MOG

Perhaps the most telling incident in young Redbone’s forgotten years was one moonlit night when he found himself at a dusty crossroads in Mississippi, guitar in hand. Shortly, the Devil appeared and asked him if he had come to sell his soul in exchange for the ability to play that guitar. Redbone replied that he had not, and was getting along just fine on his own. When the Prince of Lies took the rejection personally, a quick-thinking Redbone offered to trade him his Swiss Army knife in exchange for the ability to immediately discern fresh-squeezed orange juice from made-from-concentrate. Old Scratch, grateful to save face, took the deal and threw in several back issues of Reader’s Digest and the ability to play the ocarina.

We come now to the pivotal Mariposa Folk Festival, where Redbone catches the attention of folk-music superstar (oxymoron alert!) Bob Dylan. In a Rolling Stone interview, Dylan later said that if he was to ever start a record label, Redbone would be the first performer he would record. Warner Brothers beat him to it, releasing Redbone’s On the Track in 1975. A spurned Dylan vowed never again to utter an intelligible word.

Soon thereafter, Redbone turned up on Saturday Night Live, where his unusual style blended in perfectly with the fresh and eclectic entertainment offered by SNL in those days before they descended into cranking out hackneyed catch-phrases and running any bit that was even slightly amusing so deep into the ground that coal miners are the last ones to get sick of them.

By Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius