Essra Mohawk

ESSRA MOHAWK Pt. 1 Show Notes

Essra Mohawk has had a very long and storied career. To describe her music as eclectic is a gross understatement. Her songs run the gamut from pop to avant garden, and in between she covers a lot of bases including rock, folk, folk rock, motown, jazz, tv jingles, rhythm and blues, and beautiful, heartfelt ballads about love and lust.

Born Sandra Elayne Hurvitz, her earlier influences were her parents, Anne and Henry.  Through them she grew up listening to an eclectic list of artists such as Judy Garland, Nina Simone, The Coasters, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, Little Anthony & the Imperials, Thelonius Monk, Erik Satie, Billy Holiday, Otis Redding, The Beatles, The Stones, Ravi Shankar among others/

In 1964 she released a single as Jamie Carter titled “The Boy With the Way” which I personally think is a really cool song. It pronbably could have been a hit hat it received proper publicity and marketing. Essra sounded a little peeved  talking about it. I don’t blame her, and it would turn  out not to be the first time here career hit a snag or detour.

Essra was also the first female member of the Mothers of Invention. In fact, she spent about a year in a relationship with Frank Zappa who thanks to band member Ray Collins suggestion  for a rock star name, dubbed her, Uncle Meat.  When I first met Uncle Meat, she was in Philly on hiatus, and I had no idea who Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention were at the time. I would shortly discover them through Philadelphia DJ Michael Tearson, and eventually make the connection. But, I was happy to finally talk to her again so I could tell her the story of my first Essra Mohawk encounter. At this point, I should probably apologize for hijacking the conversation, for which I was duly busted by Essra.

As I mentioned, her career is multifaceted, so the Show Notes page at talesoftheroadwarriors-slash-Essra-Mohawk includes some Essra Mohawk Career Highlights, discography ands links to some of the songs we talked about in this conversation. In my conversation, BTW, I barely scratched the surface of her career, so this is really just a little slice of life in which I hopefully captured some of her essence and got a couple pretty good stories from her.

Due to technical  difficulties, I just couldn’t get good enough audio, so I’ll just tell you some things that were to garbled to include in the podcast.

I did manage to capture a little about her “crazy courage” as a Philly girl, and her propensity to stick up for others against bullies - and her mom.

The main story I was hoping to have her retell was how she was scheduled to be one of the performers  at Woodstock, but her manager missed the turn, causing Essra to miss her debut  on the most well known world stage of all time.

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LINKS:

Essra’s Facebook Page

ESSRA MOHAWK MUSIC VIDEOS

Essra Mohawk as Jamie Carter “The Boy With The Way"