Biography
In the 1960s, Dr. West's Medicine Show & Junk Band emerged as one of the more prominent ensembles refreshing the jug band and old-timey ethos through contemporary attitudes and rock elements, proving less eccentric than the Jim Kweskin Jug Band yet closer to core folk/jug band roots than the Holy Modal Rounders. The group is chiefly remembered as the launchpad for leader and principal songwriter Norman Greenbaum—there was never an actual “Dr. West”—who scored a massive rock success in 1970 with “Spirit in the Sky.” They never reached even the modest visibility attained by Kweskin or the Holy Modal Rounders. Greenbaum once characterized his style as “a cross between Captain Beefheart and Spike Jones,” and although Dr. West leaned far closer to Jones than to Beefheart, he and his bandmates displayed a clear gift for crafting witty, frequently absurd modern jug-band material. Live performances featured medicine-show patter between numbers, a device that earned approval from Frank Zappa. Their only album, The Eggplant That Ate Chicago, brimmed with tracks steeped in nonchalant oddity, among them the title song, which would have suited Dr. Demento’s program perfectly a few years afterward. Later singles expanded the arrangements with stronger rock textures that aligned with folk-rock and light psychedelia, while the lyrics stayed far from convention, chronicling a New York Hooker in “Bullet La Verne” and exploring “Gondoliers, Shakespeares, Overseers, Playboys, and Bums.”