Mark Volman RIP

[Teasing the Korean]

https://variety.com/2025/music/news/mark-volman-dead-turtles-happy-together-1236509450/

[JSngry]

 

[mikeweil]

Proof that humor belongs in music. Not anybody can do it the way he did it. R.I.P.

7 minutes ago, JSngry said:

I still have that 45. Hilarious.

[jlhoots]

I loved The Turtles. R.I.P.

[JSngry]

There was more to them than just the hits, namely a very keen humor and ears to match.

RIP, and I will always laugh with you, not at you (except for that "Magdalena" thing....)

[medjuck]

RIP    I never saw The Turtles but I did see Flo and Eddie as members of The Mothers of Invention.

Edited Friday at 10:28 PM by medjuck

[romualdo]

RIP Mark - wonderful Turtles harmonies

didn't realise he sang on T-Rex's "Bang A Gong"

The "Mudshark" dialogue also came to mind

[T.D.]

R.I.P. Always great to see humor in music, which is surprisingly (IMO) rare.

 

No disrespect, but when I think of Flo the cover of Zappa's Over-Nite Sensation always comes to mind...one of the details is a decal with an extended middle finger directed to "Flo". I've no idea of the underlying story there.

 

[GA Russell]

RIP Mark Volman!

Prior to calling themselves The Turtles, the group was a surf guitar band called The Crossfires.

Their recordings with Mark Volman on saxophone frequently appear on surf guitar compilations.

[mjzee]

Very sad news.  I saw Flo & Eddie with the Mothers at the Fillmore East in May 1970.  This was before Chunga's Revenge came out, so I was surprised when Zappa introduced his new lead singers.  I then saw Flo & Eddie with their band (including Aynsley Dunbar) around the time their first album came out.  Good times.  RIP.

[Steve Gray]

RIP

I saw him with Frank Zappa as well. This was the night Frank was pushed off stage and badly injured.

[felser]

RIP.  I really liked the Turtles early folk-rock period, and found the later Turtles material interesting.  I'm not really enamored of their work with Zappa, which to me was overly crude.

 

[Royal Oak]

Sad news, liked the Turtles, and that first Flo & Eddie LP. I loved "Billy The Mountain" as a teenager.

[sgcim]

15 hours ago, mjzee said:

Very sad news.  I saw Flo & Eddie with the Mothers at the Fillmore East in May 1970.  This was before Chunga's Revenge came out, so I was surprised when Zappa introduced his new lead singers.  I then saw Flo & Eddie with their band (including Aynsley Dunbar) around the time their first album came out.  Good times.  RIP.

The piano player on "Live at the Fillmore East album in 1971 playing his Wurlitzer was a junkie dude named Bob Harris, who was a great jazz pianist and also played and did arrangements for The Turtles. He got the gig with Zappa on the recommendation of Jim Pons, bass player for the Turtles and then Zappa in 1971
.
Harris was also the husband of Judee Sill, the first artist David Geffen signed for Asylum Records.
Sill had written Lady-O, which was one of the last tunes the Turtles did before they broke up. The Turtles had her on salary as their songwriter for about $35 a week.Sill's first album was co-produced by Jim Pons, the Turtles bass player,
, and John Beck, guitarist of The Leaves.

I never heard of Judee Sill until about 1990, and flipped out over her music, so I wanted to find out who the hell she was. I emailed Mark Volman about her, and he seemed to be bugged about her, and kind of blew me off. He seemed annoyed about all the interest in Sill some 20 years after her two Asylum albums were released.
I tried Volman again, and this time he answered all my questions, but was still negative about Sill, but very positive about her husband, Bob Harris (not to be confused with another Bob Harris, who played keyboards and sang for Zappa in 1980). I read Howard Kaylan's bio, and he has nothing but great things to say about Sill, so there must have been something going on with Sill and Volman. I guess we'll never know, like that middle finger deal on "Overnight Sensation" T.D. mentioned.
Anyway RIP Mark Volman.

[felser]

Jim Pons also played in the Leaves prior to his associations with the Turtles, Zappa, and Flo & Eddie.  Sill was an extremely troubled individual, but some of her music was pretty great.  Same is true of Essra Mohawk (Sandy Hurvitz)'s music.

[JSngry]

Has anybody asked Eddie Gomez about Sandy Hurvitz?

