Fritz Richmond, John Herald RIP

My old friend from Club 47 days in Cambridge died last week of lung cancer. He was a school chum of Buz Marten's at Newton High School, and a sweet modest guy who played the heck out of the washtub bass.

He took the lowly washtub, a folky imprecise substitute for the upright bass, and transformed it into a real instrument by using a steel cable for its string and adapting a sturdy steel-lined leather glove for his left "fretting hand" so he could adjust pitches without slicing up his hand. Aside from the kind of whomping sounds that a tub makes you could hardly tell it wasn't the real thing.

He was similarly adept on the jug, although that needed no adaptation.

He was one of the original characters that made Jim Kweskin's Jug Band so popular. The picture on the left is one of John Cooke's taken at the 47.

When Garrison Keillor did PHC in Portland a few years ago, Fritz was one of his musical guests. I was so proud, even though I'd only run into him once since we moved here - at a Geoff Muldaur concert a few years back. Somehow our circles never crossed after those intense Cambridge years.

From John Foyston's obituary of Fritz in The Oregonian

"By playing the jub and the washtub, he reminded us that music was once homemade, a sharing among friends on a porch, not a corporate profit center. By making his own instruments and playing them with finesse and soul, he championed music of the most human scale."

- - - - - - -

John Herald, the wonderful guitar player and tenor from the Greenbriar Boys, another old friend (boyfriend briefly) also died this year. Suicide, evidently. So sad...

This is a picture from 1977, some twelve years after we hung out together. He played a couple of years ago at the White Eagle Saloon in Portland and I went to hear him. He seemed genuinely thrilled to see me and invited me up on stage to sing a duet with him - at this moment I don't remember what. As far as I know he never married, had no kids, never really made serious money as a musician after the 70s. I wonder if he didn't just say fuck it, life's too hard and too lonely...