It was cloudy and windy but a mild 60°F in Carrabassett Valley Maine that Monday, October 5, 1981. Jud Strunk was on the airfield at Sugarloaf Regional Airport, at the controls of the 1941 Fairchild M62-A he had bought and restored, and was preparing to take his new plaything on a test flight. His passenger was Dick Ayotte, a friend of many years. With Dick strapped in to the tandem seat behind him, Jud called "Clear prop!" and pushed the starter. While the propeller on the nose worked up a spin, he checked the controls and instruments, adjusted the fuel mixture to rich, and began taxiing to the runway. At the end of the runway, with the all clear from the control tower, Jud took a visual of the airspace, opened up the throttle and accelerated. His focus was on the take-off, so he ignored a numbness in his left arm, but as the nose of the plane lifted, taking the wheels with it, was he imagining his life flashing before his eyes?
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There must have been something in the Chadakoin River water to account for it. Jamestown, New York, the birthplace or residence of giants of comedy: the incomparable Lucille Ball (August 6, 1911); Brad Anderson, creator of the Marmaduke comic strip, (May 14, 1924); the loony oversexed Mormon apostate and sworn enemy of Joseph Smith, Doctor Philastus Hurlbut (February 3, 1809). But none epitomized the show business life in quite the way that Jud Strunk did. Born in Jamestown, June 11, 1936, Jud was raised in Buffalo, an hour away to the north on Lake Erie. He showed an early aptitude for performance. Having learned the banjo and piano, he performed for local audiences before heading off to Virginia Military Institute for college.
After graduation, his passion for skiing no doubt brought him to Farmington, Maine in his early 20s. Within a short time he expertly adopted the linguistic tics and dry wit of his adoptive state, incorporating the shtick into his country flavored act to the delight of local audiences. From the base of his farm in Eustis, Maine he took his act on the road, touring for the US Armed Forces with a one-man show. From there, he was called by the folk music revolution to begin making regular trips to New York to perform his comedy and compositions in coffeehouses and clubs.
In late 1960, his big break came just Off Broadway at the Madison Avenue Playhouse. The show, by William Engvick, was Beautiful Dreamer, a biography about and featuring the songs of Stephen Foster in which Jud (appearing as Jud Bartlett) played the banjo and is credited with the parts of Turk and Bob. The New York Times' Harold Taubman raved that the show was "well intentioned." After its three week run, there was no turning back from life in the public eye for Jud. By all accounts, his next stop was Colorado where he served as spokesman for the United States Ski Association, making several paragraphs in another New York Times story in 1966 about a ski conference in Stowe, Vermont promoting New England as a ski destination to rival the resorts of the West.
While it's true that corporate spokesmanship is the epitome of razzle dazzle, actual show biz itself was never expunged from Jud's bloodstream, and his next frontier was the music industry and television. In 1969, he went to the logical place, Rockland, Maine to record the Christmas classics Santa's Got a Moto-Ski and A Special Christmas Tree for the Moto-Ski Corporation. At the dawn of the Nixon era, Jud began to make his mark elsewhere in country music starting with the album Downeast Viewpoint in 1970, a critical and modest commercial success. Singles and other albums followed including the mildly racy novelty hit The Biggest Parakeets in Town, and the sophomore LP Jones' General Store.
The next frontier was television. In conquering it, he had the help of an enthusiatic early fan-- the powerful and influential producer of television and broadway, Pierre Cosette-- who caught his act in an out of the way venue in San Diego. Cosette knew a star when he saw one even if no else had seemed to notice. First came a CBS television special, unprecedented for such an unknown. From there, almost as Cosette predicted, Jud's face became ubiquitous in the wallpaper of American TV comedy. In 1970, Samantha Stephens and the second Darren, along with their wacky relatives and colleagues spent several episodes of the ABC Situation Comedy Bewitched in Salem, Massachusetts. For 2 of those (Paul Revere Rides Again and Darrin on a Pedestal), Jud portrayed comically bemused hospitality industry employees (Bellhop and Maitre D' respectively). Throughout the period, there were appearances on variety shows hosted by the likes of Bobby Goldsboro -- as sure a sign of arrival as there was at the time
Elsewhere on the tube, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in, the groundbreaking comedy variety show on NBC that had done the unthinkable by going up against the formidable institution of Gunsmoke on CBS on Monday nights and beating it in the ratings, in the process churning out such catchphrases as "Sock it to me", "You bet your sweet bippy" and "Verrrry interesting" and introducing America to the talents of Goldie Hawn, Lily Tomlin, Henry Gibson and Tiny Tim among many others, was in its 6th and final season in 1972. In search of something different, the producer George Schlatter hired a rash of new talent, including Moosie Drier, Patti Deutsch, ventriloquist Willie Tyler, and Donna Jean Young. Rounding out the cast was none other than Jud Strunk.