[sgcim]

On 9/6/2025 at 6:24 PM, felser said:

Jim Pons also played in the Leaves prior to his associations with the Turtles, Zappa, and Flo & Eddie.  Sill was an extremely troubled individual, but some of her music was pretty great.  Same is true of Essra Mohawk (Sandy Hurvitz)'s music.

Yeah, Bob Harris(1) was the Leaves' drug dealer. They didn't even know he was a musician. He walked over to a piano while he was making a 'delivery' to them and played the schist out of the piano, and they freaked out. He wound up playing keyboard for the Leaves on some obscure tracks. Then Pons got Harris and Sill involved with the Turtles and got Harris into the "vaudeville" Mothers.

 

On 9/6/2025 at 7:30 PM, JSngry said:

Has anybody asked Eddie Gomez about Sandy Hurvitz?

Or about that Jeremy and the Satyrs album with that horrible singer?

[sgcim]

I listened to Essra Mohwk's (Sandra Hurwitz) first two albums and thought she and Sill were doing two very different things. I found Sill's first two albums to be vastly superior musically to Mohawk 's pounding out minor 11th chords and wailing out unmemorable melodies. As Robert Christgau said of her, ""Here is a vocalist who should throw away all her Leon Russell records. When she calls herself a 'full-fledged woman,' it sounds like 'pool player's' woman, which given her persona makes more sense."^[

^{Also, lumping her in with Judee Sill as a 'forgotten singer/songwriter' makes no sense, as she released twelve albums in her long career as a singer/songwriter, and had gigs with, as background vocalist and lead vocalist, such well-known artists as Carole King, The Grateful Dead, Kool and the Gang and John Mellencamp.}

^{There is also the fact that she was a beautiful woman, and had a relationship with Frank Zappa, who encouraged her and signed her up with his record company Bizarre Records. She even sang with The Mothers for a while.}

^{Sill, on the other hand was not what you'd call an attractive woman, was ignored by Zappa (even though her husband played keyboards with the MOI), and she publicly outed the head of the record company she was signed with (David Geffen of Asylum Records) calling him a"little,fat fag who wore pink shoes", causing him to drop all advertising for her records, which resulted in poor sales. I don't know of anyone who ever heard of her who lived outside of her tiny contingent of fans in a small section of California. Sill also had the same addiction problems her husband had, and severe back problems from a car accident. It also hurt both singer/songwriters that they were not playing what was then considered 'commercial' music.}

On 9/8/2025 at 4:32 PM, sgcim said:

Yeah, Bob Harris(1) was the Leaves' drug dealer. They didn't even know he was a musician. He walked over to a piano while he was making a 'delivery' to them and played the schist out of the piano, and they freaked out. He wound up playing keyboard for the Leaves on some obscure tracks. Then Pons got Harris and Sill involved with the Turtles and got Harris into the "vaudeville" Mothers.

 

Or about that Jeremy and the Satyrs album with that horrible singer?

A few of the same sidemen on both albums ; Eddie on Bass, the mysterious Donald McDonald on Drums 

, and Steig on winds. I'm referring to the Jeremy and the Satyrs album and Sandy Hurvitz' first album on Reprise.

If anyone knows what became of McDonald, please chime in here. I can't find anything about him anywhere, 

Edited 21 hours ago by sgcim

[Niko]

regarding Donald MacDonald, the one thing I could find out easily is that he was dead by the time his wife, the violin player Betty MacDonald died in 2010... 

https://web.archive.org/web/20180817035122/http://macdeemusic.com/index.html

there it says that he left the family at some point... the fact that they were still married decades later suggests that he may have died not too long after leaving his family... for instance, I can find one Donald MacDonald from Massachusetts born 10 August 1940 who died in August 1979... that might be him but without a birth date it's impossible to confirm

edit: Actually, there was an obit in Downbeat back in 1979, 

Drummer Donald MacDonald died March 21 in New York City at age 41. Ill health had forced him to retire from performing, and he was residing in Woodstock, New York, at the time of his death. First studying percussion at Fredonia State Teachers' College, he played in Florida for several years. MacDonald worked and recorded with Jackie Cain and Roy Kral, Tim Hardin, Richie Havens and Gary McFarland, but was probably best known for his membership in Jeremy Steig's early jazzrock band the Satyrs, which included Warren Bernhardt, Eddie Gomez and Adrian Guillary; he was also in the White Elephant Band led by Mike Mainieri. MacDonald is survived by four children and his wife, who wrote db that a Final Bar "seemed the most fitting way for me to let all the musicians that he played with over the years know that he has passed on."

Edited 10 hours ago by Niko