2009.37 The Unforgettable Sugarcane Harris
Don 'Sugarcane Harris'
I met first Don to jam in the basement of drummer Paul Lagos who had the crazy idea of putting together a group around "the Cane".
In the early days, Don seemed to be a normal musician, flamboyant, wacky, always saying weird things but when he picked up the violin, he seared your heart with every note. My liver still hasn't recovered from the Sugarcane days, but that's another story.
Don had a serious drug problem, one that unfortunatey wasted the huge potential he had. His talent was nurtured from an early age by a supportive mother who would do anything for him. He studied with a famous classicial violinist. Often he would whip out passages from the classics in a cadenza at the end of one of his signatures tunes, "Eleanor Rigby".
The most memorable incident occurred in Palo Alto (near Stanford) in a health foods restaurant called In Your Ear. We were playing crazy that night, with each of us on different highs. The crowd was going wild the entire set. It was after midnight when people started to learn that the doors were locked. There was a full scale, burning down riot in the streets and though no one could go in or out of In Your Ear, they didn't much care. It was an amazing night, a night of paisley stage carpeting and vegetarian pizza, beer and every forbidden substance avaiable from the science of chemistry of the 1970's. I'll bet few who were there ever forgot the spell of that night!
Yet, with all Don had going for him, two devils on his shoulders made it impossible to advance: heroin and cocaine.All through his career, he was in and out of jail, always broke, his violin in the pawn shop, yet he managed to play and record with Frank Zappa in a much talked about tour and album. The most moving thing I heard him play was "Directly From My Heart to You" (by Little Richard). Don and his longtime friend Dewey Terry wrote a lot of songs you may have heard of, the most played being "I'm Leaving it all Up To You". The way the music bussiness worked in those days, the rights for that song went into other peoples coffers, Don and Dewey getting a small stipend yearly.
Don died in 1999, at the age of 61, kneeling alone at his oxygen tank. Chronology is on Wikipedia.
