Mellencamp even sang the pop hit “I’m Your Puppet.” He would cover the Motown and rhythm and blues tunes, and Mellencamp would sing songs by white artists like Mitch Ryder and John Sebastian. “He put on a hell of a show.”īooker remembers that the band was popular because it played all kinds of popular music. “Fred was the entertainer,” said Michael Henderson, a keyboard player who was in Crape Soul and now plays with Soul Express. He had sung along with records with a group of young guys and remembers being “in and out of bands all the time.” Then, he was asked to join Crape Soul, an interracial band of Seymour teenagers built around Booker’s vocal talent and showmanship.
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Through the years, he has continued to perform in clubs and bars, playing in several different bands before joining the Soul Express band in 2016.īut in the mid-1960s, when he was just 14 years old, Mellencamp was still learning how to perform. Now retired, he has survived two bouts of colon cancer. įarm Aid founders Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Willie Nelson.īooker stayed closer to home, working for many years at an auto parts manufacturing plant in Columbus. In 1985, he co-founded Farm Aid with Nelson and Neil Young. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2008 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2018. He has sold more than 60 million records worldwide, performed with Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson and scores of other stars.
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By his early 20s, he had a record deal, performing under the names of Johnny Cougar (the creation of an agent) and John Cougar Mellencamp before a series of hit records and popular MTV videos in the early 1980s earned him the right to perform and publish under his given name. Mellencamp left his hometown years ago to chase fame in the music business. "I've had a couple of issues with my health, but by the grace of God I've been able to come back and with all the good friends that I've got, especially in the band, and my wife, my kids, you know, I've been able to continue doing something that I really love." Road to fame started in cover band
"I do it for the love of music," he said. "But I support a lot of people, and they need to make a living."īooker still loves the thrill of being on stage and moving people with his music, even if that's only a few dozen fans dancing at a local bar. “If it was up to me, I wouldn’t go out (on tour)," he said during 60-minute interview. John Mellencamp performing at the Encore Theater in Las Vegas. But now, Booker and Mellencamp perform for different reasons - and for different audiences. And both are still pursuing the muse that united them as teens.
Both are survivors of serious health scares. Now in their early 70s, both are grandfathers. After about 18 months, Mellencamp left the group and the two went their separate ways. Mellencamp, just 14 and still active in track and football in school, was the new addition with a lot of ambition but little experience. (The band also went by Crepe Soul, but a business card Booker still carries that lists him and Mellencamp as vocalists uses the "Crape" spelling.)Īt the time, Booker, a lanky 17-year-old, was the band's established star. The link between Mellencamp and Booker runs all the way back to Southern Indiana in the 1960s, when they were teenagers - one Black, the other white - sharing vocal duties at local dances, fraternities, roller rinks and racetracks as co-lead singers with the popular Seymour-based band called The Crape Soul.
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