[Harp-L] Jeff Carp

["Mick Zaklan" <mzaklan@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hey Jesse,
   Very interesting post on Jeff Carp.  Wanted to thank you for the details,
great stuff.
   I'll rehash it for you.  A year or two after Jeff disappeared off the
scene, I wound up sitting next to Sam Lay backstage at the old Alice's
Revisited club up on Chicago's northside.  I asked him about Jeff.  He told
me a wild story about a boating accident.  Said someone had gone berserk on
LSD on the boat and started swinging a knife.  Jeff got cornered and jumped
overboard.  According to Sam, the body was never recovered.  I remember Sam
telling me that the parents were devastated and I got the impression that
Sam had been in contact with them.  I knew Sam had played and recorded with
Jeff, so I kind of accepted this explanation.
   Back on 7/5/06, I posted something about an early blues fest in Chicago's
Grant Park in which I recalled Jeff doing triple duty with the bands of Earl
Hooker, Sam Lay, and Otis Spann.  I remember the guy knocked me out,
especially on the Hooker set, and I went looking for  his stuff at Bob
Koester's Jazz Record Mart shortly afterwards.  In the course of doing the
post, my memory got jogged about his bizarre demise.  I'm not sure I
would've mentioned it except that I bumped into Scott Dirks online, author
of the Little Walter bio, and he basically repeated the same story.  Said he
got it from noted blues producer Dick Shurman.  That's a pretty good source
so I went with it.  At a blues website; I found a listing of 1/1/73 Panama
for Jeff's death.  I guessed that this was a New Year's Eve party gone bad.
   So that's my story.  I agree with you about Dave Waldman; wonderful
harpist.  I was surprised to see him wandering around last year's SPAH
harmonica convention in Milwaukee, looking like a disheveled calculus
professor.  Does anyone know, I wondered, who this guy is and what a fine
player he is?  He should have been on the SPAH convention payroll.

Mick Zaklan