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Jim Sullivan
Jim Sullivan, a Rock ’n’ Roll Mystery That Remains Stubbornly Unsolved
In
1975, the psych-folk musician vanished in Santa Rosa, N.M. A new
reissue of his self-titled album only deepens the puzzle of his life and
career.
The
musician Jim Sullivan started a trip from California to Nashville in
1975. He was last seen in New Mexico, and his disappearance remains
unsolved.Credit...Yosuke Kitazawa, via Jim Sullivan Estate
By Rebecca Bengal
Jim
Sullivan was the kind of California character who seemed to have
stepped straight out of a Pynchon or DeLillo novel — a 6-foot-2 singer
and songwriter known as Sully with a magnetic personality and a
handlebar mustache.His
dramatic psych-folk songs were spacious, cinematic and edged with
mystic, lonesome brooding. His social circle included actors and
Hollywood hangers-on, and he’d had brushes with fame, including an
uncredited part in “Easy Rider” with his friend Dennis Hopper.
On
his 1969 debut album, “U.F.O.,” he sang of beckoning highways, of
aliens, of an Arizona ghost town, of a man who looked “so natural” in
death it was clearly his time to go. Six years later, the 35-year-old
Sullivan disappeared in Santa Rosa, N.M. On the front seat of his
recovered gray VW bug were his ID, his beloved 12-string Guild guitar,
and a box of his two albums, “U.F.O.” and the 1972 LP “Jim Sullivan.”
Sullivan,
a country-blues troubadour with an enigmatic story, has been compared
to Nick Drake, Richie Havens and Gram Parsons. Questions about his
vanishing still plague the small town where he was seen last, as well as
his family and a small group of loyal enthusiasts. Last month, the
record label Light in the Attic reissued his self-titled album, along
with a new collection of previously unreleased demos, titled “If Evening
Were Dawn,” that deepen Sullivan’s eerie, essential strangeness.
Image
Sullivan released two albums before he disappeared: “U.F.O.” in 1969 and a self-titled record in 1972.Credit...via Jim Sullivan Estate
In
1975, Santa Rosa was a town dependent on tourists and used to
strangers. Before Interstate 40 arrived in the late ’60s, people pulled
off Route 66 to rest at its neon-lit motels and swim in Blue Hole, an
artesian well. “We called them drifters,” the retired newspaper reporter
Davy Delgado said in a recent interview. The Communicator, the
newspaper where he was last employed, had a circulation of about 2,000
in a city of about 2,800. “This isn’t a town where you can steal a piece
of bubble gum without everyone knowing about it,” he added.
But no one seems to know what became of Jim Sullivan.
Delgado insisted the investigation was thorough: “There was no arroyo left unturned,” he said, “and no trace of him found.”
Another
local disagreed. “I always thought there was something strange about
how that went down, why they didn’t investigate it more,” said Donald
Sena, who now lives in Mount Vernon, Texas. His father, Pete, who died
in 1993, worked on a ranch near where Sullivan’s car was discovered
abandoned, and is recorded in The Santa Rosa News as possibly the last
person to have spoken with Sullivan, asking him if he needed a ride.
“We
thought he was some cowboy,” said Sena, who’d seen Sullivan’s car
earlier that week from his school bus. “He had a handlebar mustache just
like a cattle hand we knew.”
BORN IN NEBRASKA in 1939,
Sullivan was the seventh son in a working-class family that moved to
San Diego during World War II. He was the quarterback of the high school
football team, played in a band called the Survivors and married the
homecoming queen. Once he got deep into the guitar, that was it.
“Let
me put it diplomatically,” said his son, Chris Sullivan, 58 and an
English professor in San Diego. “The idea that he might have to be a
square and go work for someone else was probably as repulsive to him as
cutting off his hand.” Jim’s wife, Barbara Sullivan, was the family’s
breadwinner, working as a secretary at Capitol Records after the family
moved to Los Angeles. Sullivan played gigs at nights, spending his days
songwriting and listening to records by Karen Dalton, John Prine and the
folk singer John Stewart.
Image
Sullivan, center, in the early 1970s with his wife, Barbara, and son, Chris.Credit...via Jim Sullivan Estate
Barbara’s
boss, John Rankin, tried unsuccessfully to get executives at the label
to notice Sullivan’s music. “They weren’t interested at the time and I
didn’t have any great position there,” Rankin said recently from his
home in Alaska. “But I believed in Jim.”
Others did too: Al Dobbs, an actor turned cue-card holder for “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,”
heard Sullivan at a Malibu nightspot called the Raft and was determined
to help him make a record. “I think a lot of us were searching, trying
to find what we could put in our minds,” Dobbs said. “I’m not sure Jim
was searching. I think Jim was trying to get what he had inside of him
out.”
Dobbs raised money from friends
and co-founded a tiny label, Monnie. Jimmy Bond, Earl Palmer and Don
Randi from the famed studio band the Wrecking Crew were recruited to
back Sullivan up.
“U.F.O.”
was released in 1969, the year of the moon landing, “Abbey Road” and
Woodstock. Dobbs and his cohorts didn’t have money to promote it. “We
used to joke about the number of copies it sold,” he said.
Image
The
reissue of “Jim Sullivan” arrives with a new collection of previously
unreleased demos, titled “If the Evening Were Dawn.” The “U.F.O.” LP is
at left.
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