I'm Basically Waiting for Truly Terrific Man to Die

[Jazzooo]

Ed Scott. He could still surprise me, but it doesn't seem likely. At 88 he'd been doing ok since the death of his wife, Alice Garrett (my wife Glenda's aunt) until his stroke 1.5 years ago, and even then he's been coherent and a blast to hang with or talk on the phone with until this past month, when he started going in and out of the hospital with severe pain in his back/kidneys. They still can't tell what's wrong, but I sense he is about to give up the fight altogether.

Lemmetellya about Ed ("Lemmetellya" is one of his favorite sentence starters). He is one of the funiest and smartest men I ever met--and one of the most talented. He's a songwriter, or rather a show-writer I met in Synanon when I was only 18. His artform was part of the process through which thousands of junkies cleaned up and started over, many of whom I can still call my good friends some 30 years later.

I just pressed 100 copies of The Synanon Music Collection, Volume One: The Music of Ed Scott. I've been working on it for the last 1.5, cleaning up old audiotapes of crazy Synanon shows penned by Ed, usually performed by the same recovering addicts (and squares) who provided the inspiration for the usually hysterical and poignant storylines. I was often his drummer or bassist, occasionally an actor, his recording engineer and then later his partner and friend. In return, I learned a ton about how to write his kind of music.

Anyway, I think I'd like to tell his story by just reprinting the liner notes Glenda wrote for the album. In the next post or two, I'll link to one of his songs, which I'm betting that many of you will dig.


"ABOUT ED SCOTT

Born on the 4th of July in 1919, Ed started studying piano at five (paying for his lessons thru gardening work) and by 12 had his own radio show, as local piano prodigy “Eddie”. One year later he turned pro, helping to support his family by playing for dance classes.

Ed fell in love with musical theater, camping out in the neighborhood library until he had memorized the work of Rogers & Hart, Cole Porter, and George Gershwin. After a stint in the military he went to New York and snagged jobs with Frank Loesser and George Balanchine…but it was the new medium of television that was to become Ed’s creative home.

He “rode the heyday of the TV variety shows for twenty years”, writing songs and playing music for Jim Nabors, Patty Page, Carol Burnett, and Bob Hope. Six years on the Gary Moore Show brought him an Emmy for special material. It was on the Burbank set of the Phyllis Diller Show that he first heard about Synanon.

“I went down to the Santa Monica House…and I thought it was great. There were thousands of people there…it was chaos…and I loved the craziness. I guess it reminded me of my family. Somehow I felt at home.”

In the early 70’s, TV variety shows dried up and Ed moved back to New York. “I had written four or five shows and two of them opened off Broadway to great reviews…but in the end I just couldn’t sell them. I decided to chuck it and move into Synanon.”

“In Synanon I didn’t have a real job. I worked in Carpentry building towel racks, and I put on shows.” His first production was a Christmas special in Santa Monica, where he met Alice Garrett and asked her to go bike riding with him. They were together for the next 28 years.

Ed wrote and mounted one memorable production after another. Most focused on a single group: either older people (“The Senior Circle Follies”), kids (“Mother Goose On The Loose”) and newcomers (“A View From The Bench”).

His shows helped both performers and audience make sense of their sometimes baffling Synanon experiences. They also reflected Ed’s wry sense of humor, passion for the environment, love of community life, and unquenchable optimism and belief in the power of positive thought.

“Writing and putting on shows is the one thing I was able to do really well…and when you are in my line of work it isn’t always easy to find a place to do your thing. I found that place in Synanon. I got to work with all kinds of people and helped them tell their stories. I had a ball in Synanon…no one had a better time than I did.”

All compositions by Ed Scott
© 1975-2007

Compilation produced by Doug and Glenda Robinson
Liner notes by Glenda Robinson
Layout and design by Lex Gilbert

Singers include: Ed Scott, Alice Garrett, Larry Brilliant, Bruce Gilbert, Aimoku McClellan, Frank Rehak, David Scott, James Adams, Perry Bauman, Doug Robinson, Glenda Robinson, Mary Jo Bagger, Ann Mason, Andrea Fahy Robinson, Carrie Giglio, Liz Giglio Jr, Brenda Patton and Richard Baxter. (Note: There are many unidentified singers on this compilation—if you recognize them, please email Doug Robinson at Jazzooo@aol.com.)

