"SUGAR BEAR" - ROD AND ELTON REMEMBER MENTOR, GAY BLUES ICON LONG JOHN BALDRY

Rod Stewart, Elton John, Paul Myers and Long John Baldry's life partner Felix "Oz" Rexach pay tribute to Baldry (pictured above), who died  in Vancouver in 2005

Bugs' original version of this column ran in Hour magazine on November 8, 2007. 

Long John Baldry and Rod Stewart

glammed up (Photo from It Ain't Easy

by Greystone Books)

British blues legend Long John Baldry passed away in Vancouver on July 21, 2005, and since I had never interviewed him, I did the next best thing: I interviewed the very gracious Felix "Oz" Rexach, Baldry’s life partner, days later.

"John was not well accepted as a gay man by the blues community – it’s a very macho industry," Oz told me. "But he was more than well-accepted as a performer in his field."

So when I blabbed on the phone some years ago with Paul Myers, Berkeley-based brother of comic actor Mike Myers and author of the bestselling bio It Ain’t Easy: Long John Baldry and the Birth of the British Blues, Paul told me, "Yeah, I used your column in my book. I’m so pleased we’re doing this interview."

THE DEVIL'S MUSIC HONOURS DYKE AND POP ICON BESSIE SMITH AT MONTREAL JAZZ FEST

Bessie Smith, February 7, 1936

When I first met rock singer Sass Jordan some years ago, it was at the opening bash of the gorgeous Nelligan Hotel in Old Montreal after way too many glasses of Moët & Chandon champagne. I kept yakking away while Sass took off her shoes and told me, “My feet are fucking killing me.”

That’s all I remember.

When I interviewed Sass a couple years later, she actually remembered me. “You were awesome!” Sass laughed.

Bugs and Sass

OK, awesome might be a tad overstating it. But once again Sass and I got along like a house on fire and we ended up blabbing about her portraying one of my idols, the original woman rock star, Janis Joplin, in the critically-hailed  off-Broadway musical Love, Janis. 

“It was the hardest goddamn thing I ever did,” Sass told me. “It was four nights a week for three months. It was exhausting. I was never a fan of Janis until I did [the play]. Singing [like] Janis isn’t an easy thing to do but I did really, really well.”

These days it takes someone like Sass Jordan to generate new interest in an old singer like Joplin, who died in October 1970. In my case, it took Janis Joplin to interest me in another female blues singer, Bessie Smith, who died back in September 1937.