Foster MacKenzie III, aka Root Boy Slim, aka The Duke of Puke, is a legend you’ve likely never heard of. His long time outfit, Root Boy Slim & the Sex Change Band, never found much success outside of Washington, D.C., hardly the musical center of the world. Which is too bad, because the satire-loving purveyor of bad-taste blues and boogie rock was great. From his outrageous stage attire and inebriated antics to his joyously putrid outlook on life—his best song is called “Boogie ‘Til You Puke”—Root Boy Slim was one unsavory but larger than life character. From his days at Yale—he was in the same fraternity as George W. Bush—to his premature demise, Root Boy Slim made those in Root Boy cult happy. And what more can you ask of a musician?
What a storied life! From being tossed out of Bush’s fraternity for crimes against good taste during a homecoming return to Yale to his days driving an ice cream truck to his LSD-induced psychotic break—which led him to scale the fence around the White House and a diagnosis of schizophrenia—Root Boy Slim did nothing by half measures. “I used to be from DC,” he sings in one song, “But they don’t want no more of me.” It was an exaggeration, although he did manage to be barred from playing nearby College Park, Maryland, after a riot broke out at one of his shoes and spilled out onto U.S. Route 1. I don’t know about you, but I have a soft spot for performers capable of causing riots. That’s my barometer of true rock success.
It’s easy to write off Root Boy Slim as a novelty act, but his grainy vocals—think Dr. John—and the talents of his Sex Change Band made for some great tunes, funny or not. His band had chops, and he could sing the blues, and I defy anyone to listen to, say, “Mood Ring” and dismiss Slim as a mere prankster. Why, it wouldn’t sound too out of place on the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street. That said he was funny as hell; “My Wig Fell Off” is a hilariously self-deprecating tune, and catchy to boot.
His debut, 1978’s Root Boy Slim and the Sex Change Band with the Rootettes, was the best of Root Boy’s six LPs, featuring a handful of minor classics and some amusing filler. It opens with the landmark party tune, “Boogie ‘Til You Puke,” a chug-a-lugging slice of Captain Beefheart-flavored blues during which Root Boy celebrates the end limits of hard partying. He screams, hacks up phlegm, can’t keep up with the rhythm, and pukes, all to the wonderful rhythm established by Tommy Ruger on drums and Bob “Rattlesnake Rattles” Greenlee on bass. Meanwhile the Rootettes sing, “Boogie ‘til you puke” while Ernie “Sexy Ray” Lancaster does some impressive guitar slinging. My favorite part is where he sings, “Put a quarter in the juke/Boogie til you puke/Form a big boss line/It’s puking time/Cleaning woman/Found me on the floor/Can’t wait til tomorrow/To boogie some more.” I don’t know about you, but I like a guy with persistence.
The organ-drenched “I’m Not Too Old for You” is a paean to lechery, with the Rootettes singing, “He’s not too old for you,” even though the subject of the tune isn’t 17, or even close. This is one classy-sounding number; that organ is pure jazz fusion, as is the guitar work of Sexy Ray. It’s not one of my faves, but it does give an old lecher like myself some hope. In the funky and hard-charging “I Used to Be a Radical” he recalls scaling the White House Fence, as well as his days driving an ice cream truck. It features a tremendous tenor sax solo by Ron Holloway, as well as some cool harmonica I assume is being played by Slim, to say nothing of some fiery guitar licks by Lancaster. “Something changed my mind,” he sings, in reference to his radicalism, namely “a billy club to the head,” and while I like the tune it’s not one of his funnier numbers.
“Heartbreak of Psoriasis” is a sustained cry of agony over that scourge of the skin, and a classy blues to boot. To hear Root Boy Slim sing is a wonderful thing; to the accompaniment of a harmonica he shouts out the chorus, stretching “heartbreak” until you think the word is going to snap, then tosses in, “Of psoriasis.” Between Lancaster on guitar and Winston Kelly on organ a great groove develops, and they keep it going until the song fades out. “I Want It Now” is a fast-paced and funky tune fronted by some cool guitar, and comes on like a rocker until Holloway comes in on tenor sax and suddenly you’re in R&B territory. Disco territory even. It’s a great tune, what with that sax and Slim singing “White House on my case/White House on my case” before referring once again to his climbing of the Chief Executive’s fence, immortalizing himself with the obscure but funny lines, “And he made it/He made it, ladies and gentlemen/And that’s the birth of the blues/That’s the birth of the blues/Thank you/Thank you.” I can’t say scaling that fence marked the birth of the blues, but it certainly makes for some crazy and wonderful stuff.
