The Jimmy Carl Black Story


The Jimmy Carl Black Story is an album by Norwegian guitarist Jon Larsen.

Review

The first CD is a Part One: «The Surrealistic Space Odyssey», one hour of music inspired by the life of Jimmy Carl Black.
The musical landscape is a groove based R&B, laidback spacerock, zappaish jazz-rock, and even with some taste of Django, on this recording. Here is also the 20 minutes adventure of Capt. Zurcon and his crew on board the Spaceship BigEar III, on their way to the red planet Mars, and their problems with the sexually frustrated Martian, the mutant fromage, and a lurking whale.
The second CD is a Part Two: «The Rockumentary», with a 70 minutes documentary about Jimmy Carl Black, the “Indian of the group”. We learn about the start at the reservation, where Black grew up in Texas with his racist father, The Soul Giants, Frank Zappa, The Mothers of Invention, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, mafia connections, and the many years of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, but we also learn the moving storie from a long, and unusual life in music. Jimmy Carl Black is a born storyteller, an intriguing and unique supplement to the told story of rock music, with a view of life in the “Mothers” from the inside. The stories of Black have a measured, folk wisdom quality to what he remembers. A must have in any Zappa & the Mothers of Invention collection.

Track listing

Part One – The Surrealistic Space Odyssey
  1. En Route
  2. Hi Boys and Girls, I'm Jimmy Carl Black
  3. An Early Glimpse of Planet Ruth
  4. Spaceship Bigear III
  5. Turn It On, Elliot
  6. A Helping Hand from Unca Mickey
  7. Opal, You Hot Little Bitch
  8. Jimmy Carl Black's Dachs Reduction
  9. Mayday from Space
  10. First Encounter in Space with a Real Martian
  11. Oh No, She's Trying to Rip My Spacesuit Open
  12. A Creature Is Lurking in the Shadow
  13. Jimmy-as-a-Ghost
Part Two – The Rockumentary
  1. My Name is Jimmy Carl Black
  2. The Atomic Gadget on Anthony/That Happened in Our Little Town
  3. No Trumpets in Rock 'n' Roll/The Keys
  4. California in 1964/In Walked Roy Estrada/The Soul Giants
  5. Then We Went to Hawaii/LSD
  6. Back to LA/Frenchy's a Go–Go/The Original Suzy Creamcheese
  7. San Francisco and Fillmore West/Freak Out Comes Out/Turn It On, Elliot!
  8. New York City/Absolutely Free/Off-Off Broadway at the Garrick Theater
  9. Europe 1967/Barbarella and Roger Vadim/Zappa Food Poisoned in Italy
  10. He Didn't Like Hippies/Jammin' with Jimi Hendrix
  11. Miami Pop Festival/Freak Out at The Cast Away Hotel/Arthur Brown
  12. Captain Beefheart/Dealing with Herbie/Linda Ronstadt
  13. Back to California 1968/The Mothers' Second European Tour/Royal Festival Hall
  14. Janis Joplin/Grace Slick/Jefferson Airplane
  15. Donuts in Austin 1973/New Mexico/Big Sunny and The Little Boys/Bandidos
  16. Albuquerque/Clearly Classical/The Blob Shaped LP
  17. Zappa Music Again/The Austin Grandmothers 1988/Settlement with Frank
  18. Eugene Chadbourne/Germany/Dreams on Longplay
  19. Meeting Moni/Not on Sunday, Not in Bavaria
  20. The Grandmothers 1998/Eating The Astoria/Leukemia

    Personnel