Rod McKuen, RIP

[duaneiac]

OK, I know every one will want to rip on him/his work, but one thing i found interesting in the obit from the AP was this --

After serving as a propaganda writer in the Korean War, McKuen wound up in San Francisco, where his friend Phyllis Diller helped him find work in the growing nightclub scene. He went on to sing with the Lionel Hampton band, acted in a handful of movies and TV shows, read poetry on the same bill as Jack Kerouac and other Beat writers and had a minor hit single in the early 1960s with the dance parody "Oliver Twist."

That whole paragraph bespeaks a rather interesting life, but does any one know anything about him singing with Lionel Hampton's band? It seems so unlikely.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/30/rod-mckuen-dead-songwriter-poet-obituary_n_6576838.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/arts/rod-mckuen-prolific-poet-and-lyricist-dies-at-81.html?_r=0

[JSngry]

Don't know anything about the deal with Hampton, but as far as knocking him, if there was anything that needed fixing, Frank Sinatra was the guy who could do it.

[medjuck]

I remember when I was studying with Marshall McLuhan he complained that people would confuse him with Rod McKuen.