Richard King reflects on Gary’s career
Image: Article about The New Penelope. Le Petit Journal newspaper, December 9, 1967
Transcription (translated from original text in French): The New Penelope / Gary Eisenkraft: “Most of the blues bands don’t play in clubs anymore. Most of the time, I have to beg them to come.”
Credit: ARCMTL collection. Interview was conducted in Montreal on February 20, 2021 with Richard King by Louis Rastelli, Director of ARCMTL.
Duration: 0:48 min
In this audio clip, Gary Eisenkraft’s childhood friend Richard King remembers Gary’s untarnishable passion for music through the years, despite the challenges he faced.
Transcription:
Richard King: You know, he was uh… full of life. Uh… he, he loved what he was doing. He loved everything about the music business and he was in the music business plus he had a chance to entertain. He was a natural born entertainer.
Because as I remember it he was always being uh sort of, you know, motivated and happy. And when you think back a bit, when you realize how young he was to do all this – although I don’t know why, it never occurred to me at the time that this was really a step above impossible – it should have occurred to me, uh, that what he was doing took an amazing amount of, um, “stick-to-it-iveness” and talent and belief in yourself. But I guess I just said, “Well, we’re young. We can do what we like. And he must have had the same belief system that pushed him forward. But I remember it being a very happy period in his life.