26 Years Is Not A Long Time

CHICAGO — Baby Huey was one of those phenomena who happen along every so often. Never a freak of quite the proportions of Tiny Tim, for example, yet with that kind of bizarre potential. And now he’s dead.

James T. Ramey was Baby Huey, wafted into Chicago from Richmond, Indiana, half a dozen years ago, a 350 pound mammoth who had one of the planet’s ultimate bar acts. It was a super-visceral, intensely visual act, not all that great as lounge combos go but Huey was the front man and Huey was unique. He’d make two of Leslie West or Bob Hodge . . . those kind of proportions, the hypothalamus running beserk into the wilderness.

Later going on to Trudy Heller’s Ungano’s and the rest of the New York small time circuit, a couple tv shows, Europe, a record of “Mighty Mighty Spade and Whitey”, his ghetto dance theme song.

He got hung up on dope and that was that. Back in Chicago where he was working on an album for Curtis Mayfield’s Curtom label, he up and o.d.ed on October 28th, a little over a month after the death of his friend Jimi Hendrix.