listen to Kell Robertson | Dizzy Gillespie | 26 October 2000 | taken from The Golden Opportunity Jazz Radio Show, January 7, 2010, hosted by Mark Weber KUNM Albuquerque
listen to Kell Robertson | Of Bats and Drunks | 26 October 2000 | taken from Albuzerxque Volume 4 | Zerx 031
listen to Kell Robertson | For Woody Guthrie | 26 October 2000 | taken from Albuzerxque Volume 5 | Zerx 033
listen to Kell Robertson | A Family Joke | 26 October 2000 | taken from Albuzerxque Volume 5 | Zerx 033
listen to The Bubbadinos | Come On In (It’s Cool and Dark Inside) Lyrics by Kell Robertson. 28 November 2001 and 6 February 2002 | take 2 mix 1
listen to Kell Robertson | Cool and Dark Inside (from the Kell Robertson CD Cool and Dark Inside, 2002, Desperado Production
listen to Kell Robertson | Old Cracked Looking Glass (from an unreleased tape with the title In Tent)
listen to Kell Robertson | Mary Lou (from an unreleased tape with the title In Tent)
listen to Kell Robertson | So Long Blues (from an unreleased tape with the title In Tent)
I did a little album for Kell on Facebook http://on.fb.me/tbcO2c which has got me back into all this correspondence he so generously sent me and Lenore and our son Joel.
Actually I’m astounded there’s so much — who knows what was published and what wasn’t. But it’s important that someone responsible gather Kell’s papers together, as I’m sure someone responsible will. I’ll put Kell’s correspondence and manuscripts here in order, a bit of which I’ve been doing . . .
If there is a memorial I would like to read Kell’s remarkable “Declaration of Love” that I found among his letters . . . atypical perhaps, but still Kell.
It’s too bloody bad the alcohol problem robbed Kell of so much life (in my opinion). Not that I was without the problem, especially in San Francisco when we read together & he did alright but I was video’d drunk in some earth goddess garb . . . but he & I have laughed about that (just one of several readings together, most of them at the Thunderbird, the Zocalo and Silva’s Saloon in Bernalillo) . . . well Kell, it comes to all of us & maybe someone will find those reel to reel tapes Big John made of yr singing when you were at the Bird here in Placitas . . . love to you & yr memory, your singing (when we cd finally drag singing out of you) & all your scribblings, sketches & “poultry” . . . larry
I tried and tried to record Kell reading his poem “Julio” but he was resistant. He even coaxed me up to his digs one day with the promise that he’d record it, and I borrowed a pile of very expensive recording gear from the radio station and we set up and he kept putting it off and after 3 hours I pulled the plug and me and my crew left. Then, another time when he was on my radio show, I handed a copy of “Julio” to him to read and then when he went on mike he switched poems and afterwards gave me one of those fuck you winks he was so famous for. One of the most contrary individuals I have ever encountered. But wow, when he reads his own poetry he is a master, just completely breathes with it. I wish I was half as good. He had a gift.
Herr Klaus:
Great readings, he real put his back in the Woody Guthrie piece and “A Family Joke” is just great.
thanks,
Don
vintage Kell. Good hearing his voice. May he rest in peace.
TWO THINGS
1) Note that Larry Goodell lives in the mountain village of Placitas north of Albuquerque, and is an exceptionel performance poet in the old way of performance poetry. When I heard the story about Larry in a dress in North Beach bar reading his poetry (late 6Os early 70s) I just thought he was into his performance thing.
2) I’d certainly be willing to donate all of my Kell correspondence to a good archive. I have letters back to 1990. In some ways, Kell’s most inspired writing was in the one-to-one of a personal letter. Many of them tapped out on that ancient manual typewriter of his. Most of them with drawings in the margins and on the envelope. (He was adamant believer in the fountain pen.) I wonder where his old blown sideways cowboy hat is these days?
One time on my radio show I had the English saxophonist Trevor Watts as a guest and Kell came tromping in with Kendall and they both were mud spatter’d, smelling like tobacco & beer, well-worn Levis, cowboy boots, unshaved, loud, Kell with his leather book bag crammed with notebooks and paper and I had him read a couple poems and Trevor was in awe — it was like Kell had walked out of Pekinpah movie or The Unforgiven. That was ten years ago and Trevor still brings that day up when we have emails.