{"id":8116,"date":"2016-10-30T14:41:57","date_gmt":"2016-10-30T21:41:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/?p=8116"},"modified":"2016-10-30T14:53:52","modified_gmt":"2016-10-30T21:53:52","slug":"dave-marsh-on-buck-ormsby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/?p=8116","title":{"rendered":"Dave Marsh on Buck Ormsby"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend Dave Marsh<\/strong> on the passing of Buck Ormsby:<\/p>\n

My first response is about what I figure Buck\u2019s woulda been: Aww fuck<\/strong>…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dave dedicated a special edition of Rock & Rap Confidential to Buck:<\/p>\n

RRC Extra No. 58: Buck Ormsby<\/strong><\/p>\n

SPANISH CASTLE WIZARD\u2026. Dave Marsh writes: Buck Ormsby was the guitar player in the Wailers of \u201cTall Cool One\u201d and the leader of all the madhouse rock that came after him and his great band that rescued \u201cLouie Louie\u201d from a trash-heap.<\/p>\n

Now, this won\u2019t mean a damned thing to anyone not fully steeped \u2014 soaked to the DNA \u2014 in Pacific Northwest rock\u2019n\u2019roll lore. But without Buck, and the shows he did with the Wailers and other bands he was in, at the Spanish Castle (not a figment of Jimi Hendrix\u2019s imagination but a true crazoid rocker hatchery) and elsewhere in Seattle and Tacoma and Portland, that whole area, there would not have been the Kingsmen doing \u201cLouie Louie\u201d (because they were only doing it \u2018cause they\u2019d seen the Wailers do it), there would not have been any of the Sonics, etc. powerhouse garage punk music, there wouldn\u2019t be any memory of \u201cLouie\u201d at all.<\/p>\n

He was a pioneer in having a band own its masters (and for that matter, its record company), he was a champion of the lost memory of Rockin\u2019 Robin Roberts, of the blues and R&B musicians they copped all their licks from before warping them into teenage overdrive. He was one of the toughest guys I ever met and although I usually couldn’t deliver, I’m proud of the fact that he always at least tried to include me in all his over-ambitious projects. He had a vision, more vision than pretty much anybody out there, certainly more vision than anybody in his area until the grunge gangs evolved (and that wouldn\u2019t have happened without the foundations he laid, and there\u2019s nobody part of it I can think of it who was as visionary as Buck was on a bad day). And nobody outside of Seattle-Tacoma-Portland will remember him in a half inch of obituary.<\/p>\n

But I can\u2019t forget. He was my shepherd when I wrote the \u201cLouie\u201d book. But it wasn\u2019t just that. He was a throwback to every indomitable rock\u2019n\u2019roll impresario I\u2019ve known from Jeep Holland to Frank Barsalona. He was even in his own merciless way a prefiguration of Little Steven. I own no higher praise.<\/p>\n

I told Eric Predoehl, the \u201cLouie\u201d archivist who\u2019s been close to finishing a Louie Louie documentary for the past 25 years that my reaction to the news was \u201cAw fuck\u201d because I figured that was what Buck would have said. They tore down the Castle to widen the highway, or something equally useless. They will never tear down Buck Ormsby because they can\u2019t even reach that high.<\/p>\n

Take it from Jimi, who was there, up front copping licks from all those heroes, and didn\u2019t neglect them as he became one:<\/p>\n

Hang on, My Darling, Yeah
\nHang on if you want to go
\nIt puts everything else on the shelf
\nWith just a little bit of Spanish Castle Magic
\nJust a little bit of daydream here and there.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can subscribe for FREE to Rock & Rap Confidential by emailing rockrap@aol.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend Dave Marsh on the passing of Buck Ormsby: My first response is about what I figure Buck\u2019s woulda been: Aww fuck… Dave dedicated a special edition of Rock & Rap…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,30,7,51,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-louie-universe","category-obituaries","category-pacific-northwest","category-tacoma","category-wailers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8116"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8119,"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8116\/revisions\/8119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}