Phil Morrison, bassist of our favorite, impossible-to-describe jazz group Stark Reality, told us today that Vinnie Johnson, the band’s drummer, had passed away. We don’t have any further details at this time. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Vinnie’s family. He was one helluva drummer, and a cheerful, super guy. He will be missed.
Photo above by Jim Bourne, taken in 1970 on the back lot at Boston’s WGBH, for use on the Stark Reality’s AJP-issued LP.
We were surprised when Peanut Butter Wolf asked us why we never had the Stark Reality albums Stark Reality Discovers Hoagy Carmichael’s Music Shop and 1969 on Itunes. Well, we didn’t really have a reason why. So, we put ’em up. If you’re the type that frequents this site, you probably have an original Stark Reality album, or at least one of our reissues…
Link: Stark Reality Discovers Hoagy Carmichael’s Music Shop on Rappcats.
Monty Stark’s only child, son Monty Jr. (those of you who have seen Hoagy Carmichael’s Music Shop will remember him as one of the children featured in the show’s educational skits) emailed us after his father’s passing and included a photograph of his father. The photo was touching: Monty in a candid moment, smiling and holding his young son somewhere in Boston, some forty years ago.
Since then, Monty Jr. sent us a few more of Monty and his pals, taken by his mother in the late 1960s and early 1970s. View the gallery:
Monty Stark, vibraphonist, pianist, composer, arranger, one-time leader of inimitable psychedelic jazz band The Stark Reality died at a Scottsdale, Arizona hospice on Thanksgiving evening, 11.26.09. The cause of his death was cancer. He was sixty-nine years old.
Read Egon’s remembrances of his friend by clicking here.
Read Egon’s interview with Monty Stark, conducted at Stark’s Phoenix, Arizona apartment in 2001, here.
Read more about the Egon’s Now anthology – and view full liner notes, photos and listen to music – at Stones Throw by clicking here.
Now-Again and Stones Throw Records collectively issued the Stark Reality’s Now album in 2003. The entirety of the Stark Reality’s unreleased album, entitled 1969 upon its vinyl-only release in 2003, saw issue solely on a Now-Again LP and the now out of print deluxe CD edition of the Now album released by Stones Throw in Europe.