About Cool Fool, The Book

This is my story, my memories, from my very subjective point of view. I’ve tried to capture the enthusiasm of the era, a golden age of pop music, and its roots in the Blues. I apologize if I’ve left anyone out that should have been included and I’ve done the best I can to confirm the spelling of the names I have used, but since 1959 was over 50 years ago, etc., and memory being what it is, what you’re holding, if not the truth exactly, is how I remember it.

I made very little money from my musical endeavours, if you don’t count the $15 or so I get each year from the royalties for “Deaf, Dumb, Crippled & Blind” and “Caledonia River”, two tunes I co-wrote with Richard Newell that, believe it or not, someone somewhere still gets out of the vaults to spin on air.

The women in all the lives I touch on in this memoire have been left out on purpose. That’s another, and in some situations very complex, subject. I think I’ll leave that for the soap opera version.

In retrospect, the music ruled. As J.B. Lenoir wrote “…the voodoo music has got the whole world in its spell.” It sure as hell had me.

It’s hard to express the appreciation I have for all the help everyone along the way gave me pursuing my dream. Having gone straight from high school to the cold mill at Dofasco, as it was once known, I knew early that the get-a-regular-day-job-with-a-pension-and-stick-to it-until-you’re-65 was never going to work for me. Face the Burlington Street bus to Beach Road to & fro 5 days a week or hit the road and take a chance on life in a Blues Rockin’  band? Well, the next 150+ pages or so is my answer to that question.

Doug Carter