A note from the producers:
Every attempt has been made to improve the quality of the original recordings, which were often created in a hurry on donated audio equipment by well-meaning amateurs. In the end, we like to think the spirit shows through, even if the sonics leave a little to be desired."

[Jazzooo]

Here's one of my favorite examples of Ed's style. A little background will help you get the strange beauty of what he was doing here.

In Synanon, of course, we took in some pretty screwed up guys and girls. I think it's safe to say that 100% of the dope fiend population came to live there only after making the rest of their lives a complete mess--jail time, overdoses and sometimes much worse. Ironically, if there was one common element among the newly recovered, it was arrogance. It was very common to see these folks cleaned up but still acting like street tough punks, struggling to hold onto a story they'd told themselves about their past that didn't exactly reflect reality.

Anyway, in 1979 Ed wrote a show called A View From The Bench, which traces the first 6 months in Synanon of a junkie named Perry, and it's loosely based on the actor, Perry Bauman's, own history. At the time of the show, Perry was clean almost 2 years, but since he was re-enacting jackpots and fiascos from his first 6 months, it was extremely personal and deeply funny for the audience, because we had all been there, kicking his ass the first time around--it's hard to articulate, but I hope this at least helps you envision the artistic mobius loop Ed was dealing with.

Anyway, this here song was sung by a friend of mine, James. Now, here's his story--James was kind of the hugest screwup I'd ever met. He was a tall, black fiend from Detroit with tons of personal charm and a slightly dulled sense of street smarts--kind of a non lethal version of a Darwin Award winner. At least every month, it seemed like James went from doing great to getting busted for stealing, or smoking, or lying to his boss. Once busted, noone worked harder than James to get back on track, and he always had everyone rooting for him. When he acted in this show, he was actually well-respected and clean four years (and he's still clean and sober and working with kids 30 years later), so again, when his *character*, an arrogant screwup who is lecturing a newer resident about 'how to run your own life' you can hear us all laughing at the irony of it all--James too.

So here is James Adams, singing "Nobody's Gonna Tell Me What to Do," written by Ed Scott and based on Jaems' actual lifestory (with some enhancement for rhyming purposes!):

http://download.yousendit.com/E9A4D1855742F950

[Jazzooo]

And here is one final track--I love this one. Again, background will help:

We challenged a lot of cultural assumptions in Synanon--it was, by our own definition, an experimental community that happened to cure drug addicts as a side effect of the way we lived and the things we did together.

Some of these 'things' we did were a gas--stopping smoking in a single day (we're talking about 1600 people, most of whom smoked like chimneys); doing aerobics 5 days a week for two years while tracking our individual health, etc. Wearing overalls as a symbol of our work ethic was another one I liked--no complex decisions about wardrobe for this 20 year old!

Other steps we took were stranger and even more controversial. The shaved head was originally a punishment for a male addict who had screwed up but wanted to demonstrate that he was willing to sacrifice something in order to get back on track. Sounds weird, but it worked--when you saw an addict with a bald head, our social contract was to stop him and ask him why his head was shaved. He'd have to relate his story over and over, which got pretty embarrassing him after a while. Turns out, fear of looking ridiculous was a big incentive to stay out of trouble for the newcomer.

Anyway, all that changed one day when, in an act of women claiming true equality, a female old timer who had copped out to something pretty corrupt--stealing from her best friend--shaved her head the way a guy would have done. The next few weeks, it was like a fever--women all over Synanon got together and had head-shaving parties, celebrating the last remaining place to hide from accepting equal responsibility--the bald head. I can tell you that the women simply kicked ass the next few years in Synanon, rising to new positions of authority, from Chairman on down. It never stopped.

So for a few years, most women and women kept our hair between 1/2" and 1.5". We invented scarves and earrings and had a lot of fun with the process of convincing ourselves that it wasn't our hair, it was what was inside that was beautiful.

