Felix Albert Pappalardi Jr. (December 30, 1939 – April 17, 1983) was most famous as the producer of Cream and the bassist for one of the first American hard rock acts, Mountain; sadly, he's also remembered for the tragic shooting that claimed his life at age 43.
Pappalardi was born in the Bronx, New York City, to an Italian family who immigrated from Gravina in Puglia. He graduated from New York City's High School of Music & Art and studied classical music at the University of Michigan. Upon returning to New York, he was unable to find work as a conductor and soon drifted into the Greenwich Village folk scene.
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| Max Morath |
In 1964 he joined Max Morath’s Original Rag Quartet (ORQ)in their premier engagement at New York’s Village Vanguard with several other famous musicians. Along with Felix on guitarrón (Mexican acoustic bass) were pianist/singer Morath, who revived classic ragtime played in the Scott Joplin manner, Barry Kornfeld, a well-known NYC studio folk and jazz guitarist, and Jim Tyler, a famous Baroque and Renaissance lutenist playing four string banjo and mandolin. The ORQ then toured the college and concert circuit during the following year, and opened four engagements with the Dinah Shore show in Las Vegas and elsewhere.
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| Eric Clapton with Felix |
He soon made a name for himself as a skilled arranger, and appeared on albums by Tom Paxton, Vince Martin and Fred Neil for Elektra Records. Thereafter he moved into record production, initially concentrating on folk and folk-rock acts for artists such as Tim Hardin, the Youngbloods, Joan Baez, Richard & Mimi Farina, Ian & Sylvia, and Fred Neil.
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As a producer, Pappalardi became perhaps best known for his work with British psychedelic blues-rock power trio Cream, beginning with their second album, Disraeli Gears in 1967. Pappalardi has been referred to in various interviews with the members of Cream as “the fourth member of the band” as he generally had a role in arranging their music. He contributed instrumentation for his imaginative studio arrangements and he and his wife, Gail, wrote the Cream hit “Strange Brew” with Eric Clapton.
In 1968 he produced a band named, ‘The Vagrants’ who recorded on the Atlantic Record Label, and which featured a young guitarist named Leslie West. In 1969 along with West, Corky Laing, Mark Clarke, Steve Knight, David Perry, and N.D. Smart II, he founded the hard charging blues-rock group, ‘Mountain.‘ The group was formed in Long Island, New York and actively recorded and toured between 1969 and 1971. One of their first big gigs was playing at the Woodstock Music Festival in Saugerties, New York, in August 1969. Pappalardi produced the band's albums, and co-wrote and arranged a number of the band's songs with Collins and West. They disbanded in 1972 regrouping again in 1974, but disbanded again in 1975. The band’s signature song, “Mississippi Queen” is still heard regularly on classic rock radio stations. They also had a hit with the song “Nantucket Sleighride” written by Pappalardi and Collins.
Felix generally played Gibson basses live and on Mountain’s recordings. He is most often shown with an EB-1 but there are photographs of him playing an EB-0 live. He was known for playing a Gibson EB-1 violin bass through a set of Sunn amplifiers that, he claimed, once belonged to Jimi Hendrix.
Pappalardi was forced to retire because of partial deafness, ostensibly from his high-volume shows with Mountain. He continued producing throughout the 1970s and released a solo album and recorded with Japanese hard rock outfit Kazuo Takeda’s band The Creation (old name Blues Creation), who had opened for Mountain on their Japanese tours. Felix Pappalardi & Creation was released on A&M in 1976.
He produced The Dead Boys album We Have Come for Your Children in 1978. He also worked on the NBC show Hot Hero Sandwich in 1979 and released his first proper solo album, Don't Worry, Ma, which reflected his growing interest in funk, jazz fusion, and reggae, and featured a large supporting cast, including bassist Chuck Rainey and drummer Bernard "Pretty" Purdie.
On the night of April 17, 1983, tragedy struck: Pappalardi was shot once in the neck by his wife, Gail Collins, and killed. He had been involved in a long-standing affair with a younger woman, of which Collins had knowledge; however, a jury supported Collins' claim that the shooting was accidental, occurring while Pappalardi was showing her how to use the gun. She was convicted of criminally negligent homicide rather than the far more serious charge of second-degree murder and was sentenced to four years. On April 30, 1985, she was released on parole and disappeared to Mexico where she died during December 2013.
(Edited from AllMusic, Rock and Roll Paradise & Wikipedia)
