Scott Fagan’s exemplary folk debut resurfaces nearly half a century after it first appeared
“Overall, I’m just grateful. I could be all sorts of bitter, but that’s ridiculous,” says Scott Fagan. He’s talking about South Atlantic Blues, his debut album that’s finally getting reissued 47 years (with bonus tracks) after it appeared and quickly disappeared.
The story of the album contains famous names and near-misses; extreme poverty and high art; calypso and jazz and rock ‘n’ roll and, eventually, an indie-rock icon. It’s a moody, elaborately produced folk/rock record that sits comfortably next to contemporaneous work by Scott Walker, Leonard Cohen and the Bee Gees. It juxtaposes love songs such as “Nothing But Love” with social-realist narratives such as “Tenement Halls.” It’s ambitious, pointed and youthful.
“I was completely committed to changing the world, and I thought that we were supposed to do it through music,” says Fagan. “I sang very prettily, but I wanted to write and sing about gritty things. There was always a confl ict between those things. My manager, Doc Pomus, who was a great, great songwriter, thought that he’d discovered another Bobby Darin. But, God bless Bobby Darin, I had no interest in being an entertainer, then or now. I thought what music was for was to change people’s lives, not be a diversion, but a catalyst for deep, internal, semi-psychic change. I was coming from a very di fficult background.”
Fagan was born in New York City in 1945. His father was Frankie Galvin, a jazz saxophone player and singer, and his mother, Leila, was a dancer. The two were embedded in the bebop scene: Fagan’s father played with Lester Young and Billie Holiday, and was friends with Tony Bennett; Dizzy Gillespie was his older sister’s godfather. Both his parents were alcoholics, and when the marriage dissolved, Fagan’s mother took the children and moved to the Islands. Fagan grew up mostly in Puerto Rico and St. Thomas, in mixed race households that were constantly impoverished, although he also spent time with his father, who then lived in Florida. “I’d get in trouble in one place and wind up in the other,” he says.
He grew up listening to rock ‘n’ roll, country ‘n’ western and calypso on the radio. He was also inspired by the activist folk music of Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. In 1964, he set sail—literally—for the States with the hope of starting a career in music. When he eventually got to New York, he cold-called a contact his mother had found for him. That turned out to be Pomus, the songwriter of hits for—among other Fagan favorites—Ben E. King and the Drifters. Upon hearing a few of Fagan’s songs, Pomus set him up as a songwriter, working alongside established veterans Mort Shuman, Jerry Ragovoy, and Mike Leiber and Jerry Stoller. One of his fi rst co-writes, “I’m Gonna Cry ’Til My Tears Run Dry,” was recorded by New Orleans soul singer Irma Thomas. He also recorded a few singles for Bang Records, the label of Neil Diamond and Van Morrison.
“I was a really serious fellow who was diverted by beautiful chicks and the availability of food in the States,” says Fagan. “There was no minimum drinking age in the Islands, and I’d been drinking actively since I was 13. I was part-savage and part-sophisticate.”
Fagan had numerous relationships (“I have five children with four di fferent mothers,” he says), and one was with Alix Merritt. Their son, Stephin, would become the leader of the Magnetic Fields, although Fagan was not part of Merritt’s upbringing: Father and son did not meet until 2013. The liner notes of the reissue include a Q&A that Merritt did with Fagan about the making of the album.
Fagan sang in folk clubs—he had a regular gig at Café Au Go Go in the Village, alongside Richie Havens and Jimi Hendrix (when he was still known as Jimmy James)—and that led to him working with a manager, Herb Gart, and recording South Atlantic Blues. They shopped the album to various labels—the Beatles’ Apple Records almost released it, but chose James Taylor over Fagan—and ended up with Atco. But shortly after they signed, Atco’s management changed, and the album got lost in the label shu e, destined quickly for the cut-out bins.
“I think it’s a shame that it fell through the cracks,” says Fagan. “I’ve heard from people all across the world, these little pockets of people in Czechoslovakia; there’s people in Germany, Scandinavia, maybe a few in Japan that somehow write to me and say, man, this record means the world to them.”
Shortly after South Atlantic Blues, Fagan co-wrote a rock opera called Soon that appeared briefly on Broadway with Nell Carter, Richard Gere and Vicki Sue Robinson in the cast. The planned soundtrack album never got made. “We got punished because the content of Soon was the compromised behavior of music business people and the e ffect on artists and society,” says Fagan.
Fagan still makes music. Scott Fagan And The MAAC Island Band plays what he calls contemporary Caribbean. “It’s what I’ve always played: hopefully something with some color and some content,” he says. The band gigs mostly in the Virgin Islands and in central Pennsylvania, but they will tour more widely in conjunction with the reissue of South Atlantic Blues.
“We’ve been waiting for something wonderful to happen,” says Fagan, “and it has happened with the rediscovery of South Atlantic Blues.”
—Steve Klinge
