SUNNY DAYS: THE SKIP PROKOP STORY (PART 7 by Jaimie Vernon

Skip Prokop and his band The Paupers were on their way to the ‘big game’ when they had two back-to-back blows. Their appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival in the summer of 1967 was an unmitigated disaster and the band’s long-time Canadian manager, Bernie Finkelstein, left the group in the hands of U.S. Uber-manager Albert Grossman. Grossman wasn’t going to let these setbacks slow the band down. In fact, he had the guys become surrogate backing musicians for several artists in his illustrious music stable. This would prove to be the undoing of The Paupers as Skip found himself attracted to working with big name acts:

Frank Gutch Jr: Jack Bruce Is Gone and the World He Inhabited Will Soon Be Gone Too; Prediscovering Elliott Randall— Still Reelin’ In the Years; The Mess That Was ‘Baker Street’; and them freakin’ Notes you just cannot live without…..

Jack Bruce is dead.  Long live Jack Bruce.  And long live the musical era he lived in though that will soon be dead, too.  As dead as Bix Beiderbecke.  As dead as Glenn Miller.  As dead as Frank Sinatra.  As dead as … well, you get my drift.