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Mother Tuckers Yellow Duck
One Ring Jane / Kill the Pig - 7"
Duck - 1969
Michael Panontin
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Though Toronto may have gotten all the press back in the day (try googling these: the Yorkville scene, the Festival Express, the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival), it seems that by the late sixties the true freaks were out on the west coast.
Mother Tuckers Yellow Duck were one such outfit that originally formed as a non-musical collective. The group centred around a transplanted Bostonian named Kathy Kay as the original Mother Tucker and John Caldwell as the Yellow Duck. John Bower, a (then) 23-year-old lightshow artist for Vancouver's Afterthought club, remembers them well.
"We all shared the bottom floor of a house on McDonald near 4th Avenue, around the corner from Joan Payne's craft shop, where we worked on media for the shows. One day a car showed up with three guys and a girl. They said they were a band and had just arrived from the east. The red-headed guy introduced himself as John Patrick Caldwell and he said they were going to call the band Mother Tuckers Yellow Duck. They stayed with us for a few weeks. John tried to get on a baseball team, hoping for a job at the sponsoring brewery, but then they connected with Cliff Moore who started promoting them."
Caldwell would go on to form the real, musical version of the band with guitarists Rodger Law and Donnie McDougall, bass player Charles Faulkner and drummer Hugh Lockhead sometime in 1967. After issuing the relatively underwhelming 'I'/'Funny Feeling' in early 1968, Mother Tuckers evidently found their groove on their next single.
'One Ring Jane' was issued independently on Duck Records, but that didn't stop it from cracking RPM's Canadian Content Chart (where it reached #8 for the week of March 17, 1969). The song resonates with the energy of twin electric guitars, recalling San Francisco groups like the Jefferson Airplane and, especially, the early Moby Grape, both of whom helped kickstart a nascent Vancouver scene with their first visits in '66 and '67, respectively. Over on the back side, there's even more madness with Law's acerbic 'Kill the Pig', which essentially picks up where the Fugs left off and which probably did little to endear the guys to Vancouver's finest.
Nevertheless, Mother Tuckers Yellow Duck would go corporate soon after, signing on to Capitol Canada, where they managed a pair of LPs. Their 1969 debut, Home Grown Stuff, came in a couple of versions, a mega-rare original on Duck that sells for thousands and a less-pricey Capitol reissue (with a re-recorded 'One Ring Jane'). That was followed in 1970 by the somewhat easier-to-find Starting a New Day, with Leslie Law stepping in for his older brother on guitar.
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