Talk:Bobby Jameson

Chris Lucey/Ducey

The following text was added at Chris Lucey by User:Bobby jameson at 02:59, 22 June 2011. Because it messed up the format there, I've moved it here:

Chris Lucey is a pseudonym for Bobby Jameson. It is the name created out of Chris Ducey's name, a real person, who was the original artist and writer of the 1965 Surrey album Songs Of Protest And Anti Protest. Chris Ducey could not continue with the original project due to contractual difficulties. Surrey executive Randy Wood, former president of Vee-Jay Records, re-ran the original album jackets through a printing process to eliminate part of the letter D from Ducey and make it into an L, which became Lucey. The original record sleeve was a picture of Brian Jones, Rolling Stones, photographed at the Action Club in West Hollywood (Los Angeles) during the Stones first visit to the US in 1965.

Thanks, Bobby! Ghmyrtle (talk) 19:17, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Scandal?

Kim Fowley, in Andrew Loog Oldham's 2Stoned, states that Bobby Jameson's career stalled after he hit a small child who asked for an autograph. Is there any truth to this allegation? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.13.79.99 (talk) 11:50, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

No idea. Is Kim Fowley a reliable source? You could add it to the article - "Kim Fowley claims that....." rather than definitive though, I think. Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:29, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Death

BAD NEWS - Bobby Jameson ("Chris Lucey" etc.) is dead. It is reported that Bobby passed away (cause not yet known / released, though NOT suspected to be suicide) sometime on Tuesday May 12, 2015. As I am not skilled at editing WIKI pages, would someone please update Bobby's page and record his death in the bio section.

You can look at people mourning and giving tributes to Bobby on his facebook page https://www.facebook.com/bobby.jameson.10 - where an article from the local San Luis Obispo paper is shown dating his death. (shown here) http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153367138248117&set=p.10153367138248117&type=1&theater

RIP Bobby. Davequ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Davequ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Davequ (talk • contribs) 09:30, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Sorry to hear this news, but thanks for passing it on. I will do my best to ensure the site is updated, but I am looking out for better sources than Facebook posts - though I've no doubt they are true. Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:42, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Ghmyrtle. Cause of death has now been cited as aortic aneurysm. Per his brother Quentin Quentin Macdonald, Yreka, CA "Again thank you all. I especially want all to know that Bob did not harm himself. He had an aneurism in his descending aorta. He was clear headed to the end. He made (I think) a good choice not to opt for a risky surgery, which would, at best, have left him disabled in a nursing home for a few more years. He died true to his own rules of sobriety,honesty, and independence; a warrior's death." Thanks for your help on this page. Davequ (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 05:45, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

No problem, and thanks to you for alerting us. I hope he appreciated the article we put together here - I see it was linked from his blog page. Ghmyrtle (talk) 07:47, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

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"Jameson's life was marred by a rapid series of personal tragedies coupled with drug addiction..."

@Ilovetopaint: - That wording seems to be somewhat opinionated and not borne out by the sources. In particular, the words "marred", "rapid", and "tragedies". Can we reword it? Ghmyrtle (talk) 11:34, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Not sure how it's an opinion that he was witness to a number of deaths in quick succession, or that he was an ex-AA. I'm currently reading through the whole blog and those facts are front and center. How would you reword it?--Ilovetopaint (talk) 15:21, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

It's a long time since I read his blog. What were the "personal tragedies"? Are they not words to avoid? Ghmyrtle (talk) 16:00, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

I changed to "misfortunes". I'm not sure how else you can objectively summarize his extraordinarily bad luck, because there's just too many events to single out. --Ilovetopaint (talk) 16:23, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

How about: "Jameson's life and career were affected by personal misfortune, alcoholism and criminal activity, and he became increasingly frustrated and disillusioned with the actions of managers, lawyers, record labels, and publishing companies who, he claimed, repeatedly failed to ensure him financial compensation or songwriting royalties." The problem with relying too much on his blog (though I recognise it's a valuable source) is that we can't necessarily take his claims as true - they are only his allegations. It's quite unlikely that, in fact, he suffered much undue financial loss, as his recordings never sold well. Ghmyrtle (talk) 16:42, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

@Ghmyrtle: I strongly disagree with your last edit, which was to swap the info about his 35-year-long Barrett-esque exile with the Billboard factoid. When I was learning of Jameson's story in the last few weeks, I've found it to be a massively disingenuous tidbit of info. The Billboard campaign was a big deal for people who followed the music biz in 1963, but has little significance beyond that circle. It was not like he had a big hit and then everyone thought he would be the next Elvis Presley, which was my initial impression. It is no more significant than the trivia about him recording a single with the Rolling Stones and other misleading claims. Perhaps you think that the Billboard campaign matters more than it does because it was long thought to be a campaign for Songs of Protest - another historical inaccuracy that Jameson was determined to correct.

