Peter Cooper

What birthed the Music Makers stage was a friend of mine was losing her radio show and she didn't have any place to have it.

I was at the station in where Peter Cooper was having an album release.

He passed away some years ago.

And I remember I was talking to my friend Gina And I remember this is like October.

It's getting kicked out of the limousine by Bob Dylan because he told him he didn't like one of his songs or didn't like it as much as he liked some of his previous work.

And that was actually my entry point And ever having known about Phil, because there was a song written about it by Todd Snyder and Peter Cooper called Thin Wild Mercury.

We heard two versions of that last week.

So this week we're going to, in earnest, kind of start back at the beginning.

Right.

And I told you, too, I knew very little about him.

about phil oaks i knew who he was i didn't know who he was until todd snyder and peter cooper did a song about him and and peter came on an old radio show that i co-hosted and told us you know some backstory and stuff and i found that very interesting which is why we started with that but i mean i'm not coming in with a lot of knowledge on him either so we're kind of all learning this together and again shout out and thank you to patron hope who suggested and is paying for the series thanks hope thanks hope So we're going to start right at the beginning now.

Philip David Oakes was born in El Paso, Texas on December 19th, 1940.

It is the wildly colorful retelling of an artistic dust-up by someone that was certainly influenced by Phil.

So this is the late Todd Snider with a song that he and Peter Cooper wrote called Thin Wild Mercury.

[upbeat rock music]

Poor Phil Ochs, sad and low.

Awesome.

Mm-hmm.

Well, once upon a time, one of our guests was writer, journalist, historian, and musician Peter Cooper.

Now, he played us that song, which he had a hand in writing with Todd.