But not as wonderful as the great “Mood Ring,” a guitar and harmonica-driven hard boogie that has Root Boy Slim pissed off because “You broke my mood ring.” This one abuts on ZZ Top territory, what with Slim singing at his grittiest and Lancaster’s guitar driving in tandem with that happening harmonica. So far as I can make out, the very sight of a woman causes his mood ring to swell and explode, but I’m not going to swear to it because I’m too busy grooving to Lancaster’s particularly sweaty guitar solo. Slim then mumbles some, Lancaster continues to blaze away on the six-string, and the song ends, leaving one happy rock critic in its wake. I’m not so crazy about the Jamaica-inspired “Too Sick to Reggae,” even with its cool percussion and the Rootettes repeating the title ad infinitum. Part of my problem stems from my inability to understand what he’s getting at; it’s a cry for legalization, as the lyrics, “You know your herb make you a criminal/No matter who you are/No matter who you want to be/Hittites, Israelites, Israelites” make clear, and I get the vague idea Slim is in the slam for possession, but I’m not sure and it doesn’t matter much because my real problem with the song is that it’s too slick for Slim. More grit, Slim, more grit!
“My Wig Fell Off” is more like it. To a great and funky boogie beat Slim mourns his middle age; he’s too old for the dance floor, and his wig has just fallen off to prove it. He’s in top form, the horns are fantastic, and I love his opening, “Hey wait a minute/Don’t step on it/My toupee’s out on the floor/Watch out for my mood ring/19-button shirts in all the latest designs.” He’s searching for young love but he’s almost 43, and his Poligrip is letting him down. Meanwhile the band funks on, and he can’t make it in the disco, what with the girls calling him grandpa, and he moans, “Look out buddy/Get off my wig/Oops I didn’t realize/You was so big.” It’s a wonderful tune, and is followed by the perky “Country Love,” a salute to rural sex in the form of a song that features the Rootettes singing, “Country Love,” Lancaster playing some hot licks, and Slim singing about good places to get it on, including, “Under the bleachers at the tractor pool/On a hayride when the moon is full/In the hayloft in the barn.” City slickers may mock Slim’s kinfolk for having “shit between their toes,” but his rustics are far too busy getting it on to give a good cow paddy. It’s a catchy number, and having spent a good part of my adolescence on a pig farm I can relate.
The sinuously slow and funky “In Jail in Jacksonville” finds Slim the slammer, thanks to a legal misunderstanding regarding a very large amount of cocaine. He claims he’s innocent, and he spells out the shitty aspects of prison living to the accompaniment of the Rootettes, one slinky guitar riff, and some harmonica, and this one isn’t funny at all, despite Slim’s “public defender laughing in the hall.” But his vocals are great, as is the squealing saxophone, and when the song ends he’s working in the prison laundry, all that Clorox burning away his brain cells. LP closer “You Can’t Quit My Club” is a fast-paced piano and guitar-fueled boogie rocker. “You can’t quit my club,” sings Slim—who’s at his raspiest—before he introduces a fiery guitar solo. “You can’t quit, baby,” he repeats, before emitting a few squawks and a “Somebody help me.” He made the subject of the song a star, he repeats, and she has no place to go, or so he says because she’s leaving, despite his assertions to the contrary. Why it’s enough to make you feel sorry for the guy, all that braggadocio coming to no good.
Root Boy Slim went on to record music after the members of the original Sex Change Band went their separate ways, and reunions were much-celebrated affairs, proof that he was beloved in Washington and its suburbs. As far as I’m concerned he merits immortality on the basis of “Party ‘Til You Puke,” “Mood Ring,” and “My Wig Fell Off” alone, and that’s to say nothing of songs such as “Express Train” off 2007’s Zoom reissue and the dead serious “It’s Only Murder” off the 2015 reissue of Don’t Let This Happen to You. Crazy or not, Root Boy Slim made some great music, and he deserves a wider audience. His death in 1993 in Orlando Florida was a tragedy, because he had plenty more to contribute, and more than lived up to his status as “The Lenny Bruce of the Blues.”
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
