Herbert Francis Scarpelli passed away today at age 71.
At least that was the name his parents gave him (he never really forgave the old man for that “Herbert”); he had many others.
When he was in the radio room on the USS Kearsarge & received the order to fake the Gulf of Tonkin incident, he was Radioman 2nd Class Scarpelli. When he returned to the world & left the Navy, he headed to Haight-Ashbury, where he was Stormy, one of the original Deadheads; he also played out then as Phil Michaels.
The reason for this was that he & the Navy disagreed as to his freedom to depart, and thus he spent 2 years as Court Martial Prisoner #275525 (never trust a junkie with your address if there’s a reward involved). Maybe sometime I’ll tell you what he thought of Cpl. Toy Caldwell, one of the guards at Portsmouth.
He also played as Captain Pickalot, and ham radio folks knew him as WK9O.
But if you knew of him, you probably knew him as Mick Scott. As such he was a stalwart of the Chicago folk scene from the early ‘70s until today. It was also under this name that he was the first person I worked sound for full-time. What’s that you ask? How can you make a living doing sound for a folksinger who isn’t named Dylan? Well, I’m here to tell you that you can’t – but I sure had a lot of fun trying!
Mick wrote over 350 songs, some of them truly great (sometime around 1980, he won the Irish national Songwriting Competition). He could sing like a caress, or like a tornado. He was as good on mandolin as he was on guitar, and he’s my nomination for best all-around guitar in the world. Acoustic, electric, fretted, slide, finger-picked, flat-picked, folk, rock, blues, country, jazz, bluegrass, fiddle tunes – there are people who do each better than he, but I never heard anyone do all of them as well – or close to it.
He was one of my closest friends for 40 years, and a wonderful human being (though I will admit I might get some argument on that last point from one or more of his 4 ex-wives….) He was severely diabetic, had been on daily dialysis for about 6 years, and had recently been diagnosed with congestive heart failure. As a full-time musician he had, of course, neither money nor insurance, and thus did not receive top-tier treatment. His passing was long expected, but no less shocking for that.
We have lost many big names of late, and their going is hard – but every day we lose people who have given their entire life to music, and, no matter how good, never got the break. Mick was one of these, and I insist his passing deserves as much sorrow as any star – so I tell you now, a giant has left us, and has left a huge hole in my life.
Peter
