The Heel Has a Soul: The Toteboard Pays Tribute to People We Lost

It has become customary for many publications to eulogize important public figures who died during the previous year. Along these lines, the Toteboard would like to offer its own tributes to a small number of people who rejoined their ancestors in 2025. For the most part, these are individuals with whom the Toteboard had felt some kind of special connection, or about whom it felt there was simply more to be said. In most (or perhaps all) of these cases, the Toteboard can report with some satisfaction that it had enjoyed one or two degrees of separation. Note: The website indicates a 6-minute, but plan on well over an hour if you plan on following all the hyperlinks!

In alphabetical order:

Sonny Curtis (1937-2025):

Sonny Curtis holds a unique distinction in musical history, i.e., he not only collaborated extensively with the legendary Buddy Holly before the latter formed the Crickets, he also fronted the Crickets in the aftermath of Holly’s tragic death. The Toteboard freely admits that it can actually name only three songs that Sonny penned during his sixty-plus years of performing, but ah, what an amazing trifecta of compositions they were: “Rock Around With Ollie Vee,” an archetypal statement of the primitive 1950s West Texas rock-and-roll sound (and catalyst for Buddy’s first recording contract), “I Fought the Law,” which Sonny claimed to have dashed off in fifteen minutes but playfully recognized as “my most important copyright,” and a surprising one that, well, you'd never believe came from the same person. Not a bad legacy.

Jane Goodall (1934-2024):

There are few people whom the Toteboard would regard as a more profound role-model than Jane Goodall, the tireless primatologist and naturalist who revolutionized the way people understand their relationships with other denizens of the planet and, by extension, the way they understand their own humanity. Dr. Goodall was, of course, a serious scientist and committed conservationist, but she recognized early on that she could best serve as an effective ambassador for her various missions by working within a persona that was at least partially constructed by National Geographic and other media: the patient, simultaneously delicate and tough jungle researcher, mesmerizing with her ponytail, long legs and khaki shorts, who exuded a special dignity and equanimity even when stepping in monkey shit. Although this reflected an image that was somewhat curated, the Toteboard feels no embarrassment about having fallen under her spell. Dr. Goodall was brilliant, passionate, and charismatic, and she had the ability to educate her audience and, gently but firmly, exhort them to do better by the Earth and its many creatures. God was at her best when she made Jane.

Michael Hurley (1941-2025):

Along with kindred spirits like the Holy Modal Rounders, Michael Hurley occupied a narrow and peculiar musical lane referred to variously as "freak folk," “acid folk,” "psych(edelic) folk," or "outsider folk," though Hurley was more on the "outsider" than "psych" end of the spectrum. With an S&H Green Stamps electric guitar, a rinky-dink backyard amp, and a face that hinted at a few generations of inbreeding, the self-taught Hurley penned hundreds of songs that depicted a silly, sometimes surreal, sometimes puerile, off-kilter dimension, inhabited by goofballs, rogues, antiheroes, and lightweight grotesques – a dimension that also came to life in his cartoon paintings and album covers, which frequently featured fiddle-playing, card-shuffling, automobile-driving bipedal werewolves named Boone and Jocko, as well as other bizarre creatures. To take a peek into Hurley's universe, you can sample a deadpan love-song interruptus, an oddly philosophical reverie, and a celebratory tour-de-force of the musical absurd. Hurley died in his beloved Portland, Oregon (and where he was beloved) a single day after his final gig, so perhaps he wrote his own epitaph decades earlier.

Tom Lehrer (1928-2025):

