He left as abruptly as he arrived…

 

Denver artist, musician, photographer, and filmmaker John Ware is a member of Reckless Red.

In 1967 I moved back to Claremont. I guess I was planning on being a full time artist, but looking back I reckon I didn’t know what that meant. It’s hard to get out of grad school and hang up a shingle like an accountant. Hell, making art is hard. With a new wife and sketchy plans I managed to get a Craftsman house through the faculty housing office at Pomona College. They assumed I was on staff. I didn’t correct them. It was on Mills Avenue across from the wash in a mixed neighborhood of aging houses and cheap apartments common to college towns across the nation.

One spring morning my friend, Chris Darrow, stopped by to visit with an odd character in tow — Frizz Fuller. We sized each other up, drank some cheap wine, and Frizz discovered my piano, a Kranich and Bach 1895 upright grand. Frizz discovered my piano for the better part of a day. He made my wife kinda nervous, but I think everything made her a little nervous in the first couple of years of being paired with me. I thought Frizz just eccentric, but I enjoyed his rather aggressive attack on my piano. I can promise he enjoyed it.

Life was inexpensive and uncomplicated. I loved that instrument and kept it in tune. I learned that Frizz loved it too. Admittedly, our front door was seldom locked, and the first time I heard that piano in the early morning I thought I was dreaming. Of course I recognized Frizz’s sound, but we were still in bed and weren’t expecting a musical intrusion. It was the first of many impromptu free-form visitations from Frizz over the next few years. Claremont was a town of curious people. It was a curious time. Frizz was always welcome in my home. He seldom spoke to either of us. He just walked in the front door, made a sharp left turn, pulled up the stool and started playing. When he was finished with whatever he was working on, he left as abruptly as he arrived. We grew to accept the Frizz concerts (occasionally late at night and never with warning) as a benefit of residence. That was a grand union: Frizz and my Kranich and Bach.

Mojo mystery solved…

Letter from musician Chris Darrow published in a recent issue of Mojo:

Chris Solves the Mystery

Re your Mystery Man query in Mojo 180. When I first met Bob “Frizz” Fuller he was already a brilliant, 16-year-old songwriter. Frizz was a student of the arcane and the unusual in American music. Over the ensuing years we became very dear friends. In the early ’70s, Denny Bruce and I took Frizz into the studio and recorded him singing 10 of his classic tunes. He was playing an old upright piano, in an eclectic, honky tonk style.

Later, in the mid-’70s, Frizz signed with my publishing company, Indian Hill Music, and my partner, Randy Talmadge and I helped him place some songs. I recorded him again, later on, with such luminaries as David Lindley, John Ware, Frank Reckard, Randy Sterling and myself. Soon after, Walter Egan produced some sides on him, including the fabulous Surfing Ghost.

A short time after, David lindley and Jackson Browne did some tracks with Frizz featuring Russ Kunkel on drums. Sadly, none of these sessions has ever been released. Over the years his songs would be covered by a number of artists, such as Lindley, wold champion surfer Corky Carroll, Kaleidoscope, and myself. The only recording of Frizz Fuller was on Harvey Kubernik’s Voices of the Angels spoken word album in 1981, wherein he read a poem. Novelist Kem Nunn used Frizz and Robb Strandlund’s lyrics before each chapter in Unassigned Territory.

Frizz died as a result of lung complications a couple of years ago.
Chris Darrow, e-mail

Editor’s note: Chris Darrow the provider of several excellent solo albums, was a founding member of Kaleidoscope, hailed by Jimmy Page as “My favorite band of all-time.”