I remember Lee Crabtree as a quiet, bemused soul who always seemed as if he had just discovered the meaning of life in a simple flash of awareness, but it was so funny that he could not quite share it with anyone or he might explode.
I discovered that, after Carleton, he moved to New York, where he moved among a circle of writers, musicians, painters and poets (many identified with the second generation "New York School" of poetry). I had met many of them while during my senior year I was editing a magazine, Mother, that Peter Schjeldahl had started before he moved to Paris.
From roughly December 1965 until the spring of 1967, Lee was a keyboard player (also playing percussion, celeste, and bells) for a rock band, The Fugs, an irreverent, political, rude, obscene, funny and very literate group founded in 1963 by Tuli Kupferberg, Ed Sanders and Ken Weaver. After he was reportedly pushed out of the Fugs, he played with The Holy Modal Rounders and continued composing works.
In her dazzling memoir , Just Kids, the singer and poet, Patti Smith, gives as much of a written account of Lee's life in the literary/musical world as I have encountered (included in her book, she told an interviewer, so that Lee would not be forgotten).
Starting on p. 96 she describes his room in the Chelsea Hotel as including a "bureau full of compositions, thick piles of music, that no one had ever heard. He always seemed vaguely uncomfortable. He was freckled, with red hair tucked under a watch cap, glasses, and a slight red beard. It was impossible to tell if he was young or old.
" We began with the song I wrote for Janis, the song she would never sing. His approach to this song was to play the music as if it were a calliope. I was kind of shy, but he was even shyer, and we were mutually patient with each other."
He had been devoted to his grandfather, she writes, but when the grandfather died and left Lee a modest but meaningful estate and house, his mother blocked Lee's inheritance and tried to have him committed. He was distraught when he came to her apartment one day, soaked from a heavy rain, to tell her the news of what his mother had done. She said she would meet him in a few days to continue their work, but when she went to see him at the Chelsea, the poet "Anne Waldman told me that, facing the loss of his inheritance and the threat of institutionalization, he had leapt to his death from the roof of the Chelsea."
David-- I am currently reading the Patti Smith book and was prompted to find more information on Lee Crabtree. Curiously, just last month a Sue Crabtree Spalding, claiming to be Lee's sister, disputed Patti's account, calling it an urban legend. See http://www.christopherjconry.com/writings/2013/03/05/the-gray-man-of-the-chelsea-hotel/
I just happened to think of Lee tonight (8.13.2023). I graduated from St.Olaf in (1961-1965). During that time I formed several small group jazz ensembles and Lee played piano in most of them...I always like him and certainly thought highly of his improve skills. I knew that he had killed himself...but never knew the reason until this article. Too grim and very, very sad. I had a lot of musician friends from Carlton and counted Lee as one of the closest.....now I am an 80 year old man and all I can think of is the many decades we have not had the benefit of his creativity because of his despair...it makes me blue.....extremely blue....
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I remember Lee Crabtree as a quiet, bemused soul who always seemed as if he had just discovered the meaning of life in a simple flash of awareness, but it was so funny that he could not quite share it with anyone or he might explode.
I discovered that, after Carleton, he moved to New York, where he moved among a circle of writers, musicians, painters and poets (many identified with the second generation "New York School" of poetry). I had met many of them while during my senior year I was editing a magazine, Mother, that Peter Schjeldahl had started before he moved to Paris.
From roughly December 1965 until the spring of 1967, Lee was a keyboard player (also playing percussion, celeste, and bells) for a rock band, The Fugs, an irreverent, political, rude, obscene, funny and very literate group founded in 1963 by Tuli Kupferberg, Ed Sanders and Ken Weaver. After he was reportedly pushed out of the Fugs, he played with The Holy Modal Rounders and continued composing works.
In her dazzling memoir , Just Kids, the singer and poet, Patti Smith, gives as much of a written account of Lee's life in the literary/musical world as I have encountered (included in her book, she told an interviewer, so that Lee would not be forgotten).
Starting on p. 96 she describes his room in the Chelsea Hotel as including a "bureau full of compositions, thick piles of music, that no one had ever heard. He always seemed vaguely uncomfortable. He was freckled, with red hair tucked under a watch cap, glasses, and a slight red beard. It was impossible to tell if he was young or old.
" We began with the song I wrote for Janis, the song she would never sing. His approach to this song was to play the music as if it were a calliope. I was kind of shy, but he was even shyer, and we were mutually patient with each other."
He had been devoted to his grandfather, she writes, but when the grandfather died and left Lee a modest but meaningful estate and house, his mother blocked Lee's inheritance and tried to have him committed. He was distraught when he came to her apartment one day, soaked from a heavy rain, to tell her the news of what his mother had done. She said she would meet him in a few days to continue their work, but when she went to see him at the Chelsea, the poet "Anne Waldman told me that, facing the loss of his inheritance and the threat of institutionalization, he had leapt to his death from the roof of the Chelsea."
David-- I am currently reading the Patti Smith book and was prompted to find more information on Lee Crabtree. Curiously, just last month a Sue Crabtree Spalding, claiming to be Lee's sister, disputed Patti's account, calling it an urban legend. See http://www.christopherjconry.com/writings/2013/03/05/the-gray-man-of-the-chelsea-hotel/
That is page 196 (at least in the paperback edition) where Patti begins talking about Lee in Just Kids, not page 96.
I just happened to think of Lee tonight (8.13.2023). I graduated from St.Olaf in (1961-1965). During that time I formed several small group jazz ensembles and Lee played piano in most of them...I always like him and certainly thought highly of his improve skills. I knew that he had killed himself...but never knew the reason until this article. Too grim and very, very sad. I had a lot of musician friends from Carlton and counted Lee as one of the closest.....now I am an 80 year old man and all I can think of is the many decades we have not had the benefit of his creativity because of his despair...it makes me blue.....extremely blue....
At least as of this date, April 5, 2024, that link to the comment by the supposed sister is not available