Tom Lehrer pressed all the right buttons – musical, comical, intellectual, political, satirical – to etch a permanent spot in the Toteboard’s psyche. In the 1950s and early ‘60s, Lehrer delivered pitch-perfect (sometimes acidic) social commentaries in the style of peppy show-tunes, with the irony further accentuated by a naturally comic voice that came off as anywhere from smug and accusatory to bewildered and self-deprecating. It's hard to say just where to begin with Lehrer's catalogue. Racial and class antipathies? Nuclear proliferation? Environmental degradation? Pornography? Education? Religion? Lehrer wasn’t exclusively political, and he could even get a laugh out of the Periodic Table and deviant social behavior. Oddly enough, Lehrer withdrew from the public eye after composing his first three dozen songs, in part because he didn’t particularly identify with the emerging counter-culture or New Left (he had been an Ivy League Adlai Stevenson democrat), and he seldom gave interviews or spoke about his show biz career. But Lehrer hardly turned into a long-toenailed recluse. He taught mathematics and musical theater for decades at UC Santa Cruz, and he spent several months every year back at his home outside Harvard Square, where those who knew what he looked like might notice him taking walks in the neighborhood. Lehrer’s last (known) public performance came at a 1998 benefit concert honoring Cameron Mackintosh (producer of both Cats and Tomfoolery, the latter based on Lehrer’s songs), with proceeds going to the Royal National Institute of the Blind and various artistic charities. After Lehrer was introduced by his old summer-camp chum Stephen Sondheim, he quipped, “I’ve often wondered what became of him,” and characterized himself as someone who “went from adolescence to senility hoping to bypass maturity.” A true Toteboard hero.

Rob Reiner (1947-2025):

The son of one of the funniest men who ever lived and a cabaret singer who delivered perfectly one of the most memorable lines in movie history, Rob Reiner used to joke that if he were ever to win the Nobel Prize, the headline the next day would read “Meathead Wins Nobel.” But it was, in fact, his family’s commitments to humanitarian causes and cinematic excellence, not his ten-year stint as Archie Bunker’s comic foil, that would ultimately define his legacy as an actor, director, philanthropist, and political activist. His death, as well as that of his wife Michele, was tragic, horrifying, and utterly pointless. But it also serves as a sad reminder that wealth, celebrity, artistic accomplishment, and vast networks of lifelong friends may not always be enough to shield a family from the depredations of substance abuse and mental illness. If there is an upside to Reiner’s heartbreaking demise, it is that neither Carl nor Estelle lived quite long enough to witness it.

Michael Brewer (1944-2024) and Tom Shipley (1941-2025):

The 1971 hit “One Toke Over the Line” is probably the only song ever to earn a public rebuke from Spiro Agnew for being “subversive to American youth,” while also being misinterpreted as a bona-fide gospel song by the straightest of the straights. Written as a joke, performed on a lark, and recorded as a favor, “One Toke” actually bore little resemblance to most of the folkish ballads and literate rural narratives in Brewer and Shipley’s extensive portfolio. As two guys from the Heartland with self-proclaimed “midwestern values,” Michael and Tom imbued their songs with a particular sense of place and time, alternately capturing both the innocence and the alienation of the era. Their quasi-biographical tales chronicled their own growing awareness of struggles for personal freedom in America, as well as their first encounter with the volatile racial tinderbox of the Deep South. Brewer and Shipley also had a good ear for songs by other musicians, and they recorded classy versions of tunes by Dylan, Jesse Winchester, and Ted Anderson. Their most elegant reinterpretation came on an obscure song that they would occasionally hear on an underground radio station while driving back from late-night gigs on dark country roads: an ethereal avant-garde jazz anthem by Kaw/Creek saxophonist Jim Pepper, which was based on a traditional peyote chant he had learned from his grandfather. Brewer had  grown up in Oklahoma and came by his affinities for Native American culture honestly, and the duo was still playing “Witchi Tai To” at their occasional reunions just a few years ago. At one of their last gigs, Michael referred to it as the happiest song he’d ever heard. And for sure, it still makes the Toteboard happy.

Danny Thompson (1939-2025):

Nearly sixty years ago, a pair of British folk-baroque guitarists did what was then almost unimaginable, i.e., teaming with a virgin-voiced female singer and an intuitive jazz rhythm section to produce a unique and often experimental musical hybrid. Pentangle turned a lot of heads (and stimulated a lot of ears) with John Renbourn and Bert Jansch’s guitar/banjo/sitar interplay and Jacqui McShee’s bel canto vocals, but for many other musicians it was the pensive and creative counterpoint provided by percussionist Terry Cox and bassist Danny Thompson that elevated the band up into the rarefied air. It’s also probably fair to say that it was Thompson’s work in this band that inspired a number of serious songwriters – e.g., Bruce Cockburn, John Martyn, Joni Mitchell – to seek out top-flight jazz bassists to support their most ambitious recordings and live performances. Perhaps it is unfair to focus exclusively on this virtuoso musician’s six-year stint in a band that had its heyday more than five decades ago, but the Toteboard can’t stop going back to their music, and going back again and again. And again.