26 Years Is Not A Long Time
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CHICAGO — Baby Huey was one of those phenomena who happen along every so often. Never a freak of quite the proportions of Tiny Tim, for example, yet with that kind of bizarre potential. And now he’s dead.
James T. Ramey was Baby Huey, wafted into Chicago from Richmond, Indiana, half a dozen years ago, a 350 pound mammoth who had one of the planet’s ultimate bar acts. It was a super-visceral, intensely visual act, not all that great as lounge combos go but Huey was the front man and Huey was unique. He’d make two of Leslie West or Bob Hodge . . . those kind of proportions, the hypothalamus running beserk into the wilderness.
Later going on to Trudy Heller’s Ungano’s and the rest of the New York small time circuit, a couple tv shows, Europe, a record of “Mighty Mighty Spade and Whitey”, his ghetto dance theme song.
He got hung up on dope and that was that. Back in Chicago where he was working on an album for Curtis Mayfield’s Curtom label, he up and o.d.ed on October 28th, a little over a month after the death of his friend Jimi Hendrix.
When Curtom releases the album proceeds will go to a drug rehabilitation center. At his funeral, the backup group, the Babysitters performed. What more to say of the ravages of heroin? What more to do than plead with people to stay away from drugs? Twenty six years is not a long time to live.
