This is the first in a series of biographical essays about the unknown music legend whose impressively large footprint on today's music is attributed primarily to his remarkably enormous feet
Arnett Spuckler, is considered by many musicologists to be the least known, most seminal figure in 20th century popular music. His influence during a 75 year long career, as a solo artist and as frontman for the five-man trio known as The Spucktones, ranged across musical genres from Country music all the way to Country & Western with rock, folk, blues, jazz, dubstep, house and Indonesian gamelan drone music in between.
Arnett was born to a poor family of tenant milo farmers in the Central Park, Manhattan agricultural district in 1929 not far from the paddle boat concession. Arnett was an extremely active child and the family often remarked at how he "just always seemed to be everywhere at once".
Shortly after Arnett turned 15 years old the family discovered that he was actually the elder of identical twins but due to a clerical error by the attending midwife, they mistakenly called both boys Arnett, not realizing they were two separate children. Once revealed, the mistake was corrected, tho, for a 6 month period just before the Korean War began, for no apparent reason both young men were known as Reynaldo.
Arnett began playing music at a very early age, first drumming on his mother's breasts during feeding sessions. Mrs. Spuckler, being a shy woman, was reluctant to perform in public with Arnett, but with carefully draped clothing and creative lighting, few audience members were aware that young Arnett was actually playing his own mother.
At nineteen, Arnett realized he'd gone as far as he could go musically with his mother's body and took up the guitar. Some Spuckologists credit Arnett as the first musician to tune a guitar's strings to specific frequencies but others dispute this claim.
Arnett enlisted in the Army in 1945 and trained as a 'tunnel rat' who would burrow into loose dirt and sand to locate and neutralize enemy soldiers attempting to tunnel in to attack Allied troop concentrations. During one exercise, Arnett apparently overshot his underground target and painstakingly dug his way from Fort Leonard Wood in Joplin Missouri to a small ranch outside Boulder, Colorado over a 9 month period, surviving on naked mole rats, earthworms and a package of JuJuBes he'd fortuitously picked up at the PX before beginning the exercise.
After leaving the service, Arnett attended the American Institute of Car Wash Attendants on the G.I. Bill and after graduating from the 18 month program at the top of his class, he washed cars in the small desert town of Splashing Waters, Arizona which holds the world's record as the driest inhabited community.
With no recorded rainfall and no local supplies of water, Arnett was forced to drive 135 miles to fill his bucket in a nearby community that had a well head. When post-war inflation caused gasoline to skyrocket from a pemmy a gallon to 23 cent a gallon, the economics of the business no longer made sense and Arnett moved to Nashville, ND, then known as "The Nashville of North Dakota" to try to make it in the music business.
Visit again soon to learn more about the remarkable life and music career of this amazing man. Chapter II: The Bordello Years
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