Lord Buckley rides again!

Many Buckley fans point to one of his most frequently quoted remarks to make a case for his being a precursor to the evangelizing for tolerance, equality and the power of love that became such a force in the youth movement of the 1960s. At the close of his performances he'd often say: "Before I leave you, I'd like to say to you, people are what it is all about ... they are Mother Nature's brightest flower, her sweetest, purest, most elevating thing that ever was. You are groovy flowers in a garden where I am privileged to stand and share a few moments with you." Says Trager, "If he'd lived, in relative good health, into the age of the Fillmores, it's hard not to believe that he would have been a hippie star of a cooler variety than Timothy Leary or Ram Dass or someone like that.

"And on a purely political basis," Trager continues, "here was a guy who was doing pro-civil rights pieces [such as Joseph Newman's 'Black Cross,' later covered by Bob Dylan] to not necessarily sympathetic audiences in the 1940s, if not earlier. I don't know if that's visionary, but it's certainly brave. He stuck his neck out for what he believed in and contrary to what a lot of people might think, he was not using elements of African-American expression casually. His work addressed not only racial, but all kinds of social inequities head-on. Yet he was able to get it underneath the radar in a way that, maybe, Lenny Bruce wasn't able to. Bruce really stuck it in his audience's face: 'This is the problem.' Buckley had a gentleness about him.

"I feel Buckley was a genius," Trager goes on. "The work itself stands on high, yet it's totally neglected. It isn't even a footnote to a footnote to a footnote. To me he is a great American visionary who should not slip through the cracks anymore."

When Trager talked with Robin Williams, the comedian told him, "Buckley and Lenny [Bruce] were both jazz ... their work was jazz -- verbal jazz ... Buckley, you might even say, was more lyrical or poetic. The first time I really heard Lord Buckley, I thought to myself, 'This is amazing.' It's got layers on it. You can take it on the comic layer and you can just keep getting deeper and deeper with it. The musical layer, the literary layer -- it's full of literary references ... Hearing his work is like hearing the great jazz riffs -- they are full entities unto themselves." And while it would be unfair and pointless to ask, even a musician, to fully appreciate, say, "Kind of Blue" by merely reading the music (Buckley really must be heard), this, the opening to his classic "The Nazz," gives a sense of how his Lordship cooked with words:

"Now lookit here all you cats and kitties out there whippin' and wailin' and jumpin' up and down and suckin' up all that juice and pattin' each other on the back and hippin' each other who the greatest cat in the world is. Mr. Malenkoff, Mr. Dalenkoff, Mr. Eisenhower, Mr. Woozinweezin, Mr. Wyzinwoozin. Mr. Woodhill, Mr. Beechhill and Mr. Churchill and all them hills gonna get you straight! And if they can't get you straight, they know a cat that knows a cat that'll straighten you. But I'm gonna put a cat on you was the coolest, grooviest, sweetest, wailingest, strongest, swinginest cat that ever stomped on this jumpin' green sphere. And they call this hyar cat ... the Nazz."

"It's a fuuny thing with Buckley," Trager says near the end of our conversation. "No matter what word you use to describe him, it fits, but it doesn't fit. I think of it like performance quantum mechanics in a way. If you look for the wave you're going to see the wave. If you look for the particle, you're going to see the particle. If you look for the stand-up comedian, you're going to hear the one-liner. If you look for the visionary, you're going to hear the grand message. If you look for the mystic, the healer, you're going to hear the evangelist. And that's a testimony to his power and genius -- they all apply."

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