A Rearing Appaloosa, a Snarling Belgian Shepherd and a Frontier Revolver in Big Sur 1970, with Guitarist, Music Director Nina Simone, Al Schackman.

My favorite story about my dearest friend, Al Schackman, includes a snowflake appaloosa, a Belgian shepherd called Honeybear, 2 guns, a motorcycle gang, a honeymooning couple and a campfire.

My favorite story, the story I never get tired of telling, isn’t about Al’s 45 years with Nina Simone as her music director and guitarist. It isn’t about his years playing guitar for Harry Belafonte or supporting Dr. Martin Luther King through the civil rights era. It isn’t even about his famous ex girl-friends or his notorious mobster and drug dealing friends… Suffice it to say he never had a tame life except maybe when he was a studio musician in NY recording for ad agencies and “little known” bands such as the Drifters, the Isley Brothers,  and Benny King. It was then, and only then that he had manicures, smoked Pall Malls and played studio music, some solely designed to accompany jingles. He would sit in 3 hour recording sessions with a can of beer and a sandwich. They were paid well but the jingle music went totally against his creative sensibilities. He couldn’t wait for the sessions to be over so at night he could go to the clubs and play real music. That’s when jazz was very big everywhere.  they could play jazz in strip clubs in the village that were owned by the mafia, and there were many jazz clubs. they played in clubs from Harlem to Greenwich Village.

My favorite story comes after this. It comes after a gig late one night that Al looked down at his hands and saw a pall mall in one hand and a bowl of soup in the other. He put them both down and decided to move back to Big Sur, to Drop Out.

As well as continuing to go on tour with Nina Simone Al became an assistant foreman on a cattle ranch in Big Sur, part of the Big Sur Fire and Rescue team, and a kind of “deputy ” to his ranch boss and friend Walter Trotter. As we well know fire safety practices in California is of paramount importance and a large part of the “deputy’s ‘” duty was to keep an eye out for fires on the ridges and hills and investigate. One afternoon Al saw some smoke down in a canyon so he went down on his young  appaloosa horse Kiko to check it out. As Al, Kiko and his huge Belgian Shepard reached the small campfire quite a scene unfolded. There was a young honeymooning couple from LA who had come up to Big Sur to “get away” from the city- and had built a small campfire for a romantic night in the canyon. There was a motorcycle gang (who shall remain un-named due to possible retribution issues) who had come upon the young couple and decided to “have some fun” with them. The gang had the young woman and man pinned down and were poised to gang rape the woman. With a skitterish Kiko, a snarling dog, a savage 250/3000 rifle and an antique style frontier colt revolver Al demanded that they “back off” but the gang leader started coming at him menacingly. He wouldn’t back off so with a dancing horse and aiming mid thigh he shot the gang leader in the foot. That was the end of the assault on the young couple as the gang got back on their bikes and drove north toward Monterey. He got to a phone and the Highway Patrol was waiting for them at the bridge below Carmel Highlands.

Later that night Al went down to Nepenthe restaurant  to meet some friends. The young couple were there, having at Al’s advice checked in at Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn in  for the night. The young woman shrieked in delight to the other tourists they had been telling the story to “that’s Him!

Thats the man who saved us!!!”

I guess its not hard to see why this is my favorite story about Al.

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