[Photo by Eli Dokson]
Hugh McCarten is another guy, like Cotty, I've known since I was 13. Along with Deane Evans, a character who's about to join the cast in Wyoming, we were inmates together at a certain all-boys prep school in New England in the Sixties, an experience we are slowly starting to come to terms with. When I met him, Hugh was already an accomplished musician, who introduced me to jazz and classical music and Broadway show tunes back when other kids were only listening to rock and roll. He has throughout the years remained a great songwriter, though he makes his living as an editor and reporter for People magazine.
Here's a YouTube video filmed and posted by Corinne Chubb which documents one of his more recent songs, played in Wyoming last week:
It's a politically incorrect evocation of this nation's Native American heritage. It's funny, and heap big funky — we must give that to Hugh — but it's also simply wrong.
In a cast of very odd characters, Hugh sets new standards of eccentricity on an almost hourly basis, though I can give proof of this only on a need-to-know basis.