Jameson had no hits and virtually nobody knew of him or his records. He was always best known for being the crazy singer from Mondo Hollywood that vanished in the '70s. To people who knew him, he was the guy who kept threatening to jump off buildings. After the 1990s, he was presumed to be dead, and the thing he would remain most known for was one obscure LP from '65. This is all sourced and verifiable.

One of the reasons I've taken to this article is because of the inconsistencies I noticed in promotion for the new Ariel Pink record. Jameson is painted as a psychedelic rock musician who recorded with Zappa and was hailed as the next Bob Dylan or something, which caused me (and some friends) to assume that he was an ex-Mother, another genius kind of Syd Barrett character, or at least just another ordinary session musician of the time. He definitely wasn't any of those - he was an infamous hippie outsider artist who existed only on the fringe of the scene. It's the most accurate characterization of Jameson, and it's how he was known to the world for 35 years, again, before the popularity of Songs of Protest eclipsed his past notoriety. Of course it belongs in the first couple sentences.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 16:35, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't share your perception. I don't know what the source is for your claims that: "He was always best known for being the crazy singer from Mondo Hollywood that vanished in the '70s", and that he was known to the world as "an infamous hippie outsider artist who existed only on the fringe of the scene". I'm in the UK and (I guess) you're in the US. In my mind, he was best known for being a half-forgotten hyped pop star from the early 60s, and the fact that his whereabouts were unknown for some years is not central to his notability and in my view not worth mentioning in the lead. (There are many notable musicians and others who vanished from the documented records at some point - we don't always mention that point in opening sections.) It should be possible to compromise on the words to use in the opening paragraph to cover the key points - that is, a shortened version of your words together with a shortened version of my words (while obviously still mentioning the Lucey album). Ghmyrtle (talk) 16:54, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

See here

Remembering “Mondo Hollywood”‘s Bobby Jameson [...] Bobby Jameson was not a household name. He made many attempts during his life to achieve some sort of fame beyond the notoriety of some of the things he did. [...] With the album Working, recorded in 1968, he used the name Bobby Jameson, instead of Jameson, but once again he found that people were not making any connection to his past work. He couldn’t seem to convey to anyone who he was, or what he had done, and to others he was seen as a flash in the pan, or an artist who had reached for the brass ring, and missed.

From the same link, this time from the POV of Steve Stanley:

When I first contacted him, he was totally unaware of any outside interest in his music, having lived in self-imposed exile for over 20 years. He later went on to embrace social media, and posted an in-depth blog of his trials and travails in and out of the record industry.

And this is from his 2003/2004 article on Jameson (emphasis added)

Bobby Jameson is pissed off, and understandably so. In the 1960s, he was a chameleonic singer-songwriter better known for his larger-than-life exploits, including drug busts and suicide attempts, than for his soulful, confessional music. ... Nearly everyone he knew back then assumes he’s dead. It took a private investigator to track him down for this article. [...] Perhaps Jameson’s best-known work (Songs of Protest and Anti-Protest, available on CD from Rev-Ola) was recorded under the pseudonym Chris Lucey

And here is what the press kit for Dedicated to Bobby Jameson states (emphasis added):

The album’s title makes a direct and heartfelt reference to a real-life L.A. musician, long presumed dead, who resurfaced online in 2007 after 35 reclusive years to pen his autobiography and tragic life story in a series of blogs and YouTube tirades. “

I can argue that his status as a "vanishing act" is equivalent to his "obscurity", which absolutely is central to his notability (i.e. "cult following", "folk-rock rarity", and other such descriptions frequently tied to Jameson). After the exposure granted from the Ariel Pink LP, it's almost guaranteed that his blog will become the second (or third) most famous thing about him.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 17:07, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

To follow on another point you made, I can't think of a single musician whose status was unknown for decades — allowing historical inaccuracies to crop up in the meantime, which precipitates their return to the public eye — and for that not to be significant in their biography.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 17:35, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Furthermore, here's some excerpts from his current AllMusic bios: "... for reasons unknown ...", "Something of a mystery man of mid-'60s folk-rock ...", "... a singer of murky origins ...", "It's been hard to piece together the Lucey/Jameson story ...", and so forth. Only recently have these mysteries been solved, via his blog, so to ignore the previous decades of confusion is to remove a big chunk of the story (WP:OVERSIMPLIFY).--Ilovetopaint (talk) 18:40, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm not going to argue over the current wording. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:10, 9 August 2017 (UTC)