Log in to post an entry
Mothers of Invention drummer Jimmy Carl Black dies
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
By ROBERT BARR
Associated Press Writer
LONDON (AP) Jimmy Carl Black, who went from drummer in Frank Zappa's avant-garde Mothers of Invention to doughnut shop worker and house painter, has died at age 70.
Black died Saturday of cancer in Siegsdorf, Germany, said Roddie Gilliard, a British musician who performed with him.
Black had Cheyenne ancestry; his greatest fame came from a line ad-libbed on the Mothers of Invention's third album, ''We're Only In It for the Money,'' which made fun of hippies.
''Hi, boys and girls,'' he said. ''I'm Jimmy Carl Black and I'm the Indian of the group.''
Early on, Black played backing music for strippers. In 1964, he was playing in a Los Angeles band called the Soul Giants when it recruited Zappa as lead guitarist.
Zappa took over, changed the group's name and, according to Black, boasted that ''if you guys learn my music, I'll make you rich and famous.''
''He took care of half of that promise, because I'm damn sure I didn't get rich,'' Black recalled.
The Mothers satirized pop music and gloried in their weirdness and their eagerness to offend even their own fans. ''You think we're singing 'bout someone else but you're plastic people,'' they sang on their 1967 album, ''Absolutely Free.''
He credited Zappa, who died in 1993, with introducing him to modern classical music and teaching him complex rhythms.