But...what about the 175 kids in our private school system? In what was probably a dumb move, we insisted that the teenagers followed suit and sure enough, the high school kids all wore their hair short. Everyone was a good sport about it, but you could always tell that the teenaged girls wished they could grow their hair out and eventually that's what happened. But this song, For My Hair, was something Ed wrote (again in the late '70s) for a show based on Synanon teenagers before their dreams of long hair came true. Here is his demo of the tune, just him at the piano, singing it for the actors.

I *love* his piano-playing on this!

http://download.yousendit.com/2B2E2D9C070EB58A

[Gary Sisco]

Sorry to hear about your impending loss of a friend, Doug. But, be thankful that you have a chance to know you're about to imminently lose him and so can say or do what you'd like while you have time.

When my friend Murray Bookchin died, at 84, last year, I found out via an email from London. I didn't have the chance to spend some last time with him and it haunts me.

[Jazzooo]

You're so right, Gary, and I thought of you and Marray when I was writing. I've said what I want to say to Ed, and he to me, over the last couple of years and more intensely in the last few months. I just feel so out of control right now--he's in Ventura, I'm in Mexico and can't come up, he's in the hospital and not answering his phone yet (3 days) although I've spoken with his daughter who is there and she gives me blow by blows...and they aren't very positive.

They actually don't know what is causing his terrible pain right now--they're saying it's his back. The meds they give him are making him paranoid and ill. I know the last place he wants to die is a hospital, but maybe the pain is driving him to accept it in order to get relief.

[Gary Sisco]

Sorry, man. It's a helpless feeling, I know, for all, and something we all face.

My brother (who, like me, has a habit of befriending older guys, often way older) told me when he heard Murray'd died that every time he loses an old friend he swears he's never going to make another. But then he'll run into some old curmudgeonly mofo with a twinkle in his eye most will miss, and off he goes again ...

My brother, incidentally, makes wooden boats in Maine. He tells me that the fishermen and lobstermen there call it a "launching party" when they gather to toast another goner. I think that's one of the best language creations I've heard in a long while.

[tippy]

Sorry to hear this, Jazzooo. I hope they find the reason for your friend's pain. Loss is just the very worst deep and sad. Be well.

[Jazzooo]

Thanks, Tip. And yeah, Gary, making friends with old guys is even more predictably saddening than guys my own age, even though the wrecking ball from the sky can hit at any moment. Oddly, when I first started working with Ed, he was only 51--a year younger than I am today!

Anyone listen to those clips? You'll find them funny, I'm almost positive.

[Gary Sisco]

Yeah, that's the way it works, I guess, Doug.

In the tribe of hipsters and musicians I came up with and traveled with, I was the baby of the bunch, the youngest without any competition. A bunch of them didn't make it, though, and now I'm older than they ever got. Shit gets strange, this here life.

Another strange thing, now that I'm still the youngest at 53 (most of the cats are in their 60s, now, a couple 70 or so), is that when I'm with those guys none of us seems any different, really, to me. It's like we're always as we we've always been. Different color hair and beards. That's about all. I don't know how to word it, really. Kids I came up with, I still see them as the kids I came up with.

[Gary Sisco]

I was thinking about the meds making your friend paranoid. Morphine made my grandmother hallucinate. Scared the shit out of her.

And I'm there wondering, How come I never hallucinated on it? ....

[Jazzooo]

I don't know--I had morphine in a hospital and all I remember is overwhelming bliss. But it sure did a bad trip on my dad's head.

[gonzo]

my pops always had bad reactions to morphine and all its derivatives after his many surgeries. he'd hallucinate and try to escape out of windows.

[Ron Thorne]

Originally Posted by Jazzooo

Anyone listen to those clips? You'll find them funny, I'm almost positive.

Yes, I did listen to a clip, Doug! I dug it, and found it to be pretty much the way I expected it to be . . . knowing you somewhat.

I'm hoping for Ed to be here as long as he cares to be and no longer. And, in as little pain as possible.