Around this same time, the twice married Jud found his biggest and arguably most enduring success, with a song about a guy who falls in love with a girl in his youth and demonstrates his enduring love for her with the bestowal of a simple gift, a gesture that continues each day throughout both of their lifetimes, and beyond:
With its high concept simplicity and quintessential country flavor, Daisy a Day was a hit not only for Jud. It was recorded as well by Ernest Tubb, Glen Campbell, Roy Clark, Hank Snow (who named an album after it), Patsy Montana, and by Dutch star Conny Vandenbos (as Ik geef je een Roosje mijn Roosje). The Malaysian singer Kamahl had a hit with it in Australia. As seen above, Jud performed it himself on Johnny Carson in 1973. As an indication of its importance at the time, it received the Spike Jones, Jr. treatment in a never released rendition, that was played on Dr Demento's radio show several times.
The most unique honor for the song came in December 1972, when in the course of the Apollo 17 mission it became the first song to be played on the Moon in a specially designed player for the lunar lander, along with 4 other Jud Strunk tunes. Apollo 17 (Dec 7-19 1972), was the last lunar mission, ensuring that Jud Strunk's distinction as the only Earth composer to have received playtime on the surface of the moon may stand forever.
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| The article that appeared in Cash Box about it appears to have conflated the lunar orbiting command module with the lunar module— I.e., the lander. By several accounts the player was on the lander. |
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It wouldn't be show biz or country music if there weren't alcohol and brushes with the law involved. Jud had his share of problems with both following his success. Dick Stacey, owner of a motel lounge Jud played frequently with his band Copeland Kitchen in the late 70's reminisced that as payment for an appearance, Jud asked if Stacey wouldn't mind making a check payable to the Maine District Court System for $500 and delivering it to the cashier in Bangor. For Jud, not a problem. On another occasion, Jud requested a place his horse could stay for the night. He was on his way to Augusta on horseback to protest nuclear power and demonstrate for alternative energy sources, but first had to spend the night at the facilities of the local jail for another public drinking offense. Stacey put the horse up by the pool. The hard living inspired Jud's philosophically titled fourth and final album, A Semi-Reformed Tequila Crazed Gypsy Looks Back, in 1977.
What's the latest in energy for the home—nuclear, solar, atomic, gasified coal?Well, no, it's air power, according to William Gillette and Alan Lishness, two former aerial photographers in Maine whose Zephyr Wind Dynamo Company introduced last week a wind‐powered electrical generator otherwise known as — you guessed it—a windmill.The Zephyr windmill, which can store energy and provide for about half the space and “water heating needs of an average 2,500‐sq.‐ft. house, has no gears, belts or chains and is expected to last up to 40 years.What's so new about a windmill? The developers say theirs is different because of a slow, direct‐drive generator for which they have a patent pending. The generator, which produces 7½ kilowatts in a brisk, 28 mile per hour wind, has propellers hooked directly to it.Zephyr, which can build the units in 40 hours, has completed three of them, one of which is used to help heat its plant in Brunswick. The windmill, easily shipped, is asserted to be the largest production wind‐power generator in the world and a worthy competitor for European models that cost nearly twice as much as the $4,600 fully‐installed Zephyr.Within two days of the windmill's introduction, Jud Strunk, the country‐music singer, purchased one for his new “alternate” energy house planned for Eustis Ridge, Me.
His environmental involvement inspired him to open a new chapter in his varied life. In 1980 he ran for the Maine state senate, and according to the lore, lost by one vote.
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And this is where we find him October 5, 1981, preparing for takeoff in his 941 Fairchild M62-A at the Sugarloaf Regional Airport in Carrabassett Valley, Maine. As the plane reached 300 feet, the pain in Jud's arm spread to his chest. Struggling with the aircraft, he suddenly lost control of it. The aircraft banked, rolled and fell back to earth killing Jud and his passenger Dick Ayotte in the wreckage. The cause of Jud's death was determined to be congestive heart failure.
At 45, Jud's meteoric rise had come to a meteoric end. For Jud Strunk, downhill skier, one-time corporate spokesperson, windmill pioneer and author of a poem called ‘Bury Me on the Wind’, it might have been a fulfillment that he also died on the wind. It's reported that his sons have been shopping Jud's story around Hollywood, hoping to interest someone in a biopic. If they succeed, could there be any more fitting conclusion to the story?
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