David Carradine Sings Gilbert Shelton

Gilbert Shelton, gifted storyteller, cartoonist and illustrator, was another of the small party of terrific early 'underground'   creators of the 1960's and '70's who influenced not only my visual design education but my ideas of plot construction and even my perceptions of radio and record collecting. I've tried to locate where and why David Carradine decided to record a solo version of a cute and memorable (even though I was at first confused about the page - not  having a hard copy of it in a book conviniently available, I was thinking it was a Robert Crumb page {sorry Gilbert!}, and finally remembered that it was a rare Shelton one-off page) Gilbert Shelton strip from Bijou Funnies # 01, 1968, but have not yet found a first-hand account by Carradine; his discography is rather spottily documented, it appears.  I must have discovered this strip through the very rare, and probably bootleg, or at least grey-market, 1970's reprint paperback my father gave me, and like so many of the better-executed underground works (the first book my dad pointed me to was Justin Green's incredible and rightly acclaimed 'Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary'- a mind-bender at nine or less years old...), these stories really rattled your cage in those days of less/less extreme media saturation. When I've read more about the story behind this record I'll post it here, but in the meantime, enjoy this short piece by David Carradine, music-lover and guitar collector, doing a lovely and letter-perfect version of this bit of funky Texan hippie poetry.

 Set My Chickens Free

Comments

[Kip W]

Fix all typos! But what a great find, and thanks for sharing it with us. I was a little surprised to see that it wasn't a Lieuen Adkins verse, but Shelton was capable of his own brand of poetry. What's the guy doing now? Every time I find out what he's been doing, it turns out to that he still "has it," and I'd like to find that out again.

[Mindwrecker]

Mindwrecker here -- all problems fixed -- (this post suffered greatly from being done in too big a hurry against the deadline)...
Thanks, @Taro 3Yen for the extra data! I always appreciate enhancements to posts, and I wanted to do as much justice to Shelton and Carradine (two faves) as I could...

[Mindwrecker]

Oh, and also -I thought I had seen this comic page in ZAP, myself, but some research seemed to point to that Bijou as well...In any case, I only used to own ZAP 0, and most likely saw this one as a reprint (there were so many publishers booting underground artists in those days).

[deb]

So much fun to read this again after so many years. Lived with a cartoonist back in that day and we loved Crumb and Shelton (and Griffith, and Spiegelman)...anyhoo, this was just about our favorite work by Gilbert and we made up our own tune and used to sing it all the time. My old friend has left this mortal coil but the song lives on in my memory, and I can still sing it, and in fact just did. But I dunno how to mp3 it. You'll have to take my word that it's a better tune than Mr. Carradine's, or maybe just more fun. Thank you so much for posting.

[Mindwrecker]

Sweet comment, deb --- sounds a lot like the warm and fuzzy place that a lot of my memories of underground comix lives in...

[dober]

This Gilbert Shelton piece was also included in Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book," which is where I first saw it as did probably most others.