Folk music legend dies at 74
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Photo: Folk singer Erik Darling recounted his numerous adventures as a musician in his autobiography. Darling died Saturday.
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8/4/2008 - 8/5/08
Erik Darling, a folk musician who performed with The Tarriers, The Weavers and The Rooftop Singers, died Saturday of Burkitt's lymphoma in a hospice center near Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 74.
Darling, who moved to Santa Fe in 1986 and lived here for nearly 20 years, recently published his autobiography, I'd Give My Life!
"My wife, Barbara, and I say this all the time: Erik was probably the most eccentric person we've ever known — in the most charming and befuddling way," recalled Ted Flicker, a longtime friend of Darling's.
"Once he went to one of those self-improvement weekends, and they said if you want to have a woman in your life, you must make room for her. So Erik went home and cleaned out half his closets and half his bureau drawers."
Darling was born in Canandaigua, N.Y., in 1933. According to his autobiography, though he was urged to go into his family's paint-store business, his life changed after he moved to New York City in the late 1940s. He began playing folk music on his guitar and landed his first professional gig as a member of the Musical Americana traveling troupe early in 1954.
In the mid-1950s, he formed The Tarriers (initially called The Tunetellers) with other folk musicians, including Bob Carey and Clark Carlton. Actor Alan Arkin (now a Santa Fe resident) joined the group shortly thereafter, and the ensemble enjoyed its first major success with its version of the Jamaican folk tune "The Banana Boat Song," released late in 1956.
I'd Give My Life! is a humorous account of people and places in Darling's life, and includes anecdotes about visiting a Mexican border town to buy marijuana, dealing with an overflowing bathtub in a hotel room in Milan and discovering that at one venue, the Tarriers had been mistaken for a dog act and billed as The Terriers.
Darling's biggest hit may have been his 1962 recording, with The Rooftop Singers, of "Walk Right In." The song was first recorded by bluesman Gus Cannon more than 30 years earlier.
"He was a legend in the folk world," said Jonathan Richards, another longtime friend of Darling's. "He played the banjo like nobody's business, and when he threw back his head and let that clear, joyful tenor out, it was music that couldn't help but make you smile."
After relocating to Santa Fe, Darling painted and recorded more songs, including the instrumental "Santa Fe Express," which he co-wrote with Sid Hausman for the album Border Town at Midnight. He occasionally performed around town.
According to Richards, he received an e-mail notifying him of Darling's death from Darling's ex-wife Joan (Kugell) Darling. She did not return a phone call seeking comment.
"He was one of the really great characters," Flicker said. "It's a real loss to all of us."
Contact Robert Nott at 986-3020 or rnott@sfnewmexican.com.
