An Excerpt From: Smells Like The Blues

The following is an excerpt from  Smells Like The Blues: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Blind Mississippi White Boy Pig Feets Dupris.

It was early 1968, although it seemed it had been almost a whole year since what was called the Summer of Love, and I began keeping company with a girl Shmuley introduced me to, a very talented girl named Ellen Naomi Cohen.  Most people know her as Mama Cass.  We would carry on an affair, off an on, for the next six years, until that one fateful night when I made her one of my Mama’s famous ‘Hammy Sammy’s’ a sandwich that features an entire canned ham on two slices of wheat bread with mustard. 

Anyway, one afternoon Ellen Naomi and I were sitting on the green in Haight Ashbury when I got word that this Indian Holy Man, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, was a fan of mine, and that ‘Corn In My Stool’ was one of his favorite records.  So he invited me to to take part in a Transcendental Meditation Symposium he was conducting at his compound in Rishikesh.  I was told that many celebrities would be in attendance, and that it would be an experience filled with peace, love, and various curries.

I was between gigs, but Ellen was going out on tour with the Mamas and Papas so after a night of passionate lovemaking in the park under a tent we fashioned out of her Dashiki, I left for India to partake in this new adventure.

When I got there, I was tickled to find an eclectic group of attendees:  The author Kurt Vonnegut, the British Psychedelic Singer Donovan, Mick Jagger, and those four boys who I had jammed with back in Hamburg what seemed like a lifetime ago, John, Paul George and Ringo. 

John was especially happy to see me.  He should have been, as I was the one who had taught him how to play the harmonica, and ‘Love Me Do’ was almost a note by note rip off of my song, ‘Do Love Me’.  I should’ve known something was up. 

Every day, we would gather in the garden for a three hour lecture, followed by four hours of silent meditation, a period in which the Maharishi would repeatedly attempt to cop feels off  Mia Farrow.   She would often come out of  a deep Meditative state to discover his small brown hands on her breasts, and when she protested, he informed her he was merely  attempting to ‘Readjust her Karma’.

Although the Maharishi taught of the ‘Evils of Drug Use’, each night, the Beatles, Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithful and I would smoke wok-sized bowls of reefer and then jam until the early hours of morning..  Paul would always bogart.  That boy smokes more dope than any other human being I have ever known.  He actually would set his alarm clock to wake him up during the night just so he could get high.  Surpsingly, he’s somehow immune to the munchies…which I suppose is good for him, because with the enormous amounts of weed that he inhales he would be the size of…well, my sweet Ellen Naomi.

Prior to leaving for Rishikesh, I had begun putting together a bunch of songs I had been writing for an idea I had for a concept album;  a double record set with a very simple cover design.  I called it ‘The White Boy Album’.  The idea would be to just focus on the music, and instead of breaking it up into two separate record releases, they would be offered together, side by side, along with a poster and a photographic portrait of me taken by Richard Avedon. 

Imagine my horror upon returning to the States to find that John and Paul had copped the idea for himself…