[Harp-L] Jeff Carp

["Jesse Sinaiko" <jns@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey Mick - 
 
I had forgotten about the Joplin connection.  I remember that article as
well, now that you mention it.  Carp is just mentioned in one sentence as a
"friend who keeps her more or less sane" or something like that.
 
Joplin and Big Brother spent part of the Summer of 1967 gigging at what was
then called the Cheetah - better known now and in the decades before and
after as the Aragon Ballroom. They lived at 52nd Street and University
Avenue.  She and Carp did a thing that Summer.
 
I went up to that apartment once, with Paul Morris, the drummer of Home
Juice when Sam Lay was otherwise occupied.  It was a pigsty to say the least
- worse than your usual crash pad.  A real funky operation.  There was some
gossip about what a mess Joplin was and how could Jeff deal with her.  The
story was that it was she who got him on the smack.  This may or may not be
the case.  There was lots of it around in the last few years of the decade
and they weren't the only ones who managed to get themselves into big
trouble with it.
 
I don't think Carp had any desire to relocate off to the West Coast, given
what she was into although he did go out there to visit her at least once.
 
Also, at that point he was still in school.  He eventually dropped out, but
that was a year or two later I think.
 
Another interesting thing: now that my interest has been piqued and I've
done some minor research, when I see notes about the Howlin Wolf London
Sessions it calls Carp a "17-year-old harp hotshot" or something to that
affect.  I don't see how he could have been 17.  He got to Chicago in the
Fall of 1966 as a 1st year college student at the U of C.  It is difficult
to see how he could have only been 17 four years later when he did the Wolf
Sessions.  Even if he was a young freshman and got to Chicago when he was
17, he would have been at least 20 by the time the London sessions happened.
Still young and still a hotshot, but not 17.
 
Funny how things change and legends are built!
 
Jesse Sinaiko - Chicago