I know when I first saw him, it must have been back in Washington Square around the early Sixties. The story I heard was that he’d been brought up somewhere upstate. His grandpa or his great grandpa (I ain’t sure how long these things lived) had been brought back from the War and kept in a garage in Saugerties.
He’d been taught to play the banjo for cents and dimes, and he could dance too. At Christmas all us kids could talk about was going to see Crazy (that was his name) – the dancing, banjo playing, monkey.
When he started to learn to sing that I could not tell you. I heard that some crackpot folk singer from back West had taught the ape, or whatever he was, to sing the folkie’s songs.
One day a real important guy from Hollywood came and took Crazy away to be a big star. As for the crackpot folk singer, I heard he got paid off, and was working in some burger joint in Harlem. I’m thinking he was called Mylan or Dylan or something like that. Never did hear from him again.
And as we all know, Crazy the Monkey, is now the biggest star in the world. All singing, all dancing. Me and the family watched him down in Austin being supported by some guy called Elvis.
Everybody’s crazy about Crazy. I tell ya.
bobby stevenson 2023
