Well, last week I ordered the first two non-used CDs I've gotten since TWGMTR. (I used to buy a dozen or more brand-new discs a month - how long ago those days seem.)
One, which will be arriving later this week, is Scott Walker's new album Bish Bosch - which, to judge from the reviews, is his version of a comedy record. He apparently even mentions Jimmy Durante in it. (Along with Donald Rumsfeld, various historical conquerers and dictators, and the other folk he more typically namedrops.)
The other record is UFO by Jim Sullivan. After listening to all the tracks at Youtube a ton of times I decided I needed to have it.
Sullivan, not to be confused with the late British guitarist of that name, was a big, brawny, hard-drinking guy from San Diego who came up to LA in early '68, settled in Sherman Oaks, and started gigging. He often played in Malibu, and in the booklet with the CD there's a photo of him jamming with Ed Carter, so that, plus the highly impressive Fu Manchu mustache he sported, leads me to think he must have raised some hell with Dennis at least a couple of times.
(Sullivan was also a pal of Harry Dean Stanton and Peter Fonda, and in fact shows up briefly in Easy Rider - he's the guy in the cowboy hat strumming a guitar in the commune scene.)
In 1969, thanks to some money from a Texan friend of his manager's, Sullivan recorded UFO for the short-lived Monnie label. He almost always worked the clubs solo and acoustic, but the record features backing by some of the most impressive Wrecking Crew names (Randi, Earl Palmer, Lyle Ritz) and superb string and horn arrangements by bassist Jimmy Bond. I've seen many reviews comparing the production to David Axelrod's work but the overall sound also brings Forever Changes to mind.
The lyrics are often as hippy-dippy as they are genuinely moving and incisive, but Sullivan's voice - sort of halfway between Fred Neil and Gordon Lightfoot -really makes the songs work. That, and he was quite an able guitarist.
But the album got little notice. In 1972, it was reissued on the Century City label, remixed to make it more in line with the post-James Taylor singer-songwriter sound. Soon afterwards, Sullivan put out his second and last album on the Playboy label. The one song I've heard from this is more conventional-sounding than the UFO record, as if the label wanted to play up his vocal similarity to Lightfoot.
That album also received little notice and by March 1975, Sullivan was label-less, and separated from his wife. He decided to pack up his car and move to Nashville, where he had some friends. Within a day of leaving LA, he was pulled over by the cops in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, for driving "erratically," and advised by them to spend the night there and get a fresh star in the morning - anyway, that was what they said later.
After several days, when Sullivan failed to show up in Nashville, his family and friends started looking. Since Sullivan had phoned his wife from New Mexico, a couple of his friends went there.
They learned that two days after Sullivan arrived in Santa Rosa, his car was found on the outskirts of town. It was locked, and inside were his wallet, guitar, and the rest of his belongings. His motel room had the room key on his dresser, but there were no other signs of occupancy, though the staff said he had checked in.
Nothing more has been seen or heard from Jim Sullivan, from that day to this. He's one of the two premier missing persons of American popular music, the other being Connie Converse who vanished at almost the same time - and whose music was rediscovered at about the same time as Sullivan's.
Anyway, the story - plus the photo of him and Ed Carter is at
http://www.bluetoad.com/publication/?i=44337&p=1. My fave songs of his, all on Youtube, are Highways, UFO, Johnny, and Jerome. The guy's stuff is definitely worth checking out.