This interview was conducted during the Seattle Pop Festival, held at Gold Creek Park in Woodinville, northeast of Seattle in July of 1969 where twenty-five musicians and groups performed over three days. Myself and a photographer named Vlad from the Vancouver Province managed to convince the conservative management of the paper that this event deserved covering. We slept in Vlad's Karmann Ghia in the parking lot (not very well) and soaked up the atmosphere. Some of the questions in this interview suggest that the wiltering heat was getting to me. Photos are by Vlad.
MQ: I was wondering, how do you like the pop festival so far?
BD: Beautiful, beautiful … yeah.
MQ: What do you play now mainly, mostly pop festivals?
BD: No, this is the first one I’ve done in a long time, yeah, and I hope to get in on a few more.
MQ: What do you do otherwise, nightclubs, or big concerts, or what?
BD: Yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing … nightclubs and things around the Los Angeles area when I’m out here. I still live in Chicago. I be out in Los Angeles quite frequently because I have people out there. While I’m out there I used to work a little bit, but I think I be making a little noise on this end.
MQ: How much of your time has been making records now? How many records do you have?
BD: I think I have twenty-seven albums. I don’t know how many singles.
MQ: I imagine quite a lot of your time is spent in recording, is it?
BD: Right.
MQ: Cool.
[Bo whispers to someone “Get me a hamburger.”]
MQ: The one thing that really got me is the way you turn the crowd on so much … has it always been like this?
BD: Yes … I don’t know, I’ve been doing the same thing for 16 years now. And it’s seemed to be … it’s me … originality … and I’m glad I’ve got something that the people dug and it caught on. So it really made me feel good, you know … so … it really made me feel good, as an entertainer to know that … to know that people appreciated me so much and in return the only thing I can do is appreciate them and try to do my best to keep them supplied with my musical knowledge, you might say.
MQ: When you started fifteen years ago, what was the audience reaction like then?
BD: About the same … primarily, the same thing.
MQ: Were you doing rock concerts?
BD: I was doing a lot of college things.
MQ: You seem to have this really elemental thing, and it really gets to them. What do you think of that?
BD: Well, that’s good too, but it … I don’t know, I think I was a few years ahead of time, about roughly 10 years ahead of my time. Because now everybody the music that people used to talk about and call it “jungle music,” today everyone is copying me.
MQ: Do you think they’re going back? Groups are going back?
BD: Yes, they are.
MQ: Like a lot of groups seem to be getting back to the sort of thing you’re doing … it’s really cool.
BD: I like it, because, man, it’s a gas. This is my … I’ve made this my aim in life, to be an entertainer, so this is what’s happening
MQ: The music is really what turns them on … there’s so many people smiling and doing things that weren’t before you came on, like yesterday especially, they really got turned on.
BD: Well, I had them all standing yesterday … this made me feel good, because it’s a … music has … come out of the stiff collar bay [?] … and into the good feeling … you know, the good part of it
MQ: You just feel it …
BD: In other words … you don’t have to be all dressed to go on. You just go on stage and do your thing.
[Interruption.]
MQ: What’s your message, Bo?
BD: Well, I really don’t have one, I hope people just keep doin’ their thing…
MQ: Like we could maybe say your message is the music. That’s what really got to me.
BD: Yeah, you could say that.
MQ: What was that you said yesterday, that you really got through to the people, what you said, do you remember? It was when you were talking about your life…
BD: I said that they needed somebody on their side, I wanted them to remember one thing: I was in their corner 100 percent, because it’s groovy when you take a cat my age that thinks about the kids and thinks of the life they are trying to live. And like you only have one short life, and like I used the term “a short time here and a long time gone.” And the reason why you can be assured that you are a long time gone, all of the the heroes that have died in our lifetime, none of them have come back and said, “Hey, I’m George Washington, man … you know … I’m Abraham Lincoln.” They’re gone and that’s it. And sixty or seventy years or eighty years is no long time. So this is what I meant. So you only have a short time here so you might as well enjoy yourself, and this is it. See, the old folks used to didn’t enjoy themselves, everybody was too worried about what the other person was gonna say…
MQ: Yeah, everybody was up tight.
BD: Yeah, and I don’t think this is right. If you don’t pay my bills and walk the floor with my kids when they’re hungry or sick or something, then don’t tell me how to live. Understand? That’s the way I look at it. When you are together, then you help one another this way. When you’re not together, then it’s very easy to walk past the person who’s dying and say “Oh, let him die, he deserves it.” Or something like this. This crowd out here, today’s youth, don’t think this way, and I don’t think that the older folks dig it. Because it’s too much right. They don’t fight and cut up one another. The only time you hear of any problems is when you have the law in force come in and bickerin’ and hitting people and knocking them around with sticks. And see … and you stop to think if an officer hits you with a stick, you tell him … you search his mind and see if he would like somebody to take a stick and hit him upside the head …regardless of the job that he is doing. Just see if he would like to be hit upside the head. If he tells you yes, then get your stick, and try to knock his head off. This is the way I look at it … because we need law enforcement, we need law and order, but we don’t need a bunch of heathens, a bunch of thugs -- should I say -- with a license … do you understand? We don’t need that. Not in America. In Germany, in Japan, where they’ve been preaching this stuff for years and years and years, maybe the people are brainwashed to this type of thing. But not in America. America don’t stand for that type of stuff. That’s not what I was taught in school. I was taught something else in school and when I get grown I see something else different. And this makes me wonder, is there an Iron Curtain here that we don’t realize, dressed up in all pretty things, you know, but it’s there? It’s like a brick wall behind a white sheet. You think you gonna run through the sheet, and you run into the sheet and run into a brick wall. Do you dig what I’m sayin’?
MQ: How does your music come into all this?
[Interruption]
MQ: How does your music fit into this, Bo?
BD: My music doesn’t really fit in it, because I play … the songs that I sing are the truth. I tell the truth in a lot of songs that I sing. It’s no made up thing. A lot of the things I sing about I know about ‘em, or they once happened. Either they happened when I was a kid, or either … something recently happened. I sit down and hear people talkin’, and I pick up a couple of words they’re saying and I’m listenin’ at ‘em, and I write a whole tune from them.
[Tape fades out.]
MQ: [I think I was asking him about what he thought of other musicians.] Do you think that they do their own thing …
BD: That’s one thing I don’t do. If they’re good, I say they’re good, if they’re not good, I tell them, “Man, you know, like … you’ll make it, or something,” you know … but I don’t usually even say that much. I usually just don’t give any comment at all. And therefore I’m not jeopardizing myself that I said such-and-such a thing [that he] is no good … I don’t believe in it. I don’t brag, that’s one thing I been .. I suppose tell them all the time in my group. They’ll say … someone starts to say something like “Wow, we showed it up.”
Unidentified Woman: Who said that? You don’t hear me sayin’ that! You’ll hear your bass player and drummer sayin’ that!
BD: I used to be a fighter, and anytime I would get up and look like … and start showin’ off … or something like that, I would get whipped. I would be in the dressing room, “Oh, come on, I can do him in,” and I would go out there and get clobbered. So I learned one thing, and I learned this from Joe Louis. Joe Louis never said anything concerning a fighter except “I’ll do my best.” I tried to figure out why, because I was just a youngster. And I picked up this thing, you know, don’t say nothin’, because I’m gonna be in there tryin’, that’s all he used to say. And so I learned the same thing When I go on the stage up there, I don’t try to outdo nobody, I do what I know how to and that’s all. The only time I don’t do nothin’ is I’m probably not feelin’ too good, or something like that you get those days when you try and you can’t get goin’ … you know … be like an old raggedy car.