Ron "Big Daddy Sun" CannonRon "Big Daddy Sun" Cannon In His Own Words or, |
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in other words,....... |
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Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow |
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. . I, Ron "Big Daddy Sun" Cannon do swear that this document is the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but. I was born Aug.18th 1952 in Oxford Mississippi just before the
sun rose above the horizon in the sign of Leo. Oxford was also the birthplace and
residence of William Faulkner until he died. Being the home of Ol' Miss University, it
was the focus of national attention and the subject of a Bob Dylan song,
Oxford Town, in the early sixties when rioting occurred over James Meredith
attending the all white school. He successfully completed his degree with federal
marshals at his side for the entire four years.
Unable to support the family on the income from the farm my folks packed up and
moved to Chicago to seek work in the factories. Residing on the south side of Chicago
was a large enclave of hillbilly culture which influenced my early perceptions of the
world. Whenever the family and friends gathered their was plenty of music, both live
and recorded, to be heard. The inspiration for the song Finger Lickin' Good came from
memories of my aunt "Ruby Corinne Rose" cooking chitlin's for
large gatherings. The first record I ever remember hearing was Elvis's Hounddog
being played at a birthday dance party for my older sister Barbara Jean in the
basement of the big apartment building my parents managed on 63rd and Stony Island.
(Stony runs straight south for about 15 miles near the lake on the south side of Chicago.)
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| Elvis was a source of great pride being from right next door in Tupelo. The whole
family gathered around the "Philco" to watch the boy from Mississippi on
Ed Sullivan. | |
Summers always included a trip to Mississippi for a stay at our farm just outside of Oxford. We used to climb all over the gullies that were typical of the area at that time (before the kuudzu overtook everything) looking for arrowheads and other Indian artifacts. God knows , we may have destroyed some valuable archaeological sites digging up this stuff. When we weren't exploring the "WILDS" of the farm I would sit for hours listening to my grandfather, Walter Edmund Cannon (Papaw in the colloquial), pound out the old-timey hillbilly standards on his Kay acoustic guitar. I remember being with my father when he bought the guitar from a pawn shop. I think it was on Lake Street on the north side because, I remember the EL running down the middle of the street. And as far as I know Lake is the only place it does that. I inherited "The Kay" when my Papaw died and still own it today along with about a half-dozen or more other Kay guitars. (I haven't counted in a while). He played a sort of delta style finger pickin' as well as slide with the back of his pocket knife. He also played the fiddle and banjo, although I have no memories of him doing so. The only song I remember him ever teaching me was Little Brown Jug with the knife as slide. |
| Other early memories
are of listening to The Rock Island Line on one of those little portable record
players with no electronic amplification. This was a direct descendent of the first
Edison record players in that there was a little round speaker coil that was part of the tone
arm that received the vibrations directly from the needle. "Must have been superb"
sound quality. The first song I remember knowing "all" the lyrics to is The Battle
of New Orleans by Johnny Horton. AM radio then became the main source of musical germination, with the Phil Spector inspired hits and what is now called the "garage band" sounds (Hey Joe, Louie, Louie, etc..) being the stuff I remember the most, until high school when I discovered the Beatles Revolver album. from then on I was hooked on the "Fab Four" through the White Album. I then began to peruse the cut-out bins at the discount stores for musical treasures such as obscure psychedelic bands like Saint John Green and massive amounts of Lovin Spoonful. (who happen to be a band that gets little mention as an early, perhaps the first, country rock band), and many other even more obscure people from the mid-late sixties. | |
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My literary tastes were along the science-fiction track. The most influential books were
1984, Brave New World, Stranger in a Strange Land, Looking Backward, The Illustrated Man,
Along with non science-fiction stuff like The Catcher in the Rye, Animal Farm,
UFOS Operation Trojan Horse. I then went off to college at the U of I in Champaign-Urbana where I majored in pot smoking and spending money at the many used record stores on campus. Needless to say I soon flunked out of the architecture program losing my scholarship in the bargain. I discovered even more oddball stuff in these little treasure chests like Sun Ra, The Holy Modal Rounders, The Velvet Underground, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Gentle Giant, all the Mississippi delta blues material, etc... My tastes were shall we say diverse. I never bought new records and I never bought anything I considered main-stream. I kind of got into collecting "conceptual" albums for a while but not in any serious scholarly manner or anything. Other than that I didn't really have a clear perception of what my criteria was. I just knew what was "cool" when I saw it! It was at this time that I began to sit in on classes in electronic music. The professors were more than glad to have people in their classes that were there because they had a genuine interest in what they had to teach. I never paid a cent for these classes and I had full access to studio time in what was the second oldest electronic music studio in the western hemisphere. Among its professors at one time was John Cage. The tradition here was in creating truly cutting edge sound without any regard for marketability. I created some "God Awful" montages with their equipment and the two Grundig tube tape recorders that I bought used from an electronic repair shop. These grundigs were marvels. They were stereo sound on sound/ sound with sound and did they sound! I still enjoy listening to some of this stuff (when I'm in the mood for a heavy cleaning of oxide from whatever deck I play them on). Thus follows my ascent into the hippie/intellectual/eastern mysticism sub culture that was thriving in the early seventies. I began to hang out in coffeehouses with dangerous people like zen buddhist theoretical physicists, nihilist computer programmers, Icelandic post-doc chemists, communist painters, existentialist sculptors, and freudian astrologers! I've almost recovered from the messianic complex that developed from the juxtaposition of all these paradigms into one small brain. Of course, drugs had nothing to do with this period! That is actually the truth. Drugs were a minor part of this intellectual milieu, other than marijuana and small amounts of psychedelics.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, my musical development was spurred on by an average
of 4-5 hours a day practicing scales and arpeggios, listening to the farthest out stuff I
could get my hands on, and playing only my own compositions on the huge Kay acoustic
guitar.
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