An appreciation of an extraordinary songwriter
Musician Patrick Brayer shares this remembrance:
This is from a manipulated photo series of what I call, the inland empire hall of fame, of which frizz is one entry
the photo is culled from the one and only picture I ever took of frizz
I was walking out the door of the charleston hospital in vegas when I snapped it
so you are seeing, frozen in space, the last time I laid eyes on Frizz Fuller
Writer Wayne Wilson reminisces:
If pressed, I’d guess that it’s 1971. I’m in the passenger seat of a Volkswagen bus wobbling through Indio en route to Joshua Tree National Park. I sift my moiling thoughts for our mission. The movie, that’s right, we’re going to film the final scenes of a Super 8 film. But where’s the camera? More to the point, where’s my hand? Whew!—right there at the end of my arm! When I reach for the glove compartment my fingers sink into the dashboard as if it’s made of putty.
Ahead the highway writhes toward the horizon, where, casting off rainbow-hued bubbles, it boils into the clouds. Hold on—are those tumbleweeds bordering the pavement? Or enormous beavers? And, by the way, who’s driving?
Nestled in back among a mélange of hysterically giggling companions, Frizz honks away on a battered tenor sax, having taken lessons for about a week. “Wow!” I say, as the notes swirl around my head in a phosphorescent helix. “That’s real funky, you know?”
Frizz puts down the instrument and shrieks with demented laughter for what seems like hours before gasping, “That was ‘Old Black Joe’!”
Writer Wayne Wilson remembers his friend:
The early ’80s found me living in San Luis Obispo on California’s Central Coast, where the neo-hippie community had elevated holistic dietary principles nearly to the status of a religion. One summer afternoon the peripatetic Frizz, passing through town on one of his many mysterious journeys, stopped to visit me, and we drove to a whole foods café.
A young woman, glowing with health, brought us coffee, and Frizz asked her for some artificial sweetener.
“I’m sorry,” she said with a faintly pitying smile, “we don’t serve anything that causes cancer.”
Frizz fixed her with a stony gaze. “That’s all right,” he said, “I’ve already got it.”
Mark Reckard, a good friend of Frizz, sends this:
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.
“Frizz” was not the only nickname for Bob Fuller. According to screenwriter, author, and longtime friend, Wayne Wilson, Frizz was variously known as, Bobo, Bug, Bughouse, Frazzbo, Frink, Frizz, Frisbe, Froob, Frooba, the Hound, the Lad, Lowboy, Lug, Luggard, Lugger, Plug, Plugger, Plughound, and Streamlined Daddy.
According to Wilson:
“Streamlined Daddy” — that one may invite some explanation. After a mysterious absence of a month or so, Frizz turned up at our communal dwelling — The House of Space and Time — in Pomona, having shaved his head and gained at least 50 pounds. “Bob?” said one of our compadres, as this rotund figure, eyes of polished flint hidden by sunglasses, came huffing and puffing up the driveway. “No,” was the businesslike reply. “Streamlined Daddy.”
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.”
Writer Wayne Wilson remembers his friend:
Searching the Internet for the late Bob “Frizz” Fuller yields several screens’ worth of song credits, a hodge-podge of exaggeration and myth, a few supercilious observations about his appearance, hygiene, and behavior, and the general impression of an amusing crackpot who happened to compose “funny” songs. There’s ample evidence too of the sorts of fans who, immune to the enchantment of the music itself, relish at a safe distance the spectacle of human wreckage. It’s probably fair to say, though, that most people have never heard of him. But there was a moment when it looked as if he was going to pull it off, carve out a musical niche like that of Tom Waits or Loudon Wainwright III. His work was praised and performed by Jackson Browne, Ry Cooder, Linda Ronstadt, Walter Eagan, David Lindley, Leo Kottke, Warren Zevon, and Chris Darrow. Radio stations played his songs in respectable rotation. Yet he ended his days as a resident in a retirement and assisted living center off the Strip in Las Vegas, his songs languishing in shoeboxes…
Read the complete article: Quarter of a Man
Bob “Frizz” Fuller 