Dec 14

Kurt Cobain

Greatly Appreciated

KURT COBAIN

 
Kurt Cobain  (February 20, 1967 – April 5, 1994) was an American musician who was best known as the lead singer, guitarist, and primary songwriter of the grunge band Nirvana.  Following the success of Nevermind, Nirvana was labeled “the flagship band” of Generation X, and Cobain hailed as “the spokesman of a generation”.  Cobain, however, was often uncomfortable and frustrated, believing his message and artistic vision to have been misinterpreted by the public, with his personal issues often subject to media attention.  During the last years of his life, Cobain struggled with heroin addiction, illness and depression.  On April 8, 1994, Cobain was found dead at his home in Seattle, the victim of what was officially ruled a suicide.  Together with Nirvana band mates Novoselic and Dave Grohl, Cobain was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014, which was the first year in which the band was eligible.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
So who is she?  Linda Pierre King is a native of Houston and moved to New York in the mid-1960’s.  She became active in the folksinging circuit and spent a lot of her time at a beatnik coffee house called Beanie Baby’s Java Hut.  Apparently the recordings featured on the Heart Beats CD were made in New York but had never been officially released before this. 
 
Meanwhile, Norm Wooster was adrift in the Big Apple after seeing his musical career evaporate.  The self-styled “king of barbershop” had numerous hit songs in the 1950’s and later became a talent scout for Play-Tone Records.  After a bitter dispute in 1962 with Play-Tone chairman Sol Siler, the #1 hit “Lovin’ You Lots and Lots” was released in 1964 under the name Norm Wooster Singers, though Wooster did not perform on the record and had his songwriting credits excised.  This song was also the opening track on the soundtrack album for the 1996 Tom Hanks movie That Thing You Do! about a one-hit wonder rock band called (naturally) the Wonders. 
 
Norm Wooster then immersed himself in the folk music world in New York and saw Linda Pierre King perform at the Beanie Baby club.  He fell in love with her, and they were later married.  Through her, Wooster eased his way back into the music scene and performed in a variety of styles from psychedelic rock to disco to country. 
 
Linda Pierre King might also have helped moderate Norm Wooster’s right-wing political beliefs; he had been friends with members of the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), whereas King was a follower of philosopher and author Ayn Rand.  The HUAC connection had exacerbated the falling-out with Sol Siler, since HUAC was investigating actress Suzanne Pleshette, whom Siler was dating at the time.  (See below).
 
(April 2012)
 
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While bandleader Kurt Cobain wrote most of their music, the first single by grunge pioneers Nirvana was a fairly obscure Shocking Blue song called “Love Buzz”.  Their version of this Robbie van Leeuwen song (Nirvana’s “Love Buzz” only used the first verse and chorus) is included on the band’s little-known 1989 debut album, Bleach.  Cobain often varied the spelling of his name over the years; on this album, he is credited as “Kurdt Kobain”. 

 

(April 2013)

 

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Well, apparently I got fooled by some of the back story that was created for the 1996 Tom Hanks movie called That Thing You Do!, about a one-hit wonder rock band called the Wonders; I have never actually seen the film.  There is no such person as Norm Wooster or Sol Siler, and Play-Tone Records was the fictitious record company that released the single by the Wonders.  The supposed hit song by the Norm Wooster Singers, “Lovin’ You Lots and Lots” was actually written by Tom Hanks.  Linda Pierre King evidently remained in the Houston area and never moved to New York City. 
 
I ran across the biography in more than one location that appeared to be reliable, such as the post on last.fm that gave a biography called “Norm Wooster: The Myth and the Legend” (and several Amazon.com and YouTube items, though one YouTube video disclaimed the New York City connection).  Birth dates, parents’ names, recordings, and name dropping peppered the entry; besides Linda Pierre King and Suzanne Pleshette (who was apparently not ever investigated by HUAC), the biography also mentions white soul singer Timi Yuro, Jerry Murad and the Harmonicats, Bob Dylan, and Kurt Cobain.  Turns out that last.fm is a wiki like Wikipedia; the real story can be found in several entries on Wikipedia.  It sure seemed legit to me at the time; I figured, how many people named Linda Pierre King could there be in the world who were folksingers?  
 
Anyway, sorry about that, and I apologize for my part in propagating this nonsense.  But that doesn’t make Linda Pierre King’s music any less wonderful.   
 
(October 2014)
 
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Patti Smith suffered a series of losses in quick succession beginning with the death in November 1994 of her husband Fred “Sonic” Smith, followed by the unexpected death of her brother Todd Smith – her band’s keyboard player Richard Sohl and her early love Robert Mapplethorpe had died four and five years earlier.  She reemerged from that pain more visible than ever; her next album, Gone Again (1996) was perhaps her most self-assured effort and included a tribute to Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, “About a Boy”.  The final track is a heartbreaking tribute to her late husband, “Farewell Reel”. 

 

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What brought Tori Amos early attention was an even sparer performance of a true story:  an a capella rendition of her being raped by an acquaintance, and what was going through her head during the ordeal.  The song, “Me and a Gun” was the title song on an EP called Me and a Gun; it is also included on her first solo album, Little Earthquakes (1992).  Her slow-tempoed cover of the Nirvana hit song “Smells Like Teen Spirit” later became a tribute to Kurt Cobain following his death. 

 

(February 2014)

 

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Someone put together a backstory for the characters in the Tom Hanks film That Thing You Do!.  Some of the people were entirely made-up; presumably those are the ones who are actually in the film.  Others are famous to one degree or another:  Bob Dylan, Suzanne Pleshette, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, Jerry Murad’s Harmonicats, Timi Yuro.  

 

And then they threw Linda Pierre King into the mix – and that just isn’t playing fair.  Neither one of the CD’s that I have provides any information to speak of about her.  The liner notes in one of them describe her as a quintessential hippie folksinger, and the small picture that is included bears that out.  Now anyone trying to ferret out information about Linda Pierre King has to get past all of the made-up story line about her hanging out in a Greenwich Village club called Beanie’s something-or-other, and then meeting and marrying the so-called King of Barber Shop. 

 

(April 2015/2)

 
Last edited: March 22, 2021