HERBIE DUNCAN R.I.P.

DUNCAN R.I.P.

by Deke Dickerson, President of the Herbie Duncan Fan Club

It has come to my attention that the great man Herbie Duncan no longer walks the face of the earth. Herbie, as most of the Norton Records faithful already know, was responsible for one of the wildest, outre' and incoherently wonderful records ever released--"Hot Lips Baby" b/w "Little Angel" on the Mar-Vel label of Hammond, Indiana, in 1958 (and reissued by Norton, of course). Herbie took the somewhat limited singing talent god gave him, added the rocket-fueled energy of a thousand Elvis Presleys, and came up with a musical formula no one has come close to matching in the 50 years since. He made a couple other records, good but not quite as magic as the first, and retreated back to a midwestern family life where he remained until his death.

I had the good fortune to track Herbie Duncan down in 1986, where he was living in a trailer park in Olathe, Kansas. As a rockabilly-obsessed 15 year old, I had formed the "Herbie Duncan Fan Club," not knowing initially that Herbie lived only a few hundred miles away. When we found out Herbie's whereabouts, we organized a three-hour tour to meet him--no mean feat when you're 15 and your oldest friend was 19. Herbie and his wife treated myself and my friends like long-lost friends. Herbie could not believe that anybody would want to talk to him about his rock & roll past, and thought we were half-crazy when heaping praise on "Hot Lips Baby." Such is the curse of genius. Herbie did give me a show business platitude that I still retain to this day: "If at first you don't succeed, suck and suck and suck until you SUCK-CEDE!" These are words to live by.

I'll always remember Herbie most from this visit, when he took his old guitar out of the case, sat on his La-Z-Boy chair, and began warbling "Me And Bobby McGee" in his trademark vocal style. His body, his hands, his head, remained almost motionless as the words and music spilled out from his voice and guitar. Strangely, almost inhumanly, the La-Z-Boy chair began violently rocking back and forth, as if it was levitating, though Herbie remained almost motionless. My friends and I looked at this and remarked on it later, and to this day I have no idea how he did that. There was magic--magic that few understood, but undeniable magic--contained in the body and soul of Herbie Duncan.
That magic is gone from us now.
Rest in Peace, Herbie, from your friend Deke.