester's Jazz Record Mart shortly afterwards. In the course of doing the
post, my memory got jogged about his bizarre demise. I'm not sure I
would've mentioned it except that I bumped into Scott Dirks online, author
of the Little Walter bio, and he basically repeated the same story. Said he
got it from noted blues producer Dick Shurman. That's a pretty good source
so I went with it. At a blues website; I found a listing of 1/1/73 Panama
for Jeff's death. I guessed that this was a New Year's Eve party gone bad.
So that's my story. I agree with you about Dave Waldman; wonderful
harpist. I was surprised to see him wandering around last year's SPAH
harmonica convention in Milwaukee, looking like a disheveled calculus
professor. Does anyone know, I wondered, who this guy is and what a fine
player he is? He should have been on the SPAH convention payroll.
Jesse Sinaiko
First of all, I should say that I wasn't specific enough when I said that
everything in John Schulman's post was true to my knowledge. I was only
referring to the incident, not the details - I should have been clearer
about that. I never heard the part about getting to shore and then going
back out to look for his wife and being lost or eaten by sharks at that
point.
No, what Sam lay told you is almost EXACTLY what I heard, with one minor and
not contradictory difference.
I wasn't told that Jeff specifically was cornered but that everyone jumped
overboard, and only Jeff didn't get back to the boat.
It was out in the Gulf somewhere. The owner of the boat - as I was told a
guy named Steve Klee, but I don't have any proof of that - was an
ex-Chicagoan who was living in Panama or Mexico or Belize or someplace, and
had a large sailboat.
I don't even remember specifically how I heard the news - it was 35 years
ago and hasn't really been in my frame of reference.
That said, I am attempting to tie them-there synapses together to remember
more detail, or someone who might have more detail. There were others from
around here on that sailboat, and I trying to connect those dots - I doubt
that anyone still around in the blues community would know what happened -
but I may know someone who knows someone locally. Although Jeff had kicked
by that time - or so he had said - my sense is, the people he was with were
not from the music community but were, uh, dopers. I suppose this is partly
based on the the nature of the incident, but also I have a vague memory of
it be a topic of conversation at the time based on who was on the boat.
I wonder if there are any recordings in existence of Home Juice. It was a
really good band - played lots of shuffles and other fast stuff because they
played at U of C dances. The often opened for bigger acts as well - I
remember a particularly good gig with the headliner being Otis Rush in a gym
at Ida Noyes Hall that was converted into a movie theatre for Doc Films
about 20 years ago, circa 1970. Also Jr. and Buddy, and Johnny Young, the
mandolin player.
I'll see what I can find out. My guess is that anyone who is in a position
to know, but is outside the blues world, and perhaps even this list isn't
thinking that it has any significance outside his immediate friends or
family. If anyone is hesitant to talk about it because of what happened,
well, it's been thirty-five years; I doubt that anyone has anything to fear.
When running an obit search in the NY Times I found one for his Dad Eli in
2001, but that was it. Jeff himself would be pushing 60 by now if he was
alive.
Jesse Sinaiko - Chicago